And here’s Roland….

1. I spent the morning in Idaho Falls at the LDS Welfare Services Cannery. The local Church congregations in my area were assigned to provide volunteer service there this morning. The cannery was producing chunky chicken noodle soup with a goal of 10,000 cans during the morning 4-hour shift and another 10,000 cans during the afternoon 4-hour shift. As we wrapped up they told us we had processed 9,600 cans of soup, meaning that about 20,000 people will have a meal. The goods produced in the LDS Church Canneries go all over the world to help feed the hungry and mitigate disasters. My job was to load cans onto the conveyor system, so I was working at the very front of the production line. The good part was that this work was done outside the production area so it was much cooler. Difficult part was four hours of standing and repetitious movement: snag eight cans from the pallet of cans, put them on the feed conveyor, snag another eight cans, rinse and repeat. After emptying a pallet of cans, replace with another pallet full of cans. Even with ear plugs I can even now hear the rattling of cans on the conveyor belt!
2. Yesterday was the hottest day of the year so far reaching an official high of 92°. The extended forecast is for higher than normal temperatures and lower than normal rainfall. That’s a good recipe for wild fires.
3. A couple of weeks ago Nina bought an apple tree at Costco. This tree had four branches, each with a different variety of apples. The tree sat in a bucket on the back deck for a couple of weeks until last night when it got planted in the back yard. There are several blossoms on the tree so just maybe we’ll get some apples?
4. We spent Saturday morning at the Farmers Market where we gave away a lot of brochures and had many people looking, but no sales. Yesterday morning a woman called me and asked if I would custom build a garden bed for her as she wanted one larger than I had on display. That’s turning into a nice order.
5. Saw some information on Utah Preppers, a website dedicated to all things related to being self sufficient, about potato boxes. That looked very interesting and a better idea than using old tires. I’m thinking I should build one and have that for sale at the Farmers Market as well. Maybe I should build two … one as a display at the market and one for use here at the house.
6. Today was another election day, this time for the local school board. I stopped in to vote after my Rotary Club meeting ended. There were a number of people voting which surprised me. I kind of expected the turnout to be marginal at best. Perhaps the February school board fiasco with a levy that failed followed by a scaled down levy that passed in April has fueled the interest.
7. Gasoline prices have been going up here and are around $2.10 or so all over the area. We’re leaving on June 14th to make another trip out east. While the trip will be less expensive than the one we made to South Carolina last year, I’d still like to see gasoline prices under $2.00. There’s no good reason for them to be higher than that.
8. On the other hand, my IRA actually made money in April and it looks like May will repeat that performance. April was the first time since last June that my IRA has had a net increase in value. Maybe things are getting better economically.
9. Remembering things has become somewhat of a joke between Nina and me. The other day we were trying to remember the name of a couple we knew very well when we lived in Colorado Springs. That name just wouldn’t rise to the surface. A bit later Nina came up with her name, but we couldn’t remember his, or their last name. As the morning progressed, she got a name, then later got her last name back, then got the name of her daughter back, and finally got her husband’s name back. I have a list in my iPhone of important names to remember; names that I occasionally draw a complete blank on when called upon to remember them.
10. The Hubble Space Telescope has been refurbished by the Atlantis team. I thoroughly enjoyed watching their work being televised from space on NASA TV. It was absolutely amazing to see them work through problems and issues and despite lots of unexpected events (and NASA tries incredibly hard to think of every possible scenario), everything got finished. I ran across a beautiful set of pictures from this mission today: boston.com/bigpi… The imagery is gorgeous and breathtaking. I’m really hoping that my great grandchildren will think that space travel is as routine as we take air travel today.

Another brain dump in another seven days!

It’s time for another mindless brain dump….

