A Tectonic Plate Stumbles Into a Bar ...

... knocking things over, and quickly apologizes, "Sorry! My fault!"

You're welcome!

Speaking of earth shattering news: I forgot to share a photo embarrassing myself. For the Nielson family candlelight Christmas party (which is what they usually call it every year, even though we typically leave out anything to do with candles), the theme was to dress as a favorite Christmas character:

Do you know who we are? Most family members didn't know, which I guess dates me. One even suggested I looked like Pennywise the clown from Stephen King's It, which is definitely not a good character to think about at Christmas time.

We are Snow Miser and Heat Miser, of course. We're too much! (Ba da da daaah, daaah, dah.)

In other ground-breaking news: Andrew went crazy cleaning our old, beat-up piano. I have no idea what got into him, but it was fun to watch. You probably can't tell much from the picture, because there is not much one can do about the broken up panel exterior. But, he scraped lots of old goo off the piano, rubbed protective oil on it, used steel wool to shine the nobs and pedals and other brass pieces, cleaned in and around each key, etc. He did very good work:

In low-Richter-Scale news, I spoke in sacrament meeting Sunday, but the new 2nd Counselor, Rob Crown, took most of the time (and did a fantastic job). I took five minutes to add testimony and didn't use any notes, and left the bishop about 30 seconds. (FYI, the bishop was fine with that because ward conference is coming up and they want him to teach Sunday School and give a talk.)

And, Esther did something really cute and it is driving me nuts that I can't remember it! I gotta write stuff down right away or I completely forget.

More earth-shaking stuff: yesterday, I took everyone to the movie The Greatest Showman, which I would highly recommend. Just be aware that the story only marginally follows P. T. Barnum's real life, but I think that might be part of the point: a movie, like a circus, should be really entertaining but need not be true to real life. And this show really delivers on the entertainment.

Oh yeah, and if you missed it, our favorite mountain-leveller, Miriam, sang The Star Spangled Banner at a swim meet and did a great job. Enjoy the view of a drain.

She also did not perform at our ward Christmas program during sacrament meeting, which caused a lot of problems for the person she was supposedly playing the duet with. She sat up by us for awhile, but then decided that the noises were just too much and left during the program, before her number. In other news, she is really, really offended when people hint that she isn't very responsible.

And I think that should take care of a few weeks of news.

Ciao!