Today was the day to clean out dad’s workshop in Soda Springs. My favorite brother Perry along with his wife Chris came over from Green River, my sister Eileen and her husband Phil came up from Sandy, and Nina and I drove over from Pocatello. We spent the day disposing in one way or another almost everything in the shop. Click on the picture for further details.

While we were cleaning, Nina, Eileen, Chris, and Mother were gardening. We put one of the corner garden beds I made last year on her porch and the women stocked it with flowers, hung hummingbird, finch, and seed bird feeders, and prepared a great lunch on the BBQ grill.

In late Summer 2008 we had a yard sale to get rid of most of the tools in dad’s workshop. As the yard sale came to a close, dad went shopping in his own yard sale…. Then over the next several months before the stroke in January put him in the hospital and then into the nursing home, I brought him a few times to Pocatello to go to Harbor Freight, his favorite store. He bought a few more tools, most of which he was never able to use. Some folks are going to be surprised when they go into Deseret Industries and find quite a selection of new or nearly new tools!

Perry, Phil, and I had a good day … with lots of lifting. Perry brought his pickup truck which was invaluable getting everything handled. The shop now looks rather bare. Someday someone will buy the house and the shop will be one of the selling points. Some other dad will make some incredible stuff in that shop. It’ll be put to good use for years to come, I’m sure.

TTFN!

Nina has a new assignment at the Idaho Falls Temple which means she needs to be there earlier than “normal” to get things ready for the day at the Temple to start. Right now that means leaving 15 minutes earlier than usual. In a couple of months it’ll mean leaving fifteen minutes earlier than that. In about four months it’ll mean trimming off another 15 minutes of sleep. At least we get to do it incrementally.

The dental plan we subscribe to closed their offices in Pocatello meaning that we have to go to the office in Idaho Falls. They’ve done pretty good work for me, so we stayed with them after the office in Pocatello closed. If possible, I schedule my dentist appointments on Friday’s after we’ve finished our shift at the Temple. I go in every four months for a cleaning and a checkup. Today was one of those visits. The dental office is closed for lunch, we get out of the Temple around 11:45 am, meaning we have to kill about an hour. We usually don’t have anything else to do, so we go to the Barnes and Noble store in Idaho Falls and browse through the store. It’s really hard to do that without finding something that we absolutely have to have. As usual, we exchanged money for a book and two magazines. I keep thinking that if I had an iPad, I wouldn’t be buying any more books in book form. Maybe next year.

TTFN!

For the third day in a row, I wasn’t anywhere worth taking any pictures so I’ve pulled up another one from the past. Our visit to Ephesus, Turkey was definitely one of those highlight trips.

I’ve been working pretty hard on a website and keep running into some interesting technical problems. My calendar is completely empty for the day as well. That meant I could devote my time to this programming assignment. Meanwhile, I’m learning how to do some Flash programming and not liking how to interface it with Javascript and PHP (nice geeky terms).

TTFN!

This is another day with no picture taking opportunities, so I’ve pulled up one from the past. I spent a very heads-down day working on a website. I had some success and broke through a significant barrier. It’s clear to me why this functionality wasn’t implemented earlier!

During my initial visit at the end of April with the Veterans Clinic, the doctor suggested that I get involved with a weight management program the VA is offering to overweight veterans. The program is called MOVE and is something like Motivating Overweight Veterans (I don’t know what the “E” stands for). The VA’s website has lots of information, but doesn’t spell out the acronym. I went to the initial information session last week and yesterday went to the first meeting. It’s conducted by video conference out of the VA Hospital in Salt Lake City. The sessions will go for about eight weeks (I think … it may be six weeks) covering various themes.

The video conferencing technology actually doesn’t work very well. The traditional process certainly hasn’t improved very much since I was dropped from AMI Semiconductor a couple of years ago. Skype works incredibly better, but corporate mentality hasn’t caught up with that yet. In the meantime, hopefully I’ll get started on a process that’ll result in getting some of this weight off.

TTFN!

I don’t think I actually went out of the house today. Of course, that meant little opportunity to take any kind of a picture. So, I’ve pulled up a picture from several years ago to go along with the Memorial Day theme. On several business trips to Belgium between 2004 and 2008 I toured most of the World War One battlefields and visited several cemeteries, including the American Cemetery in Warengem. After those trips I put up some pictures from those visits here, here, here, and here.

Today was the first day of a new month … where one who wants to have good luck would say “Rabbit Rabbit!” As luck would have it, I completely forgot about it being the first day of a new month. I guess I’ve forfeited my link to future luck (at least for this month). However, if the past is any indication, the month will be over before I realize it.

I’m working on a website project for my new client. It’s not easy working through someone else’s programming to figure out what they were really trying to do. I characterized this as being “frustratingly fun.” I’m learning stuff and playing with computers and getting paid for it. Life is good! Maybe my luck is still holding….

TTFN!

Rather than spending the day wandering around cemeteries where family members are buried, we pretty much stayed around the house today getting needed things done. Late morning Nina needed to make a run into town and do some errands. If the memorial chapel at the cemetery was open, she would text me and we’d meet there as it’s only open one day each year. The building was open, so I met her there.

