Saturday it rained. Not the occasional thundershower, but a real, soaking rain. The entire region got close to an inch of rain during the day yesterday. The rain is quite timely as fields have just been planted for next year’s crops and the ground has been very parched. Along with the rain came a twenty-degree drop in temperatures. Friday we had a high of about 80 degrees, today the high was 54. Fall is definitely here and winter snow probably isn’t very far away. We’ll delay that for a few weeks while we go to Georgia and South Carolina for the next three weeks for our son Daryl’s wedding (hurrah!) and to visit Nina’s sister. This seems like a very nice time to be in the south as their hot weather has also abated. Even better, all our children will be at the wedding. I think that’s the first time in many years since they’ve all been in the same place at the same time.
Friday night we attended the first Idaho State Civic Symphony concert. The new music director, Dr. Chung Park, made his outstanding debut as the conductor. From even before the first note was played, it was clear to me that we’ve entered a new age of Symphony in Pocatello. I’ve no idea how the Symphony Board was able to persuade Dr. Park to come to Pocatello, but they’ve scored a major coup. The scheduled start of the concert was 7:30 p.m., but Dr. Park held an fairly informal question and answer session in the rotunda from 6:30 to 7:00. He was exciting to listen to and delightfully vibrant. It was almost like he didn’t want the session to end when 7 p.m. came around. We took our seats and promptly at 7:30, he came on stage, snatched up the baton, and launched the orchestra into Wagner’s “Prelude to Act III, Lohengrin”. He pulled music out of the orchestra that just made my heart soar. They followed up with a Hydn Symphony and wrapped up with Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with an absolutely outstanding soloist, Corey Cerovsek. He was just incredible … truely a virtuoso performance. As an aside, he obtained his Ph.D in both Math and Music at age 18…. I’m so happy we’ve got season tickets to the symphony this year. We’ll definitely make sure we’re in town for every concert!
Yesterday (Saturday) we made a quick trip to Soda Springs. Dad had a shopping list for me from Harbor Freight (he’s busy restocking his shop after he sold all of his tools a couple of months ago). My brother Perry and his wife Chris were also there and it’s been a couple of months since we’ve visited with them. While there we watched the first session of LDS General Conference. After the session and a quick lunch, we came home in time to watch the second session, load some things in the motor home, and for me to go to the Priesthood Session on Saturday evening.
This morning Nina had her usual meetings up at the prison, while I stayed home and watched conference. We then watched the afternoon session of conference together.
I love General Conference. It is a rejuvinating experience in all aspects … spiritually, mentally, and physically. For some reason each conference seems to be better than the one six months ago. Then, to my surprise, the MP3’s for all the general sessions have already been posted on lds.org. I’ve already listened to two of them for a second time.
What a great weekend: a fabulous symphony concert, a great (but too short) visit with my brother, time with my parents, General Conference, and rain. Life doesn’t get much better than this!