The week got off to a good start with reasonable weather and temperatures. A busy Friday, Saturday, and Sunday made for a good night’s sleep. We started the day at water aerobics. Our normal instructor was away on vacation and a young, trim, energetic, and very inexperienced substitute took over for the class. I’ll miss Wednesday’s class because of a doctor’s appointment and am not too disappointed. It’ll be good to get our usual instructor back!

TTFN!

Sundays come in two flavors for me at present: busy and very busy. The first and third Sundays are generally in the “busy” category and the second, fourth, and fifth Sundays are in the “very busy” grouping. April 24th was a fourth Sunday and that meant a very busy day.

They are, however, also fun and interesting days. On this particular Sunday I was assigned to speak in a Sacrament Meeting that started at 2:50 p.m. and talk about the subject of consecration. Then later that afternoon at 6 p.m. I was in charge of a meeting to include representatives from the ten Wards (or congregations) in our area. In that meeting we are planning a preparedness fair which will be held on October 9th. The planning has gotten a pretty good start and we should have an event that’ll be of interest to people living here in the south end of Pocatello.

The day started with a meeting at 7 a.m., another set of meetings at 9 a.m., a Sacrament Meeting at 11 a.m., a Sunday School at 12:20 a.m., and then the speaking assignment at 2:50 p.m. and the preparedness meeting at 6 p.m.

Then at 8:00 p.m. and again at 8:30 p.m. I have two meetings on the air waves. The first is a meeting on the ham radio with the Pocatello Amateur Radio Club followed by another ham radio meeting with the Portneuf Valley Amateur Radio Emergency Services club. By the end of the day, I’m right ready to head for bed.

TTFN!

Rather than find 65 men and 70 women who would be willing to spend every Saturday afternoon working at the Idaho Falls Temple, each of the other shifts at the Temple are asked to work four Saturday afternoons a year at the Temple in addition to their regular shift.

Nina and I work the Friday early morning shift (which is followed by a Friday midday shift which is followed by a Friday evening shift). In addition to our normal Friday morning schedule, we are assigned to work the Saturday afternoon shift on April 24th and May 1st of this year. We’ll have that opportunity again in late October.

The Saturday afternoon shift begins at noon on Saturday and ends between 6:30 pm and 7:00 pm, depending on what our last assignment is for the day. Saturdays are generally quite busy at the Temple, depending on the weather. The better the weather, the lower the attendance. The “wild card” in that has to do with how many weddings are scheduled for a particular Saturday. In addition, some wards or stakes will schedule a special event day at the Temple. On this particular Saturday, a stake in the area scheduled a special “women in white” event and 96 women came from the Stake to a special meeting in the chapel in the temple followed by an endowment session.

Endowment sessions start every hour on the hour and end about 90 minutes later. The last session on Saturday starts at 5 p.m. and ends at about 6:30 p.m. On this Saturday the last session was completely full with about 130 patrons. All in all, this was an unusually busy Saturday afternoon. I prefer busy!

May 1st will be another Saturday afternoon in the Temple. I hope it is also a well-attended, busy afternoon.

TTFN!

Friday, April 23rd was our normal day to work at the Idaho Falls Temple. That means an early wake up and a lot of time spent on our feet at the Temple. Meanwhile, Nina’s niece Ashlyn and her husband Eric came down to stay with us for the weekend. We have enjoyed having them here in our area and will definitely miss them when they leave in early May to go to Connecticut.

There’s also no news at all from the Census Department! My supervisor called me to say that he had no information and no idea what would happen next, if anything. So, I still have a badge and all the other stuff, but no work to do. My last paycheck for three hours of work will be deposited on Wednesday and that looks to be the end of this chapter. I was getting used to have a little extra money!

TTFN!

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve gone over to Soda Springs. Meanwhile, mother’s computer stopped working. If the computer is online, I have the ability to log into it from home and do maintenance. However, it was not online and mother was unable to get it to respond. So, while Nina and her niece Ashlyn were up at the Pocatello Women’s Correctional Center doing a craft class, I drove over to Soda Springs on Thursday. We’ve been getting a lot of rain Wednesday and Thursday along with some snow in the higher elevations.

The computer problem was quickly solved, but no apparent reason for the problem. The computer was on, but not responding. Pushing and holding the power button did nothing. I finally unplugged the computer, waited for a bit, plugged it back in, and it started up normally. I had a nice visit with mother and an uneventful drive over and back.

For a couple of months I’ve been thinking about registering for school at Idaho State University and taking a couple of Chinese classes. In 1963-1964 I was sent by the US Air Force to Yale University for an intensive Chinese language class. In the meantime, I’ve forgotten almost all the Chinese that I ever learned. I felt it was time to rebuild that capability. So, the other day I called the registrar’s office and was told to go online and make an application. I tried with a very strange outcome. I was “kind of” registered, but some required files were not created. The university is bringing a new computer system online and it definitely didn’t work correctly. After spending some time working with their help desk and talking with the registrar, it turned out that the process for registering as a “non-degree-seeking student” was broken and I had to go into the registrar’s office and fill out a paper form. I went over to the office and learned that there would be no Chinese classes this fall.

The information from the Registrar’s Office was that the professor had left the university and because of a hiring freeze due to the budget crisis, a replacement wasn’t going to be hired for the fall semester. The back story is that the professor was forced out and that the entire language department is being brutally dismembered. I’ve not been impressed with what has been going on at the University lately and this is just another debacle in process. The faculty last week voted “no confidence” in the provost and the level of dissension is unprecedented. Meanwhile, I don’t get to take a Chinese language class. I’m not pleased.

