Conferences

I really enjoy going to conferences, for a lot of reasons. This weekend I attended the Mormon Scholars in the Humanities conference. This year they held it at Utah Valley University (which when I was out there was still UVSC). It was a great conference, I really enjoyed the keynote speaker. My favorite part had to be the music we heard...Marvin and Sam Payne I think were their names. Excellent stuff. A close second would have to have been Todd Mack's paper - he talked about things that I worry about, how students don't engage with literature anymore and how that's dangerous, and what we can do about it.

Conferences also always get me riled up over one thing or another....this time it was this guy who was DETERMINED that our reason for being here was to "uncover" aspects of ourselves that we already had in the premortal life. Yeah, because that's not essentialist or deterministic at ALL. I was frustrated enough to ask a question in the Q&A session, wondering if we already had these characteristics what the POINT of this life was, and why God would put us through it, but he answered the question he wanted to hear, not the question I asked.

My favorite thing, though, was that I got to see friends...Dale and Valerie let me stay with them. This morning before I left Joseph informed me that I was an honorary family member. I don't think he knows how much that means to me....I love their family. And it was the first time since we graduated that Todd, Jared, AL, Steve, Vanessa and I all saw each other, at the same time, in the same place. SO MUCH FUN! And I dropped by the BYU Bookstore to try to track down my old boss, and ended up getting to chat with him for a while.

We also ate excellent food....Tucano's, which I miss a WHOLE LOT, a Mexican place in Orem that I don't remember the name of, In-n-Out, and Malawi's pizza (Dale's idea, totally AWESOME). Yummy, lovely, and I didn't have to cook it, clean it, or wrangle kids during it.

Which brings me to the point of the post - going to a conference always makes me realize how much I love my kids. I have fun, enjoy good food and company, learn a lot, rest and become a more stable human being again....and then I go home. I love my kids so much, and I miss Ben like crazy when I'm away. It's nice, helps me remember where the really valuable things in my life are.