Technically Speaking

Tomorrow is Heidi’s funeral, so I wanted to post the obituaries that were published in the local papers.

Sacamento Bee (2/19/2006 – 2/20/2006)

Heidi Michele Urie of Sacramento, was born in San Luis Obispo, CA, and passed away unexpectedly February 16, 2006, at the age of 42 years. She is survived by her husband, Thom Urie; children, Thom and Lauren Urie; parents, Jimmie and Sue Sanders; siblings, James, Lance and Kirk Sanders, Heather Dickerson and Brock Weaver. She was a wonderful wife and mother and will be fondly remembered and missed by all who knew her. Family and friends are invited to attend funeral services Tuesday, February 21 at 11am at the Sacramento North Stake Center (751 Rio Tierra Ave.) of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. PRICE FUNERAL CHAPEL, directors (725-2109).

Imperial Valley Press Online (2/25/2006 – 2/26/2006)

Heidi Michele Sanders Urie, 42, formerly of Brawley, passed away unexpectedly on Thursday, February 16, at Sutters Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, CA.

Heidi was born January 13, 1964 in San Luis Obispo, CA to Jimmie A. and Sue Sanders. The family returned to their Imperial Valley home when Heidi was two years old. She was educated in the Brawley school system, graduating with the class of 1982. Heidi met Thom (Tad) Urie while attending Cal Poly Pomona. They became engaged two weeks later; and, were married in the Los Angeles Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on December 12, 1986. After Heidi graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in Social Work, she and Tad moved to San Diego where he graduated from San Diego State University. They then moved to Sacramento for Tad to attend the McGeorge School of Law. During that time, Heidi worked at the capitol building in the office of Assemblyman Jan Goldsmith and “in the horseshoe” as a staff member for Governor Pete Wilson.

Heidi and Tad have been blessed with two wonderful children: Thomas Sanders Urie was adopted March 5, 1999; Lauren Madalyn Urie, July 13, 2002. After a 13 year professional career, Heidi became a devoted mother, focusing her attention on the parenting of her children.

Funeral services were held on February 21 at the stake center of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Sacramento, CA. She will be interred in St. George, Utah on February 27.

Heidi is survived by her husband, Thomas Relyea Urie, and a son and daughter, Thom and Lauren of Sacramento; father and mother, Jimmie A. and Sue Sanders and grandmother, Oleta Sanders of Brawley; siblings and their spouses: James and Stephanie Sanders and Heather and Daryl Dickerson of El Centro; Lance and Leslie Sanders of Fullerton; Kirk and Brooke Sanders of Guadalajara, Mexico; and Brock and Aaron Weaver of Oakland, California. She leaves a large extended family of aunts, uncles and cousins. She was preceded in death by her maternal grandmother and step-grandfather, Dennis and Edith Rainwater; grandfather, Grant Lemaster; and paternal grandfather, James A. Sanders.

Heidi was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis at the age of one. If you wish to make a donation in her memory, the family suggests it be given to the Children’s Hospital, Department 7924, Arthritis Foundation, Los Angeles, CA 90084-7924 or your favorite charity.

(Note: this blog entry was edited on 3/1/06 to include both obiturary notices.)

Tonight Christina and I are in California, due to the sudden death of Christina’s aunt Heidi. We found out about it yesterday afternoon at about 3:00, and we left around 7:00 for California.

We spent the night in Reno, and then made it to Stockton this afternoon.

Heidi’s funeral will be on Tuesday morning; I suppose we’ll come back to Utah on Wednesday.

The whole thing is quite a shock. Heidi was in her late 30s, and leaves behind her husband, Tad, and her children, Tom (6) and Lauren (4). I’ll reprint her obituary when it publishes in the paper (probably Monday).

Many of you know that Christina and I started an online book club last year. We suffered through a drought at the end of 2005, but we’re excited to announce the next book for the club: 1776 by David McCullough.

I noticed this book not long after it was published last year, and thought it would be interesting to read, but it wasn’t until last week that I considered 1776 as book club material.

In September 1995, Mr. McCullough addressed a BYU forum in the Marriott Center without any notes. A condensed version of his speech was published in BYU Magazine, and can be read here. As I’m no longer a student at BYU, I didn’t attend the forum where Mr. McCullough spoke, but I loved the condensed version of his speech given in the magazine.

I liked the speech so much I read it aloud to Christina, and it made both of us want to read the book. Christina suggested the book as a book club item, and here we are.

