Wikipedia defines a cold as

Acute viral rhinopharyngitis, or acute coryza, known as an upper respiratory virus or commonly called the cold, is a contagious, viral infectious disease of the upper respiratory system, primarily caused by rhinoviruses (picornaviruses) or coronaviruses. It is the most common infectious disease in humans; there is no known cure, but it is rarely fatal.

In other words, it is a huge nuisance. And, I’ve got one. I woke up in the early morning hours last Saturday and realized I was coming down with a cold. As the day progressed it got worse. Yesterday (Sunday) was pretty miserable. Today it moved down into my chest and, thankfully, I’ve still got some of the magic elixir that everyone else in the world can buy, except us Americans. That’s right … it’s the stuff that contains enough codeine to suppress the cough:

Codeine (INN) or methylmorphine is an opiate used for its analgesic, antitussive (cough suppressant), and antidiarrheal properties, and is useful for numbing back pain, and is frequently purchased under this pretence. It is by far the most widely used opiate in the world and probably the most commonly used drug overall according to numerous reports over the years by organizations such as the World Health Organization and its League of Nations predecessor agency and others. It is one of the most effective orally-administered opioid analgesics and has a wide safety margin.

It is amazingly effective. I’m quite happy to have it on hand as otherwise it has to be prescribed by a doctor. Just another symptom of our crazy medical practices which seem to be driven by big pharma and not by what makes sense for the patient.

It’s very interesting to me that all the folks hard-over opposed to universal health care are those that already have company-sponsored insurance. They seem to not be interested in people like Nina and me who have no access to affordable health insurance.

It’s been a bit over a month since the last time we have been to see dad at the nursing home in Soda Springs due to the Big Trip East. We drove over to Soda Springs this afternoon and did a few things at the house for mother and then visited with dad at the nursing home. Some random thoughts:

1. The sprinkler people did a very good job putting in the sprinkler system for mother. We had B&B Sprinkler in Pocatello do the job and I’d recommend them to anyone. They did the job last Wednesday, were there when they said they’d be there and were finished by about 1 p.m.
2. Dad definitely isn’t acclimating to the nursing home. As we left he told me he wants me to take him to the house so he can measure the doors and verify that a scooter will work so he can go home. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen.
3. His hearing is definitely a problem. Most of the time he can’t hear what’s happening and what he does hear is often wrong.
4. His memory is getting much less reliable. Events that he used to be able to recall clearly are now quite mixed up in both names and places.
5. He enjoys playing in his drawer, however. The items there are still interesting to him. However, the DVD’s he enjoys watching seldom make it back into their cases and three of them are cracked and not playable. We’ll be seeing about buying replacements.

Meanwhile, our granddaughter Kendra has been here for several days. So far she’s dealing rather well with the very different lifestyle here at our house. Things move much more slowly and much more quietly here!

I’ve come down with a cold. I’m definitely looking forward to a day when colds are a thing of the past.