1. Today we picked dad up at 8 a.m. and brought him to Pocatello for his annual visit to the Veterans Clinic. He has to physically go to the clinic once a year in order to continue getting free prescriptions from the VA. I think he really enjoyed getting out and the drive to Pocatello and back. After the clinic we stopped at Costco for a few things and I wheeled him through the store in his wheelchair. We got him back to the nursing home in Soda Springs about 1:30 this afternoon. The weekly bus ride was leaving at 2 p.m. and he got on the bus to take their drive out north and east of Soda Springs. The area where they were going was where some of his favorite fishing spots were located.
2. The VA Clinic visit was somewhat of a puzzling appointment. When I made the appointment they told me that he should come fasting. On arrival they did the vital signs and then he meet with a nurse practitioner who looked at the list of medications and was ready to issue prescriptions and send us on our way. Mother reminded him that dad had come fasting. So he (somewhat reluctantly) arranged for blood to be taken for workup. Two nurses stuck dad three times without getting any blood so they called in a phlebotomist to take over. One more stick and they got all the needed blood.
3. A few weeks ago we got a mailing from Idaho Power offering us some money off our electric bill this summer if they could install a switch where the power company can slow down the air conditioning unit at peak demand times. When we got home this afternoon there was note in our door that the switch had been installed. Now I’m wondering how the guy got into the yard to install the switch on the a/c unit.
4. Nina has started working out schedules for our trip out east in June. It looks like we’ll go all the way to Connecticut on this trip as well. I’m looking forward to being on the road once again.
5. While the undenting looks nice, the Avalon car door still has too much wind noise. I’ll take it in once again this week to see if they can make the passenger side as quiet as the driver’s side of the car.
6. My favorite brother Perry was born on Mothers Day way back in 1953. I remember that event to some extent as I was eight years old then. One standout memory is that he was so very tiny when mother brought him home from the hospital. My sister Eileen had a doll bigger than he was. That seemed very strange to me then.
7. For this Mother’s Day Nina and I drove over to Soda Springs after we were finished with Church meetings. Our oldest son James and his family had come out to Utah from Missouri as there was a wedding in LeeAnn‘s family and Jim and LeeAnn were doing the photography for the wedding. They also drove up to Soda Springs as a surprise visit. We then had a family dinner at mother’s house. It was a very nice day.
8. During this time of the year my favorite color is green. After so many months of winter with brown or grey hillsides and mud, spring has arrived and everything is green. It’s beautiful! I put fertilizer down on the yard last Friday and Monday turned the sprinkler system on. While there were no geysers, one segment isn’t working. The sprinkler folks haven’t called me back.
9. I’m looking forward to living someday somewhere where the wind doesn’t blow so hard. Today the jet stream was literally over the town of Pocatello with wind gusts in excess of 50mph. That’s too much wind!
10. I’ve got piles of stuff all over my area of the office. The chair mat on the floor is disintegrating. There is an apple tree on the back deck that has to get planted. Meanwhile, I’m about half-way through book 6 in the Wheel of Time series. I lasted one day between book 5 and book six. Now I think I can finish the series by the end of June and still have time to read it again by November 3rd when the next book will be released.

And that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

Here we go for Tuesday, May 5, 2009!

1. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Cinco de Mayo event, ever. Today I finally looked the celebration up in Wikipedia and learned that Cinco de Mayo refers to an unlikely victory of the Mexican army over the French. It’s an interesting article about an event I didn’t have any clue about until today.
2. I’ve been re-reading the Wheel of Time series. So far 11 books in the series have been published, with the author Robert Jordan dying after book 11 was published and before he could complete the series. He was working on what he thought might be the last book when he died and another author Brandon Sanderson was engaged to finish. However, he and the publisher have decided to finish the series up with three more books. Book 12, A Memory of Light will come out on November 3rd this year. So, I decided to reread the initial 11 books and be ready by November for the next book in the series. This is at least the fourth time that I’ve read them. The series is so interesting, though, that I can’t put the books down. I just finished reading Lord of Chaos, book 6 yesterday. At this rate I’ll be done by June! So, for the time being, I’ve stopped reading so I can get something else done.
3. While the Avalon is indeed undented, the door now makes wind noise and at highway speeds it whistles. I’ve been assigned the task of taking it back into the shop to get the noise taken care of. Hopefully that’ll happen Thursday morning.
4. A very clever and talented young lady I follow on Twitter (@katieblair) recounted the last paragraph of her grandfather’s obituary. It was delightful!

In lieu of flowers, the family asks you to take a friend to lunch, call a favorite teacher, or reconnect with a long time acquaintance.