After spending a short time at the memorial chapel and taking a few pictures, I saw that a number of folks in uniform were gathering around the gun and the veterans memorial. We stayed for the short flag ceremony, speeches, and a three-gun salute. As I was standing there with my camera around my neck, I heard a voice behind me say, “Hey buddy! Would you take my picture?” I turned around and saw it was, in full uniform, a fellow on our Friday morning Temple shift. He looked pretty nice, so I did take several pictures of him during the ceremony. I’ll get them printed at Costco (the cheapest place to get prints, by far), and give them to him on Friday.

I finished mowing the yard and doing the trimming. This was the first time this year that I’ve mowed the grass and I’m sure the neighbors were thinking, “Finally!” I’m hoping that Spring is finally going to stick around.

TTFN!

Today was a fifth Sunday of the month, meaning that my Sunday meetings started at 6:30 a.m. with a Stake Welfare Meeting. I had meetings from then until 2:10 p.m. that afternoon … and would have had more except Nina and I left town!

I had a High Council speaking assignment in my home ward at 1:00 p.m. My assigned topic was on Priesthood, but I was following a recently returned missionary from the Singapore Mission, so he was able to take as much time as he wished. He left me about ten minutes, so I trimmed my talk down appropriately.

When the meeting was finished, Nina and I drove over to Soda Springs, picked my mother up, and we drove to Logan, Utah where the twins were going to be ordained Teachers in the Aaronic Priesthood and celebrate their birthdays. LeeAnn’s parents live in north Logan and that was where the festivities were being held. We had a nice visit with a house full of people. Afterwards we drove back to Soda Springs to drop mother off and came home.

This definitely wasn’t a typical Sunday, but rather was one of those very special Sundays!

TTFN!

This was the Ultra Marathon Pocatello 50 Race day. When we got out of bed it was below freezing. When Jim and I left the house to go to our aid station, it had warmed up to a balmy 38° … and raining HARD. The race course was roughly a figure 8 through the mountains west and south of Pocatello and our assigned spot was about a third of the way into the race. We were set up and checked in with net control about 7:45 am and ready for the first runners to arrive. The wind was blowing quite hard (as can be seen on the side of the tent in the picture to the right) and it was pelting rain. We were sure that meant it was snowing and probably hailing up higher on the race course.

The first runner came into the aid station at 8:23 am. He was finished at this point as he was running in a three-man relay. His partner took off as soon as he arrived. The first female runner arrived at 8:58 am.

By this time the weather had gotten much worse. The winds up on the ridges were in excess of 40 mph and where we had rain, they had pea-sized hail. The wind and hail were stripping the route markers away and a group of 12 runners lost the course and eventually made their way down the mountain where they were picked up. Their race was finished.

One of the race organizers was running at the back of the main pack of runners and came into the aid station about 10 am very beat up, carrying in another runner who was showing signs of hypothermia. After consulting with the race doctor and the other race officials, the race was called off at 10:30 am. Anyone who had continued on from our aid station could continue to the 32 mile mark at Mink Creek, but no one else was allowed to leave. No one was complaining about that, though, as most everyone at this point were more concerned about surviving than racing. A number of runners turned around and made their way back to our aid station.

From there our task turned from reporting on runners and their time out of the aid station to accounting for all of the entrants. The radio communications were essential to getting that done in a timely fashion. We finally got everyone checked off at our aid station by about 2 pm when the last two runners on the course came down the hill to be greeted by their wives. Again, neither were unhappy that the race was finished and they couldn’t continue!

The City Creek aid station was close to a Pocatello highway and the location was very well known. More than a hundred people crowded around the aid station waiting for runners, cheering runners on, or assisting runners change clothes and get something to eat or drink. Some came well prepared for the wait (see the picture to the left) and others were not well prepared for the weather conditions. Our small tent, because it had some shelter from the rain and wind, became a favorite gathering spot. We sometimes had very little space to work in.

However, by about 2 pm, the sun had come out, the front had passed, and the weather turned quite nice (although very chilly). Jim and I drove over to the start/finish line, got a bite to eat, and visited with some folks. There was a lot of pot-luck food, particularly deserts available. One of the female runners was loading up her plate with goodies and said to me, “This why I run … so I can eat!” I’m still not motivated…!!

Had all gone as originally planned, Jim and I would have closed up shop at City Creek about 2:30 pm and moved from there to the last aid station on Scout Mountain to provide communications there. That aid station was about six miles from the finish line. So, we drove up to where we would have been and saw how much snow had fallen on Scout Mountain. That would not have been a good place to run and I’m sure there would have been some serious runner issues, including broken bones and serious hypothermia. We got to the spot and found about three inches of snow / grapple on the ground. We were also not disappointed that the race had been called off.

All in all, it was a very interesting day. We started out in a routine race communications capacity and ended up working with Bannock County Search and Rescue to get all of the runners accounted for and off the mountain. I’m looking forward to next year!

TTFN!