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!