January '22 Randoms

I want to go to these places on a day trip with my favorite day-tripping friends, or with my history-loving sons.

More sightseeing and travel desires. I want to go to all of these places, some of them practically in my backyard (figuratively speaking), and others much farther away.

England is where I want to go most in the world. France is in my top five.

Egypt is where I want to go second most.

This would be so cool. Literally!

I thought this Netflix DVD envelope was cute. I'm old-fashioned and still get the DVDs! (I do streaming too.)

Sad. 

Love thyself 😘

Our schools didn't close, but it was cold! Not as cold as Iowa got though.

This is my favorite meal at a little restaurant that I like to stop at for lunch on my way home from the temple.

When I was preparing my talk about teaching and learning the gospel for sacrament meeting, I looked up my Institute teacher from college because he was a part of my talk, and I found out that he lives here in the Boston area now! Small world! He was SUCH a good teacher and I know that he's blessing the lives of students and young adults in Boston and Cambridge.

He was getting his doctorate in Egyptology when we were at Penn. He was very smart, both intellectually and spiritually. Now he's a chaplain at Harvard and the Institute director in Cambridge.

I think it's funny that right after it says that he and his wife have nine children, the next part talks about barren women. 😆

I watched a lot of webinars in January, most of them about getting a job. 

I was made for remote, at home work!

I spent January updating my resume, writing my cover letter, joining LinkedIn, and watching webinars. It was all worth it--I applied for a job at the end of the month and received an offer two days later. I highly recommend the FlexJobs website. It helped me a lot and is where I did the webinars and found my job. (It's an editing job for study.com--the pay is low and the hours are too few, but I like the work and the hours should increase soon--especially because they just gave me an additional opportunity because of the quality of my work! And hopefully the pay will go up at some point.)

I had resisted joining LinkedIn for quite awhile, but I did it!

I liked the cover of The Friend for December. It was very sweet. 

The first counselor in our stake presidency (and my mom's former bishop) is running for governor of Massachusetts! It's like Mitt Romney all over again! He's Republican, LDS, very nice and successful, and I like his platform, so he has my vote! 

Even though I've hardly worried about this for myself, I found this little flow chart helpful.

Spotted at CVS: "Plan it, do it" -- that's pretty much how I live my life. It works! 😊

Pretty roses

I watched another webinar, this one from the high school about junior year. It was done by my guidance counselor from when I was in high school--she's still there! She's in the right corner. She was the best!

College is coming up fast! 😱

The scene where my webinar watching happens.

Hangin' With My Bros

 I don't know how calling my sons my "bros" made it into my personal lexicon, but somehow it did, and I'm just going to go with it. 😄

John did a ninja competition at his ninja gym and tied for third place with one of his teammates. He still does ninja and he enjoys it, but wrestling has definitely become his priority. One of the good things about ninja is that you can do it your whole life--there's an adult division for competitions. Wrestling, not so much, so he's decided to prioritize wrestling during his high school and college years.

After the competition, the boys and I went to the movies to see the new Spiderman movie. The theater had been refurbished during Covid and now had cushy recliner seats with table trays. It was great to go to the movies together again for the first time since Covid hit! And the movie was good too; Sam especially loved it.

After one of John's wrestling meets, Sam and I went out for ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery. I may have used that as incentive to get him to go to the meet. 😆

Could Sam be a future employee of Cold Stone, perhaps? He wouldn't mind that!

And finally, here we are at his annual physical.

These appointments are always a little nostalgic for me because they never fail to remind me of when the boys would go in for their check-ups as babies, toddlers, preschoolers, and so on. They keep growing, and that's a good thing, but it's also a sentimental thing for their mother!

Crazy Times Scrapbook, January 2022

 The reason I still do these "Crazy Times" posts is because the crazy times have continued ever since Covid made its debut over two years ago, and in some ways they've only gotten crazier. I also still do these posts because I've been proven right over time in a lot of my opinions and suspicions, and I expect this to continue as well. I haven't been right about every single thing, but--unfortunately--many of my conspiracy "theories" have turned out to be true. So I will keep at it, although I suspect these posts will get shorter in the future as I have less time to read (and photograph) the news now that I'm a working woman.

"Abortion affects two people: the mother and the unborn, who has no say in the matter. It is a woman's right to make a second bad choice, nothing more. It is not a noble right like equal pay or voting. Let's not pretend it is anything but what it is: murder."

I will continue to speak out against abortion until it is banned for the shameful crime that it is.

This was big news in January, although I don't think there was very much about it on the mainstream networks. It doesn't support their narrative. 

Oh, Biden.

The only "good" the vaccines seem to do is that they can make Covid less severe if (when) you get it after being vaccinated. 

These are good thoughts about why those in church leadership may not see the whole Covid cabal for what it might actually be. Church leaders and members and their general lack of consideration for this very real possibility is something that I wonder about a lot. 

"It would be irrational, legally indefensible and contrary to the public interest for government to mandate vaccines absent any evidence that the vaccines are effective in stopping the spread of the pathogen they target. Yet that's exactly what's happening here."

Interesting...

YES

This is insane. 

Florida has turned out to be the most intelligent state in the country. 

This sadly proved to be prescient a month ahead of the actual war. 

Sensible, smart England

I think this is so sad and unnecessary.

This has turned out to be mostly right. Not that I put much stock in what the CEO of Pfizer says. 

This helped me to understand better the whole Ukraine/Russia problem and how it could affect the U.S. and the world. Unfortunately, about a month after this was written, Russia invaded.

This is so sad. It all is.

Evil China. Everything is their fault. (Not really, but they have done and continue to do horrible things.)