Nina and I just got back from the Pocatello Womens Correctional Center (aka the prison). Thursday evening is the normal Relief Society meeting at the prison but because Nina’s counselors were going to be with family, I went with her instead. I’m in the process of being cleared as a volunteer at the prison … just need to attend a training class in January so that I can assist in the future if needed. Today was Thanksgiving so Nina spent the day yesterday baking cookies, brownies, pumpkin bread, and making Rice Krispie treats to take to the inmates and guards at the prison this evening. All of these treats for the inmates have to be individually wrapped and have to be consumed during the meeting. No food can be taken back to their cells. As an activity she took a craft up for the women to do. Once the craft was completed, the women were allowed to take it back to their units and keep it. The craft took a little preparation work. It was a picture of three candles. Then yarn was glued onto the outline of the candles. After that tin foil was pressed down on the paper to make indentations around the yarn. Then using Sharpies colored markers, one colors in the indentations and the result looks pretty much like a small stained-glass window. It’s very clever.

But, the inmates can’t have scissors or play with glue. The Young Women in the ward did the part of putting the yarn on the paper as part of their service project last week. The inmates could then put on the tin foil and color the craft. They had a great time and were particularly happy that they could take the finished product back to their rooms when they were finished.

My part in this was to sit at one of the tables and kind of help keep order. It was very interesting listening to the girls chatter about their day and whatever came to mind. They apparently had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner with real turkey today. They talked a lot about the things they were thankful for. One girl said she was thankful that she was still alive and that if she wasn’t there in prison, she was sure that she wouldn’t have been alive today. They were thankful for family who visited them. They expressed over and over again that they were thankful that we had come up this evening and that we cared for them. It was pretty humbling. Most of them know Nina (she’s been in the Relief Society at the prison for more than two and a half years) and two different girls said to me that they knew that Nina cared for them and was interested in their well being.

Well, I also know that she does as well. She more than cares for them … she is passionate about them and their well-being. Many of these girls have destroyed their family relationships and have little or no contact with family. Others come from situations so dysfunctional that a caring or loving relationship could never exist there. Most of them have had to become manipulative in order to survive and don’t know how to live otherwise. In all of that, Nina truly cares for them and goes far beyond the mark in filling her calling and is a perfect role model for them. I was very thankful to have been there with her this evening.

It has been a day for thanksgiving, for sure. Nina prepared a delightful Thanksgiving meal this morning. We loaded it in the car about noon and drove over to Soda Springs where mother had a lovely table set ready for the feast. And feast we did. We left much of it behind for them to snack on for the next couple of days. Some of the good stuff came back, however. In fact, as soon as I post this I’m going to get a piece of pumpkin pie. That should be a good “night time before going to bed” snack!

We have a white board on the inside of the door to the garage. It’s intended for reminder notes, usually for things that we need to buy at the grocery store. As I was taking things out to the car, I noticed that Nina had begun to make a list of all the things she was thankful for. It is a long list with family at the top (noted by name). Some of our family have gathered in Chandler. Others had their holiday at home. One met with a number of other families at the church for a community dinner. All were safe, warm, well-fed, and having a good time. I too am thankful for family. I’m thankful to be alive. I’m thankful to have been at the prison this evening … and even more thankful to come back out again and come home. I’m thankful for a Heavenly Father and a Savior who love me. I’m getting a bit teary eyed. Time for some pie….

The headline says that the Pocatello High School marching band is undefeated. I was stunned at the headline! How are they undefeated? Was there some kind of a battle, like “band football” or something? No one on the staff wanted to take credit for the story, either. Most articles in the Idaho State Journal are written by a person whose email address is put at the end of the article … this story is by “Journal Staff”. I’m not sure I would want to take credit for the headline, either.

Now if the band would only march somewhere besides at the Red Rocks Marching Competition in St. George, Utah. What is a parade without a band? The annual Night Lights Parade will be this Friday evening at 6:30 p.m. Some 60 entries will be in the parade … but no band. Maybe that’s how they stay undefeated?

I came home from the dentist this morning (we’re on first names up at that office, I’ve been there so often) to hear a strange buzzing sound in the hallway. I tracked the noise down to the doorbell chime unit. I popped the cover off and the solenoid that fires a metal plunger out to hit the chime was making the noise. It was also very hot! I touched it and burned my finger!! So I disconnected the wire coming from the doorbell button out on the front porch and then removed the unit from the wall. I let it cool down and then inspected the unit. The metal plunger had at one time a plastic knob on each end. The plunger had gotten so hot the plastic knobs had melted. I suspect this thing could have gotten hot enough to set something on fire. So, I disconnected the transformer in the basement and then took off the doorbell button out front to find it was stuck in the “ring” position … along with a door knob tag from the FedEx man that he had tried to deliver a package and a tag from the Idaho Power guy saying that our power will be off tomorrow (Tuesday) from 9 to 11 a.m. One or both of them had rung the doorbell before leaving. The button got stuck, the metal plunger heated up, the spring that should hold the plunger out of the solenoid came off, and the whole chime unit started heating up. It was a good thing that I came home and noticed the noise!

That meant, of course, that the doorbell chime unit along with the button had to be replaced. The FedEx package could be picked up after 3:30 p.m., so about three this afternoon I drove over to Lowes to get a replacement unit. I wanted to know if there was a unit that had a thermal sensor and would shut down if it got too hot. No such thing available. That should be an opportunity for someone! I bought a cheap unit, picked up the FedEx package, and came home to do the installation.

That’s when I discovered the stove was still on. One of the gas burners was busy warming up the surrounding air … fortunately no pans were on the burner. I asked Nina about it and she reminded me that I was the last person to use the stove when I “made” some Ramen noodles for lunch. That’s right … moi. Dang. Two opportunities today to burn the house down.

