Chapter 11.9: Headwinds -- Becalmed
"You work too hard."
Julia was washing and cutting tomatoes while I chopped onions for a tossed salad. Giselle was tearing leaves of lettuce, and Mom was tending the pot of wieners boiling on the stove while Dad worked on the fruit salad.
I finished the half onion, and started peeling a large carrot. "You think so?"
"What are you going to do after we eat?"
"I thought I'd do some homework and then I could dig into writing some routines to exercise the disk drives and the controller. And then I could read through the 9900 series datasheets and --"
"I think you've over-committed yourself. What is today?"
I stalled, pointing at a green bell pepper on the counter. "Do we want this green pepper in this salad?"
Mom said, "It's up to you, hon."
Julia picked it up. "I'll cut it. What is today?
"Uhm, I heard Sinclair was planning to release their cheap processor trick, the ZX81 today." I started cutting the carrot into strips.
Julia gave me a dirty look. Mom laughed, and Giselle cleared her throat.
"I don't think that's what Julia is talking about. I think this is enough lettuce."
I handed Giselle the chopped onions, and she scraped them into the bowl of lettuce.
"What day of the week is it?" Julia handed her the chopped tomatoes, which also went in.
"Thursday. Oh. Institute."
"I'd like to see what your Institute is like."
"You could take your hot dogs and salad with you and eat in the car," Mom suggested.
"Salad in the hot dogs?" I theorized.
"Even if you use slices of bread instead of buns, I think the salad will spill in the car. Are you going to dice the carrots for the salad, or are those strips for eating?" Giselle was a fan of carrot strips.
"I like carrot strips." Julia finished dicing the bell pepper and it went into the salad, as well. "Or carrot in the salad works, too. Either way."
"Let's do strips," Mom decided for us.
"Strips are good," Dad agreed.
I collected the carrot strips into a cup and checked the wall clock hanging on the edge of the dividing wall where the wall had been cut away to join the two mini-kitchens into one long kitchen when the duplex was converted to a double-sized single home by the previous owner.
"If we eat quick before we leave, we can make it to Midland in time for Institute without eating on the road."
"I can drive," Julia volunteered, "and you can work on homework or something."
"What about your homework, Julia?"
"It'll wait."
"I'll drive." Giselle moved the salad from the counter to the table. "Then both of you can do homework."
We asked a quick blessing on the food and ate quickly, and Julia and I grabbed our backpacks. I grabbed an Institute manual, and Giselle grabbed the key to the Colt.
Giselle climbed into the driver's seat, and I opened the door on the passenger side for Julia. But Julia went to the other side and climbed in behind Giselle, giving me a smirk over the roof of the car, challenging me with her eyes before she ducked in, whether I'd climb in beside Giselle or sit in back with her.
"You don't mind if I sit behind you, do you Giselle?" she asked.
"No problem. Not at all." Giselle started to slide the driver's seat forward with a quiet smile.
"My legs are okay, give yourself room to drive."
"The seat is set for Joe, so I need to move it forward anyway. How's this?"
"Plenty of room."
I opened the back seat door and ducked down. "I can move the passenger seat forward and you can sit on this side."
"Get in and let's go."
I shut the forward door and climbed in.
Giselle started the engine and we left.
Julia reached out and took my hand. "Are you going to read to me from that book?"
"The Institute manual?"
"That is what you grabbed just before we left, isn't it?"
"Yeah."
I had an idea which lesson we would be studying, so I opened the manual to that lesson and Julia and I took turns reading it out load in the fading sunlight, while Giselle listened.
*****
That Institute lesson wasn't the best Institute lesson I've ever sat in on. I guess it wasn't the worst, either. The teacher, Jerry Wilks from Midland, had over-prepared, and had brought in a lot of non-canonical material, and the lesson drifted back and forth between listening to dry doctrine, skating into off-topic dogma, and dipping into false doctrines. I guess it's the usual mode for lessons at church.
"So women who aren't making progress toward the goal of temple marriage should repent and prepare themselves to be good mothers." Jerry smiled emphatically.
Giselle raised her hand. "What about the men?"
"Well, of course the men are preparing, too."
"Or, if we aren't we should be, right?" I added.
"Of course. Of course. But I know we're all preparing."
One of the young men from Big Spring, Darrel Boyce, raised his hand. "So how are you preparing?"
Jerry recited the usual list, daily prayer and scriptures, weekly church meetings, accepting callings and assignments, getting a college degree in law so he could earn a good living, and so forth.
Jill Burnham, from Andrews, raised her hand. "Is getting a college degree a commandment?"
That sparked a bit of discussion. Many seemed to think it was a commandment for men, but not for women.
At one point, I was able to slip in a comment -- "I don't recall chapter and verse, but I have read a quote from Brigham Young to the effect that, if it was down to a choice between sending a daughter to school or a son, he would prefer to send the daughter, since the mothers have more opportunities to pass their knowledge on to the children."
Brother Quintas, from Seminole, said he'd read the same thing, and his wife dug out her notes from a recent conference talk, quoting Brigham Young, and expanding on his advice to the effect that, because of the possibility of becoming a widow, and with the increasing number of divorces in the church, the prophet was encouraging women in the Church to prepare to take careers if necessary. Shortly the side discussion dried up.
Brother and Sister Quintas were the young adult advisors for the stake.
On the way home, Julia leaned her head on my shoulder and asked, absently, "So is getting a college degree a commandment?"
Giselle looked at me expectantly in the rear view mirror.
"Commandments --" I began.
"Commandments?"
"-- as I understand it, are mostly given to individuals through the Holy Spirit, according to their own situations and needs."
"Can you quote me chapter and verse on that?"
"Let's study the question tomorrow."
"Okay. I was afraid I'd feel out of place, because everyone would be spiritual giants."
Giselle said, "Yep. We are all definitely not spiritual giants!"
I nodded my head. Julia closed her eyes with a comfortable smile and nestled into my arm around her shoulder, and Giselle winked at me in the mirror. I kissed the top of her head and let myself get lost in analyzing the scent of her hair.
*****
"You know, we could take turns driving to school." Julia was getting a hug from me before getting in her car to drive home."
"Good idea. I'll pick you up tomorrow. Is 8:30 too early?"
"I'll be ready."
After she left, I called Denny.
"So how did it go?"
"I have no idea. Lot's of talk. Me talking too much. No decisions. Well, except I have to help five people get their Micro Chroma 68s running with 6803s."
"Not 68701s?"
"Not 68701s, apparently. It would have been cool to have the 68701 boot to its own ROM, initialize its own internal ports, and then switch to the monitor ROM."
"Sounds tricky, and I wonder if it's really worth it. You won't be able to access the code in the internal ROM all that easily, ya know. But I'll scrounge you up more 68701s. How's Julia?"
"Geaugh. No, I mean good, but scary."
"Heh."
Before I went to bed, I doodled up a design that would allow installing a 4K ROM, up to 32K of dynamic RAM, and an optional 6844 DMA controller on the daughterboard. I thought about it long enough to decide it wouldn't really be such a good idea because of mechanical stability problems, but I thought I'd show it to the other students on Friday anyway.
[Backed up at https://joel-rees-economics.blogspot.com/2020/05/bk-33209-headwinds-becalmed.html.]
