All posts by rksmith

A Visit to Soda Springs

General

It’s been quite a while since we were in Soda Springs. I think the last time was when my brother Perry and his wife Chris were there. Mom and dad came over here for Christmas and that was probably the last time we visited with them. So it was time to go over. We left after church today and spent the afternoon visiting with mom and dad and having (a delicious) dinner. There is a lot of snow in Soda Springs! I’d recon between three and five feet of snow with huge piles where the plows have pushed the snow. This is the kind of snow I remember growing up in Soda Springs where by late February snow had to be piled down the middle of streets as there was no place else to put the snow. There isn’t that much snow now, but there’s still a lot of time left in February! Here’s hoping!

Dinner Out

General

This was a Wednesday evening with not much needing to be done at home. So we went out to Applebees for dinner. The restaurant was very busy! We got there about 6:30 pm and waited for a half-hour before being seated. This is one of the better restaurants in town and we both enjoy the food. As usual, I ate too much (no room for dessert!) and waddled out of the restaurant.

Happy Twelfth Birthday, Michael! Congratulations, James, on the new job! Rabbit Rabbit, everyone.

I’ve been arranging for a business trip to Manila, Philippines. Originally I was going to leave next week on the 8th and return on the 18th. However, one of the key people that I need to work with over there had an urgent matter come up and would not be there during that time. So the schedule now is that I’ll leave on February 20th and return on March 1st. I have had a very nice pair of Bose noise cancelling headsets. These headsets have literally been used and abused for tens of thousands of airline miles. They are almost essential when flying (or when running the snowblower) to reduce all of the surrounding noise and make it possible to listen to music or movies at a reasonable sound level. They’ve broken a couple of times and have been glued and patched back together, with glue on top of glue and patch on top of patch. Well, last week after finishing up blowing the snow out of the driveway and walks, I managed to hook the cord from the headsets to my iPod and yanked the headphones off so they fell just right onto the cement and broke. This attempt to glue them back together ended up cementing too much stuff together, and the headsets finally bit the dust. With the impending trip, I ended up ordering online a new headset and shipped it 2nd day air so it would be here for the trip. It arrived safely yesterday, and now in plenty of time for the upcoming trip. I’ve also gotten my dental sleep apnea device as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to get some sleep on the flight over and back this time. The Manila trip is a long trip. My flight leaves Pocatello at 6:40 a.m. MST and I arrive in Manila at 10:20 p.m. the following day Manila time (or 7:20 a.m. the following day Pocatello time). In real time, I get up about 4 a.m. MST on the 20th and will arrive at my hotel in Manila 9:00 a.m. MST on the 21st for a total time of 29 hours from arising to collapsing. Getting a few hours of real sleep on the trip would be a great benefit. So, most everything is ready for a now-delayed trip. The routing this time will be Pocatello to Salt Lake City to Portland, Oregon, to Tokyo’s Narita Airport, to Manila and then back the same way.

We’re in a pattern of snow, melt, snow, melt. We’ve gotten what seems to be twice as much snow this winter as last winter. A really good storm that closed schools and businesses would be very nice! It’s been a long time since we’ve been snowed in!

Back Home

E-Mail Musings

The drive home from Orem last night was quite a drive. We’ve driven through some bad storms before. Perhaps the worst one was when we drove to California to clean out Trevor’s apartment after his death. The roads were being closed behind us that day. Another was coming home from Arizona a few years before. We lost part of the car and at times thought we might not get through. Many, many years ago we were driving to Connecticut for Christmas as it began to snow on the New York Expressway. The roads were very slick and we spun out in the middle if the roadway — miraculously missing all the cars around us. Then there was the time as we were on our way home from Church in Ohio and rolled our VW camper-bus onto its side. Everyone came out with no problems and we were able to drive away once the wrecker got the van back on all 4 tires. Last night’s drive probably wasn’t in the top 10 of lousy drives, but it was nevertheless a long and difficult drive. I was quite happy to be home.

The reason for coming home yesterday was so I could attend Stake Council meeting this morning. It was a good meeting and worth the drive. One of the items discussed was the attendance at Stake Conference last week. About 29 percent of the Stake attended. This was considered good. It was a good conference and I was glad to have been there. I’m also glad to be home. Nina will make the drive today — hopefully in the daylight — and I’ll be really glad to have her home!