The Pursuit of Happiness

Just a quick post about a movie we saw over the weekend that we loved. It is The Pursuit of Happiness staring Will Smith and his own son. It is the story of a young father who has real get up and go, but no money. His son's mother leaves them and he has the chance to take an internship at a stock brokerage firm in San Francisco, but without pay. If, he impresses the bosses, at the end of the internship he could get offered a job. He has twenty other interns with whom he is competing for one spot.

But the real story is how he fights so hard to take care of his son and provide for him. They sleep in subway stations, cheap motels, and mostly homeless shelters all for a chance to make it and create a better life for the family. It is a true story and the man about whom the story is was a consultant on everything. It is very true to his real experience.

We loved it and highly recommend it. The movie was rated PG-13, supposedly for language. However, we were surprised by how clean it it was. There is one scene at the very beginning where the five-year-old son reads some graffiti on a wall and asks if it is spelled correctly and I think that is the only reason it is rated PG-13. Go check it out. It will make you feel like you can do anything!

Turning Wheat into Gold

So you all know the story of Rumpilstiskin and the girl who can turn straw into gold. Well last week our stake organized a huge food storage order from some giant Idaho food distributor. Food storage has always been a hobby of sorts for me. But as of late, the price of wheat has increased significantly and has really got me thinking about how we are doing and if we needed to place an order. When I commented on the price of wheat, J reminded me of that Brigham Young quote where he says that there will come a day when wheat will be more valuable than gold. On Saturday morning I was listening to public radio and heard the Market Place Money Report which announced that gold has reached a new high. It is trading for more than $950 an ounce! My thought was, "Boy, I can't wait for my hundreds of pounds of wheat to appreciate that much!" Maybe that extra hundred pounds of wheat I was thinking of ordering will come in handy one of these days as a long term investment strategy...

(Okay, reality check also says that if my wheat is more valuable than gold, I probably need to keep it because the state of the world will be such that my basement may be the only grocery store I have access to for quite a while.)

Long story short, Saturday night we did an inventory of our food storage and found ourselves fairly satisfied, minus a few exceptions. The peace of preparation far outweighs the price of gold.

BTW, the Church has emphasised a little different strategy for food storage as of late. It emphasizes a complete three month supply of food and then a years supply of the very basics (the three months supply can be part of that year supply). That may not really sound new, but if you go to providentliving.org, the approach is slightly different and the recommended amounts have changed some what.

Have You Ever Tried a Netie Pot?

So I went to the doctor today and have a particularly bad sinus infection. My nasal passages have been plugged up for quite some time now and I generally feel awful. Besides doping up on Tylenol, the nurse told me on Monday when I called to make the appointment not to take anything else until I could see the doctor.

I was getting desperate for some relief. A nurse friend of mine suggested trying a netie pot. It's like a tiny little watering can than you hold up to your nose and let the water drain through one nostril, circulate through your sinuses and then drain out the other nostril.

I tried it! It's really interesting. At first I felt like I was drowning. You look kind of stupid with your head cocked and a pot stuck in one of your nostrils. A just kept coming in to see what I was doing. (It sort of reminded me of a picture in one of A's books, No David, where mom tells David to keep his finger out of his nose.)

I did it once on Monday night. It took forever because my sinuses were so clogged up. But I'll tell you what, so much came out of my sinuses it was remarkable. I didn't think it did much as far has helping me feel better until I woke up on Tuesday and felt so much less congested. Tuesday was a really busy day and I didn't have a chance to do it again and today I'm feeling terrible. I don't know for sure if it has to do with the netie pot, but I'm willing to keep trying. Put that together with my antibiotics from my doctor and hopefully I'll be good as new in a few days.

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