SpiritDragon

Sounds like the pendulum has swung too far since the days of shark repellent bat spray I haven't seen the movie in this topic yet, but it sounds like they missed the boat on some comic relief. Granted audiences today may not appreciate a rubber shark that can't pierce human flesh - but somehow I still get a kick out of it anyway.

@unixknight Way to go! This is truly exciting news. All the best to you and your family.

You should have found a different dealer

This is all very interesting to me and I will need time to fully formulate an opinion and digest this. On the one hand I can see how it could alleviate tensions and make wedding days possibly more friendly to many. I can even see how getting all of the wedding nonsense dealt with on a separate date and then being able to focus on the sealing without everyone else putting in their two cents and packing the day to stupidity with non-essential "stuff" would also be nice. I can say that for my own wedding day it was fortunate that this policy was not in place because my meddling mother in law would have surely pushed for my wife and I to do a fluff ceremony to cater to a plurality of relatives that weren't and aren't worthy to attend the temple ceremony. My wife has too great a need to please her parents that she would likely have decided to go along with it even though she didn't want to as they were/are not relatives she actually cared to have around anyway. I personally like the idea of having the wedding/ sealing combined and intimate, just really close family and friends. In fairness, I never have understood the big deal about this either though, people can still go to the reception and/or dinner to take part. I only attended one of five siblings sealings as they either took place before I was endowed or while I was on my mission and I never felt I missed out on anything. I can't help but wonder if this is going along with the policy change for children with homosexual parents to allow for less family alienation when family members are clearly not living up to standards which would allow them to participate otherwise. Hopefully it helps more families than it hurts. I can't help but feel that some people will just find something else to be offended over. As it happens, I have a brother-in-law who's family boycotted his wedding for various reasons and my sister and he didn't even notice their absence until some time later it was brought up and his family were all the more miffed at not being missed when they didn't show. It wouldn't have mattered what was done, they were just going to find a way to be upset and try to make a stink.

The mini me does appear to showcase greater intelligence than who she is dumbing herself down to portray.

Or an emoji throwing a tomato

I did actually do scouting both in and out of the church, and while the experience in church troops was different, neither of them excelled in actual scouting or at least my perception of it. Not a navy seal, but Scouting originated with the military discipline of scouting - as in surveillance, detection, avoidance of detection, sending signals and so on. I just happened to wish for it to live up to the purpose of it's existence from my understanding as a child. Lord Baden Powell put together the scouting program first to prepare boys to be more useful in military application and things were later revised for a more civilian take on improving life and building character, but the useful military application shouldn't have all but disappeared into history. Fair enough - I should have stated how to minimize odds of detection. From an actual scouting perspective the ability to get back and relay information without being detected is incredibly valuable. It could also be highly valuable to the innocent person who witnesses something that puts their life in jeopardy. Perhaps more of an urban movement course would be appropriate for most, but still a valuable skill set. Indeed, if my father had been a hunter I could have learned many of these skills. He wasn't and didn't - and that's okay too. Interesting points. You've hit the nail on the head. There is a lot that is/was SUPPOSED to happen that doesn't/didn't. It's easy to blame it on how the church ran things, easy to blame it on parents not being involved enough, easy to blame it on scouting in general... none of which is entirely true, and all of which contributed to the issues. My primary point in all of my pointing these things out is that at least I wouldn't have been disappointed by the new program for not living up to it's legendary potential, perhaps I'd be dissatisfied for other reasons - but not because it failed to meet expectations.

I completely agree with this anecdotal experience. We foster public speaking skills in primary as well as basic music and rhythm. Our youth further develop the ability to set and meet goals, plan activities and delegate responsibilities through other church responsibilities so that they are reasonably well prepared to take on further challenges as missionaries which really has the potential to instill some great leadership skills. So from that perspective I would have to say the church is already more effective at developing leadership skills than scouts ever was. But my bias is showing because I found Scouts to be a huge disappointment. I had hoped to learn things like: how to cross terrain without being detected how to pick up on tracks and signs of others (human or animal) Edible foods for living off the land how to make a fire without matches building improvised shelter recognizing when you're being followed how to lose someone tailing you Any number of useful survival, outdoorsman, espionage skills that seem to fit into the scouting umbrella. Other fun things that may not directly apply but would have been cool (i.e. archery, marksmanship, etc.) When I think back to what I learned... how to tie a square knot stands out as about the only thing that stuck with me. In fairness, I had opportunities to go on hikes in nature and learn a little about edible vegetation and so on. Still more often than not, we were doing seemingly random stuff that never built on other skills to the point of proficiency - nevermind mastery - with the occasional field trip to go see how a water treatment facility works mixed in with a healthy dose of fundraising like selling honey at a booth at the mall. Almost all of the useful skills I wanted to learn in scouting I either have still not learned or picked up on doing things around the house with my dad or on camping trips with my family. I'm still somewhat optimistic that the new program the church roles out will be excellent. There is a part of me that is concerned it will turn into an extra night of seminary and lack the physical side of things to the extent one would hope, but again in my experience that was all a fail anyway, but at least this way I wouldn't be expecting it to be something it's not.

Is it wrong to ask... which one is Vort?

