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.