We’re about 15 minutes west of Denver and have just flown into some clouds
at our assigned altitude. It is occasionally quite bumpy! If I were writing
this by hand in my regular journal, this would be quite unintelligible. At
least this way, the words can be read; whether or not they make any sense is
up to someone else to decide.

I left the house at about 6:30 for an 8:00 a.m. flight. That’s a bit late,
actually, that I would have preferred, but that’s how things worked out. If
there are a lot of folks going through security, I possibly could have had a
problem. However, the airport was relatively quiet. The flight from Colorado
Springs to Denver was full — and this flight from Denver to San Jose is
completely full. No empty seats on the flight at all.

Airport security is quite a bit different than it was a year ago. It’s no
better (and in fact may be worse) but is definitely different. One of the
changes is “random” searches of people before boarding the flight. As an
aside, it’s quite amazing to me the things that are found in this random
search that the screening at the concourse didn’t pick up. The folks doing
the screening usually pick someone in the first two or three people to board
the plane. That person is taken aside and thoroughly searched, including
removing shoes and belts. It takes up to ten minutes to do this screening,
so as soon as someone is picked out of line, then the folks behind move
through the boarding process quite rapidly.

The general process is to board First Class and higher-level frequent fliers
first. If you’re a frequent flier, you have to have been asleep not to
notice how the “random” search candidates are selected. Today as we were
getting ready to board this flight, the agent called for First Class, 1K and
Premier Executive frequent fliers. No one approached the agent to present a
boarding pass!! A second call went out and more folks gathered, but no one
approached to board. Finally one soul went up, and headed through to
board — he wasn’t selected! Another wait. Then a fellow, part of a group of
people traveling together, ordered one of his subordinates to go “volunteer”
to be searched so that the boarding process could begin. As soon as he got
there, everyone lined up. The agent joked with the screening person, “See,
everyone knows!” Well, we sure do. Hence the observation that security,
while different, is not necessarily better.

We’re approaching western Colorado and Eastern Utah. Grand Junction,
Colorado, is on the left front of the airplane. We’re flying a bit more
northerly than in the past few months. Because of the flight restrictions
associated with the Winter Olympics that were held in Utah in February, the
airlines had adjusted their routes to fly through Central Utah rather than
over Provo as they head into the San Francisco area. The routes are just
this month being adjusted back to normal patterns. But, it’s quite cloudy
and there’s only an occasional view of the ground. I’m in a window seat. The
guy next to me in the middle seat is a young fellow with the most beat-up CD
player I’ve seen in many years. It’s held together with Duct Tape! There
isn’t much room on the table, partially because I’m quite wide front to back
and that the seats are pretty close together. I’ve got to keep kind of an
eye on the guy in front of me because if he decides to recline his seat, it
could possible break the display on the laptop computer I’m using. So far
he’s been quite content to visit with his wife seated next to him in the
middle and hasn’t made a move to recline the seat. I’m of the opinion that
with these seats as close together as they are, none of them should be
allowed to recline.

Yesterday was a pleasant Sunday. I had Priesthood Executive Committee
meeting at 7:30 a.m. in the Bishop’s office. That was followed by the
meeting block. The High Councilor assigned to our ward, Peter Burnett, came
over to the house around 3:45 in the afternoon to conduct his monthly PPI
with me. Then at 8:00 p.m. we went over to Duane Slocum’s to give him a
blessing. He’s going to have cataract surgery on Wednesday and wanted a
blessing before he went in for the procedure.

PEC is held generally on the 2nd and 4th Sundays. The 3rd Sunday is Welfare
Meeting at 7:00 a.m. followed by Ward Correlated Council at 7:30. There are
a lot of folks attending PEC — and the Bishop keeps adding folks to the
fray. We can barely all fit into his office. If he adds anyone else, we’ll
have to find another room. The major activities going on right now are:

1. Aaron’s Camp for the young men 14 years old and up. This is a camp held
instead of a scout camp or other young men super activity every other year
to help prepare the young men to be ready to go on a mission. It’s a fairly
expensive affair, costing about $175 per boy. So there’s a lot of fund
raising activity going on to finance these boys.

2. Young Women’s Camp. This is put on by the Ward on alternate years with
the Stake putting it on. This year the cost will be about $100 per girl. So,
that requires some fund raising as well.