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/competition-bureau-mum-on-metro-vancouver-gas-price-investigation About $1.80 in the Vancouver area. It's not as bad across the country, but it's not pleasant either: https://www.gasbuddy.com/CAN

@clbent04 This has been my preferred source of reading and listening on this topic as well - I have found Hale's works to be very well done and trustworthy. I listened to the audio version for free with links from this site: http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/

Let me know how it goes. Feel free to share what you discover if you're comfortable doing so.

My three year old is giving me a time chasing her around on her training wheels as well. She often decides to just stop pedaling and she has a long way to go before steering is working well. So I tend to end up stooped over running alongside trying to keep her from steering herself off the edge of the sidewalk. I'm looking forward to her getting it a little better. The biggest challenge is that she doesn't want to put in the effort to learn, she just expects that it should come easily. She always wants to bail out and go play at the park. Which is fine except I'm left carrying her bike and helmet which she said she wanted to ride five minutes earlier. My point being, I think I can relate quite well.

Congrats on the 15 lbs down. I want you to think about some alternatives to your guilty pleasures that you think could be satisfying in a less guilty way. You don't necessarily need to give them up, but simply reduce the frequency and'or volume consumed to start seeing improvements more often than not. You might also investigate food associations - are there particular activities you get involved in that bring about certain foods? Could you break the chain by associating different foods or snacks with the activities that bring about the worst perceived offenses? Could you give up the activities and in doing so curb the mindless feeding? Some of the most common food associations are things like eating chips or popcorn while watching movies... or nightly binge watches on a favourite streaming service. It can be tricky to swap the munching to something like carrot sticks or even nuts for some people, while others quickly realize how mindless the eating is because they don't even care so much what is going in their mouth. Food for thought

Sorry I haven't been as active in here to comment sooner. Have you had some great rides?

It would appear that the context shows that beginning to be old is followed by knowing they will die soon, so perhaps it has less to do with age and more to do with health and function. In any event, I'm not ready to begin to be old if it means making preparations for my imminent grave

Excellent. I don't remember my copy having that, but it probably does. Mine is all three in one large book in paperback that I picked up second hand as a teenager. It's falling apart now and I recently found a boxed set trilogy with the Peter Jackson movie rendition characters on the cover for $5.00 to make sure that I can continue reading them to my children past the time my old copy will hold out. I think old and young is largely relative. I don't personally think of 55 as particularly old, but certainly more experienced. I would say that my universal cut off is around 70 anyone can be officially called old and less than 20 is young. Everything in between is simply an adult with more or less experience - hopefully not a protracted adolescence extending into the late thirties or a premature geriatric due to poor stewardship or health concerns out of one's control. I imagine that if I live long enough to see my own children turn 50 I may very well start to think of 50 as young

I love the history lesson, thanks! As for Smeagol, I always thought it was Smee-A-gohl, but when the movies came out everyone started saying smeegle or, as you put is SMEE-gull, and I had just decided I was mistaken and never found it something worht looking into - I wasn't nearly as used to checking everything against google in those days. It appears I wasn't too far off after all, but still wrong in my assumed pronunciation as well. I imagine you became versed in the world of Tolkien long before the internet was the main way of checking on things like this, did you have a a guide to pronouncing names? (Note I'm not calling you old, but I know you have a son who has returned from a mission and that I didn't use the internet for the first time until I was 13 or 14 years old, so I would assume you are a bit older than I am since I only have toddlers and even if health challenges hadn't delayed my family would still only have a ten year old at most which has me thinking you are 10-20 or more years my senior)

The first thing I want you to do is to try and determine if your personality is best suited to cold-turkey lifestyle overhaul or targeted improvements a step at a time. From there I can help you with your first steps. Don't be afraid to read through the entire thread as there is plenty of useful information that has already been shared by everyone.

And that's great. The fact is that if everyone liked the same names it would be hard to enjoy much variety. I find when names are too common I tend to like them less. So I actually appreciate that people like names that I don't because it increases the odds that the names I do like will be available when I have each of my children. I don't much care for having cousins and close acquaintances with the same names, so if they all pick names that I don't care for that's so much the better so I am free to have my choice of the good names (and fortunately my wife has been quite agreeable to good names as well) I figure everyone can go on being happier if they feel like they have good names for themselves and their children, even if it means there is little agreement on what constitutes a good name.

I confess I don't really like any of them.I mean some of them could be alright for some one else's kid, but I wouldn't want to hear most of these names, let alone have to say them often. In fairness, though, some like Eden or Eva aren't hideous names, and could be kind of pleasant, but I have negative associations with individuals with these names. Andy isn't bad, and I have no negative associations with the name. Declan seems to represent everything wrong with naming boys for the last decade, I don't really know why, but it just fits into and epitomizes a category of names that I truly loathe.

My wife and I were pleased to see that at least at the conference centre it sounded like the request was respected. I believe that would have meant a lot to President Nelson. I would have really feared for the membership of the church if a simple and direct request could not be honoured.

Yes, simply let us know what your goals are and we can help offer encouragement and suggestions.

Today I tried out a fun new exercise class. It was a boot camp style class, which has nothing to do with actual military training and in fact is a fairly meaningless term other than it sounds more intense than simply advertising group exercise. It was a lot of fun though. I talked to one lady who has been going six times a week since January and is down 25 pounds.

Quote of the day! A great Vortism.