When I was attending the University of Utah one of my then favorite movies, The Big Chill, was released. Starring a very young William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Glenn Close and Jeff Goldblum, it was about a group of friends who come together when one of their own commits suicide. One of the more powerful moments for me was when the minister gave the eulogy. In conclusion he said:

“It makes me angry, and I don’t know what to do with my anger! Are not the satisfactions of being a good man among our common men great enough to sustain us anymore? Where did Alex’s hope go? Maybe this is the small resolution we can take from here today. To try to regain that hope that must have eluded Alex.”

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The stake president called on our home last night, a pre-arranged appointment that made my wife and me anxious. We knew it was going to be about California’s Proposition 8– that’s all the stake’s been talking about for the past month. It’s become ad nauseum in these parts, even more than Obama. (more…)

Last night at 5:30pm Sara gave birth to our daughter, Lucca Plum Clifton (Lucca as in the Italian city and Plum as in Plummer, Sara’s maiden name). It was a long, exhausting and painful labor, but both mom and baby girl are healthy and happy.

Now we can finally get some sleep!

I have the nicest visiting teacher. She’s an older lady, and she’s very conscientious about coming to visit every month. She’s like clockwork—she calls the first day of every month to arrange her visit, which is always during the first week of the month.

Once she called and I was rather busy and told her we could just count it as a phone visit for that month, but she just couldn’t accept that. She’d never done only a phone visit in her life. She’s really sweet.

Because I live in an apartment complex, with very little parking, and our building is way in the back, I always meet her out front and we sit in her car and visit. I love having her come—we’re both quality time types and can sit and talk forever.

When she came this week, I had been doing laundry in the morning, and my son’s hoodie was in the wash. He has a band pin on it that I didn’t want to go through the wash, so I pinned it to my tshirt to prevent losing it.

It wasn’t until I was walking back from visiting with my visiting teacher in her car that I looked down and saw that I still had it pinned to my shirt.

Fortunately, I’m sure she has no idea who Slayer is.