Melissa's Decision

Well, Melissa has decided to go on a mission. We are very excited about it all. It's something we've been hoping she would choose to do for some time now. It's all very exciting and I know Melissa can't talk about anything else (and I don't blame her). We are anxiously awaiting her mission call, which should come next Wednesday! Can't wait.

Cindy and I are planning on going "down south" for the long 4th of July weekend. We are going to head down to Lafayette, Louisiana and that will be our base of operations for the weekend. We will head out to New Orleans for the fireworks, and just to look around. We are also going to Avery Island, home of Tabasco hot sauces. Don't know what else we're going to do or see while we're there. Lots of good food though, I'm sure. I'll have a bunch of pics and stories for the blog after that trip I'm sure.

No Microsoft!

So, I started having a bit of trouble with my laptop when I was in Iraq. It was just acting funny sometimes. So, I tried to keep it limping along for a while, but it wasn't optimal. Well a few weeks ago Cindy wanted to use the laptop and called me at work to say it wouldn't boot up. What a pain.

So, I come home from work and sure enough, it wouldn't start up. I tried everything I could think of (which admittedly isn't much) but couldn't get it to work. So what's the next option? Re-load Windows and start fresh. Luckily I'd already backed up everything so that wasn't a problem. So, I reload Windows and the computer starts working again. It was a pain, though, having to track down all the hardware drivers and such, loading them, getting everything working again. But, the computer was running again.

Well, it lasted for a couple of days, then it crashed again! So, I take it to a computer place here in town that Melissa hed used once before. They spent a couple of days on it, said it had been hacked into (most likely that happened in Iraq) so they cleaned it up and got it running again. I brought it home and downloaded a new anti-virus, anti-spyware program and loaded it. Again, the computer worked about 2 days. I took it back in and they said that since I had it on the internet "unprotected" for the 3 minutes it took to download the anti-virus that I would have to pay for them to fix it again. I was not happy with that, as you can imagine, so I took the laptop and went home.

What can you do? I was fed up with the whole thing, so I decided to try going a whole new way. I got on the desktop computer and started looking around. I found what I was looking for, downloaded the .iso file, burned it to a CD and loaded it on the laptop. How awesome.

So, what did I get? I downloaded the latest distribution of Ubuntu Linux. The install was easy as could be, and quick. Much easier and quicker than loading Windows. It even found all my hardware and had it working when it initially booted up. No drivers to download or anything. Great. Best part about it is it was free. I was looking at prices and buying Windows Vista, Microsoft Office and a couple of other programs would have cost me close to $1,000. Ubuntu Linux is free, and it comes with other things needed, also for free. Open Office is a free office suite (word processor, spreadsheet, presentation program, and database) that is the equivelant (and completely compatible with) Microsoft Office. It also came with Firefox web browser, which I was using in Windows anyway, so that was nice. And Gimp, which is a graphics/photo program like Photoshop.

The important thing is that my computer is now running very well. Much faster than with Windows. No hiccups so far. I still have a bit of a learning curve with Linux, but for basic computing (email, surfing, and my school and church work) I'm doing great.

New Calling

So about a month or so ago, we had our Stake Conference. It was exciting because we knew that we were getting a new Stake Presidency. Of course, we had no idea who was going to be called. What a surprise to find out that our Bishop was called as one of the counselors in the Stake Presidency. Well, that obviously left us with a Bishopric to fill. That week I was called in to interview with members of the Stake Presidency. There were quite a few of us called in, so while I knew I was on the hook, I knew there were other people higher on the list. Cindy and I both felt that the new Bishop would probably be a good friend of ours who is a music professor at one of the local colleges. In fact, he and I kept teasing each other about which one of us would be the new Bishop.

This went on for several weeks, and we were all beginning to wonder if we were ever going to get a new Bishop. Eventually I got another call from the Stake Presidency asking for Myself and Cindy to come in on a Wednesday night. Cindy knew I was getting a calling, but I told her they were going to call her as Stake Relief Society President. She got a good laugh out of that. So we went in for our interview (coincidentally we were also able to renew our temple recommends at that same time, one stop shopping), and it turns out the calling was for me after all, and Ross Smith (the music professor) is the new Bishop and I am his first counselor. The second counselor is one of the Colonels on base, the Chief of Safety for 8th Air Force. In fact, his office is just upstairs from mine, and he comes down occasionally now and we shoot the breeze.

All in all I'm very excited about this calling. I've always enjoyed serving in Bishoprics. Yeah, it's a lot of work, but also a lot of blessings. Cindy's also happy about it. The workload has already increased even though we haven't really done anything yet. By that I mean that we were set apart two weeks ago, and last week was Conference, so we haven't even conducted a single Sacrament Meeting yet. Anyway, I've already helped people move, picked them up when their car was broken down, etc.