If you haven’t joined our book club, I encourage you to do so. We’re small, but we have had a good time discussing the books we’ve read. Your opinions are welcomed and we love diversity. So please join us and share your thoughts about the books we’re currently reading, or share some thoughts about a book we’ve read previously. We’re online at:

http://bookclub.pehrsonfamily.net

The benefit of an online book club is that you get to read and contribute at your own pace. You can read whenever you want and finish whenever you want. When you have time, you can log into the club and contribute to the discussion. We’d love to have you join us, and we encourage you to invite your friends as well.

You can get 1776 at a local book store, or you can order it online from Amazon. It sells at Amazon for $18.51 new; they have used starting at under $5.

If you have any questions, you can e-mail me or leave a comment on this post.

Last Friday we watched the Olympic Opening Ceremonies of the XX Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

(“Turin” is the name of the city as it has been translated and is known in the English-speaking world. The official name of the city in Italian, however is “Torino.” National Geographic reports that NBC thought that “Torino” sounded more exotic than “Turin” so they decided to use it in their broadcasts. The IOC decided to stick with the city’s official name in Italian. On the other hand, the BBC is using the more familiar “Turin,” but plans to introduce the word Torino into broadcasts “at appropriate moments.” And now you know why some people call the city “Turin” and others call it “Torino.”)

I have to say, the whole event was more exciting than I expected. I had a great time! There were a couple of parts that we had to rewind on the TiVo-like recorder that is part of my parents’ digital cable package.

My favorite parts of the event, in no particular order:

• The Skier. There was a part in the ceremony where people in colored costumes stood on the stage, such that from a distance you could see that they formed the shape of a skier. The “skier” reached up, pulled down his goggles, then leaned forward, and was off, then he went off an apparent jump, and you could see the ski come up while the skier was flying through the air, and then you could see the ski drop when the skier landed. It was pretty cool. We probably watched it three or four times; we watched it at about 2x speed too, and it was even cooler.
• The dove. At one point there were a bunch of acrobats dressed in white who were climbing up parable poles (think of the scene in Ocean’s Eleven when Rusty and Danny are watching the Amazing Yen and decide that he will be their ‘grease man’). Anyway after some beautiful acrobatics, they all came together in the shape of a dove, as a symbol of peace. They used to release a bunch of doves at the Olympics, symbolizing peace. But not many years ago, amid public protests of the inhumanity of releasing the doves, most recent organizing committees have foregone the use of live doves. I thought this was a very interesting and beautiful nod to the dove tradition, and I thought it was executed very well.
• The fireworks after the Formula 1 car. This one is hard to explain, but I’ll try. There was a formula 1 race car that did some spinning demonstration on the stage, and then immediately after that, there was a really cool fireworks demonstration, where the fireworks came out in a circle around the stadium, shooting up in the air. I don’t think I can describe it adequately for as cool as it was.
• The parade of nations. I really liked the dresses worn by the nation placard holders. They were large hoop skirts in the shape of the Alps. And I really liked watching the athletes from all over the world enter the stadium to applause and glory. For many of the athletes, this was to be their moment of glory.
• The lighting of the cauldron (of course). The climax of the opening ceremonies is always the lighting of the Olympic Cauldron, and this one was pretty cool. The torchbearer lit an on-stage firework that set off a chain reaction of fireworks around the stage, and then around the stadium, and then the cauldron was lit. My only complaint was that it didn’t appear that the flame that lit the cauldron was the same one that had been carried into the stadium. I mean, they go to all the trouble to bring the torch from Greece, and then they light the cauldron with a different flame source. But visually it was appealing.

Overall the ceremonies were very good. I was really glad that for the most part NBC kept the commercials to a minimum. I expected more commercials, and I was pleasantly surprised.

I’m looking forward to watching the games in the coming days.

You all should know that I have the best wife in the world. I just couldn’t be luckier or more blessed or happier.

Tonight I had a leadership meeting at our church building, and Christina and I missed each other at home. She had gone tutuoring before I got home, but didn’t get done until after my meeting started.

After the meeting, I walked out to Lassie, our red truck, and got in. To my great suprize, there were two balloons tied to the stick shift. There was writing on them, but as the dome light is out, I couldn’t read it excpet the big writing that said “I love you!”

Well Christina, I love you too! You are better than anything I ever imagined. Every day is better because I get to go through it with you! Thank you. You made my day/week/month.

And for the rest of you, you could take this as an early Valentine’s day idea. I highly recommend it.