Scott Chester

Breakfast went well at Bear Creek this morning. I’d continue to attend. Things were crazy in the office getting ready for shows, breaking things like a DC-One trying to do a software update, etc. Then I left early to meet Verizon again today. Of course, today when we have a 3 o’clock appointment, they don’t show or call till after 5. We got the box swapped out and still didn’t have audio on the hdmi. I changed ports on the receiver and there it was. Is it possible that the software update did something to kill my hdmi port? I guess I’ll have to call Sony sometime and see what the heck is going on there. I do remember testing another port though, so that’s where I’m kind of confused as to why it isn’t working now.

I was pretty lazy tonight/this afternoon. I just plopped down on the couch and watched TV most of the time I was home, other than the hour or so I worked upstairs.

Institute was good tonight as always. I didn’t bring my laptop in and Brock told me I had high priest scriptures when I brought in my large print.

I stopped at Costco this morning to get gas as I was almost to the point of having to run on batteries. They totally changed out the pumps and they aren’t just new, but have been redesigned to look new/sleek. It was very confusing, although it seemed much faster than the previous pumps they had.

Let’s see if I can pick this up where I left off last night. Cheesecake. The Beverly Hills Cheesecake is quite smaller than your typical Cheesecake Factory and you almost walk through the kitchen to get through the restaurant. The surprising part was that there was no wait when we came in even though it was about 5:30. I’ll spare you the details of dinner, you can just know that Krystal felt that her chocolate raspberry cheesecake was better than mine. I actually did try something new: the 30th anniversary cheesecake which is layers of the original cheesecake with Linda’s Fudge Cake. It was pretty good in my opinion and pretty rich. We actually had to call it quits about half way through the cheesecakes and saved them for after the show.

Wicked was amazing. I had been telling Krystal not to expect much from the seats because we got them at the last minute and so forth. I was trying to build her up to expect the last row of the balcony or something. Well, I think my story got blown when they told us what door to go to - door number three, which is downstairs. Oh, maybe it’s just the back row of orchestra. As we were walking she almost nervously said “we keep walking.” I should have said something like we’re just going to check out the orchestra pit when she asked what row we were going to. She was thrilled when we stopped at row F and then slid to almost dead center.

The cast was almost entirely different from what I had seen any other time. The only main character that was the same was Madame Morrible, played by Carol Kane. We had the understudy for Galinda/Glinda. She did a good job. Fiero was pretty good as well, I’d say second best to the actor on the tour, although I wasn’t as critical of his role the first time I saw it. I still thought the sound was a bit off. Maybe the crew is just tired of the production or maybe they don’t have good fill speakers for the front. Everything considered, I’d say that everyone seemed to do a great job in the show. I enjoyed it so much that I quite literally would have come back the next night to see it again. Krystal “is in love with Wicked and wants a remote that can rewind her back to the beginning of WICKED!!!!”

So, the short of it is that I don’t know exactly what made this trip to Wicked so great. I don’t think I could put my finger on one thing in particular. I think overall though this trip tops the chart and has raised the bar for a great evening out. I enjoyed the show and appreciated the company greatly. I would totally do it again this week.

Now, on to today. As usual, I spent most of the day cleaning. As I was vacuuming downstairs near the entry I found these black spots that I hadn’t seen before. When I ran the vacuum over them, they only got bigger and bolder. The best way I can think to describe them is something like dry toner. I don’t know why I would have something like that on my floor, or what it was in reality. Since the vacuum was only making it worse, I got out the carpet cleaner and decided that pretty much everything downstairs needed a good cleaning. Well, hours later the family room, dining room and hallways had been done. The spots came out along with a lot of other dirt as I had to make many a trip to the sink to empty and refill. This was of course in addition to the other cleaning chores I did, so it took most of the day.

Lauren called me about going to some work thin with her. I told her I’d try and be there, but had to figure out some timing things. I got sidetracked with some work things that didn’t work out as they should have, so i wasn’t able to be there right on time. I could never get a hold of her to figure out where I was supposed to be going or what to wear, so it never happened. I was really sad about it as I haven’t seen her for a few weeks now.

