It’s a little past 9 p.m. on the first day of December, which is also a Sunday and is further the first Sunday of the month. Nina is watching one of the made-for-TV Christmas Movies in the other room. I’m, as usual, fussing with computers. The first Sunday of each month is generally a Fast Sunday — a day when we abstain from food and drink for two meals in a 24-hour period. The money we would have spent on food is donated to the Church for charitable purposes. We then gather together in our worship service where we take the sacrament and bear testimony. This is the last Fast Sunday for this year and in this time slot. Starting in January we switch meeting times with the other Ward in our building. They will have their block of meetings from 9:00 a.m. to noon and we will have our block of meetings from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. All in all, I prefer the afternoon meeting schedule.

This Sunday is also the First Presidency Christmas Devotional. Now that we have satellite TV, we get KBYU on the satellite and can watch these things from the comfort of our living room. We invited Duane and Bobby Slocum to come up and watch the devotional with us. The music by the Orchestra at Temple Square and the Tabernacle Choir was outstanding. It was a lovely meeting and we enjoyed the time together.

It’s also a tired day — I took a nap this afternoon and am still right ready to head for bed. I got a call about 10:30 last night that a woman in the ward, a single mother, had gone into the emergency room and needed a blessing. I rousted out one of my assistant group leaders and we drove over to the hospital to give the blessing. We were gone about an hour and a half. Then it was up a 6 a.m. to get ready for church and meetings starting at 7:00. Taking a nap is rather unusual for me these days, but it was welcomed this afternoon!

In addition to having the ability to post on-line to this journal, I also want to be able to send e-mail to the journal and have that post as well. This is the first step in that process, making sure that by doing a straight insert into the database is handled correctly by the system.

The incoming e-mail would have the category, author, posting date and time, and the content of the post in the body of the e-mail. A php program set up as a cron job would read the incoming e-mail, parse out the various components, and insert the post into the journal database.

The purpose is to provide a way to write a journal entry while I’m not connected to the internet, such as when I’m on an airplane, and be able to deliver the post when I am next able to connect to the internet.

The day after thanksgiving is coming to an end. Star Trek II ‘The Wrath of Kahn’ is on TV and just finishing. The hot tub is warm and my next destination. It’s been an interesting day.

We made a great breakfast since both Daryl and Jared are here to enjoy it. We then went to the movies to see ‘The Emperor Club’. That was a very good movie about a dedicated teacher. We followed that up with a trip to a new Super Target store near the theater. It was crowded and people seemed to be buying lots of stuff. I’m not yet ready to start buying. Nina and I have agreed to hold to a limit of $50 on each other. Shouldn’t be hard to do that this year for sure.

After we got home and let Bradica out, we left again and had dinner out at new Japanese restaurant not far from the house. The food was very good. This is the third time I’ve eaten there, but the first time in the evening. It’ll definitely make our list of the best restaurants around.

The end result is that I’ve eaten far too much food in the past couple of days. I’ll never get rid of this weight at this rate! Time to start really counting calories.

I think I’ve gotten the date fixed for these posts. Only problem is, the computer keeps reporting that the time is Eastern Standard Time. Does the computer know the difference? I’m going to have to ask the question about how to get the time zone reset. My other Linux computer is reporting the correct time zone. This is pretty strange.

I think I need to create another category — one for regular journal posts and another for technical posts about this journaling system.

I’ve also got other electronic journal entries that I need to put into this system as well. Finally, I need to get the e-mail process working. This system doesn’t come with a method for e-mailing in entries, but I have one pretty well written so I can modify that to put posts into this same database from e-mails.

This is the first post to the new web journal. I’m still getting this software to work correctly. I think enough is working to start putting posts out on the web page for all the world to see.

Today is Thanksgiving. It’s been a good day. Our two youngest sons Daryl and Jared arrived last night and will stay through tomorrow. Daryl being here was a surprise that the boys did a good job of keeping. Fortunately there is more than enough food!! It’s now close to 11 p.m. and time to head for bed!! I’m noticing that the server time isn’t set correct, either. So I’ve got to get that fixed — maybe tomorrow. I think the server thinks it’s set up for EST and I’m in MST.

We’ve just finished breakfast. Nina is out taking pictures of the ship and
we’ll meet in the library in about 15 minutes for the daily trivia quiz. She
would have won yesterday had she turned in her paper. I won two days ago. The
prize isn’t much of interest, but it’s kind of fun to have won. Each day the
trivia questions are different, having to do with the area where we are
sailing. I took the one related to glaciers.

Today is the last day aboard the ship. We dock tomorrow morning around 7 a.m.
and will disembark when our number is called. Oh my goodness, there is a huge
bunch of dolphins or something jumping and swimming just off the port side of
the ship. No way to get a good picture without going topside and even then, I
don’t have the right camera. But that was quite interesting!!

