April 26 - May 2, 2010

Fortie Family Flyer
April 26 – May 2, 2010

Dear Family and Friends and other genealogy buffs somewhere down the road,

If you are expecting a letter of great volume I am afraid I have some bad news. Time is something I am in short supply of so this will have to be short. You see, the Census Bureau, called a few weeks ago and asked if I want to work for them. Well, I had this little part time job at Deseret Book (while trying to get the photography business going) but the Census Bureau gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse so I told Deseret Book that I couldn’t afford not to leave and work for the Census Bureau even though it was only supposed to be for two months. It was full time and more than twice the wage I was making at Deseret Book. Well, Deseret Book said they hated to lose me so they just said to go work for them and come back in two months. So off I went to class for a week to learn a foreign language, called governmentese. Yes that’s right there should be a name for this junk. I have never heard so many acronyms and strings of numbers and letters representing one form or another in all my life. I have to fill out a D-308 to get paid and an EQ when asking people questions about their lives, and a D-201 to tell which of my crew members is going to which neighborhood, etc., etc., etc. There is no end to the forms that have to be filled out. I don’t believe I will even come close to learning the names before I am finished with the job. Yes, that’s right me, the artist with the short attention span and horrible spelling must sit for hours on end filling out forms and more forms to keep track of 15 people who are going out each day to ask people about their lives and hope they don’t get chased away by some nut with a shotgun shoved in their face. This is the exact opposite of the work that I would like to do, but unfortunately, what I enjoy doing, art, doesn’t pay very well (not yet for me anyway). In fact I ran into my friend Kory Trapane, another photographer and graphic designer who is now substituting everyday for Fort Herriman Middle School to make ends meet. Starving artist syndrome is alive and well.
Speaking of anyway (back to the story), I barely survived the week of training (two weeks ago), which was a long grueling week of listening to two people switching off reading from a book that was more than 2 inches thick (it had to be verbatim), who had just been trained 2 weeks before they trained us. We then took a test at the end, studied several manuals for a week (on our own last week), then we went in and spent a week (this past week) training our own group – reading, verbatim, from a more than 2 inch thick binder. Some of the CL’s (Crew Leaders) had large rooms so they shared them and taught two groups together (that way they could trade off) but some of us had smaller rooms so we had to train our groups alone. I have the largest group in the south end of the valley (I don’t know about the north) so I was put alone in a medium sized room. I barely knew the stuff but proceeded to act as if I knew all about it and started teaching all day long. Well, unfortunately some of the classes have been put together rather quickly so they asked if I would stay Monday night to help teach the night class as well (they were having a hard time getting instructors for it). I stayed and by the end of my first day of teaching I had 16 hours on the clock (12 without a break longer than 5 minutes – of which I had 3). Each day seemed to go like that and (after Monday) I was getting 12 and 14 hour days until the end of the week and ended up with just below 80 hours for the week. At least it is good overtime pay. During that week I got to know my group pretty well and even got to know the night group that consisted of about 35 people even though none of them will be in my crew.
Luckily, I was able to get Friday night off and I headed home quickly, ate something so we could dash down to Timberline Middle School in Alpine to see the play, Hello Dolly, that Chad has been putting together for the last few months. Tami was sick, Michelle had to work and Brian had another obligation so Jennifer and I went down with grandpa and grandma and Alicia to see it. The play was beautifully done, the singing was amazing, the costumes were wonderful and the acting was superb. I definitely give it two thumbs up. It was as good or better than any high school production. We had a blast. After the play we stayed and I took some pictures of the cast until about 10:00 p.m. (Jennifer even got to talk a bit with the lead guy who is about her age that she seems to like – could be interesting). Grandpa and grandma went home after the play so we went with Chad and Alicia (after pictures) to get ourselves a milkshake to celebrate Chad’s success then they took us to our car, just off I-15 at Ikea, so we could head home.
(A little side note here, it has been stormy this week and I had to wipe (you don’t have to scrape spring snow off, it is heavy and just pushes off) a little over 3 inches of snow off my windshield one morning and about 1 inch on Saturday morning. I want to go up into the mountains and do some snowshoeing and get a few shots of the 82 inches of new snow they got up there this week but there has not been enough time nor has there been good enough weather to go. Maybe sometime next week (which is supposed to have 2 more storms). Anyway, back to my week.)
Needless to say, Sunday I was exhausted and had to take a nap in the early afternoon before heading out to grandpa and grandma’s for dinner and a birthday celebrations for grandpa. That’s right, it was grandpa’s birthday on Saturday and it was the big 3 quarters of a century mark. At the last minute (I didn’t have time to think much during the week) I felt it would be good to do something unusual for the birthday dinner so after my 80 hours had ended, Jennifer and I (Michelle was working) went to the store at 8:30 p.m. to shop. I first handed some of my papers in to my boss who was having us meet at 8:30 at the McDonalds in Wal-Mart (to hand in forms), then we went around looking for things we could get that would be fun for the party. We got 75 balloons, 75 M&M’s, 75 Oreos, some other toys and silly things to create a party atmosphere like Mickey Mouse paper plates and napkins for cake and ice-cream, a pin the tail on the donkey party game, streamers, ribbons and even 75 wiggly plastic eyes that we could put on 75 coins with a note that said this is the money you could have saved if you hadn’t had such crazy kids (for those of you who are reading this in the future, that is from a Geico Insurance company commercial showing a stack of money with eyes on it that sits and stares at people and they say that is the money you could be saving if you switched to Geico (you really have to see it to understand)). We had fun shopping and coming up with some of the goofy stuff we got. We even bought some of those silly party blowers that you blow in and the paper role at the end unrolls and shoots out then roles back up (Spencer had a blast with them). We finally headed home and after cranking the radio up and singing to some old soft rock songs we got home at about 10:30 and finally after a few more hours of scripture study and other work we got to bed.
Early Sunday morning I had to collect pay forms from my group (yes, the government makes me do a few minutes of work on Sunday, (more stuff to repent of, dogone it)) then I went to church (and of course taught my genealogy class), it was the last (7th) class in the series so I’ll be starting over again next week with a new class. We sent the girls early to grandpa and grandma’s to get the house ready while they were at church then I took another short nap while we waited for Brian to come home from church then we headed out. Tami has been very sick all week and wasn’t going to go but towards the end of the day she started feeling better so she came with. They tell us (we weren’t there) that as soon as Spencer came home from church he ran in the house and dove onto the large balloons that were covering the front room floor and rolled across them clear over to the couch which he crashed into. He really had fun with all the party stuff. We finished all the preparations and Mike and Linda joined us for dinner and party. It was a fun time. The girls even made a crown for grandpa which he wore most of the night. After dinner Brittany, David and Brian went to a fireside and the rest of us sat around talking and eating cake and ice-cream (they had some before they left). I had put 75 pictures together of grandpa over the years but we couldn’t get them to work on his electronic picture frame so we will have to show them next week at Curt’s house for Mother’s Day and more birthday party for grandpa with those who couldn’t make it for this party (hey, any excuse for a party I say). Well, after a few rounds of golf and cleanup we finally headed home to get the girls to bed (they’ll probably sleep through half their classes on Monday).
Oh, I almost forgot, during the week Tami signed Michelle up for an exchange program for kids of U.S. airline employees to go for two weeks to the homes of kids their age of airline employees in Europe. Then the kids in Europe would come to the houses here in the U.S. to spend time here with their new found friends. Well, Tami got an email from the director Saturday night that said that while they were looking for someone for Michelle they found a 13 year old that they were having a hard time matching up and they wondered if Jennifer would be interested in doing the program as well as Michelle and going to Spain to stay with the 13 year old girl (who would then come here and stay with Jennifer). Of course Jennifer got so excited that she could hardly sleep after such exciting news. We will have to get more information on the whole thing but that is a definite maybe on the girls going to Europe for a few weeks this summer. What fun for them; spoiled I tell you, spoiled.
Well, I didn’t have much time so I thought this was going to be short but I really got to typing on this computer and here we are on page 3, what craziness. Well, it is after midnight and I have a long week ahead of me (nothing like this past week, it will be about 45 hours of keeping track of my crew now as they go out knocking on the doors of people who didn’t mail their census forms in and gathering data – paperwork, lots of paperwork). Well, for those who are doing genealogy in 2082 (the year this census will be released) you should be able to look at the census records of 2010 and see our names in there as a family living in Riverton Utah and my signature on many, many census forms.
