The week is indeed almost in the books. In a few minutes I’ll head to bed to be up early in the morning for a day of Church service. I’ve a speaking assignment at the Arbon Branch tomorrow. I really enjoy going out there and always look forward to the opportunity. There are some outstanding people out in that valley. I’m speaking on Unity and I’ll probably post the notes from the talk tomorrow evening sometime.

Most months on the fourth Friday Phil Windley organizes a monthly CTO Breakfast. I enjoy getting together with that group and try to arrange my schedule to be able to go down to Salt Lake for that. Usually the fourth Thursday Laura Moncur organizes a Geek/Blogger dinner somewhere in the valley. If it works out, I drive down on Thursday afternoon, go to the dinner Thursday evening, stay the night at our daughter Heather‘s house in North Salt Lake, and then go to the CTO Breakfast on Friday morning. This month I decided to make a small change, skip the dinner, and Nina and I would drive down to North Salt Lake after she was done at the prison. I’d go to the breakfast the next morning, we’d visit with the family, and drive back home in time for the last Idaho State Civic Symphony performance of the season.

It worked out very well. I picked Nina up at the prison at 9 pm as they finished up and we got to Heather’s house about 11:30 pm. She was still up as a young woman in her ward (where Heather is the Relief Society President) got bit by a rattlesnake and had to be life-flighted to the University Hospitals in Salt Lake for treatment. Fortunately, all is going well for the young woman who now definitely has a rattlesnake story to tell!

The breakfast on Friday morning is usually held at the Novell Cafeteria in Provo. However, on this day the cafeteria was not available so the breakfast was hosted by the Utah Education Network (UEN) at their facility in the Eccles Broadcast Center on the University of Utah campus. There was good attendance and the UEN presentation was very interesting. Utah is doing some very innovating things with marrying technology and education.

Afterwards Heather, Nina, and I met granddaughter Stephanie for lunch at Dodo’s Restaurant at the Gateway Mall. I had a very nice French Dip (the bacon and swiss cheese really helped make the sandwich). It was a good experience and great conversation.

The Idaho State Civic Symphony (their website has disappeared!!) together with the Camarata Singers put on a fabulous program on Friday night. The program started with Respighi‘s Pines of Rome which literally pulled the entire audience (another full house) to their feet at the end for a long, heartfelt standing ovation. After a 20 minute intermission the orchestra was joined by the Camarata Singers in a performance of Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. The piece begins and ends with “O Fortuna“, an almost undescribable, heart pounding piece of music. It almost brings tears to my eyes whenever I hear it (and I have three different recordings of it on my iPhone). Last night’s performance was, well in a word, stunning. Once again the entire audience sprang to their feet for a long, long standing ovation. The local university radio station recorded the performance. I need to find out if they’ll replay it sometime on their station. I’d dearly love to hear it again.

And that wraps up this week. Good night!