5. I’ve got several things to get done for the next Farmers Market on Saturday. The weather is not forecast to be favorable, however. I’m hoping it at least will be a bit warmer than last week.
6. The most important item for the market is to get Much Bigger Signs. While we were sitting at the market last Saturday trying to stay dry and somewhat warm, Nina suggested that we should make up some signs and get them … and she couldn’t think of the word. She kind of described what she was thinking, but my brain was completely blank as well. Several hours later as we were driving somewhere else, I suddenly blurted out “laminate!” We both laughed very hard and long. It’s not that we forget, she reminded me, we just remember later.
7. The charter event for our new Portneuf Rotary Club was last Tuesday afternoon. It was a very fun event and an attendee took a number of pictures. I was given the opportunity to upload those pictures to the Rotary District Website (link to the pictures on the bottom of the left column). That turned out to be a very painful process. Their website is set up for uploading the occasional picture. Every picture has to be uploaded individually and every one of the fields in the process has to be precisely correct. And, the website doesn’t remember anything from one picture to the next, even the date of the event. After uploading about 66 pictures, I was glad to be done and won’t avail myself of that opportunity again. Maybe I can have our new Rotary club let me make their webpage?
8. I was over in Montpelier on Monday meeting with the Mayor and the City Clerk. They were having huge computer problems trying to print out the past-due water / sewer notices. For some reason the print on the page was so small it couldn’t be read. There were a couple of technicians working on the problem, one in the office and one on the phone. The problem was finally solved … it was an issue with Microsoft Word. A patch automatically installed by Microsoft caused the problem. I don’t like auto-installed software updates.
9. My motorcycle is ready for the summer. I needed a new front tire and new front and rear brake pads. Now I just need some decent weather so I can do some riding! We’ve been getting plenty of rain which also is not a bad thing (except for riding the motorcycle).
10. Nina came in a couple of minutes ago to get an envelope. She saw I was still writing this missive and expressed her pleasure that I wasn’t ready to go to bed yet, as she needed another ten minutes or so. I think she still got done faster than I did!

And that’s another ten things in the bag.

It’s Tuesday! Here we go:

1. The City of Pocatello has started a curbside recycling program. It costs $5 per month, no sorting, everything recyclable goes into the same container and they pick it up every other week. Our new pretty blue recycle can was delivered yesterday and the first pickup is a week from today. It’ll be full by then as we’ve been saving up!
2. We’re clearly still having spring weather as we’re bouncing between warm and cold, sun and snow. I drove the car out to Arbon for a speaking assignment Sunday and drove back through two big snow squalls. Today the foothills got a blanket of snow.
3. It looks like we’ve had a good water winter. The farmers in Arbon and happy with the amount of moisture in the soil. Now it needs to not have a hard freeze and for prices to remain fairly stable.
4. The Avalon is now finally completely undented. We returned the car to the shop yesterday morning for the final piece of work and picked it up that afternoon. It looks once again like new.
5. The drive to Heather’s house in North Salt Lake goes through the wetlands northwest of Brigham City and alongside Willard Bay just north of Ogden. We usually kill several million bugs, it seems, every time we drive that route from spring to fall. Last week thousands of small black bugs committed suicide by car as we drove past Willard Bay around 10:30 pm. They don’t want to unstick, either.
6. A good piece of today was spent relearning to do some things with a database that I was sure I would remember when I first figured it out several months ago. What isn’t practiced is forgotten! I even have a convenient way of writing those kinds of things down in my laptop. Suffice it to say that it’s now documented … and because of that, I’ll probably never have to refer to the documentation again. It seems that the very act of writing it down cements it in the brain!
7. The media always seems to have to have something sensational to latch onto. This week it’s swine flu. Certainly no fun for those in Mexico who have died from the flu, but it certainly isn’t a pandemic.
8. The city websites are definitely keeping me busy. I want to get these two pretty much done before taking on additional work. There’s most likely a market in small municipalities for web pages, but I’ve got to get it a lot more automated and need the ability to outsource some of the work. I need to figure out how best to package the work that would be outsourced (not necessarily overseas, though).
9. We went to the Symphony on Friday night and I wrote about it last Saturday. When I wanted to link the Symphony website, I found that the website had disappeared and what was displaying was not at all helpful … primarily links to dating sites. I called the President of the Symphony and told her about the problem. It appeared that the domain registration had expired. Calling her worked as the website is now fully functional, but rather out of date.
10. Last, but far from least, the Rotary Club that I joined last year finally got enough members to be chartered as an official Rotary Club. Tonight was the big event and I’ve now got a Rotary pin to wear on my lapel that says “Charter Member”. Most of the members of this club are quite a bit younger than I am as this is an afternoon club that meets at 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday evening. Two of other three Rotary Clubs in Pocatello meet at noon and one meets at 7:30 a.m. I think the afternoon club will be quite popular. Rotary is definitely a worthwhile organization and a whole lot of fun!

