I just finished disposing of two more mice out of the storage room in the basement. The battle with the mice is definitely not over. I have seven traps set in the storage room right now and it seems like the critters are multiplying faster than I’m killing them. Nina thinks the nest is under the stairs somewhere, so tomorrow I need to clean out that area and see what we find. That area has been a kind of a catch-all, so that will definitely have to change. Fortunately there are no more empty lots around us to drive the mice out of when construction starts. I rather dislike mouse traps. They are sensitive and it’s easy to catch one’s fingers! I have a set of rubber gloves that I wear, but the fingers and thumbs in the gloves are longer than my fingers and thumbs so it takes about four tries to set a trap and get it on the floor where I want it without the dang thing firing. On the other hand, I’m quite happy this is the only thing I can complain about today.

Yesterday I started working on putting up Christmas lights. My goal is to figure out a way to do this without having to climb up on the roof. I thought if I attached the lights to 1×2 pieces of lumber and then put hooks on each end of the board, I could hook that on to the rain gutters. So, I made my first trial yesterday. It took two trips to Lowes to get all the hardware I needed. However, the prototype didn’t work. The span I was putting the lights across was too long … the board sags and twists … any breeze will cause it to break. The concept is still valid; the spans just need to be shorter. That means getting on the roof to fit them in place this year, but then I should be able to take them down after Christmas and put them back up next year without having to get on the roof again. That would be much better. I didn’t put up any lights last year. Hopefully I can work through the concept by the end of the coming week and we’ll have Christmas lights up this year. Most of the neighborhood houses are decorated with lights in some fashion.

Our weather has been very nice for the past couple of weeks. The ski areas in the Salt Lake City area are complaining as there isn’t enough snow for them to open. I’m not complaining, though. Thursday we took mother and dad to Logan to do a session at the temple. We take them down once a month so they can do a session without mother having to drive. She’s quite happy not to have to drive in much traffic and I don’t blame her at all. I had appointments in Salt Lake City on Tuesday and again on Friday and some of the Utah drivers are pretty bad. I think that the speed limits cannot be high enough for some of them. For many others, the left lane is the only lane regardless of how fast or slow they wish to drive. On Tuesday going through a long construction area in Ogden, a car came up behind me quite rapidly so I moved out of the left lane into the right lane. The car came up alongside and slowed down to match my speed. I sped up a bit and they stayed right with me as we came up on a very slow moving semi. I slowed down. They slowed down, all the while the driver was waving a finger at me (probably signaling his IQ??). I’ve no idea what I had done to them, other than being in a car with an Idaho license plate. There was an exit coming up, so I took the exit, waited through the light, got back on the interstate and they were long gone. There are not many policemen patrolling the interstate in that area (but beware south of the Point of the Mountain … plenty of opportunities in Utah County to meet a traffic officer) which is quite unfortunate. The man in charge of the Pocatello barracks for the Idaho State Patrol has said a couple of times that the ISP issues two speeding tickets to cars with Utah plates to one with any other plate, including Idaho. “Utah drivers are very good for our coffers,” he said. My anecdotal evidence agrees with his observations.

I’m here in Pocatello on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll be in Boise on Wednesday for a seminar on “Doing Business With the State of Idaho”. Thursday is Thanksgiving Day and we’ll take dinner over to Soda Springs and spend the day with mother and dad. We will NOT be shopping in Friday! And for that I am very thankful.