I ended up helping out with the movie in the park or drive in movie as they like to call it. They needed some more power cables and other things to make it all work, so that got me out of the house this evening. I got things going, waited for people to show up and then took off. I called Sister Dowden on my way home to check in and ended up going over there to see the new look for her site. Of course that turned into a longer thing and it was about midnight before I got home.

I’ve got lots to do for church tomorrow, so I should probably get to sleep now that I am wound down. Good night and I hope you will join me tomorrow for church. We meet at 1 off the 215 at Los Alamos.

These girls make me laugh. I must start off by just stating how much joy Melissa & Krystal bring to me on a weekly basis. I love their goofiness and constant smiles. I even love how testy Krystal can get and I do appreciate that she hasn’t killed me yet.

I really enjoyed sleeping in this morning. I didn’t get out of bed for good until 9:30 or so which was amazing. The weather was beautiful outside last night, so I was able to sleep with the windows open after cooling the house down (and am hoping to do the same tonight). I enjoyed a pretty lazy morning, reading up on blogs and other stuff online, watching some TV and trying to figure out a game plan for the day. I had a lot of things I could have done, I think I was just too tired for all of them. I literally thought about just sitting on the couch and watching tv/movies all day.

I ended up not going to the zoo, Disneyland, Larilyn’s BBQ or anything else and went to catch up with Sister Dowden on the stuff we were supposed to do Saturday. I got her blog updated and taught her some tricks. She got me going on stumble upon. I still think in my head that all these sites are such a pain, but I understand that it will help drive traffic. I’m realizing the hours that I am going to have invested in this project and am seeing where this could really be a full time job. Problem is, if it was a full time job, what would one blog about?

We also had dinner there and celebrated Kenny’s birthday. He was crashed on the couch most of the time after going for a 200 mile ride this morning! I didn’t even know the boy was a bicyclist, yet alone capable of that monster!

I was a little bummed that we didn’t make it to the zoo. I was partially waiting for Lauren to call, but mostly lost track of time and it got to be too late. I think I was probably just not energetic enough to deal with the people and talk my way through security.

WordPress won’t keep these pictures in order so don’t be surprised if you get confused - they aren’t in chronological order.

This is really just another test trying to figure out the new gallery feature in WP 2.5.1. It looks like I can’t easily change the layout of the page, so I am stuck with the default 150×150 tumbnail size. Assuming this works of course…

Check out these pictures from the rain we just had a few minutes ago here at the office. This is the best thunderstorm we’ve had in a long time! I hope my grass got some free water as well since it was looking kind of brown…

By the way, have I mentioned how much I love the rain?

Mandi and I finally made it to Disneyland today and Kelsey joined us. We had a good time even though we had to cut the trip short to get Kelsey to work by 3. It was pretty hot out there, so it was probably a good thing we didn’t stay all day long and totally exhaust ourselves. We did Space Mountain and Indiana Jones, then got Kelsey’s pass on the way to California Adventure where we hit up Tower of Terror (walked straight into the hotel) and California Screaming. We headed to Fudds after that. Neither Kels or Mandi had ever been there before, so I had to get them hooked!

I spent the rest of the day at the Dowden’s. We just hung out for a while, then decided to go get some new furniture they had been looking at. A new couch for upstairs and a new kitchen table. It was nice to take a break today and although I am exhausted, I feel much better.

So I didn’t write yesterday because I didn’t get home until almost 2 this morning. I figured that was a good enough excuse to put it off until this evening. I went to Costco on the way to work and picked up a new Nikon Coolpix S700 digital camera. We had decided earlier in the week that the Sanyo digital cameras we got require a lot of work to get a good picture. I thought it could be worth a small investment in a little camera to hopefully get better pictures in those situations now. I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to try it out yet, but we did take a few pictures at Wicked.

Maegan and I went to Wicked at the Pantages in Hollywood. The seats were amazing, Row L dead center. Traffic was horrendous, but the GPS nav was able to divert us around some of it. It also directed us to surface streets through downtown to Hollywood which I’m not exactly sure I agreed with because they were quite slow, but we got there and we made it on-time, so that is all that really matters. The show was great, even the third time seeing it. I wouldn’t mind going back and seeing it again! Maegan seemed to thoroughly enjoy the show although she seemed a little disappointed with how dirty LA is. I guess we now know why she has never been there before. All the characters were good. Megan Hilty was great as Glinda as always. Caissie Levy did good as Elphaba, but I think I liked the previous actresses I saw do the part better. Kristoffer Cusick did a good job at Fiyero as well, but the guy I saw from the tour wins hands down as he just fit the part so well.