And that’s the end for this Tuesday.

Some random thought over the past week:

1. We’ve had two days of spring weather. Today was a lovely day with temperatures in the mid-60° range. So, I put my key in the motorcycle and turned it on. Battery.Was.Dead. Tomorrow’s forecast is for rain and thunder. I think I’ll call the motorcycle place and schedule my bike for a spring tuneup. I’m looking forward to riding again.
2. Today we registered the “new” Toyota Avalon. It turned out to be a surprisingly easy process. The longest part was that the temporary tag had one letter wrong in the VIN number and the computer at the Department of Motor Vehicles wouldn’t accept it. The clerk had to call to get the right data. A ‘V’ is definitely different than a ‘U’. So the car is not only registered, but licensed until June 2010. We can put the license plates from the old car onto the new car … but Nina wanted them washed and the dents pounded out first so that they’d “match” the new-car look. I did the best I could with the front license plate. All the trips through the marshland around Brigham City had coated the plate with the remains of probably a million bugs.
3. The website for the City of Georgetown is coming along quite nicely. I loaded the base software for the new City of Montpelier website today as well. I’ll be demonstrating the City of Georgetown website to the Mayor and City Council tomorrow evening. One interesting aspect is the city ordinance pages. There’s an interesting bit of city history in those ordinances.
4. I hadn’t thought about whether or not the LDS Church changes over time the statistics it reports in General Conference, or even the method and meaning of the statistics it reports. I learned that they used to report the number of “children of record” which was calculated by taking last year’s number, subtracting the number of children that turned 9 or were baptized during the year, and adding the number of new children added to the records. This year they stopped reporting that number and instead report only the number of new children of members added to the record. A comment on my blog used that information to figure out that the parents in the Church are getting less prolific over time. It was an interesting comment.
5. I wasn’t able to watch any of the college basketball championship games. Our local CBS affiliate KIDK has been in some kind of a stupid dispute with Dish Network and has stopped uploading their programming to Dish. Of course, Dish Network doesn’t care a bit whether KIDK uploads the programming or not. So those folks in this area who have Dish network didn’t get to see the ballgames (and don’t see Survivor). I relied on my favorite brother to keep me updated on the important games. He’s a much bigger basketball fan than I am.
6. My brother is also a very major Atlanta Braves baseball fan. My daughter Jaelene is a very major Arizona Diamondbacks baseball fan. They’re already predicting the two teams will play each other in the World Series next fall. I can’t even keep the baseball teams straight. Last night I though I was watching the Los Angeles Dodgers when in fact I was watching the Los Angeles Angels. In my brain, the Dodgers are still in New York and the Mets don’t exist.
7. I scoured the phone books and the Internet looking for a health insurance broker here in Pocatello a couple of months ago to no avail. Tonight I learned that a two-week-old new member of our Rotary Club is a health insurance broker here in Pocatello and has been for about sixteen years. My first question to him was, “Why are you so hard to find?” Don’t have an answer, yet.
8. I organized a neighborhood meeting for last Sunday evening on the local school levy vote scheduled for today (I voted YES). I split up our neighborhood with another fellow and on Friday night and Saturday we rang every doorbell in the neighborhood. A bit more than half of them answered the door and we gave them an invitation. The rest got the invitation either in their mailbox or stuck in their front door. This is a rerun (at a lower levy amount) from a levy that was defeated in February and without which the schools will be decimated. In spite of many people telling me they’d be at the meeting, very few people showed up. Won’t know until tomorrow what that means. Hopefully it means they’re voting in favor as well and didn’t need a meeting. I invited the Superintendent of Schools and our area’s School Board member to come to the meeting and both showed up with some very good information.
9. As I walked the neighborhood ringing doorbells, I was surprised at a couple of things. First was how many homes had a dog in the house, all of whom barked quite loudly as soon as I rang the doorbell. The other was how many doorbells I couldn’t hear if they rang or not, but because the dog started barking, I knew the bell had rung. Sometimes dogs are useful.
10. The polling place for the school levy was very busy today when we stopped to vote on the way back from registering the car. That probably doesn’t mean a lot since the polling place was very busy last February when the levy was defeated. It does mean, though, that a lot of people are expressing their own opinion about whether or not the schools will get local property tax dollars rather than letting someone else make the decision for them. It’s democracy in action.