Anyhow, we’ll dock and wait upstairs in the library or something until the
motorcoach is ready that we’re scheduled to take to go to the airport. Our
flight is at 1:30 p.m. and we’ll get into Colorado Springs about 7:00 p.m.
tomorrow night.

The cruise has been a lot of fun. I think Nina has had a very good time. I
would have liked the weather to have been warmer, so next time we’ll make this
trip in July or not later than mid August. The best weather day was yesterday
late afernoon. That was the first time that one could have been out on the
verandah in shirtsleeves.

The cruise left Vancouver, B.C., on Saturday afternoon, September 14th. We
sailed all day Sunday and arrived in Juneau on Monday mid-day. Cruising on
Sunday worked out pretty well. We had a short Sacrament Meeting at 9:00 a.m.
and a couple other people from Idaho joined us for that meeting. It was a very
relaxing day followed by formal night in the restaurant.

Juneau was quite interesting. We spent only a short time in town before
boarding a bus for the whale-watching trip. I’ve already written about that,
so more detail isn’t necessary. We left Juneau around 10 p.m. and sailed to
Skagway, arriving about 7:00 a.m. We got off the boat there about 9:30 or so
to do some shopping. We spent a little money, took a lot of pictures, and
enjoyed the town. We “discovered” an old steam locomotive back in the woods
and expended a lot of film around that engine. Now I wished I had climbed up
into the engineer’s compartment to take some pictures, but I didn’t think of
it at the time.

Wednesday was spent cruising up into Glacier Bay National Park and then on
south towards Ketchikan. The glaciers are quite magnificent. The weather
wasn’t very cooperative…. Lots of blowing rain and cold temperatures. We
didn’t stay very long around the glaciers, which was surprising to me. I
thought we would have been there for several hours.

We got into Ketchikan yesterday about 9:00 a.m. Nina and I disembarked shortly
after we arrived and did a little picture taking before taking a tour to the
Tlingit Indian village — called Saxman Village.

More dolphines off the side of the boat!

The village was quite interesting. A number of totem poles along with
explanations of what the pole represented. We visited with a carver working on
a pole to be sent to a customer in Saratoga, Florida. We also saw some native
songs and dances performed. So, with a 2-hour glimpse into this village, we
are now experts on the Tlingit Indians!

So, we’re now on the last day. Lots of small stuff to do and some picture to
take around the ship. It has been a very relaxing time. I’m ready to pack and
go again … which is happening in just under a month when we take a cruise to
the western Caribbean!

Transferred from an older journaling system on 29 November 2002. Pictures from the cruise are available here.

It is a rainy, overcast Sunday afternoon. We’re on our way to Juneau as part
of our cruise to Alaska. Today will be spent cruising at sea. We left
Vancouver, B.C., yesterday afternoon about 5 pm and will arrive in Juneau
tomorrow about 1 p.m. This is a longer cruise distance than from St. Thomas
back to Nassau in the Bahamas!!

I’ve no idea if this will work. I think this e-mail will be sent in HTML
format, which won’t work very well with the journal format. However, I’m
certain I can fix all of that when I get home.

We’re here with Duane and Bobby Slocum, friends of ours from Colorado Springs.
We have had a very good time sightseeing in Vancover. We had no idea that
Vancouver was such an interesting place. We definitely want to come back
sometime in the future when we can spend several days. We took a trolley tour
around the city and made stops at Stanley Park (the same person for whom the
Stanley Cup is named for), Granville Island, and Chinatown. We were quite
tired when we finally made it back to the hotel.

Yesterday was spent getting ready for the cruise and getting everything
packed. Dinner last night was good, as usual. The other four people at our
table are from Australia. I find it quite interesting that there are so may
Australians who have discovered Alaska!

There are people waiting to get on the computers and this costs about 40 cents
a minute, so time to get it sent.

Transferred from an older journaling system on 29 November 2002.

It is a very hot Thursday afternoon. For some reason we always manage to get
to places when they are in the hottest part of the year. We arrived on Tuesday
afternoon and will be leaving on Sunday morning. We are on our way to San
Jose, California, for next week. This week is vacation time.

We left Colorado Springs on Sunday morning at about 8:30 a.m. and drove to Las
Cruces, New Mexico. My uncle Delon and his wife Nelma live there, as does
another Uncle and his wife, Ted and Larella Larsen. Delon is my dad’s youngest
brother and is three months younger than I am. My mother and her mother-in-law
were pregnant at the same time…. Aunt Larella is my Dad’s younger (and only)
sister. She’ll be 73 years old in September. Delon was 57 in June. His wife
Nelma is eleven years older than he is.

Delon’s oldest daughter and her husband (Sean and Cheryl Anaya) live in Ft.
Collins, Colorado. Consequently Delon has stopped at our house a couple of
times when they’ve been in transit between their home in Las Cruces and
Cheryl’s home in Ft. Collins.

