Welcome to petelaw78's Roundeo.

All of my future blogs will be available only for family and friends who are connected to me and registered on this site.  So everyone sign up and you can still follow what's going on in my life.  If you need another email invite let me know.

I know it's pretty lame to blog about the weather, but it has been so nice here lately for the last couple of days that I just couldn't resist.  I have been able to walk around during the day wth no coat, and that is something to celebrate.  Plus, the best part is that the sun has come out.  Your really don't realize how down you get when it is dark and cloudy all the time.  Let's hope that spring comes soon (and I think it will because Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow (although purportedly he is only accurate 38% of the time).

As part of my new calling in the Elder's Quorum, I have to go to the churchwide training broadcasts.  At first I really didn't want to go because it was held at 8:00 AM on a saturday morning.  But I ended up waking up in time to go, so I thought I would check it out.  It ended up being a really good broadcast. 

The speakers were President Packer, Elder Perry, Elder Hollund, and President Monson.  They gave some really good tips on teaching and told some pretty good stories.  They told a story about a convert who joined the church in Bosnia during that conflict in 1996.  He was serving in the military and became interested in the church.  His baptism was held in a converted Russian bar.  They didn't have a font, so they filled the hood of a tank with water and baptised him in that.  The coolest part was that Elder Holland was there to confirm him. 

In the end, I guess I am glad I went after all.

The weather here in Washington has been unusually frigid lately.  Some may blame it on global warming, but I don't think so.  I don't doubt that it is global warming (although a better term needs to be coined because it definitely seems colder to me) but we as humans obviously don't cause it.  But I digress.  The real reason I am writing about this subject is that my apartment is now constantly cold.  At first we used our heater to try to warm it up.  This was working reasonably well until I got the electricity bill.  A new solution had to be forthcoming.

The answer proved to be the windstorms we had a few weeks ago.  A 120 foot tree fell on the house of one of the people in our ward.  I informed him that I was interested in converting some of that tree into firewood.  We found a couple of other people to chip in, and made short work of that tree.  We converted the entire tree into firewood (using a hydraulic splitter of course) in a matter of only a few hours.  Incidently, I don't know how I ever split would without the use of a hydraulic splitter. 

I know have an indefinite supply of firewood to heat my apartment with.  I rather enjoy living this way, you know, the way nature intended.  It's sometimes hard to get the wet, green wood to stay lit, but I manage.  Another drawback is that I only get heat when I have a few hours in the house to actually get the fire going and enjoy it, but it's actually pretty nice.  I'm just glad the tree didn't fall over on my house.

I couldn't start this blog without putting in a great video by Weird Al.

Check out this video.  My friend Chris works on this project at Boeing, and I think he might have been pretty disappointed at what happened, but you have to admit that it is pretty cool to watch.