And another Tuesday Ten Things is a wrap.

Time to put some random thoughts down!

1. We had a wonderful week of spring temperatures, the snow had all melted, and I was right ready to pull the cover off the motorhome and start getting it ready to do some local trips. Then the weather changed and we’ve had a week of winter. It’s snowing now … and thundering. If there’s thunder then there must be lightning. I don’t think I’ve ever seen snow lightning.
2. The “new” car has passed the inspection and hopefully we’ll go down to Salt Lake and pick it up on Friday. It’ll be nice to being a two-car family, but more importantly, to have a much more comfortable car to drive longer distances than my Chevrolet Tracker.
3. We have General Conference of the Church this coming weekend. I really enjoy conference and am looking forward to it.
4. I’ve put in a bid on building a website for another small city in southeastern Idaho. I’ll hopefully know tomorrow night if my bid is accepted.
5. Small towns seem to have the ability to spend money on a website where the larger cities are cutting budgets. I’m wondering why that difference.
6. A week from today the local school district is running another levy election. The last one failed in February. They cut back on the amount being asked and are running another election. If this one fails, the school system here will be decimated. The prospects of the levy passing don’t look good, however.
7. I’m about halfway through the second book in the Wheel of Time fantasy series. I think this is my fifth time reading this book in the series. I’d still rather read the book than do about anything else.
8. Last fall I joined a newly-forming Rotary Club. This will be the fourth Rotary Club in Pocatello and will be called the Portneuf Rotary Club. In order to charter a new Rotary Club, there have to be at least twenty signed-up members. A week ago we reached that goal and will be chartered by the end of April. It’s kind of cool as I’ll get a Rotary pin to wear on my lapel that says “Charter Member”.
9. After upgrading my Macbook’s hard drive, I needed a new backup hard drive for the Time Machine software (very cool Mac backup software). I started formatting the new backup drive on Saturday morning and the formatting program is still running 84 hours later. Something doesn’t seem right.
10. Another installment of Tuesday Ten Things is ready to publish. ‘Til next week!

It’s time again for Ten Things Tuesday!

1. One really nice thing about big snowstorms near the end of March is that I can justify waiting for it to melt rather than dragging out the snowblower. The sun will surely be shining the next day.
2. The other nice thing about big snowstorms near the end of March is that they are very wet snows and we definitely need the moisture.
3. I cranked up the pressure on my CPAP machine (used to treat sleep apnea) and have really liked the results. It took quite a while to find something online that would tell me how to adjust the pressure setting. While doing the search, I found that my machine went out of production the month after I bought it.
4. We’ve had some visitors from the eastern part of the United States (one from Connecticut) and sometimes it takes visitors to help appreciate the beauty we have around us.
5. There are some fabulous canyons to the east of Logan. On Saturday afternoon before Ashlyn and Eric’s wedding reception, Nina and I drove up to the Hardware Ranch State Wildlife Management Area. It was a beautiful 15 mile drive through the canyon. We will definitely go back sometime. By the way, it’s interesting to me that the visitor’s center for the ranch is only open in the winter, and is now closed for the summer and fall.
6. I’m wondering about, and doing some research, on what can be done so that I might be able to avoid going into a nursing home as my health deteriorates in my old age. Looking around my house it is clear that it’s only good for reasonably able bodied folks.
7. One of my nieces said yesterday that she could see no value in algebra as it is never used outside of school. I’ve been making notes of the times that I’ve used algebra since then. I have surprised myself and have begun to wonder what people do when they don’t know algebra. It’ll be a blog post one of these days.
8. Car shopping is not fun. It seems that all the advantage is with the dealership. Being a one-car family is going just OK. Nina and I have to do a lot more schedule coordination than before.
9. I’m hooked again on the Wheel of Time fantasy series. The final (?) volume in the series is rumored to be available by Christmas. I plan to finish rereading the entire series, all eleven plus the prequel, by the time the next volume is published.
10. This marks the third installment of Triple-T. It’s also getting shorter! That’s likely a Very Good Thing.