This weekend was LDS General Conference weekend. That means pretty much staying home, sitting in my easy chair watching TV. Hard to find much wrong with that! The interesting part of LDS General conference is the difference between how I see things and how Nina sees things. I come away pumped up and excited for all the things going right and Nina comes away all pumped up and excited for all the things that need to change. The stunning announcement was a change in the age at which young men and young women can apply to go on a mission. For young men the age was lowered to 18 (must have graduated from high school or the equivalent). For young women the age was lowered from 21 to 19. That’s a big and probably life-altering change for many young women.

My Dell monitor that I’ve been using for a second monitor gave up the ghost overnight. It’s been acting a bit wonky for several days and finally decided it had enough. I’ve had a Samsung monitor/tv sitting off to the side, mostly being a TV and sometimes being a monitor for an older iMac computer. I decided to press this into service as my second monitor. Only problem: I’m sure I bought the right adaptor to connect my Macbook Pro to the monitor, but it’s somewhere in a very safe place (meaning, I can’t find it). I’ll need to make a quick trip to Best Buy tomorrow on my way home from the office. Hopefully, they’ve got it in stock. More than half of my visits to Best Buy end up with me going away not finding what I needed. I’m singularly unsurprised that Best Buy is having financial problems.

I have an Apple TV that I’ve not done much with. Now that the HD TV is now directly in front of me, the Apple TV is busily engaged showing pictures from my iPhoto directory. I have Hulu Plus on the Apple TV box. Thought I’d try out a couple of TV shows. Started with Grimm. That was definitely a no-go. Suggestions for what to watch while I’m rehabilitating are welcome.

Sometime late tomorrow afternoon the surgeon’s office will call to tell me what time I need to show up at the hospital. Hope it’s early!

Ta ta for now!

So, everything I wanted to get done today (other than watching LDS General Conference) didn’t work. The motor home wouldn’t start … I needed to empty the holding tanks so I could winterize the vehicle (the battery charger is still on the battery … I need to remember to go out and take it off before going to bed). I decided to blow out the lines anyway, but the air compressor broke and I’ve had to go buy a new one. I couldn’t find the adaptor to blow out the lines, so that was another trip to the store.

A side benefit: on the way I saw a Fat Boy truck selling 25 count boxes of Fat Boy ice cream sandwiches. I stopped on the way back. Excellent price … $15 for a box of 25. Reason for the good price? They’re seconds. Turns out the reason they’re seconds is that the top cookie is missing … they’ve got a bottom cookie piled up with ice cream but no top. I’m justifying that by remembering that the missing cookie makes this a “Fat Boy Lite”.

Not sure how I’m going to get the winterizing done before the really cold weather arrives. We’ve already had a hard freeze. I’m so not worrying about that. Time to go take off the battery charger. Ta ta for now!

The place where I work has an interesting work schedule. Five days one week then four days the next week. Each Monday through Thursday are 9 hour days and every other Friday is an 8 hour workday. By splitting the Friday over two weeks, I get 40 hours in each week while getting every other Friday off. Today is one of those off Fridays. Lots to do to day in preparation for being laid up for several weeks starting next Tuesday. So what am I doing? Sitting at the computer. Time to get moving … except I’m waiting for YouTube. I took a short video of my new office (about 50 seconds), but its too big to upload to my website. So I decided to put it on YouTube … and that’s going to take about a half hour to get 50 seconds of video uploaded and processed.

I do have a new office. For the past two years I’ve been managing a $3 million project. That came to a successful end on September 28th. I’ve taken a new Director position where I’ll be managing people again instead of managing a project. Along with the new position comes a new office. So, a new office on a Thursday and new knees the following Tuesday. Quite the combination. Here’s the link to the video of my new office: http://youtu.be/bYEb5xMDV9Y

As I was driving home from work I looked across the valley and saw smoke — lots of smoke — in the area where we live. I dialed 911 and was told that help was already on the way. I then called Nina and told here there was a fire “behind our house.”

Amazing how communication doesn’t happen. From my view, the fire was beyond our house, hence the word “behind”. From Nina’s view, behind is out the back door. “I don’t see any smoke here,” she said. I told her to go look out the front door and to look south. She did. And screamed. The fire was directly behind the houses across the street. These two houses were all that stood between the fire and us.

I was stuck at a railroad crossing while not one, but two trains went by. A Very Slow Train coming in and just about as it was about to clear the crossing, another train left going south. There I sat in my car watching the fire, seeing one … just one … fire engine go up the hill, and then seeing huge plumes of fire and black smoke.

Wild fires burn with white or light grey smoke. If the smoke turns black, something bad is happening. Often it’s a house burning. Meanwhile, Nina is near panic, telling me that the neighbor across the street is losing their home. She asked if she should leave. I told her to get her purse, leave everything else behind, and get out of there.

Instead she put her purse in the car, backed it out of the garage and turned it around, and then walked up the street to watch the fire. A couple more fire engines arrived and she told me the fire was out. About that time the trains cleared the crossing and then I had to, very impatiently, wait for the line of cars to cross. There was no passing as a line of cars were waiting on the other side to come my direction.

I pulled into the driveway to see quite a crowd of people on the sidewalk watching the firefighters. The fire was pretty much out. The firemen were getting ready to walk the fire to verify that it was out. One by one the fire trucks, ambulance, police cars, Idaho Power trucks, and gas company trucks left. A small rain shower came over. That was sufficient. The last fire truck left.

We went up and took some pictures, including the one above. That picture is a link. Click on it for a larger version and some information about the picture. I also took a short (50 seconds) video of the fire and put it on YouTube. The black smoke? It wasn’t our neighbor’s house, thankfully. It was from the tires on the tractor that started the fire. That’s one machine that won’t be able to be used again.

That fire was much too close.

We’ve been paying a lot of attention to the fires south of Salt Lake City and the devastating fires in Colorado Springs. Then, it happened here! I was at work in Idaho Falls and, while waiting for a meeting to start, was checking Twitter and saw that there was a fire in the Mink Creek area, less than 5 miles from where we live. I sent the link over to Nina (who at first thought it was a joke).

A few minutes later she sent me a picture of a huge cloud of smoke taken from our front porch. It was time to get out of there and for me to get back home. My office in Idaho Falls is about an hour from home in Pocatello. Nina loaded the car up with the “absolutely must save” stuff from the house. Then came the phone call instructing us to evacuate. We set up a meeting place a safe distance away from the fire. I took the picture on this post from my car as I came into the Pocatello area.

We met, parked by the railroad tracks, and watched the fire on the hill. The fire came close to our neighborhood, but didn’t jump the ravine. It was clear that we wouldn’t be sleeping at home, so we made a reservation at the Hampton Inn for the night.

Nina did a good job of getting stuff we needed out of the house, particularly given the stress of knowing the house may well not be there a few hours later. However, a couple of essential items were missed, such as the hose and mask to my CPAP machine. She got the machine, but missed the hose and mask. So, we checked into the hotel, had dinner, and then tried to go back to the house. While that wasn’t allowed, a police officer drove me to the house so I could get the items we needed. That was very helpful! Thank you, Pocatello Police Department!

It’s now the next morning, Friday, June 29th. We checked out of the hotel. I made up a breakfast plate. Nina headed back to the house. She called a few minutes later. Our neighborhood is still closed. No one allowed back. The local TV new channel just reported that we might not be able to go back for another couple of days.

Some 20 homes have been lost in this fire. I’ve no idea how the fire started, but it definitely moved VERY FAST. We’re really early in the summer. It’ll probably happen again.