About ten minutes before ten o’clock, what little sunlight we had was overtaken by a storm. It started to snow. The snow has continued on and off throughout the day. As I predicted yesterday, the day is cool and wet. The outside temperatures are between 32 and 37 degrees, depending on whether or not it is snowing. That means the snow won’t really stick very long

This picture shows the extent of the storm. The blue area inside the red circle is the area of snow. It literally goes from Pocatello in the north to Salt Lake City in the south. Very interesting, but quite normal!

I’m headed for bed in a few minutes; this is the last thing to do as this Friday comes to an end. I’m looking forward to a cool and wet weekend. As a result, I’m sure I won’t be disappointed. It’s April General Conference Weekend. Everyone in the northern Utah and southeastern Idaho area, regardless of affiliation, knows that it always, and I mean always, rains on conference weekend (unless it snows). We do have company of sorts for the weekend. Nina’s niece Ashlyn and her friend Claudia are here for a couple of days. It’s fun to have them here — they sure do have a lot more energy at late hours of the evening than either Nina or I have!

This past week has an unsual twist to it. The United States (or at least, much of the country) changes to Daylight Savings Time on the first Sunday in April. Europe, on the other hand, makes that change on the last Sunday in March. All of us switch back to standard time on the same last Sunday in October. So, for this week, my collegues in Belgium are 9 hours ahead of me instead of the normal 8 hours. Eight o’clock in the morning in Pocatello is usually four o’clock in the afternoon in Belgium. However, for this one week out of the year, eight o’clock here is 5:00 p.m. there. That one hour makes a difference — the work meetings that need people in attendance from both Pocatello and Belgium normally occur between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. in the morning, which normally translates to 3:00 to 5:00 p.m. in Belgium. However, during this one week, the 3:00 p.m. Belgian time meeting happens at 6:00 a.m. in Pocatello. Consequently, I’m always relieved when this week is finished. Next week we’ll be back on the normal meeting schedules.

But, all of that changes next year. Congress has changed the changeover dates starting in 2007. So, next year we will change to Daylight Savings Time on the second Sunday in March. That means next year for two weeks the time difference will be seven hours. I like that difference a whole lot better. For those two week we can move all the 7:00 a.m. meetings to 8:00 a.m. and get an extra hour of sleep. I ready for that!

It’s now about 23 hours since we left the Jensen Performing Arts Center after being thrilled (and chilled) by the Golden Dragon Chinese Acrobats. I’ve run out of superlatives to describe their show last night. Tonight I’ve got very sore hands from clapping. I think that Nina is going to post some pictures so that’s the place to go. At one point near the end of the program as one of the stars stacked chairs higher and higher to the ceiling and then did all kinds of hand stands and other tricks at each level, I noticed that I had been holding my breath for quite some time — afraid to exhale in case that blew down the stack, I guess.

A couple of new weblogs have been set up. My sister Eileen and my neice Lexie have joined the ranks of bloggers. The links are on the right sidebar as well. I was talking with a group of folks the other day about the value of weblogs in a family setting. We had been discussing corporate weblogs and whether or not they add any value (the jury is still out on that one) and had gone on to discuss political and so-called news blogs. I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of web logs are read by fewer than thirty people on any regular basis, but for those thirty people, the blogs were an important part of communication. For example, my mother really enjoys being able to read what is happening in our family. She and her siblings more than fifty years ago started what might be classified as a private, paper blog — called The Family Letter. Each sibling wrote a letter, added it to the envelope, and sent the batch of letters along to the next sibling, who removed their previous letter, added a new letter, and sent the collection along. This letter has been making the rounds for a Very Long Time. I would love to have copies of those early letters today, even though at the time they were about very every-day mundane things. Today the letter still circulates and the number of recipients has increased. It comes around to me about every three months. I make a copy of all the letters, take my last letter out, add a new letter, and send the envelope along to the next person. Perhaps someday these copies will be interesting to someone … in fact, I’m sure they’ll be interesting to some people.

Well, these blogs are the new Family Letter. We don’t have to wait for the envelope to come around — people add to the collective Family Letter at their own pace and in their own time. I like it. However, since these blogs are really nothing more than little magnetic pulses on a computer hard drive (and I do make a backup of all the blogs on my server every day at 1:00 a.m.), I need to do something to preserve them into the next generation or two of computer technology. Nina has some movie film that her great-grandfather took in the 1920’s. The film has the sprockets running down the middle of the film. We’ve not found a projecter anywhere that can show the pictures. Consequently, unless some miracle happens, this bit of family history will be lost. I’ve found over the years that paper seems to be the only medium that lasts and crosses many generations of technology. So, it’s about time to do some more programming and build an application that can take the weblog postings and the associated images and print them on paper. That way they can be put into a book or a binder and be a good backup to the computer. I’d sure hate to loose all this good stuff!

As I came home today, I noticed once again smoke and fire on the hillside west of our house. Yesterday the area to the right of this fire was burned. I think this is being done as a prevention process?? However neither yesterday’s nor today’s newspapers had anything to say about any controlled burns being conducted to reduce the threat of an out-of-control fire. This would be the right time of the year to burn off undergrowth that might fuel a fire later in the summer.

It looks like we’ve finished a series of storms coming in from northern California. Bright, sunny days are forecast until the weekend with temperatures in the lower 50’s. This could definitely cause the grass to start waking up! I think I need to go find the crabgrass control to put on the yard. Maybe that’s a Saturday activity? We’ll see.