The doorbell has been replaced. The stove is off. I think I’ll stay out of the kitchen for a while, though.

I just finished disposing of two more mice out of the storage room in the basement. The battle with the mice is definitely not over. I have seven traps set in the storage room right now and it seems like the critters are multiplying faster than I’m killing them. Nina thinks the nest is under the stairs somewhere, so tomorrow I need to clean out that area and see what we find. That area has been a kind of a catch-all, so that will definitely have to change. Fortunately there are no more empty lots around us to drive the mice out of when construction starts. I rather dislike mouse traps. They are sensitive and it’s easy to catch one’s fingers! I have a set of rubber gloves that I wear, but the fingers and thumbs in the gloves are longer than my fingers and thumbs so it takes about four tries to set a trap and get it on the floor where I want it without the dang thing firing. On the other hand, I’m quite happy this is the only thing I can complain about today.

Yesterday I started working on putting up Christmas lights. My goal is to figure out a way to do this without having to climb up on the roof. I thought if I attached the lights to 1×2 pieces of lumber and then put hooks on each end of the board, I could hook that on to the rain gutters. So, I made my first trial yesterday. It took two trips to Lowes to get all the hardware I needed. However, the prototype didn’t work. The span I was putting the lights across was too long … the board sags and twists … any breeze will cause it to break. The concept is still valid; the spans just need to be shorter. That means getting on the roof to fit them in place this year, but then I should be able to take them down after Christmas and put them back up next year without having to get on the roof again. That would be much better. I didn’t put up any lights last year. Hopefully I can work through the concept by the end of the coming week and we’ll have Christmas lights up this year. Most of the neighborhood houses are decorated with lights in some fashion.

Our weather has been very nice for the past couple of weeks. The ski areas in the Salt Lake City area are complaining as there isn’t enough snow for them to open. I’m not complaining, though. Thursday we took mother and dad to Logan to do a session at the temple. We take them down once a month so they can do a session without mother having to drive. She’s quite happy not to have to drive in much traffic and I don’t blame her at all. I had appointments in Salt Lake City on Tuesday and again on Friday and some of the Utah drivers are pretty bad. I think that the speed limits cannot be high enough for some of them. For many others, the left lane is the only lane regardless of how fast or slow they wish to drive. On Tuesday going through a long construction area in Ogden, a car came up behind me quite rapidly so I moved out of the left lane into the right lane. The car came up alongside and slowed down to match my speed. I sped up a bit and they stayed right with me as we came up on a very slow moving semi. I slowed down. They slowed down, all the while the driver was waving a finger at me (probably signaling his IQ??). I’ve no idea what I had done to them, other than being in a car with an Idaho license plate. There was an exit coming up, so I took the exit, waited through the light, got back on the interstate and they were long gone. There are not many policemen patrolling the interstate in that area (but beware south of the Point of the Mountain … plenty of opportunities in Utah County to meet a traffic officer) which is quite unfortunate. The man in charge of the Pocatello barracks for the Idaho State Patrol has said a couple of times that the ISP issues two speeding tickets to cars with Utah plates to one with any other plate, including Idaho. “Utah drivers are very good for our coffers,” he said. My anecdotal evidence agrees with his observations.

I’m here in Pocatello on Monday and Tuesday. I’ll be in Boise on Wednesday for a seminar on “Doing Business With the State of Idaho”. Thursday is Thanksgiving Day and we’ll take dinner over to Soda Springs and spend the day with mother and dad. We will NOT be shopping in Friday! And for that I am very thankful.

Heather’s comment on her blog about politicians struck a chord. A few years ago in a close presidential election year I made the mistake of contributing some sheckles to one of the candidates (it doesn’t really matter who since in this regard they are all the same). For the next several months that candidate spent more money soliciting ME for money than I had contributed. I wanted the money to be spent on the campaign … maybe a few posters or a couple of seconds of a TV spot or the like … not on trying to get more money from me. I was planning to make several more contributions … and would have if they had just gone about the process of campaigning for office. As it was, their actions put my money back into my pocket.

I’ve mentioned this to other people and have gotten the same reaction from people who contributed once to a specific candidate and then received the full-court press to pony up even more money. Like me, they also will never make such a contribution again. Want to drive a Republican crazy? Make a small contribution to a Democrat in the Republican’s name … for the next four years their mailbox and email inbox will be stuffed with solicitations for money…!! So much so that the Republican will probably have to learn to recycle (very big grin).

The subject came up again last night when we were in Soda Springs visiting mother and dad. They had made a $50 contribution to one of the current presidential candidate campaigns and were now being flooded with solicitations for more money from that campaign. Dad was lamenting how badly his money (and in his opinion, $50 was a whole bunch of money) was being spent.

Heather, you’ve got it right on who should get the money!

The same applies to the so-called social agencies. We are constantly being solicited (by phone) by the police, firemen, disabled veterans, and similar agencies who are exempted from the Do-Not-Call regulations. These are paid solicitors who are the most rude people on the face of the earth (and unfortunately the disabled veterans are the worst of the lot). We won’t even speak with them anymore. As soon as the voice on the phone asks for “Rowwwland Smith” or for “Nighna Smith” we hang up. I’m not enough of a masochist to stay on the line and be called “cheap” or “unpatriotic” and sometimes worse. They aren’t getting any more of my money, either! There aren’t any “deep pockets” in this household.

Bradica (the dog) spends much of her life these days sleeping. She’s not in the best of health (not by a longshot) and has to work at getting into a sleeping position where she can breath somewhat easily. She’s got four beds strewn about the house, including this one in the computer room. It’s in front of the bookcase where Nina keeps a lot of her genealogy information. This afternoon the bottom shelf became Bradica’s pillow. It must have worked … she slept for a couple of hours!