Dad is making excellent progress and we had a very nice visit with him and mother today. We drove over to Soda Springs in the late morning and stayed through most of the afternoon. I’ve made another video — this is a bit better than the last one. I’ll never become a professional (I’ll leave that to Jared), but it does show the kind of progress that dad is making in his recovery from the stroke.

It has been very cold here and the cold weather seems to be making its way eastward. At least seven people in the great plains have died as a result of this unusually cold weather. It certainly does curtail outdoor activities for most people, that’s for sure. We went downtown to pick up a couple of items before driving to Soda Springs and there was literally no traffic in town!

The past week seems to all blend together. I had very early morning meetings four days this week — and by early, I mean 6:30 a.m. be at work, being human kind of meetings. This morning when the alarm went off, I groaned and started to get up before I realized that it was Saturday and I could push the snooze button! That elicited a sigh of relief. Nina has also been swamped this week and we’re both kind of worn out. It’s nice to have a quiet weekend to recharge.

My trip to Belgium is also firming up. It’ll be a short trip this time, leaving on Saturday February 3rd and returning on Friday, February 9th. Hopefully the weather will cooperate. It has been unseasonably warm in western Europe the past week. I’ll not complain if that continues.

On a political note, I’m increasingly unhappy with what is happening in Iraq. It seems to me that there is nothing we can do there as those folks can simply wait us out, all the while picking off our military men a small group at a time. Whenever we leave, an all-out civil war will certainly erupt. I’m becoming of the opinion to let them kill each other off. It’s certainly better than them killing our troops! Somehow we have to put a stop to this kind of an action where we go in with guns blazing and then have no idea what to do next. I wish that the Democrats had a better plan, but nothing is emerging there, either.

On a happier note, it’s Girl Scout Cookie time. I think the only Girl Scout among the grandchildren is in Pennsylvania, so I’m working on how many boxes of cookies I will be buying. I think at least eight … but I had dinner a while ago so I’m not very hungry right now. Maybe I need to think about this again before dinner…!!

A brief note about the video. This time I’ve put it out only in Windows Media format. Of the sixteen people who viewed the video last week, fourteen downloaded the Windows Media format and one of the others downloaded both. If I only do one format it goes in about half the time. So, unless I hear anything else, that’s the only format I’ll be doing for the next while. There are bloopers plenty … starting with saying there were four video clips when in reality there are five. Someday I’ll learn to count (not).