I've spent the last two years working as a Sushi waitress at three different restaurants, and that was a great blessing! I was able to work with some wonderful people and it was awesome to be able to earn money while Eric was finishing up school.
Right now, I'm looking for some jobs that will either work well with my school schedule, or would be able to provide me with experience with law offices, and I found some promising opportunities last week!
So lately, I've been talking to my friend Jenni (who lives in Hawaii right now with her husband and beautiful little son), and she kind of inspired me to read more books lately! I get so into reading stupid little news articles in my free time, and it had been a while since I had read actual books consistently... Eric is WAY better about it than me! He's read 24 books so far this year, some of them behemoths like "Crime and Punishment" and the like. So, last week I read a biographical book about Brigham Young. It was fascinating to hear about how much that man traveled. I learned some pretty cool and interesting things about early church history, too!
And now, I'm been in the process of reading G.K. Chesterton's "The Innocence and Wisdom of Father Brown", which is actually two books. Each chapter is a new mystery, and so far I've only guessed 2 out of 14 of the "solutions" by the chapter's end. His descriptions of the settings are intriguing. Often the story takes place in the evening, and the sky takes on some crazy color, like "peacock green with ribbons of gold", for a typical example. I especially enjoyed chapter 3, a funny mystery about an exclusive club called "the twelve true fishermen." And chapter 4, "The Flying Stars" had a part about a "good-old fashioned Christmas eve 'pantomime'" that really stuck with me. It was magical, but a bit eerie.
In other news, Eric and I met with the bishop of our ward for the first time, and both of us were impressed with just how sweet of a man our bishop is! He truly loves the people in the ward, especially those who have less stability at home. He really prays for the Lord's inspiration in the decisions he makes to help the congregation. He extended callings to both Eric and I, Eric to be a counselor in the Young Men's program (which I think is very neat, because Eric has never experienced working with the Young Men since he joined the church while he was in college), and I was asked to be the first counselor in Relief Society. We were both very humbled. I really look forward to working with and getting to know the other women in our ward and trying to help as best as I can. It will be good for me as well to make it a priority to go to the activities! It will be a big learning opportunity for sure.
After meeting with the bishop today, we went for a nice walk. It was really muggy and summery out!
Yesterday evening we checked by the Kansas City Symphony to see if they had any tickets available for their "Disney's Fantasia LIVE" performance, because if there is ANYONE who would enjoy that show, it would be us. We love Fantasia! Unfortunately, the very cheapest were like almost $90 combined, and we just can't do that at the moment. We knew it would be a long shot anyway and it was fun to check, because the Kauffman Center is beautiful. And it wasn't a total loss, because we were able to eat at a new barbecue place, Q39, which was delicious! I'll go into a more extensive "barbecue rating" post sometime of the places we've tried, but this experience was fun because there was this super friendly couple sitting next to us and we hit it off pretty well talking about barbecue in KC. Eric and I aren't the best at making new friends because we're both more reserved in public, and so I almost wish I had gotten some information to hang out (and maybe eat at more barbecue places with them in the future), but I didn't know if that'd be weird. After that we walked around the Plaza. We love walking around beautiful places, and in Kansas City there are a LOT of great places to enjoy. We want to take advantage of living so close to cool things!
Anyway, today ended with Eric kindly agreeing to watch "Pride and Prejudice: A Latter-day Comedy" with me. Admittedly, it is a cheesy and sort of dated movie with moments of not-the-best-acting, but it is still a movie I really love. Is it because the main character Elizabeth reminds me of my friend Jenni? Is it because the part where the friends go from ice-cream eating shut-ins to exercising, river-floating success stories is somehow inspiring to me? Is it because the guy who plays Collins does waaaayy too good of a job playing his part??? Yes, yes, yes and more. (Mozart for Dogs, anyone?)
It's thunderstorm weather, which means it is time to catch some glorious Zs. Good to be back! :)
--Sannah
