23 December 2018

I woke up at 5 AM as usual, completing my journal entry for yesterday. Today's journal entry seems like I am writing about writing. I probably wrote for seven hours.

Since I woke up so early, I wrote in darkness. I inverted the screen color to reduce the bright colors. I actually wanted the brightness of the colors to be darker or dimmer. I do this to reduce the strain on my eyes. Looking on the Android Play Store, I found many apps to dim my screen, but an interesting concept is that dimming an inverted screen actually makes the screen a brighter hue. These apps don't actually dim the brightness of the phone, but they modify the display to look dimmer by causing the white colors look more grayish or a less bright white hue. 

This inverted dimming situation was a problem to solve. Most apps were straight forward, but an app called Night Shift actually had an option to make the screen brighter. I found that making a screen with inverted colors brighter actually dimmed the display. The next paragraph is a side note that I wrote for Android users.

I have the One Plus 5 phone, and it does not have an onscreen navigation bar, having physical buttons, so the screen is a uniform black color; therefore, I am lucky to have the option to hide the navigation bar natively, since I have a One Plus 5. Writing in the dark with other Android phones would not have a uniform display, since the navigation bar is usually inverted to a white color from black.

Margaret joined us for the Christmas Sacrament meeting of the Maplewood ward. Jessica sang "Born to Save" in a women's choir. Margaret was a French professor at one time, and she said that the song was French. We arrived by 8:25 for Jessica dress rehearsal. 

The service had three special music pieces played. Jessica & her choir sang well. 

Skye, a primary student of mine, gave me a gift bag of goodies after church. I rarely get gifts, so these gifts tickled that Iove language, which I usually don't identify with. I feel appreciated since two of the three students gave me a gift at Christmas. I will not be teaching them anymore. My calling next year is to teach CTR 5.

Each Sunday I usually call my parents about four in the afternoon. I like to ask them to tell me stories of their week. Mom typically tells me of drama at work with patients and coworkers. I Iike to keep up with my dad's business, since I am business oriented.

Jessica & I try to leave on time to my in-laws for our traditional Sunday dinner at the requested time of 5 PM, but we usually arrive a few minutes late. Mercedes' food is an embraced change of pace from my bland diet of oatmeal and sandwiches. I don't have time to think of preparing a good variety of food. 

Since I didn't have work the next day, John asked if we would like to play, the card game, Trash; which our Ledesma cousins taught us at Lucas' baptism at Grant's Pass. I have realized that the strategy and skill of this game is very limited. It is mostly probability. Since Trash has phases similar to, the game, Phase 10; the completion of all the phases can be very long. It would be very hard for one person to dominate, which can be appreciated. Our game last night rotated winning, and it seemed that we would have to play nearly forty rounds to finish all of phases. Jessica & I got to phase four, and Jasmine & John got to phase three. Jessica & I decided to leave at the "late" time of 9:40 or so.

At home Jessica and I got distracted. I was looking at self-improvement apps, downloading Habitica. I decided on daily standards of achievement and new habits, committing myself to the hard task of cleaning the entire apartment the next day. 

I advised Jessica to try the Wysa AI Therapy app, requiring extra convincing. She liked it. It was a little enlightening to her.

I didn't get to sleep until about midnight.