1. We got home from the Big Trip East around noon on Saturday, July 4th. After unloading the motor home we were both too tired to do anything else. Our Independence Day Celebration consisted of Nina making some of her (delicious) potato salad, her (famous) bbq beans, and grilling some chicken outside on the grill. I think I heard some of the city’s fireworks just before I went to sleep.
2. Sunday was a pretty busy Church day with lots of catch-up for being gone for three weeks. Otherwise it was very uneventful. Two nights in a row in our own bed was very nice.
3. My cousin Cheryl along with husband Sean and their four kids arrived from Boise on Monday mid-day and stayed until Thursday morning. We had a great time with them here. The boys are a lot of fun and the baby Cerise was delightful. We convinced them to stay a day longer than they planned and we’re looking forward to their coming again or us going over to Boise to visit with them.
4. Before coming, Cheryl sent me a text message saying her son Kendal wanted to bring a game “Settlers of Catan” over so we could play it. Of course he could bring it! We finally got enough time to play the game Tuesday evening. It’s a board game originally from Germany and it was a lot of fun. So much so that when we were in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, we bought the game. Now we just need people to play it with.
5. Our granddaughter Kendra (Trevor’s daughter) spent a week or so with our daughter Heather in North Salt Lake. We picked her up on Wednesday and she’ll be here with us through the weekend. It’s been a long time since Kendra’s been here with us and she sure has grown up. She loves music, loves to read, LOVES to text. We’ve really enjoyed having her here. We’re rather boring people, so it’s good that she’s willing to put up with us. Upon her return she’s got a very busy schedule with Girls Camp, Theater Camp, and Band Camp and then school starts again. She’ll be a Sophomore this year. She’s getting pretty dang grown up! Trevor would be very proud of her. At her request I’ve set her up with a blog.
6. I think our grass was long enough that we could have bailed it and sold it for feed. We’ve certainly had plenty of rain (although none of our tomato plants survived) with June setting a record for the amount of rainfall and the number of days with rain. Paradoxically, in May the long-range forecast was for less than normal rainfall, hotter than normal weather. That hasn’t happened, yet. Today was another day when the air conditioning was not needed.
7. Mother finally no longer has to move sprinklers. On Wednesday an automatic sprinkler system was installed. She is ecstatic and threatens to do the Happy Dance. Nina says she has to wait to do that until we’re there and Nina can film it.
8. Dad, on the other hand, is desperate for me to bring him to Pocatello so he can get a scooter and be able to get out of the nursing home. He thinks that plus a ramp will let him go home. Unfortunately, that’s not possible. Some people never acclimate to a nursing home and he’s definitely in the non-acclimating class.
9. Mother’s only surviving sibling, Aunt Marjorie, has been having some pretty serious health problems lately. Surgery would normally be required, but her health is so frail the doctors are afraid she’d die on the operating table. So instead, she gets to die a much slower and much more painful death. Not sure I understand how all that works.
10. The slide-out on our motor home broke today. It is extended and now will neither retract nor extend. I’m thankful it waited until we got home to break! The list of things needing fixing in the motor home is rather lengthy anyway. We’ve got several more short trips planned so I need to get busy getting the motor home ready to go.
11. And I made it to ten. Just not on Tuesday. Oh well.

1. Connecticut is always fun to visit. Lots of roads that go wandering through the countryside and there are so many trees you can’t see very far. Very different from Idaho.
2. Nina thinks we may have made our last visit to Hammonassett Beach. I’m not so sure. She would like to do a family history trip where we would stay several weeks in New England. There’s surely time then to carve out a day at the beach.
3. The rumors are true that you can smell chocolate in the air in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Also, the street lamps all look like Hershey Kisses.
4. Garmin Jill (our GPS unit) has been quite helpful on this trip. Only once has she lead us astray. But, I’m a bit worried about the route she’s taking us on right now as we make our way to Marion, Ohio to meet up with Nina’s brother Ralph. We did arrive, but we took some roads that are not on our big Rand McNally map.
5. It is very hard writing this on my iPhone. I actually had this finished and lost everything from #5 onward. So, it’s now Wednesday and we’re at our daughter-in-law’s home in Springfield, Missouri. I’m now on a nice wifi connection and on my laptop.
6. On Sunday we went to Valley Forge with Daryl and Laura along with Kirk and Dawnmarie and family. That was our second visit to Valley Forge and I finally figured out what is so much different about Valley Forge than the other Revolutionary and Civil War sites. There was no big battle fought at Valley Forge.
7. Marion, Ohio, in addition to being the birth and death place of President Warren Harding, is also the location of a gravestone marker that mysteriously moves. It’s a two-ton granite sphere on a granite pedestal and rotates around on it’s own. No one knows why.
8. We’ve spent more time driving in the motor home on this trip than we have visiting people. It’s a long way across country! When we leave Springfield we’ll have about 20 hours of actual driving time ahead of us before we arrive home. I think we’ll split that across three days as we’re both rather tired. However, the objectives of the trip have been met. We were at Kate’s baptism. We went to the beach at Hammonassett, visited with Aunt Jean and Uncle Bob, and saw Peter and Maureen. We spent some time with Daryl and Laura and saw their new house. We spent some time with Nina’s brother Ralph, and now spending some time with our daughter-in-law and granddaughter (Jim and the boys are at Scout Camp). We spent some time with my favorite brother and his wife on the way out and will see them again on the way home. All in all, a successful family-oriented trip.
9. There is a delightful toy train museum in Strasburg, Pennsylvania. The exhibits are very interesting and quite amazing. However, there is also a Red Caboose Motel next door. There are probably forty cabooses from different rail lines, all outfitted inside as motel rooms. We.Must.Go.Back.
10. My brain is fried and there is nothing more to come out tonight. ‘Til next week.