We drove by the LA Temple on the way home and I finally got home just before 2. It was definitely a long day, but it was so much fun. We’re planning a trip to the Los Angeles Temple on March 1st if anyone is interested in joining us.

It was really hard to get myself out of bed this morning for the World Wide Leadership Training, but I did it nonetheless. I made it to the stake center with a few minutes to spare and discovered that they were having all sorts of technical difficulties. Sister Dowden tried to get me to go help, but I just didn’t want to get involved. They finally got the satellite feed going, but they were having problems playing back the recorded feed as they were trying to delay the broadcast an hour. We ended up just watching the second half and we will catch up on the first part later. It was all good, but it seems like the same old stuff. I guess that means we have more work to be done and need to continue to raise the bar to make better homes and wards.

After the broadcast I went out to breakfast with the Dowden’s and then went to work for a few hours. I got things together for the board meeting, took care of some emails and then came home. I was debating about going for a bikeride or taking a nap. I was planning on getting through the mail and receipts. I accomplished none of the above and I’m not really sure why. I did get pictures posted and started catching up on some of the news.

I found out that my Sunday School teachers are leaving me left and right tonight. Not only am I loosing Stephanie in two months, but Marissa and Kyle are leaving. Stephanie, the amazing Stephanie, is stepping in for Marissa tomorrow, so I’m going to owe her something big that is yet to be determined. Here is one more thing I was going to do today that we can mark off as not getting done. That would be getting to bed early, so I’m going to work on finishing this up and trying to get to sleep before 11.

What a day. The new First Presidency was announced this morning. I watched the press conference at work and was pleased with the call of Elder Uchtdorf and am interested to see where this will take us. The press conference was good and kept me thinking for a while. For the record, the rain was gone and it was a beautiful day here in Southern California.

We hung a bunch of pictures in my office today so it finally looks like we have moved in. I have a few frames left to fill, but will need to go through some more pictures to get more variety. I got through a lot of email today because it was fairly quiet and can actually see all that is left on one screen!

Stacy taught a good lesson tonight at FHE on compassion. I could come up with some great things to write, but I need to get to sleep.

I went to the Dowden’s after FHE to take Diana the chocolate doughnut holes I forgot to bring yesterday. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stay for just a few minutes, and it was 10 o’clock before I left.

I think I need to be in the office in the morning, so I had better get myself to bed. I’m ready for the new light.

Well today wasn’t nearly as exciting as yesterday, but I guess we all have to work sometimes, right? Batch and I spent the day installing Windows Server and pushing around machines … We’ll be back tomorrow afternoon and evening to continue the fun.

I got to go to La today for lunch. I haven’t been there in forever, so it was nice, but it wasn’t as good as I was expecting. I think I just had my expectations set really high. It wasn’t bad by any count.

Lauren had been bugging me to get pictures on facebook from yesterday, so I had to make sure to take care of that first thing when I got home this evening. They are up there, and I decided to make a group so everyone else could post pictures, comments, etc. It drives me crazy that you can’t add events after the fact, so I made one for tomorrow. I then found a few other events that I will be attending that didn’t exist on FB, so I took the time to create them.

I really didn’t do too much else today. I need to figure out my plans for Idaho later this month so I can get my flight booked and go see Shelly! Alas, it will have to wait another day as I need to get some sleep tonight.

Today must have been good because it just flew by! We had our company outing at Disneyland today. I picked up Sibonet, Tara and Lauren (S) and we were at Disneyland just after they opened. We met up with Christa, Batch & Bouse. Nathaniel and Erica joined us a bit later.

We hit California adventure first: Tower of Terror, Soaring, Screaming, Ferris Wheel, Mulholland Madness and Tower of Terror again. I couldn’t believe what time it was - and we didn’t spend much time at all waiting in lines.