Make sure that you are doing something that counts while we count you.
Ken and clan



From Elder Fortie:
Dear people of... other places...
Haha, sounds like I'm coming home just in time to take care of all of you gimps and wimps! What on earth is with all of you? Actually I had a bit of an interesting experience this past week. We had a pretty bad storm, and I was out knocking doors in the pouring rain, and the wind, nothing out of the normal, when something carried by the wind hit me in the eye ball, it stung a bit but I didn't think much of it, just thought it was some dust or something and kept going. A few hours later my eye was a bit dry and stung some, and my companion said "hey you got some white stuff on your face" I wiped it away and again thought nothing of it, but a few minutes later he said "hey... the white stuff is back..." so on some investigation, we realized there was puss coming out of my eye ball... a little gross, but mostly just weird, so I kept cleaning the puss that collected in my tear duct about every ten minutes before it could build up and get on my face, and worked the rest of the night merely thinking "wow... hmmmm.... that's weird". I went to bed that night and the next morning I woke up and my eye would not open! It didn't hurt at all... but it was like super glued shut! It wasn't that it wasn't responding, I could feel my eye lid pulling and fighting to get it to open, but fluid had built up in my eye and dried and it was glued shut! My companion and room mates and I honestly had a pretty good laugh at the situation (hey, you gotta laugh at life or else it's just too depressing, besides you gotta admit it was pretty funny.) So I went into the bathroom and after about 5 minutes of scrubbing and cleaning and washing and rinsing was able to free my eye ball from it's prison, but it was really blood shot and red. So I called the mission office and asked them what they wanted me to do, and they had the church's doctor in Salt Lake call me, after I explained to him what happened, he didn't seem terribly concerned he just said "well that sounds pretty fun, glad you got your eye back open! Okay, I'm going to call in a prescription for you at this pharmacy, just go pick it up and use it for a while and you'll be fine, no permanent damage, but keep taking it till it's gone, even once it looks and feels better it will need some help rebuilding damaged parts." So I go pick up this prescription, and it says on the bottle "this medication is a combination of antibiotics and steroids", SO I have been on steroids for the past week prescribed by the church's doctor! HEHE But there is a down side to this... I've been trying to lose a pound or two here before I go home, and I got myself down about 20 pounds, but then I started taking this steroid, but we don't work out enough for the steroid to turn into muscle, so instead... I have gained 10 pounds back again... haha. Sigh, oh well. When I get home and I'm not sitting for 12 hours on end, I'll get around to losing it.
By the way, what's my schedule looking at for the first few weeks once I get home? Are we going to Nathan's baby blessing? and when is that and other trips etc? There's a couple events I am trying to schedule around, such as one of the people I taught is going on a mission and is going through the Oakland temple the first week of June and I thought if it was at all possible I might try and pull a Jet blue boomerang though long beach to see him go through the temple, even if it's just for a day trip. Just let me know the general schedule so I can make some guesstimates.
Well things here are picking up some, we set a baptismal date this week, for June 5th (another thing I'd like to com back and see if it's possible... oh so much to do) so that's exciting. But Oakland, where I was before has died... things there collapsed. It makes me so sad because I worked SO hard to make that area the highest success rate in the mission, and it was flying, and I was so excited and it just makes me almost mad to see it go so down hill so fast when I went to Hayward. In part they are going through a change in leadership, the member of the high council I worked with to get the mission work moving there, got made a member of the 70 during general conference, so they lost him and me at the same time, so they are having to shuffle, but still, it's gotten bad fast. It makes me sad. Sometimes I just forget that the mission work will go on with out me I guess... I just feel like what are they going to do when I'm gone! haha, but I guess they will do just fine without me, I'm just another piece on a chess board... sadly enough lol.
Well I'll talk to you all on mothers day, I'll be calling in the afternoon ‘cause I have meetings all morning. Take care and be good!
Love Elder Fortie