Nina and I had a very pleasant weekend. We both took quite a few pictures — and have both uploaded pictures to our picture albums. The main event on Friday was the Vienna Boys Choir concert at the Jensen Center. The concert was just sublime. We followed that on Saturday starting with a session at the Idaho Falls Temple, some shopping, and eating at a favorite restaurant. Sunday evening we hosted the youth of our Ward for a youth fireside where Nina and I talked about the Church around the world.

Preparing for the fireside got us thinking about all the places we’ve lived and gone to Church as well as all the other places we’ve been either on business or on vacation. Going the Church is just a normal activity for us, wherever we are in the world. In our married lives we’ve lived in:

• New Haven, Connecticut, where we attended the New Haven Branch (or at least, that’s where we went to church before we got married, got married in that building, and then left the next day to go to Texas)
• San Angelo, Texas where I was going to an Air Force technical school. The bishop of the ward in San Angelo was able to arrange for me to get into the airborne reconnaissance program which resulted being sent to Japan
• Soda Springs, Idaho. We went to my parents’ home in December, 1964, after I finished technical school. Jim was given a name and blessing there. Nina stayed with my parents for the next six months while I went to Nevada for survival training
• Stead AFB, Nevada where I went to church by myself on the only Sunday I had free while going through a pretty brutal four-week survival training program
• Yokota AFB, Japan where I attended the serviceman’s branch before Nina and Jim came over to join me
• Johnson AFB, Japan where we attended the servicemens branch. Nina and Jim came over in August, 1965 and we left in August, 1968. Before we left I served in the Branch Presidency as a counselor and Nina served in the Relief Society as a counselor
• Danang AFB, Vietnam where I attended the servicemens group which met at the base chapel on Sunday morning at 6:00 a.m. That was plenty early and I must confess that I slept through a few meetings. I usually was able to attend once per three-week temporary duty assignment trips to Vietnam. For almost two years I was on a three-week in Vietnam, two-week in Japan rotation
• Lafayette Second Ward, Lafayette, Indiana while attending Purdue University. After getting out of the Air Force in August, 1968, we moved to West Lafayette and attended this ward for the next three years
• Cleveland Second Ward, Cleveland, Ohio. We moved to Mentor on the Lake, Ohio from Indiana when I was transferred to Cleveland by TRW. This time marked lots and lots of driving — for instance, Nina would pick up kids all over northeastern Ohio to take them to Primary on Tuesday afternoons. The drive was so long that she’d bring dinner in the VW bus to feed the kids on the way home
• Duesseldorf Ward, Duesseldorf, Germany. We attended this ward for about four months after we arrived in Germany on assignment from TRW in January, 1973
• Krefeld Branch, Krefeld, Germany where I had been called as the Branch President. We moved to Krefeld and lived there for the next fifteen months
• Munich 2nd Branch, Munich, Germany. TRW had transferred us to Munich so, of course, we moved. Nina was the Relief Society President while we were living there
• Kirtland Ward, Chardon, Ohio. The Kirtland Ward had been formed a few weeks before we moved back to the Cleveland area in the summer of 1976. There wasn’t a building, yet, so the ward met at the local community college, at a rented school building, and at a junior high school until the building was completed. Then the building was burned down by an arsonist and we moved back to the junior high school while the building was rebuilt
• Pleasant View Ward, Pleasant View, Utah. I took a job with Thiokol Corporation (since renamed ATK Thiokol) and we moved to Utah in the spring of 1969
• Tsukuba Ward, Tsukuba, Japan. After Thiokol and a couple of years of independent consulting, I took a job with LSI Logic and an assignment in Japan. We moved to Japan in August, 1995 and returned to the United States in August, 1998
• Fremont Third Ward, Fremont, California. From Japan we had a brief stop in California where we rented a home in Fremont. While we were there only about three months, this was by far the most friendly ward we have ever attended. Shortly after we left, three wards were divided into five wards and the few people we knew were all dispersed into the other wards
• Mountain Shadows Ward, Colorado Springs, Colorado. From California we moved to Colorado Springs and spent a wonderful five years in the Mountain Shadows Ward, including building and moving into a new ward building
• Juniper Hills Ward, Pocatello, Idaho. This is our current ward. We moved here in the summer of 2004 and will likely be here for years to come (but who knows?)

That’s quite a few places to live and attend church. Traveling on business as well as on vacation adds many other locations where we’ve been able to attend Church — Connecticut, South Carolina, West Virginia, Illinois, Iowa, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, California, Oregon, Wyoming, and Washington are places that come to mind in the US. Overseas Church attendance includes Spain, France, Switzerland, Korea, Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Belgium. There are surely more that Nina can add to the list. Church has certainly been an important part of our travels! That’s why we need the occasional nice, quiet weekends, I’m sure….

Nina went out this evening and I snapped this picture as she was getting ready to leave. Tonight was the Relief Society’s Annual Birthday Dinner over at the chapel. As part of the theme, the women were to wear hats. Now, Nina has had a very hard time over the years finding a hat that would fit her. As we were moving from Colorado Springs to Pocatello, we went out to dinner with our very good friends and as a parting gift they gave each of us a Red Hat. Mine is a normal baseball cap with the letter “R” embroidered on the front. Nina’s was this large-brimmed hat that could be adjusted for size in the back. It fit and now, almost two years later, she’s had the opportunity to wear it out for the first time. I thought she looked marvelously funky (as well as looking marvelous)! Anyhow, she’s back home after the event and remarked, “I should have worn my purple outfit!” She had a great time and had been looking forward to the evening with the other women in the ward for several weeks. Her assignment at the Womens Correctional Institute means that she doesn’t get to be with many of the other women in the ward very often. However, all of this says something important to me: Pocatello is becoming home. She’s part of the town and the ward. That’s a good feeling.