Three Stories About Nate

1. Nate has been working on the Histories series of the Joseph Smith Papers for four years. He's been in charge of every aspect of the books, from making sure the documents are transcribed right, to making sure the footnotes get written on time, to rewriting them when they're wrong, to guiding the books through dozens of reviews, to copyediting and typesetting, and (what he's working on now) indexing. The first book, Joseph Smith Histories, 1832-1844, came out two weeks ago, and the second book, Assigned Historical Writings, 1831-1847, will be out in September. I must say, Nate is famous these days. He was part of a press conference for the book and he's been interviewed several times for news articles. He's most proud of the compliment the lead historian on the series, Karen Davidson, paid him at a Joseph Smith Papers banquet last week. She said, "Without a doubt, there is no finer production editor in the world than Nathan Waite." He is so fancy.

2. We're currently redoing our kitchen, including painting cabinets, a project that has been going on for more weeks than I care to mention or try to remember. Last week Nate was diligently painting away inside the cabinets down by the floor. And he was doing so all alone because he was giving me a night out because he's awesome like that. I was up reading in my room with the door shut and suddenly heard yelling from below. Turns out he'd managed to kick a full gallon of paint over onto our kitchen floor (which we're not redoing). It actually cleaned up really well - I'm sure it was aided by all the choice words Nate was saying under his breath. I actually thought it was hysterical and would have taken a picture, except, given Nate's mood, I would not have survived to write this post had I done so.

3. Last week, Bryn came into our room REALLY early (big surprise). As we lay there trying to squeeze in a bit more sleep with her between us, she was flopping around and telling/asking us all sorts of things, including at one point, "Where's my bum-bum?" Really nice. I pretended to be asleep and Nate mumbled, "It's in the parade." I thought he was making a joke or something but then he woke up and said, "I don't know why I just said that." BAHAHAHA! Every time I think about it I die laughing.