4th of July in New Orleans

Hey Ya'll. Cindy and I decided that we wanted to see more of the state of Louisiana before we left and regretted not seeing it all. So, with a 4 day weekend for the holiday, we decided to see some of the southern part of the state.

We drove down to Lafayette on Friday morning. It was a very pleasant drive. We got set up on the motel and then drove on into New Orleans. What a great town.

We got into New Orleans and then drove around looking for a place to park. It was crazy crowded for the holiday. Anyway, we parked and started walking. We ended up eating dinner there on Bourbon Street. We enjoyed a bit of Jambalaya. We spent some more time looking around then went to the riverfront to set up for the fireworks.

The fireworks was set up as "dueling barges". Two barges in the river, both shooting fireworks at the same time. It was a pretty cool, if very short, fireworks display.

After the fireworks, we grabbed a quick slice of pizza (which was awesome) and then spent a long time trying to get out of town due to the traffic.

Saturday, we went back to New Orleans and went down to the lower 9th Ward, the sight of all the Katrina flooding. While there were still some houses abandoned and boarded up, there was a lot of rebuilding going on and things are looking better than before.

While we were in town, we also visited one of the New Orleans cemeteries where everything is above ground. It was actually pretty cool.

After our sight seeing, we went back downtown to Bourbon street and had some lunch. It was great. More Jambalaya with andouille sausage and alligator sausage. Delicious!

Sunday was my day really. We went to Avery Island, home of Tabasco hot sauce! It's something I've been wanting to do for some time now. It was great. We got to tour the factory (no one was working at the time, though), sampled some of the sauces and other things. Believe it or not, they have Tabasco cola and two flavors of Tabasco ice cream. How weird is that? After the tour and the shopping, we took a tour of the Jungle Gardens. The inventor of Tabasco is also a conservationist and put aside 250 acres as a wildlife refuge and gardens. It was very beautiful. Below are some photos from the island.













As you can see, it was quite beautiful there. Of course, it wouldn't have been Louisiana without some of these critters all over the place.

The interesting thing about all of this was that there was no barrier between us and the alligators. Just a couple of warning signs. We were a bit surprised at one point. We were looking at some birds and taking pictures. As we stepped off the steps of the stand we were on, one of the alligators that we hadn't seen before was sunning himself at the waters edge. As we walked about 20 feet away from him, he quickly ran into the water and turned to watch us go. We had no idea he was there so when there was this flurry of activity and splashing water, well we both jumped pretty high. He was just a little guy, probably 2 to 3 feet long, so this was one of those cases where I truly believe he was more afraid of us than we were of him.

All in all it was a very good weekend. We had a blast. It just cemented in our minds how much we are going to miss Louisiana when we leave.

Recife Brazil!

Melissa received her mission call today. Recife Brazil! She sounded very excited this afternoon when she opened her call and said "I'm going to Brazil!" Cindy and I are both very excited. She will leave for the Sao Paulo Brazil MTC on October 22. This is very exciting. we are also looking forward to our trip to Utah this August. We want to go to the Temple with Melissa, and of course the Fail Family Reunion. Look forward to seeing ya'll then.

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.