We’re in another of the many “stupid” construction traffic jams we’ve encountered on this trip. We’ve been inching through this one for over an hour and have moved about 2 miles. Incredibly poor planning. Four lanes from two freeways merging into two lanes then merging into one lane, but with an “exit only” lane for about 1 1/2 miles creating yet another merge. Someone in the PA Dept of Highways should have to drive that for eternity.

We actually had one day on Thursday at the beach at Hammonasset with enough sun to get most everyone sunburnt. It was a nice day at the beach followed by some fabulous pizza. Yesterday we went to the famous Book Barn, followed by Mystic Seaport and then a visit with Pete and Maureen. The day was capped off by a huge thunderstorm.

But not like the devastating storm that hit southern Pocatello yesterday. We’ve heard reports of some serious damage in the area. Our house is unscathed, and we’re thankful. This has been a very strange Spring and Summer.

The campground in Connecticut had WiFi. However, it was set up with some default settings and broadcasting on channel 6. Two other wireless access points showed up last night, also broadcasting on channel 6 and all three stepping on each other. That ended wireless connections. Thankfully we had 3G cellphone data connection. Now if AT&T ever gets their tethering act together, I’ll not be dependent on dumb setups like at our campground.

We’re about a hundred miles from Daryl’s. Wagons Ho!

Yesterday Kate was baptized. I took a number of pictures during the afternoon and put them together into a slideshow. The show itself is rather large and will take some time to download. For those interested, the link for the slide show is: here.

We had a fun day with the family. Nina’s sister Pam along with Nina’s niece Vanessa and her family came over from Ohio. Our son Daryl drove out from Philadelphia. Both sets of Kate’s grandparents were in attendance. The family was well represented. It was a special day for a very special girl.

Forty-five years ago this evening Nina and I were married at the New Haven Branch of the LDS Church in New Haven, Connecticut. We had met on a blind date about eight months earlier and within a couple weeks we began talking about getting married. I don’t think I ever formally proposed, but by Christmas time we were busy making plans.

I was going to the Air Force’s Chinese Language School at Yale University in New Haven. I reported there in late September, 1963 and met Nina in late October. The school finished at the end of the first week in June and I had to report for further training at Goodfellow AFB in San Angelo, Texas on June 22nd. Nina was a senior at Hambden High School and her last class was on June 12th.

We were married by the Branch President on Friday, June 12, 1964. We had a small wedding reception at the Branch Meeting House and Nina and I spent the night at a nearby very nice motel (we watched Jack Parr on TV that evening). The next morning we left with my mother and my Aunt June to go to San Angelo.

We drove through Washington, D.C. (it was an incredibly hot day), then on to Texas with a couple of stops along the way at night. One evening we stayed in a motel in Tennessee that had a number of  log cabins for their rooms.

Mother and Aunt June helped us find an apartment in San Angelo, and then they left to go back home (mother to Soda Springs, and Aunt June to Tooele, Utah).

Our first apartment cost $35 a month and was located in downtown San Angelo above a dry cleaning establishment. It was a two-room apartment and we were very excited to set up housekeeping.

It’s been a good 45 years since then. We have been blessed with wonderful children and they’ve found outstanding spouses. Life has been very, very good. I definitely “married up” and have never had second thoughts. Happy anniversary, Nina, light of my life!

Who knows! This might be posted in enough time for me to have a normal bedtime….