There was actually a funny story that came out of all of this, and what a small world it is. A couple of nights ago the Bishop called at about 9:30 pm. He said that some guy from Minnesota had been passing through Shreveport, began feeling bad (chest pains and such) and went to the hospital. He called his wife, who called their Bishop, who called our Bishop asking if someone could give him a blessing. Our Bishop was tied up so he called me. I grabbed another brother who lives down the street and we went downtown to the hospital. We got there and met the guy, talked to him for a bit, then found an empty room to give him a blessing. After the blessing and before we left I was giving him my phone number in case he needed anything else before he left town. I gave him the number and was giving him my name (spelling the last name of course) when he said "Ortolani huh? When I was in college I had a roommate named Kent Ortolani." I said "Hey, that's my brother." I don't know if I have the spelling right, but Shannon Crouder (Crowder? I don't know how to spell it) was Kent's roommate down in Provo. That was just pretty cool and it really makes you realize what a small world it is.

A little politics

It's an election year, so I figure it's appropriate to talk a bit about politics.  I won't go into the flap over Obama's pastor, I think his "sermons" speak for themselves.  I won't talk about Hillary trying to pad her resume a bit, it's boring.  What I do want to talk about is the political left's true colors.  There are a couple of links in the next paragraph, follow them if you want the full story.

The left spends a great deal of time bad-mouthing America, the military, conservatives, and Christians, then with a quick "We support the troops and we're the real patriots", we're not supposed to question their patriotism or loyalty to this country.  Well, just today I found an interesting story coming from Portland, Oregon.  These protesters in Portland feel that it's appropriate for soldiers to shoot their officers.  They also burned soldiers in effigy along with some other wonderful bits of good clean American fun.

In the past, liberal politicians and their supporters understood that they needed to slide towards the center politically in order to get elected.  They know that if their true feelings and intentions were known, they would never get elected.  This year, however, they feel that their hold on the White House is guaranteed and they're not afraid to show their true colors.  Can we now question their patriotism, their support of the military, their commitment to this country?  I think so.

Sorry I've been gone

Hey ya'll.  Sorry I've been missing here for so long.  So many things happened that I just got out of the habit of writing here.  But I'll catch you up on what's been happening.

On January 30th I went in for some Oral surgery.  Sounds like fun huh?  What they did was to chisel some bone out of my chin and graft it into my upper jaw.  This was done to build up that area so they can implant some posts to put a new bridge in place.  What a pain!  Literally.  So, I was down with that for about a week.  At one point I thought I was feeling better and we decided to go to one of the Mardi Gras parades.  I guess it was a little too much excitement for me.  Later that night, my mouth suddenly filled with blood.  I couldn't get it to stop bleeding.  Cindy called the emergency number for the dental clinic and we ended up back at the clinic at about midnight (this was a Saturday night) getting something injected up in there that would stop the bleeding.  Not a fun night.

After healing up a bit from the oral surgery, it was time for the real fun.  Hernia surgery.  A couple of years ago I noticed I had a bit of a hernia.  So, I talked with the flight surgeon about it and he said that it wasn't that big of a deal, and if I didn't want surgery, it could wait.  So, I waited.  This last January when I went in for my annual flight physical, I talked with the doc about it and he checked it out and said I should have it taken care of.  This doc is in our Ward and he told Cindy that Sunday that it was the biggest hernia he'd ever seen.  The Dr. I went to downtown agreed.

So, on the 19th of February, I was in the hospital for that surgery.  That was a big one and I was stuck at home for three weeks recovering.  I don't know if ya'll have ever had surgery in the stomach area, but it's very painful and a long slow recovery.  It was done as day surgery, so when I woke up Cindy brought me right home.  I was put in a chair by the TV and spent the rest of the day there.  That night, when it was time for bed, it took Cindy a long time to walk me up the 17 stairs and into the bedroom.  Then she had to lift my legs into bed, and help me all night every time I had to roll over or go to the bathroom.  Not too much fun.  It was a long 3 weeks.

I've almost completely recovered from the hernia surgery now.  I started back to the gym last week.  Just running on the treadmill, nothing more than that.  But things are coming along there.  However, a couple of weeks ago, I was in for my annual dental checkup and they discovered that the bone graft in my upper jaw was loose.  So, the next day (a week ago Friday) I was in the chair again and this time they numbed me up, pulled the bone out and cleaned it up, then screwed it into my upper jaw and then stitched it closed.  I went in today and they removed the stitches.  Things are looking good.

