Jessica invited me to dinner at her house yesterday. I called her up one evening hoping to score another date … but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was sick and miserable. But she asked me to come do dinner the next night – the same night the missionaries were coming over.

I wasn’t planning on meeting many adults while I was here. Sure, adults would come in to take tests and all, but after the Bishopric and a few parents of friends I figured that’d be it. I don’t have anything against meeting adults, even those of the parent variety, but something about meeting these parents resounded too much of “putting down roots”. That’s not something I’m sure I want to do in a place I only have a month left in.

So off to dinner I went to meet the whole family. Food was great and it didn’t take me long (compared with my normal habit) to feel comfortable talking, telling jokes, and sharing stories. The fact that my dad served his mission around here and I have a family line that goes back this direction seemed to go over really well. And as boring as my job is it provided a moderate level of interesting discussion.

Jessica’s mom has a knack for finding people on the internet. From the information Jessica had given her she had alredy found my family, knew their names, and probably more than she would let on. As weird as that is … it didn’t weird me out. Made me more intrigued maybe. (I’d like to see them find this site! HA)

After dinner I went with Jessica to drop little brother Eric off at the movies. Then when I got back I helped give another brother’s girlfriend, Amy, a blessing. Amy’s getting baptized today and has been super-sick. After a bit more chatter Jessica took me upstairs to show me her art.

Oh my gosh …. !

It was amazing! She has this cowboy sculpture she’s going to get bronzed and it totally looks like something I’d see that the Palm Springs Desert Museum. She has this self-portrait of her face that’s gotta be 4 feet tall and looks so amazing. The walls were covered with chalk drawings and paintings and collages and illustrations and sketches and statues. It was amazing! She’s way better than I had imagined. I wish I had brought a camera so I could take some pictures to post. Wow!

After we went downstairs the night was pretty much over. It was too late to really start a movie or anything and too late to justify sitting and chatting just for the fun of it (since she’s still kinda sick and all).

So I drove back to my hotel and pondered on how un-artistic I am.

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