1. Things never break all at once. A piece on the steering mechanism on the lawn tractor broke on Monday. When I took it apart, my dad had apparently fixed it once before. The part could be put back together, which I did, but the hood was very precariously attached. I went through my bucket of nuts and bolts and found a bolt that would work, but no matching nut. I was off the Ace Hardware to buy a nut. (As I left the house, I texted Nina to tell her where I was going. She responded, “A peanut?”). I got back, securely attached the hood, and headed out to mow between rainstorms. I got the front partly finished when the steering part broke for good. The mower store had the part, but it needed a nut. Once again, no matching nut was found at home. Another trip to Ace Hardware. Of course, buying one nut is weird, I’m sure I’ll need another nut of those sizes sometime again in my future. The nuts and bolts bucket has been resupplied.
2. We’ve certainly had a lot of rain. The paper said we had a record amount of rain over the past weekend. We never get long-lasting rain here in Pocatello. We get storms that blow through. However, on Sunday we had a rain that lasted all day and well into the night. I’m pretty sure if I looked closely, I probably would have been able to see the grass grow. By the time it stopped raining, and the mower was fully fixed, I had to mow grass about four or five inches tall.
3. Someone said something about all the rain. I remarked that I was getting worried about something starting to grow on the top of my head. “Fungus, or algae?” he asked.
4. Nina got rear-ended last Friday. The result was a couple of small dents in the back bumper that really should get fixed. The guy handed over an insurance card in someone else’s name, claiming it was his girlfriend. While the whole story isn’t in, yet, he probably doesn’t have any insurance. Some states have started requiring insurance companies to feed insurance info into a database so that the police can verify insurance information at the time the accident is being investigated. We need that here in Idaho. There are just too many untrustworthy people.
5. We’re in the midst of planning The Big Trip East. We’ll go from here to Connecticut and back with the main purpose to be at our granddaughter’s baptism on June 20th. Is it safe to put on my blog that we’re out of town for a period of time? Will someone look and decide to break in? I’m thinking it’s safe, but there are just too many untrustworthy people.
6. For two months in a row we’ve gotten our Home Teaching done before the middle of the month. That’s scary. Tradition is definitely being broken.
7. I’m always surprised at how many people cannot follow written instructions. I’ve been assigned as part of my High Council work, to conduct a preparedness survey for the Stake. The survey was to be conducted in each Ward or Branch in the Stake last Sunday. Good instructions were included on each survey form. Also on top of the package was instructions on what to do with the completed forms … which was to call me to arrange for me to pick them up. The instruction even included my phone numbers. No one called. Of the nine Wards and one branch, not one called. I had to call them. One person said, “I didn’t know what to do with the surveys, so they’re locked up in the office at the Church building. Can’t get them until Wednesday.” When I told him the instructions on what to do with the forms was on top of the package, he said he hadn’t read it. My amazement continues.
8. Last Thursday I went to Montpelier to a meeting of all the community organizations. My part was to do a ten minute presentation on how they might use Google Calendar to be able to have a comprehensive master calendar for the city. I was first impressed by how many organizations were present at the meeting: 17 different community organizations from Little League Baseball to Enough is Enough, from the Arts Council to Parks and Recreation. I was then impressed by how much energy and interest there was about getting a comprehensive community calendar together. Every organization said that they’d build a Google Calendar and a woman who works for the City volunteered to do the master calendar consolidation. I think this might actually happen!
9. Saturday afternoon my siblings, Nina, and I went over to Soda Springs to celebrate my parent’s 65th Wedding Anniversary. They were married in June 7, 1944 in the Salt Lake Temple while dad was on leave from the Army. D-Day was the day before the wedding. A couple of weeks later dad left on a troop ship for Europe to see duty in France and Germany. Mother was pregnant when he left and dad was notified by telegram the following year in March when I was born. His unit was poised to cross the Rhine River the day he got the telegram. Sixty-five years is a remarkable feat and definitely needed to be feted.
10. Today we had a mostly sunny day, the only day this week forecast to be partly sunny. If it’s raining on Saturday, I probably won’t go to the Farmers Market. That activity has resulted in a couple of sales, but definitely hasn’t been the market I was thinking it would be. I’ll have to rethink how to do this next year for sure.

Hope your week has been good for you, too!