3. Getting a sister’s house ready for sale. She is a single mother having a
lot of difficulty maintaining the house and yard. She’s decided to sell the
house and move into something that would be maintenance free for her. So,
there’s a lot of work needed to make the house ready for sale. This Friday
evening and Saturday morning there’s a work project to paint the front of
the house and trim the weeds and bushes. It’s one of about 3 or 4 work
details needed. The house has been listed for sale and it’d be good to get
the work done soon.

We’ve also got several people out of work with slim prospects of work in the
near future. There’s not much that can be done other than making sure that
we’re being generous with our Fast Offerings.

We’re flying over some mountains covered with snow — so we must be
somewhere in the Salt Lake area. It’s still very cloudy so not a lot of
opportunities to see what’s going on down below. I very seldom sit in a
window seat — I usually want to be in an aisle seat so that I’m not hemmed
in. There weren’t many options on this flight, however.

I’ll be in San Jose for the week, flying back on Friday afternoon. I’ll get
home around 7:30 p.m. on Friday. Other than being available to the folks in
California who work for me, there isn’t a lot of requirement to fly out
there. I go at least once a month. It is a good way to build frequent flier
miles, however! We’re definitely in the building mode, since all of our
Saturday’s are busy at the Temple. That limits our ability to go anywhere
that would require an airplane. I think the next time will be in September
when we fly to Vancouver, Canada, to board the cruise ship for the trip up
the Inside Passage. We will do a few things this summer. We’d like to go
somewhere for Memorial Day if we can work out how to do that without taking
much vacation. We may decide to take the vacation time anyway. The Temple
shuts down for the first two weeks of July and that is when Soda Springs is
holding a multi-class reunion. We will go over that way for the week. The
reunion is on the 4th of July. Wendy is getting married in August and Nina
would like to be in attendance, so we’ll take a week to pull the trailer
over to Oregon for the wedding and back. I’ll try to put a business trip to
Gresham in the equation to give us some additional time on vacation and get
some of the expenses paid.

Dad is in the hospital in Idaho Falls. He had a rough night Saturday night
and was transported by ambulance to the hospital on Sunday morning. The
doctor’s don’t know what is the matter, exactly, just that something is the
matter with his heart. They are doing a catheterization this morning,
probably as I’m writing this, and we hopefully will know more as the day
progresses. Mother called yesterday afternoon with the news. She feels that
things are generally OK, now that he’s at the hospital. She’s sleeping right
in the room with him, so she isn’t getting much rest, either.

The Temple on Saturday was very hectic. We were very short of ordinance
workers, both brothers and sisters. So it was a scramble all day long to
meet the assignment schedules. We have a prayer meeting at 12:05 p.m. which
consists of a hymn (I play the organ and Nina conducts the singing),
followed by a prayer and a spiritual thought. Then the Matron or Assistant
Matron (depends on which member of the presidency is on duty that
afternoon), presents the confidential information for the sisters. They all
leave the chapel and the duty member of the presidency presents the
brother’s confidential information. We then go to our training meeting.
That’s where the assignments are handed out and we have a (hopefully) short
training lesson. I’m currently assigned to be the shift training, so I
present this material. We then go to our assignments. Saturday’s instruction
is the longest lesson in the book and was on officiating an endowment
session. It took 20 minutes to go through the material.

We had a new brother assigned to our shift, so I spent a few minutes getting
him oriented and we tossed him into the fray receiving patrons at the veil.
He had a good afternoon, I think! No question about his feeling needed. I
filled in wherever we were short and then officiated on the 4 p.m. session.
It was a busy, but fun day. I certainly enjoy the afternoons we spend at the
temple. It’s a major time commitment, but one of the more enjoyable things I
do each week. Afterwards we went out for tacos with the shift supervisor and
his wife, Br. and Sister Stott. We learned that he was in Japan in the Air
Force the same time we were at Yokota AFB. He wasn’t a member of the Church
at that time, so we wouldn’t have had an opportunity to meet. Small world!

We’re over western Nevada and I think we’ve begun our descent. We’re out of
the clouds right now, but it is partly cloudy below us. A lot of clouds
ahead, which usually means the Cascade Mountains. So we’ll be on the ground
in about 45 minutes, I think.

So that’s all for today.

This entry was copied from a older journal system into this program on 29 November 2002.