Today our oldest grandson Christopher was sustained in Stake Conference to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood and be ordained an Elder. That’s something we don’t want to miss!
So, Nina drove down to North Salt Lake yesterday afternoon to go to conference with Heather’s family. I had some Church assignments, including speaking in a Sacrament Meeting at 12:50 p.m., so I drove down right after my meeting ended. Ty did the deed and gave Christopher a very lovely blessing.
Christopher will now start working on his missionary papers!
We’ve arrived back home, safe and sound. We had an enjoyable trip and got to spend some time with three of our kids. It’s been a great couple of weeks!
The temperatures in Chandler were definitely higher than we were expecting, going so far as to set records. Of course, the day after we left much more normal weather moved in. I so not surprised.
I really enjoyed the grandsons Colten, Jackson, and Austin. They are fun to be around, fun to play with, and fun to listen to. Colten is deeply involved with World of Warcraft (when he’s not texting with Nina), Jackson is a kindred spirit with cream soda, and for Austin, Sprite is the best tasting thing in the whole world. Thanks Jaelene and Scott for having us for the week!
We stopped overnight at Heather’s on the way down and on the way back. Danielle was Really Sick when we drove down. Thankfully, she was almost back to normal on our way back. I don’t think Danielle does sick very well. It seems to get in the way of what she really wants to be doing.
The phrase “Everything in Phoenix is for sale” seems to be true. Not only is there very good shopping in the greater Phoenix area, it looked like about half the homes in some areas were for sale as well. I spent a couple of hours browsing through Fry’s Electronics and was very surprised at the low inventory levels there. Lots of empty or very sparsely populated shelf space through most of the store. The down economy is very evident at Fry’s.
We had a very nice drive back with a couple of interesting stops. Here’s a couple of pictures;
Steps and CanyonsThe drive from Flagstaff to Page is very interesting, including a beautiful ascent up the side of a tall cliff. The views are spectacular. Near the top is a pullout where I took this picture. The beginnings of the Grand Canyon are in the middle of the picture. The weather for this part of the drive was pleasant although a chilly, stiff wind was blowing.
Dinosaur DungNina saw a Rock Shop on the way down that looked interesting, so we stopped on the way back at the shop. It was indeed an interesting place. There were lots of different kinds of rocks piled up in areas around the yard, including this unusual collection of “rocks”. I’m not sure what I’d do with them in my yard, but they would make for an interesting conversation.
Dinosaur MealAt the aforementioned Rock Shop this dinosaur sculpture was on display, with an added Halloween feature. There were actually three rock shops, all right next to each other, featuring rocks from the “Orderville Mine”. I didn’t know there was a mine in Orderville, Utah. SnowI think we went through most of the available mountain west weather patterns on the drive home. We went from hot, dry and dusty in Phoenix to heavy winds as we drove across the Navajo Reservation, to hail near Knab. Then as we drove over the summit from US-89 to I-15, we came into fog and snow. That was followed by some very heavy rain showers. It was good to be in a well-running, air-conditioned, heated car!
We’re in Chandler, Arizona at the moment visiting with our daughter Jaelene and her family. Right now, Nina is teaching the three grandkids how to make balloon animals. They are having a very good time and lots of balloons are popping. Making these balloon animals takes a lot of patience during the learning phase for sure.
We’ll be here over the weekend, leaving on Tuesday morning (very early) to drive back north retracing out trip down.
We left Pocatello after Church on Sunday afternoon and drove down to Heather’s in North Salt Lake. It’s always a delightful visit at her house … except Danielle was definitely not feeling good while we were there. It seemed to be more of a cold than the flu, but who knows. So far Nina and I seem not to be infected (another balloon just popped and I jumped!). We did some shopping on Monday, that is after I drove back to Pocatello to pick up some meds I forgot to bring with me. That evening we attended the local high school’s presentation of West Side Story. Grandson Michael was in the chorus and he’s got some very smooth moves. They’re performing every night this week and the final presentation is next Monday evening. I’m sure he’ll be plenty tired when the musical is finally had it’s run!
Early Tuesday morning we headed south on I-15. It was almost a perfect day for driving. Absolutely no weather, partly sunny skies, and reasonably cool temperatures. Twelve and a half hours later we pulled into Jaelene’s driveway.
The Big Event … actually Two Big Events … are Colten’s 11th birthday next Monday (with a family party on Sunday afternoon) and Jaelene is running in a 5K race on Saturday morning. Hence the reason we’re here.
However, Arizona is still HOT. 97° today and warmer forecast for the next several days. Since it had already turned to winter in Pocatello, we’re finding the temperatures to be more than a bit uncomfortable. I think by the time we leave, we’ll find Pocatello to be plenty cold when we get home.
Today we spent a couple of hours at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. The native American exhibits were very interesting and I really enjoyed our time there. It would be worth a return visit for sure. We rode the light rail from Mesa to the museum and back. That was also a pleasant ride and there seemed to be good ridership as well.
Nina’s been going to the Fitness Center for several years, primarily to do water aerobics. There are two locations in Pocatello, one downtown and another further north (although nothing is very far away in Pocatello). The water aerobics classes have been all consolidated at the north location which has a larger pool.
Nina receives a bunch of guest passes each year when she renews her membership and has regularly invited me to go with her to the aerobics class which is held Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. On Tuesday and Thursday she would go to the pool to swim laps for about an hour. A couple of weeks ago I decided to go with her for the free swim.
The pool is nice, reasonably warm, and not crowded at 7 a.m. It turns out that I could only go three times on Nina’s guest passes, and I need to do something that resembles exercise, so I added myself to her membership. Yesterday was my first day at the water aerobics class.
The instructor is quite fit, and even that would be an understatement. She’s fun, energetic, and goes non-stop. The class started at 8:45 a.m. and continued without pause for fifty minutes followed by ten minutes of cool-down stretching. My arms felt like jelly when the class finished. Thank goodness there’s a nice hot tub next to the pool.
I didn’t have very high expectations about getting any kind of an answer from managemyhome.com. I posted my question and even sent in a comment referring them to my rant from yesterday. Shortly after that I got a tweet from @managemyhomebob asking if he could help. They sent me in email a short note saying,
Dear Mr Smith,
Thank you for contacting us about your dryer. I’m really surprised to hear that you got routed to people in the Philippines when you pressed the click to chat feature on our website. I’ll definitely let our management know about that. Based on the information you posted in your blogs, it sounds like you’re a real do-it-yourself type of person. One thing you may want to check is the wall vent itself that the dryer is connected to. If it’s blocked at all, it could also cause the problem that you’ve described. Now if your vent exits to the side of your home, you can check to see if it’s clogged by starting the dryer in a cycle and then going outside to check the air flow coming out of the vent. If there’s a lot of air flow, the vent is in good shape. If there’s little to know air flow, it means you have a clogged wall vent and it will need to be cleaned out.
Also, even though the dryers element is getting hot, it may not be getting hot enough and this may also be what’s causing your problems. Most dryers hottest temperatures are between 150-155 degrees. If it’s not getting that hot, then your element may need to be replaced.
Even though all of that had been checked previously, it was good information. Then this morning I got a very lengthy and very informative response with a good action plan from them, plus two followup tweets from @managemyhomebob.
The problem is well on the way to being solved. Good on you, @managemyhomebob for being on twitter!!
My only remaining question:
How is anyone to know from the sears.com website to go over to managemyhome.com to get technical questions answered?