TTFN!

A couple of years ago, my wife Nina gathered together some things she had been saving for more than 30 years from my time in the United States Air Force, put them in frames, and gave them to me as a Christmas present.

We spent that Christmas down in North Salt Lake at our daughter’s house with her family. After we got back home, we couldn’t find the pictures. For more than two years the pictures have been something we’ve commented about, but they were gone … until April 20th. Nina dropped her iPhone down between the bed and the storage bench at the foot of the bed. She pulled the storage bench away from the bed and there were the pictures underneath the bench.

Someday I’ll put scans of the pictures on my blog. Today, though, I’ve scanned the picture taken of me when I was selected as Airman of the Quarter for Yokota AFB in Japan in the spring of 1967. A few interesting things about the picture:

• I was really skinny back then!
• I didn’t have any hair then, either.
• The badge over my right pocket was my “Combat Crew Badge” which was awarded to airmen flying as part of a combat crew in southeast Asia (specifically, Vietnam). Nina saved the badge. The rule then was I could wear that in place of a name plate.
• The wings over my left pocket are permanent wings awarded after three years of flight status. The fact that these wings were awarded to enlisted airmen was quite controversial. A couple of times as I was transiting between Japan and Vietnam, I got confronted by some officer who demanded that I remove the wings because I was an enlisted person. For a while I actually carried the orders with me to show the officer who then became rather befuddled (a usual officer state).
• The two rows of ribbons weren’t all the medals I was entitled to wear. However, it was considered austentatious for a lowly enlisted man like I was to wear more than two rows of ribbons except when wearing a formal dress uniform. There was also lots of protocol about which ribbons one should wear and what order they are displayed.
• Top row: Small Arms Expert Marksman (I was dead-eye with a .45 caliber pistol, marksman with a .38 pistol, and expert with the M-16), Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal (with a cluster),  and Air Force Good Conduct Medal
• Bottom row: National Defense Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal with three clusters, and the Air Medal (a very special medal)
• Other medals awarded, but not worn in this picture: Republic of Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Air Force Outstanding Unit Award

Thanks, sweety,  for the re-find!

TTFN!

Every couple of months an opportunity comes up to read to pre-school children enrolled in Head Start. This is a program designed to help young children from disadvantaged households become ready to start school when they become old enough. The program focuses on helping these kids learn social skills, focus skills, and attention skills. I really admire the teachers and aides working with these kids, many of whom come from extremely dysfunctional situations.

A few times a year through the efforts of the service organizations in town, children’s books are donated to the program and volunteers come into the school to read these books to the children. Enough books are donated so each child can have one of them for their very own (which really excites these kids). Hopefully when they take the books home, someone in the family will read it to them again and again.

Reading to children is the single most important thing that families can do to prepare their children for school.

Today I read two books (one was a counting book about animals having fun, and the other was the Gingerbread Man book, that is, Run Run as fast as you can, but you’ll never catch the gingerbread man) to a group of 3-year-olds. Once I start reading they all pay rapt attention and after the book they all want to say something about the book … and I let them all talk in turn. After that I read a book about butterflies to a group of 4-year-olds who are growing butterflies in their class. The caterpillars have spun their cocoons and soon will emerge as butterflies. These kids, although a year older, have very similar reactions, except they want to talk after every page!

This is a very fun activity. Every time it comes up, I volunteer to go. During the summer  the schools sponsor lunch in the park … every kid who shows up gets a free lunch every day during the summer (paid for with federal grant money). On Wednesdays volunteers team up with the bookmobile and read stories to the kids while they’re eating their lunch. I’ll be part of that activity this summer as well.

TTFN!

One of the trees in our backyard broke out in leaves on Sunday and another shows great promise. The forecast is for rain the next few days and that might just green up the grass a little bit. Spring is definitely breaking out all over.

The cough suppressant has done it’s job. While the cold hasn’t gone away, I got a very good night’s sleep and actually feel like doing something. That something was pretty much in the home office or in the recliner snoozing. Late in the afternoon my cousin Cheryl in Boise told me about a great deal on printer paper from Staples. By using a couple of coupon codes I was able to buy two boxes of paper (20 reams) for a total of $6.58, including free shipping to my house. That was pretty amazing.

Cousin Cheryl is one of the shopping queens … particularly cheap shopping. She brings home amazing quantities of things at incredibly low prices. A couple of times she’s actually been paid to buy stuff. She has an incredible wit about her and some of the exchanges between her and my daughter Jaelene are just priceless.

I like flowering trees. Pretty soon the willows whose name I always get wrong will burst out in yellow flowers. They’re either wisteria or forsythia or something like that.

The most fun with flowering trees, however, has happened in Japan. The cherry blossoms are revered all through Japan. They start blooming in the south and march northward to the top of the country as winter turns into spring. The news reports showing where the cherry trees are blooming probably take precedence over all other news items (except maybe something drastic happening to the Emperor). As the trees came into blossom around Tsukuba when we were living there in the late 1990’s, my department would always schedule a “hanami” (literally means ‘cherry blossom viewing’, but in reality was a great excuse to have a party with lots and lots to drink) in a park where the trees would all be in bloom.

Since it would always rain on the party as well, they were usually held in tents set up by companies who provided these parties and venues. We would sit at tables grilling little pieces of food, some folks drinking copious amounts of beer and others, like me, not-so-copious-amounts of soft drinks, and just having a great time. It is a beautiful Japanese tradition. I miss it each year and am reminded about these parties when the trees here burst out into bloom.

TTFN!