We were originally going to Oregon this week for Kendra’s wedding. We had
planned the week to drive out to Oregon, be at the wedding, and then go down
to San Jose for a week. However, Kendra and her fiance were in a motorcycle
accident a couple of months ago and still aren’t fully recovered. As a result,
they put their wedding off until September when we’ll be on a cruise ship up
in Alaska. So, we decided to take this time anyhow. After a lot of discussion
we decided to spend the week visiting family, even though it would be very
hot…. The itinerary was to drive on Sunday, August 11th to Las Cruces and
spend Monday with Delon and Nelma with a short visit to Uncle Ted and Aunt
Larella. Then on Tuesday drive to Chandler and be there until Sunday morning.
We’d then drive on Sunday to Morgan Hills, south of San Jose, and spend the
week there. We’d leave on Friday and drive to Provo, then leave on Sunday to
drive back to Colorado Springs.

Saturday was another day working at the temple. It was fairly busy. I spent
the day loading sessions as the fellow who normally does that wasn’t able to
be there. That’s a very enjoyable job, particularly getting to interact with
every session as it’s getting started. One of the sessions included a fairly
large family who were all there as the father was being proxy for his son and
their younger brother. That was a very lovely session as we arranged for
everyone to be gathered around behind the veil as the father came through.

We finally got away about 8:30 on Sunday morning. It was a bright, clear day
and pleasant driving conditions. We arrived in Las Cruces about 6:30 that
evening. We stayed in a RV Resort — very well appointed — but too expensive
and more than we really needed. It was pretty much empty, but I expect that’s
because this isn’t the tourist season. The best part of the park was that each
site has a phone connection. We were able to check e-mail and call Delon from
the trailer which was very nice.

After getting the trailer set up we drove over to Delon’s house for a few
minutes, went back to the camper, and crashed for the night. On Tuesday
morning we went back to Delon’s for breakfast and then drove to Old Mesilla.
We spent the morning taking pictures there. The sun was directly overhead and
picture taking was somewhat difficult as there was far too much contrast. We
had a good time … sweating the whole way. I’d like to go back there in the
very early morning. We had lunch in a Mexican restaurant “Si, Senor” and then
went out east of Las Cruces to visit with Uncle Ted and Aunt Larella. Uncle
Ted is, at 83, very active and will be going to St. George in early October to
play in the Seniors Tennis Tournament. Aunt Larella had a tumor removed from
around her pituitary (along with the pituitary gland) a year or so ago and has
a lot of memory problems. She was a bit confused when we were there. She was
convinced that her entire house had been in Mexico last week and had just come
back. She was worried that we wouldn’t be able to find the house since the
house was oriented incorrectly after it came back from Mexico. Dreams and
reality are difficult for her to sort out from each other. We had a good
visit, but I’m sure she doesn’t remember it very well. We then drove south of
town to the Stahman Pecan Farm to do some souvenier shopping. We had dinner at
their house that evening and visited. I had a very good visit and it was good
to have spent some time there. We’ll need to go back sometime.

Delon and Nelma have a son Kenny who has Down’s Syndrom. He is 27 years old
and in amazingly good health. He’s quite a testament to what good medical care
can do for these kids. Nelma receives a small stipend from Social Security
each month for her care of him in lieu of him being in an institution. For us,
who don’t have to care and worry about Kenny every day, visiting him is a lot
of fun.He competed in the New Mexico Special Olympics over the past weekend
and did very well.

Tuesday we drove from Las Cruces to Chandler. We arrived about 3 p.m. and the
place where we had a reservation had no one at the office. We waited for a
while, then called a second place. That one was a few blocks away. We drove
over there and found a place that we would not stay at. It was rather scary!
So, we called a place in Mesa who had a spot available. It’s a Senior Citizen
park catering to the Snowbirds who come down every year to stay the winter.
We’ve a nice space, it’s very clean and well maintained, and we’re quite
pleased with the park. Now if it wasn’t so very hot!!

We made dinner at Jaelene’s place on Tuesday night. Nina spent Wednesday
morning visiting with her friend Cathy and we had lunch at a Japanese
Restaurant. Jaelene came home from work a bit early and we spent the evening
at her place ending up with a rousing game of Scrabble which Nina (this
happens very often) won.

This morning we arrived about 8 a.m. so we could watch the kids while Jaelene
went into the office for a couple of hours. After lunch we went to a nearby
pool for a couple of hours. The water was wonderful. We’ll have dinner here
tonight. Tomorrow we’re going to Sedona. No idea what’s planned for Saturday
other than we’re having dinner at a very popular Chinese restaurant. Sunday
we’ll leave for San Jose. It’s a very long drive, so I think we’ll break it up
into two days. We’ll drive as far as Los Angeles on Sunday and then go the
rest of the way into San Jose on Monday morning.

Hot is measured in the hundreds. High today was 109 degrees officially. It was
hotter here in Chandler! It was the same yesterday and the day before. It’ll
be the same for the next week or so. Perhaps it’ll be cooler in Morgan
Hills????

Copied from an older journaling system on 29 November 2002.