I was asked to write the obituary for my dear brother, Devin. My parents and brother, Kirk, had some good suggestions for me. I even called his former spouse, Racheal, to see if she wanted to be included in the "survived by" section. She did, but not if Katy objected ... and when I contacted Katy she felt like Devin would have preferred that not be included.
Anyway, here is my brief obituary, along with photos that Kirk sent to possibly included in the slideshow on the mortuary web site:
I lost a dear friend today: my little brother, Devin James Benge.
I think I am still in a bit of a state of shock after getting the news early this morning, so I don't feel like sharing a massive amount of cathartic information right now. Most of my thoughts have been on how we might serve his sweet wife, Katy, and help his young son and soon-to-be-born child.
Esther gives a book report of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as Hermione Granger:
NY Jets head coach Robert Saleh said something like that in the middle of an interview I heard today. Terrific! I think I may cheer for the Jets for the first time this year, with Zach Wilson and Tristan Hoge on the roster.
Other thoughts:
I bumped into this today, and thought I should put it on the blog.
About 9 years ago, my mother asked us to perform at the Springville Museum of Art. As a family, we sang "Good and Kindly Parents". Miriam, Gideon, Isaac, Hannah, Susie and I sang "Lullabye", I believe, which is still one of my favorites. Lucy and up sang "Dynamite". Miriam played something on the violin. Did we sing anything else?
The Daily Herald photographer didn't make it to our little show, but came to Mom & Dad's clubhouse afterward, did a quick interview and took a couple of pictures.
I have PDF files of the article and the photo and captions. I can't share the PDF on the blog, so I am taking images of the 5 pages and posting them here, which include some brief notes I added.
I just watched President Russell M. Nelson's message of hope. (President Nelson is the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a prophet, seer and revelator.) He encouraged us to #givethanks on social media and express gratitude daily in prayer. I will.
I have a few blog posts in unfinished states and feel extremely busy right now as I try to finish a project involving database development I am doing. I am not always filled with gratitude during such times. Instead, I think I often feel anxiety, irritation, disappointment and critical thoughts about myself and others. I am relatively certain that is quite normal.
I geek out about modern technology a lot. I couldn't really imagine a technology career when I was a kid in New Plymouth, Idaho. I remember creating a program on a TRS-80, a "microcomputer", and saving and running the program from a cassette tape. We created a white humanoid (that's as good as you do with pixels larger than the type you are now reading) on black field waving, with words of greeting. I was told it was the future. I couldn't tell how.
I've always wanted to watch a football game at Layton Christian Academy. It is on the edge of the ravine leading down to Hobbs Reservoir below, and I find it very picturesque.
When was the last "Storm of the Century", where we cleaned up all the fallen trees and replaced neighborhood roofs? 2010? So, I guess we now get a Storm of the Decade.
I am very grateful wind doesn't blow any of our trees into our house. We lost a little roof cap, but otherwise our home itself is fine. And, unlike some, we measured our power outage in hours, not
Here are just a few picture at our place of the storm on September 8th:
Yesterday morning I felt I need to record the sounds of the Benge household in the morning. It is pretty amazing.
The high school bus leaves before seven, so Lucy can't play her instruments Monday and Wednesday mornings anymore. But when she is around, we have five children practicing at the same time, and the neighbor girl that Susie is tending shrieks along with them.
Wonderful.
Like many, I now work from home. And, things have been going well enough that the presiding Bishopric has asked us to pilot some work-from-home patterns to see what works, and we were asked to submit a proposal, following some basic guidelines. Our team has proposed to work from home every day except Friday, possibly coming in on Tuesdays if we feel we need more face-to-face meeting time.
My desk is in the downstairs family room, and it is really noisy sometimes, especially when children come over. But, I hate trying to get everyone to be quiet when I am in meetings. And, my set up is pretty sloppy. So, I took some steps to make my "office" more conducive to work.
I started by purchasing a very expensive set of Bose noise cancelling headphones, with speakers that also block out most everything except my voice. So far, they have been excellent.
... the Complete Calvin and Hobbs:
