1. My sister-in-law Pamela has been blogging literally every day this year. I’m really impressed. That’s some great dedication, S-i-L!
2. I’m kind of being a bachelor as Nina is currently in Chandler, Arizona visiting with our daughter Jaelene and family. She’ll be there long enough to go to a baseball Spring Training game. That should be a lot of fun.
3. Meanwhile, yesterday afternoon our oldest grandson Christopher, who is preparing to leave on an LDS Church mission to Singapore / Malaysia, came up from North Salt Lake to spend the evening and this morning with me. I had a great time … he’s a fine young man and really fun to be with. He went with me to my weekly Rotary Club meeting, then went along as we did our weekly Amateur Radio Emergency Service radio network exercise. We then had dinner at Chili’s and ended the evening watching the woman’s Olympics short program on TV. He went back home early this afternoon.
4. The Olympics have definitely dominated my time since they started. I love the winter Olympics and the competition has been outstanding. This year I’ve been very impressed with the snowboarding events. What a great addition to the Olympics.
5. Last Sunday grandson Christopher was the featured speaker in his Ward’s Sacrament Meeting. He had about a half-hour of time available to him and he used it to perfection. Even though I’m a bit biased, that was one of the best departing-missionary talks I’ve ever heard. Since Nina was going from there to Chandler, we drove down in two cars. I went over to Soda Springs to pick up my mother so she could be there for Christopher’s talk. She really enjoyed the visit. We stayed until Monday morning and came back north while Nina went south.

And that’s the way it is. Ta Ta for Now!

Catching up is a good thing to do! Posted a lot in December but January has been rather sparse.

1. We need snow! The snow pack is about 40% of normal for this time of the year. The storms are going south of us and leaving only traces behind here in Pocatello. The weather has certainly been cold enough, but no moisture is making its way here.
2. I turn 65 in March. That means getting set up on medicare. I’m looking forward to having real health insurance back, but this is a rather convoluted process. There’s Part A, Part B, Part D, and Part F. I’m automatically enrolled in Part A (no cost) and Part B (about $110 a month automatically deducted from my social security). I can elect Part D and Part F. Or else, I can buy a Part A/B/D (and then can not get Part F). Or I can buy a Part A/B and skip Part D…. It’s a convoluted system to be sure. I’ll probably write more about this Real Soon Now.
3. Now that our oldest grandson Christopher has received his mission call (to the Singapore / Malaysia Mission), he could go to the Temple and receive his own endowment (pure LDS lingo!). Nina and I were invited to go with him and his parents to the Bountiful Temple for this experience. I thoroughly enjoyed being by him in the session and thinking about this from the view of someone being there for the first time.
4. The Idaho Falls Temple is closed at the present time for some remodeling work. It reopens the first week in February. As a result we were able to go to water aerobics last Friday and for the next two Fridays. This is a somewhat intense water aerobics session that goes nonstop for an hour and is held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I’ve been going with Nina for past couple of months and it’s quite a workout for me. The hot tub next to the pool at the fitness center is very welcome when the hour’s workout is finished.
5. I’m slowly but surely getting my ham radio setup working. I built a cabinet for the four devices I currently have … a power supply, a 2-meter transceiver, an HF transceiver, and an antenna tuner. I haven’t been able to do anything yet with the HF transceiver because I don’t have an appropriate antenna. That’s on order and hopefully will arrive on Friday. Then I have to assemble it. It’ll go out in our front yard next to the 2 meter antenna I built some time back until I can get some coax cable pulled up into the attic and get up on the roof to install the antennas in their final location.

The new year has a good start!

Ta ta for now.

We’ve arrived back home, safe and sound. We had an enjoyable trip and got to spend some time with three of our kids. It’s been a great couple of weeks!

1. The temperatures in Chandler were definitely higher than we were expecting, going so far as to set records. Of course, the day after we left much more normal weather moved in. I so not surprised.
2. I really enjoyed the grandsons Colten, Jackson, and Austin. They are fun to be around, fun to play with, and fun to listen to. Colten is deeply involved with World of Warcraft (when he’s not texting with Nina), Jackson is a kindred spirit with cream soda, and for Austin, Sprite is the best tasting thing in the whole world. Thanks Jaelene and Scott for having us for the week!
3. We stopped overnight at Heather’s on the way down and on the way back. Danielle was Really Sick when we drove down. Thankfully, she was almost back to normal on our way back. I don’t think Danielle does sick very well. It seems to get in the way of what she really wants to be doing.
4. The phrase “Everything in Phoenix is for sale” seems to be true. Not only is there very good shopping in the greater Phoenix area, it looked like about half the homes in some areas were for sale as well. I spent a couple of hours browsing through Fry’s Electronics and was very surprised at the low inventory levels there. Lots of empty or very sparsely populated shelf space through most of the store. The down economy is very evident at Fry’s.
5. We had a very nice drive back with a couple of interesting stops. Here’s a couple of pictures;

The drive from Flagstaff to Page is very interesting, including a beautiful ascent up the side of a tall cliff. The views are spectacular. Near the top is a pullout where I took this picture. The beginnings of the Grand Canyon are in the middle of the picture. The weather for this part of the drive was pleasant although a chilly, stiff wind was blowing.

Nina saw a Rock Shop on the way down that looked interesting, so we stopped on the way back at the shop. It was indeed an interesting place. There were lots of different kinds of rocks piled up in areas around the yard, including this unusual collection of “rocks”. I’m not sure what I’d do with them in my yard, but they would make for an interesting conversation.

At the aforementioned Rock Shop this dinosaur sculpture was on display, with an added Halloween feature. There were actually three rock shops, all right next to each other, featuring rocks from the “Orderville Mine”. I didn’t know there was a mine in Orderville, Utah.

I think we went through most of the available mountain west weather patterns on the drive home. We went from hot, dry and dusty in Phoenix to heavy winds as we drove across the Navajo Reservation, to hail near Knab. Then as we drove over the summit from US-89 to I-15, we came into fog and snow. That was followed by some very heavy rain showers. It was good to be in a well-running, air-conditioned, heated car!

And we’re happy to be home. TTFN!

Our Kennmore dryer, bought about eleven years ago, is not working as well as it should. It takes a long time to dry, and when it shuts off and buzzes, the clothes usually aren’t dry and need to go through another cycle. My expectation is that a moisture sensor is going bad rather than the heating element. So, because I was going to be in the area this afternoon, I stopped into the local Sears store at the mall to go to the parts department.

But, there was no parts department. I finally found a young fellow in the major appliance department who said that I needed to go to either (1) sears.com and order the part online, or (2) go to a local appliance repair store and have them order the needed part. He tried to show me where to look on sears.com, however after waiting for about 11 minutes for the website to display, I left the store and went on my way.

How long has it been since I was actually in a Sears store to buy something? I know when we were looking for a new flat panel TV for mother, we stopped into the local Sears store, which took about 5 minutes to find that they didn’t have anything close to what we were looking for and left. In total, I think I could count the number of times in the past five years that I’ve been in a Sears store on the fingers of one hand.

It was obvious as I walked through the store the rest of the general population doesn’t shop there either. The store was completely devoid of customers. I was the only one there and four different sales persons came up as I walked through the store to ask if they could help, including one from the children’s department.

Back in the early 1960’s, F.W. Woolworth decided to get into the big-box discount store business. I think they were the first ones, actually, and their target was Sears. They built what was then considered to be large box buildings in suburbia and sold at a discount much of the Woolworth merchandise and leased out large parts of the store to other discount merchandisers. These stores were called “Woolco” and by the early 1970’s were pretty much known as the place where people went to shop when they were done shopping. Woolco didn’t survive and by the end of the 1970’s, most of their stores were closed and the buildings sold. Some were even sold to Wal-Mart!

I think that Sears has degenerated beyond Woolco as a place to go when you’re done shopping but don’t want to go home. At least in most Woolco stores in those days they had a kind of a food court where you could buy real ice cream and real milkshakes. Sears just stacks stuff on ugly metal racks and the employees wander aimlessly around hoping to waylay a potential customer.

Even an appliance needing a repair is no longer a reason to go into a Sears store.