So, that's all that's been happening with me over the last couple of months.  As you can see, it hasn't been exciting or fun.  Lots of pain and lots of boredom.  I should be complete with everything by August and that will be very exciting for me.

Pisa and Lucca

We truly enjoyed Rome, but now it was time to head out and see the rest of Northern Italy.  Our first stop was Pisa, famous for it's leaning tower.  It was quite impressive to see that this tower, which is leaning quite far, is still standing, and has been standing as long as it has.

Look at those goofy tourists!  It was actually funny to see so many people all along this walkway posing the same way!  As crooked as the tower looks here, you can really see how "off" it is when you get up close.

After getting our look at the tower, we had some free time to do some shopping and have lunch.  We found this neat little shop where they sold Pinocchio puppets.  The man who wrote Pinocchio was originally from Pisa.  Anyway, we found a nice puppet for Dylan and a book to go along with it.  Hope he enjoys it.

We found a little restaurant and decided to have some pizza (in Pisa, what else do you have?).  Didn't turn out so well.  Actually my pizza was actually quite good.  The restaurant was on a side street away from the tower.

I ordered the "Salami Picante", which we in the States know as "pepperoni".  My pizza was good.  Melissa ordered an olive pizza and got a cheese pizza with a few whole olives on top.  Cindy ordered the "Popeye" pizza, and got a cheese pizza with what looked like a couple of handfuls of spinach thrown on the top.  Ha Ha, I liked mine!

After lunch we were off to Lucca where we were going to spend the night.  Lucca was the very cute little medieval town.  We walked through the gates in the wall surrounding the city, and then into the town itself.

As you can see, it was very quaint.  At one time the city had an old Roman arena.  That has now been turned into a town "square", but as you can see, it is actually round.

We spent some time looking around the city, and found a church's tower that we were able to go up inside and see a better view of the entire city.

Lucca had some stores that both Cindy and I found quite attractive.  For myself, of course, I liked the cheese shops.  I'm a cheese freak so it was cool to see so many different cheeses together. Cindy liked the pastry shop.

It was a fun day, with quite a bit more traveling than sight-seeing, but we had a great time just the same.

Rome

The Colosseum has to be the most iconic site in Rome.  It is what people initially think about when they think of Rome, at least that's the case for me.  So it was so cool to be able to actually see the Colosseum, live and in person.  I know Melissa was just as excited as I was.

It really was an amazing sight.  To me, it was incredible that it was still standing.  It was built around 290 AD.  What workmanship.  We then got our tickets and went inside. 

Walking out into the interior of the Colosseum for the first time was pretty awe inspiring.  Not just because you were there seeing this incredible antiquity, but for the thoughts that went through my mind of the spectacles that were performed here.  The many deaths that happened all for the entertainment of the masses.  Incredible.

The planning and engineering in here were amazing. You can see that there are walkways and hallways all around down there.

This was all underneath the floor of the arena.  This is where the gladiators and the animals were kept and moved around.  There were about 60 trap doors in the floor where lions and other predators would be lifted up on elevators and then they would pop out of these trap doors to fight the gladiators.  So, the gladiators would be fighting the animals, most likely getting killed, while the Romans would watch and cheer.  Sad really.

After spending some time in the Colosseum, we then walked over to the forum.  This was the Roman equivalent of downtown, with offices and shopping.

After the Colosseum and the Forum, it was time to do some other sight seeing.  We had a chance to walk around Rome and see some of the back streets and less "touristy" spots.

We then ended up at the famous Trevi Fountain.  Beautiful.

Melissa wanted to throw a coin in the fountain. Actually, as the tradition goes, you throw one coin in if you want to find love, two if you want to get married, and three if you want a divorce.  Melissa threw in two!

After some time at the fountain, it was time to see what Rome was like at night.  One of the first places our guide took us was to a local shopping mall.  It was a lot like what you would expect in the states.  However, there was a terrific crowd there and lots of noise.  It took us some time to figure out what was happening.  It turns out that someone was there for the debut of their new movie.  Maybe you can recognize him in this picture.

Melissa was very excited to see Will Smith and tried to get close enough to get an autograph, but the crowd was just too big.  It was an exciting surprise, though.

We then traveled around and saw some of the other Roman sights, like the Pantheon. 

The Pantheon is an old Pagan temple that was converted to a Christian church after Constantine.  It was a very impressive architectural piece.  The dome has a 25 foot hole in the top.  The interesting thing is that it never gets wet inside.  When it rains, the water that comes through the hole evaporates before it gets to the floor.  Interesting.

After the Pantheon, we did a little more shopping and saw some more of the incredible art that just seems to be laying around Rome.

And that was our two days in Rome.  In my next post I'll discuss our next day, which included the famous tower in Pisa.