Circus Time!!!

Karen and I went to the circus tonight. I never really went to the circus much as a kid (at least that I remember) but Karen likes to go every year. She really likes the elephants. She doesn't quite know why, but she finds them cute. We bought her a stuffed elephant with a pink circus-logo blanket on his back and it now lives on our bed with a couple of her other select stuffed animals. It's pretty funny. Karen wasn't feeling well today and I wondered if we wouldn't wind up canceling. We already had the tickets, though, and I was already skipping the Priesthood session of conference so we figured we should just go ahead and go.

The circus this year was a little less fanfare than I have seen in previous years. I had fun, but the acts were rather ho-hum. The big trick attempt for the trapeze guy was to do a triple somersault. ?!?!?! A triple? Really? In previous years I've seen them do four or five rotations. Hmmmm..... The worst was that the guy only did two rotations. I counted them and definitely only counted two. A woman in front of me heard me say something to Karen and turned around with two fingers held up, confirming that he did, indeed, only do a double. It was pretty funny/sad. Other than that it was a fun time, though.

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Rudy's Moving Day

Judith's nephew, Rudy, moved into his apartment today. His wife, Jenny, is still in St. George. She's waiting to find a job out here before she comes out. They were only moving into a two-bedroom apartment so there wasn't a ton of stuff. Unfortunately their apartment is up a flight of stairs, however, so we had to haul all of their stuff up stairs. That was a lot of fun. Our legs were dead after just a few trips. We worked for about an hour before Jim and Judith showed up. Jim had apparently thrown out his back so he wasn't able to do a whole lot of heavy lifting. We gave him the job of bringing things to the end of the truck so that we could grab it easier. He sent Judith home to get his moving straps to help with the heavy stuff. Rudy had an organ he was bringing in and none of us looked forward to trying to haul that up the stairs.

When Judith came back she brought the straps and the teenage son of one of their friends. It was incredibly nice of him to come and the extra pair of hands was helpful. Jim's moving straps were great, too. I had never used this type before but I'm now convinced that I want to go find some. They are the ones you see advertised on TV that go over your forearms. It apparently took five or six guys to load the organ into the truck, but Jim and Rudy were able to get it up the stairs and into the apartment by themselves. Jim's straps are much better than the ones I use because his leave your hands free. That allows you to stabilize what you're hauling. One of the things I hate moving is mattresses because they are so hard to hold and control. These straps made moving the matress a breeze. We were able to finish up the rest of the moving pretty fast. It only took us three hours, total. My legs were pretty dead for the rest of the day ... and the next day, however.

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