I know … a day late….

1. Even though this is a day late, I did put a couple of other blog entries out yesterday. But then I totally forgot it was a Tuesday until I was driving to Georgetown to attend the City Council meeting and then it was too late. I barely get cell phone reception in Georgetown.
2. Speaking of City Council meetings, the one in Georgetown is always interesting. Lots of people show up and the meeting seems to me to be a showcase example of small town interactions. Last night’s meeting agenda included a complaint about someone with too many horses on their property and not keeping their geese penned up and a complaint about a yard that seriously needs to be cleaned up. Interestingly enough, no names were used. Everyone on the council and in the audience (except me) knew who was being talked about.
3. I could never charge enough money for the garden beds I build to pay for my labor. Either that or I have to decide that my time is worth around a dollar an hour. There’s no way to do these things fast and have them look as good as I want them to look.
4. We were at the Boise Temple on Saturday for my cousin’s Big Day at the Temple. Her husband was receiving his own endowment and then the family was being sealed. As I was sitting in the lobby waiting, in came a couple from Pocatello that I know fairly well. We chatted for a couple of minutes and they went to a different sealing. When we saw each other on Sunday we remarked about how often it happens that we are out of town and run into someone we know.
5. That reminded me of a time when Nina and I were in Salt Lake City sitting in a small cafe in one of the malls in downtown Salt Lake. A fellow walked past where Nina could see him and she said, “That looks like Tom Mooso!” He heard his name, turned around, and came back to talk to us. Perhaps twenty years previously we had been in Japan together and had served together in the Johnson Branch Presidency.
6. We have had copious amounts of rain the past couple of days. Driving home from Georgetown the sky provided quite a lightning display. Some of the streaks of lightning went across the entire sky and there were often lightning strikes in front, to the right, and to the left all at the same time. I think the last time I saw a lightning display that spectacular was when we were living in Otterbein, Indiana in 1970 and watched a massive thunderstorm move across the fields in front of the house.
7. One other memorable lightning story. I was flying from Atlanta to Denver and we were routed around a big thunderstorm. The routing took us north of Cheyenne, Wyoming and then south along the front of the Rocky Mountains. The air was very turbulent and the airplane was bouncing around. I had a window seat on the left side of the airplane as we went past a very large anvil-shaped thunder cloud. Hundreds of lightning streaks were flashing around the sides of the cloud and the whole cloud flashed like a florescent light bulb that needs to be changed. It was another marvelous display of nature.
8. We had a group of Rotarians from northern Germany at our Rotary Club meeting yesterday. While my German is still pretty good (or else they were being very, very kind), I can’t think very fast in German anymore. Time to get back to that country for a while and get some practice thinking in German rather than translating. One of the Germans was from Hamburg and knew of the TRW company in Hamburg that I did some work for back in the mid-1970’s. The company still has the same name, but a different mother company than TRW. It was good to know that they were still in business.
9. School is out here in Pocatello. While I was working on the raised garden bed in the garage yesterday I could hear kids all around the neighborhood. When a thunderstorm would come over, they’d all run inside and then reappear as soon as the rain went away. On Monday a neighbor woman and her daughter stopped by to see the upside-down tomatoes Nina is growing. The daughter complained that her brother “won’t play school with me!” I had to chuckle at that remembering that our kids all played school for several weeks after school let out for the summer as they were growing up. Can’t wait for school to end so we can go play school….
10. Since it’s not raining at present, it’s time to go spray on the last coat of stain on the custom 9 ft raised garden bed. I have to do the spraying outside and rain isn’t very conducive. The radar maps show the rain has moved to the east and we shouldn’t have anymore until the thunderstorms wake up again late this afternoon.

And that’s all for (yesterday)….!!