We went to Disneyland to get fast passes for Space Mountain before getting lunch/dinner, but found there was only a 10 minute wait. We quickly discovered this was only because it was a 10 minute walk and that there really was only a few minutes of waiting to board. We tried to talk with Stitch, but he was on vacation this week and Nikki was nowhere to be found. The only thing in the park that had a line was the submarines, so we decided not to stand around for that. Bouse managed to beat me on Astro blasters, with a gun in each hand!

We had an awesome waitress - Teal - at The Cheesecake Factory after Batch decided we should walk there. It was great as always, and we definitely ate too much. Teal talked me into trying a new cheesecake, the chocolate oreo mudslide or something like that. It was quite good, once I got past the nuts in the crust. Lauren insisted that we take a cab back to the park - which she, Tara, Sibonet and I enjoyed while the others walked.

We got right on Pirates after getting fast passes for Indiana Jones, then went for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad before hitting the Matterhorn as the park was closing. We didn’t get to do Indiana Jones because of some problem with the ride. Maybe they will honor our fast passes for another day?

I’m trying to keep the long story short so I can get to sleep, but it was a great day and we will have to do it again soon. I’ll try and post pictures later, but I have a feeling the next couple days are going to be kind of long working days.

I’ve been running so late everyday this week that I haven’t read in the morning and have instead opted to listen to conference while driving. It has been nice having something more relevant to ponder throughout the day.

I was a bit disappointed we didn’t get any rain today. I even wore my boots to work today thinking we were going to get some excitement today, but nothing came of it. I spent most of the day continuing to clean up the books and pressing forward with the little things that need to be done.

Alison and I met for dinner at BJ’s tonight and then went to Costco. We found some great art pieces that I would have loved to have bought, but I wouldn’t have known what to do with them if I had. If I had a whole house to decorate, I might have had to purchase a few of the pieces, so I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have a house to decorate. I also saw this Pirates of the Caribbean bed that I loved. It’s again a good thing I didn’t have a kids room to go put that thing in cause it was $800! (Most of the artwork was above $300.) I really liked this one picture assortment they had of the Grand Canyon and wanted to buy it for my dad if I knew it would actually go in a good place in the house.

I have no plans for this weekend - or I guess rather tomorrow: Saturday. I was hoping to get some time in for a bikeride at some point or maybe I could clean my car, but if it actually rains like it is supposed to neither of those will probably work out too well.. Maybe I can spend the day cleaning up around here and reading, or maybe I will finally work on some server tasks I’ve been putting off that I could do from home. Maybe I could book my travel for Idaho & Salt Lake later this month so I don’t end up waiting till the last minute like I normally do. Well, it sounds like I’ve got an adequate list together now, so maybe I’ll just go to sleep!

I was all prepared to get to work at a reasonable time this morning. I actually got up just after six and spent a good amount of time reading. After I was completely dressed and ready to leave the house, Susan pointed out to me that there was a fire nearby. We started doing some research and sure enough there was a fire in Rainbow that caused all lanes of the 15 to be shut down. There went my chances of going to work!

I did get some stuff done from home, but for the most part spent the day watching the fire and checking in on other people lost in the craziness. There was so much traffic on the Fallbrook ARC channel that it actually drained the battery in my HT. They ordered a complete evacuation of Fallbrook this afternoon, but we never got the reverse 911 call. My dad and I drove out to see what we could see and discovered that the fire was still down at Reche and Ranger and it seemed that we were not in immediate danger and decided to ride it out.

I’m thinking its time to get a ham radio in my car and maybe a real unit for my house as well.

I’m headed to bed now so I can get up for my shift of fire watch at 2. Please pray for the safety of the firefighters and other emergency responders.

For those that don’t know, they are realigning the southern end of Alta Vista where it meets Via Monserate. They have been planning this for as long as we’ve lived in Fallbrook which is close to a decade. They started a few weeks ago, and are slowly making some progress.

It looks like someone got tired of the detour though. I’ve heard it is about 8 minutes to get to the other side of the detour for the people that live right there. For me who rarely travels south, it really isn’t that big of a deal, but does add a few minutes the times that I do go that way.

Granted, I don’t know that I would blame them. It is only dirt and I don’t think it is impacting the work of the construction crew. Heck, if I still had my truck, I may have done it myself!

Having the road closed is nice for riding on the street though as it dramatically lessens the number of cars one has to deal with. Here is a picture of the high quality sign instructing that the road is closed: