We’ve just passed through Green River, Wyoming, on our way to Soda Springs.
We’ll be there in about 3 hours. It is a fairly hot day — 88 degrees — but
cooler than yesterday. Thank heavens for air conditioning! We’re quite
comfortable in our Chevy Suburban with this trailer stuck on our rear end.

The campground last night was more than adequate. Easy-in and easy-out
sites. The sites were long enough that we didn’t have to unhook from the car
which made getting underway this morning much easier. This afternoon we’ll
be in Soda Springs and will have to back the trailer into the driveway on
the pad that Dad built when they had their 5th wheel trailer.

My cold is making life somewhat miserable. Lots of hacking and coughing. We
stopped and replenished the cold medicine. That stops the hacking and
coughing, but with major dry mouth. But, the cold will go away one of these
days, I’m sure. My diaphram sure is sore from coughing. So, Nina is doing
all the driving today.

Last Sunday afternon we attended the last dedicatory session of the Nauvoo
Temple which was broadcast into our Stake Center. Nina had previously gone
to the rebroadcast of the Thursday session, the first session, so she was
able to attend two sessions. It is so wonderful to have that temple rebuilt
and back into service. Quite a few people from our ward went to Nauvoo to
the open house, but we weren’t able to fit that into our schedule. We would
have had to take a Saturday off from the Denver Temple, and we’re so short
handed at the temple, we didn’t feel we could do that. But, we’ll soon go
over to Nauvoo and do a few sessions in the temple — that is, after it
cools down a bit! Here we have the high temperatures, but the air is
relatively dry. In Nauvoo the temperatures are high and the humidity is also
and that makes for a very sweltery day. We can easily wait for much nicer
weather.

I’m using my laptop computer plugged into the car’s power. It’s amazing how
far technology has progressed, and I’m certain that in another 20 years the
technology we’ve got available to us today will seem very quaint and quite
ancient. To be able to pull into a campground and be fully hooked up (water,
electricity, sewer) and to have cable TV available is very nice. As soon as
I buy a tripod we’ll have satellite TV available to us as we’ve enough
receivers to be able to take one with us when we’re travelling. Most
campgrounds have modem hookups in the office, and the one last night was no
exception. They had a nice facility set up for modem users and I was able to
log onto my e-mail account as well as log into work and take care of a
couple of issues there.

The economic climate is improving somewhat, but several companies have
turned up using fraudulent accounting practices. Enron was the first to
collapse last fall. Since then, Adelphia Cable, Xerox, Tyco, Global
Crossing, Quest, and MCI Worldcom have all been uncovered. These are major,
multi-billion dollar companies using illegal methods to inflate their
revenues or reduce their costs. In some cases, they had also made extremely
large loans to the CEO for other purposes. The net result is that the stock
market is very skittish and stock prices are around their lowest point in
ten years. There’s a lot of money on the sidelines because no one knows
where to invest. Money market rates are also at their lowest point in years,
so even the money on the sidelines isn’t doing much, either.

The work situation is heavily influenced by the overall economic situation.
We just finished our 2nd quarter which looks to be right on target at about
$500 million in revenue. I’d sure like for our stock price to pick up! We
need for it to gain about $18 a share over the next few years which would be
enough to retire. Retirement needs to happen in the next 5-7 years!

I made a trip to California last week. I need to make a couple of trips in a
couple of months to be certain that I retain the Premier Exec class at
United. It makes a real difference. If I make a couple of extra trips, I can
probably become a 1K flier which results in a much greater opportunity for
1st Class upgrades.

So, now I’m rambling. Time to queue this up and send it along to the computer
file.

Transferred from an older journaling system on 29 November 2002