The new lawn tractor doesn’t look so new anymore! It got a couple of pretty big owies when I tried to maneuver it past the motor home and didn’t succeed.

The occasion was getting the garden beds ready to be planted. Nina had been working on them during most of the day and there was some stuff that needed to be hauled from the back yard to the trash cans. Since the tractor has a nice trailer with it, I thought I’d haul all of the stuff in one load…. Most of it’s still in the back yard waiting to get into the trash.

I had another meeting out at the airport today. This one is in preparation for the first annual Airport Appreciation Day event that’ll be held at the Pocatello Airport on June 26th. That should be a very good event based on what’s being planned. The best part (in my humble opinion) will be $10 airplane rides … about 20 minutes from engine start to engine stop … and $25 helicopter rides … about 15 minutes from start to stop. I’m hoping to snag a ride in a helicopter. Hope I fit!

TTFN!

Today’s calendar was definitely not empty! I had a Veterans Admin weight management class, an Airport Commission meeting, a meeting with my client, and the weekly Rotary Club meeting. No programming got done on this day.

The Airport Commission is an interesting appointment. The nominal term is for one year, but reappointment is almost automatic if desired (and I desire). The commission meets once a month and provides some oversight to what’s happening at the Pocatello Airport. It’s one of several volunteer commissions set up by the City of Pocatello to provide citizen oversight to various activities the city engages in. There are six of us on the airport commission. A couple of folks have served for more than five years and a couple of us are brand new to the commission.

Today’s meeting had to do with a few leases of buildings and property out at the airport. Usually these are no-brainer kinds of issues. Today’s items, however, had a lot of discussion and comment. None of it was heated or controversial, just working through the best wording to use to accomplish what the Airport Director wants to have happen and fit within the long-range planning for the airport. Some very good things are starting to happen out there. More later when things become more settled.

TTFN!

Today’s calendar was completely empty. That doesn’t happen very often. The rest of the week looks like it’ll make up for an empty calendar, though. Meanwhile I spent most of the day working on an email issue on a website I’m modifying under contract.

The iPhone application I’ve been using, called Project 365, actually seems rather pointless other than being a method of posting pictures on Facebook. I think it’s time to look for something better. It’s storing a copy of each of these pictures on the iPhone and there’s now method to delete them or do anything else with them. That did propel me, however, to start putting the pictures along with something about the day on my blog. If I find a better program, then I’ll switch. Perhaps I need to write the better program??

TTFN!

I’ve written several times before about my current Church assignment on the Pocatello Stake High Council (the first blog entry is here). As a result of that assignment I sometimes have meetings all day long and into the evening. There are other Church callings that are much busier than that, but this one is sufficient for me!

The picture was taken as I arrived at the Pocatello Stake Center for my last meeting of the day. We’re planning an Emergency Preparedness Fair to be held on the 9th of October and this meeting was part of that planning process.

TTFN!

Today was the day to clean out dad’s workshop in Soda Springs. My favorite brother Perry along with his wife Chris came over from Green River, my sister Eileen and her husband Phil came up from Sandy, and Nina and I drove over from Pocatello. We spent the day disposing in one way or another almost everything in the shop. Click on the picture for further details.

While we were cleaning, Nina, Eileen, Chris, and Mother were gardening. We put one of the corner garden beds I made last year on her porch and the women stocked it with flowers, hung hummingbird, finch, and seed bird feeders, and prepared a great lunch on the BBQ grill.

In late Summer 2008 we had a yard sale to get rid of most of the tools in dad’s workshop. As the yard sale came to a close, dad went shopping in his own yard sale…. Then over the next several months before the stroke in January put him in the hospital and then into the nursing home, I brought him a few times to Pocatello to go to Harbor Freight, his favorite store. He bought a few more tools, most of which he was never able to use. Some folks are going to be surprised when they go into Deseret Industries and find quite a selection of new or nearly new tools!

Perry, Phil, and I had a good day … with lots of lifting. Perry brought his pickup truck which was invaluable getting everything handled. The shop now looks rather bare. Someday someone will buy the house and the shop will be one of the selling points. Some other dad will make some incredible stuff in that shop. It’ll be put to good use for years to come, I’m sure.

TTFN!

Nina has a new assignment at the Idaho Falls Temple which means she needs to be there earlier than “normal” to get things ready for the day at the Temple to start. Right now that means leaving 15 minutes earlier than usual. In a couple of months it’ll mean leaving fifteen minutes earlier than that. In about four months it’ll mean trimming off another 15 minutes of sleep. At least we get to do it incrementally.

The dental plan we subscribe to closed their offices in Pocatello meaning that we have to go to the office in Idaho Falls. They’ve done pretty good work for me, so we stayed with them after the office in Pocatello closed. If possible, I schedule my dentist appointments on Friday’s after we’ve finished our shift at the Temple. I go in every four months for a cleaning and a checkup. Today was one of those visits. The dental office is closed for lunch, we get out of the Temple around 11:45 am, meaning we have to kill about an hour. We usually don’t have anything else to do, so we go to the Barnes and Noble store in Idaho Falls and browse through the store. It’s really hard to do that without finding something that we absolutely have to have. As usual, we exchanged money for a book and two magazines. I keep thinking that if I had an iPad, I wouldn’t be buying any more books in book form. Maybe next year.

TTFN!

For the third day in a row, I wasn’t anywhere worth taking any pictures so I’ve pulled up another one from the past. Our visit to Ephesus, Turkey was definitely one of those highlight trips.

I’ve been working pretty hard on a website and keep running into some interesting technical problems. My calendar is completely empty for the day as well. That meant I could devote my time to this programming assignment. Meanwhile, I’m learning how to do some Flash programming and not liking how to interface it with Javascript and PHP (nice geeky terms).

TTFN!

This is another day with no picture taking opportunities, so I’ve pulled up one from the past. I spent a very heads-down day working on a website. I had some success and broke through a significant barrier. It’s clear to me why this functionality wasn’t implemented earlier!

During my initial visit at the end of April with the Veterans Clinic, the doctor suggested that I get involved with a weight management program the VA is offering to overweight veterans. The program is called MOVE and is something like Motivating Overweight Veterans (I don’t know what the “E” stands for). The VA’s website has lots of information, but doesn’t spell out the acronym. I went to the initial information session last week and yesterday went to the first meeting. It’s conducted by video conference out of the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City. The sessions will go for about eight weeks (I think … it may be six weeks) covering various themes.

The video conferencing technology actually doesn’t work very well. The traditional process certainly hasn’t improved very much since I was dropped from AMI Semiconductor a couple of years ago. Skype works incredibly better, but corporate mentality hasn’t caught up with that yet. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get started on a process that’ll result in getting some of this weight off.

TTFN!