House Projects

Painting
June 28, 2011

 Latest project – get the house painted. Mar has chosen the color. We have had the house power washed. I have taken off a lot of the light fixtures. Now we are just waiting for the "fun" to begin.

Here are the "before" pictures. I will get more pictures as the work proceeds.

Memory??

I've been considering my high school days – particularly Poudre High School in Ft. Collins. If I do not count church people, I can only remember the names of four friends in that high school.
    Doug Johnson
    Keith Holmes
    Nancy Young
    Dolores Delp
I do remember other first names, and a few names that were not friends.
I guess the message here is – well is there a message?

Books on Tape/CD

June 22, 2011

Small Steps by Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar wrote Holes. I saw this offering at the library and thought, well let's see. I really liked Holes. I just liked this one (not really liked). It doesn't have the fun energy that Holes does, but it is still an enjoyable and readable story. It is a sequel to the Camp Greenlake story, this time dealing with Armpit and Xray, two of the Camp Greenlake boys. If you see this book (and you don't have to pay for it), Small Steps is okay. Be forewarned, the end is . . . wait, that would be telling too much.

Blog Issues

I have to admit, I have been horrible about keeping up with the blog. I feel like I get behind and then there is just too much to catch up on – so I don't do anything at all. And of course then I just get further behind.


So here is a quick update – and I may do some of these in more detail – but then again, maybe not.


Travels (since my last travel update).
April 29 – May 7 – Haifa, Israel (this is the one that really got me behind – it is important, but what can I do.)
May 15 – May 21 – Hillsboro, Oregon ( Mar went with me – we saw Jon and Erin, Terry and Hallie – and Anne came up and spent time with mar also – I had a cold.)

May 22 – May 28 – Folsom, California (only highlight – I went to the Sacramento Temple.)

May 31 – June 4 – Lawrenceville, Georgia (only highlight – I went to the Atlanta Temple.)

June 5 – June 11 – Redmond, Washington (only highlight – I went to the Seattle Temple.)

June 20 - June 25 - Fremont, California (only highlight - I went to the Oakland Temple.)

Books (since my last Book List update).
May 7, 2011 - The Man Who Would be King – Rudyard Kipling (liked it a lot)

June 2, 2011 – Howards End – E. M. Forester (author of A Passage to India which is one of my favorites – this one was good, but not as good.)

June 6, 2011 – The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan (a romance – as in the nature of H. R. Haggard – barely possible and highly improbable – Mar and I saw it as a film adaptation on PBS. It was intriguing enough to make me pick up the book. I liked it – however different from the PBS story line.)

June 7, 2011 – The Gift of the Magi – O. Henry (just one of my favorite stories – so I read it again.)

Events (since my last Events update)
May 7, 2011 – Mar's graduation and Pinning from the Registered Nursing curriculum at Front Range Community College. (This is another stopper for my blog – it really deserves much more than this entry – much, much more.)
June 16 – 18, 2011 – Youth Conference at Red Feather Lakes. (Mar and I both went – a campout. I enjoyed it, mostly because I was with Mar.)
June 19, 2011 – Father's Day (Erica and family and Breanne and family came over, and I heard from everyone else – and we had the Elders over for dinner.)
June 21, 2011 – Mar and the dentist (enough said about that.)

Okay – let's call this caught up. I will try to do better in the future. Better might mean more of the same – but I think it will mean different kinds of posts. Breanne showed me a book she prepared of her posts, but I think mine would be less that exciting. So I will try to put in more history.

Reading List

May 5, 2011
A Modest Proposal by Johnathan Swift

Some short comments.

I have read it before.

It is not fair to call it a book – at most in print it would be 20 pages – with large type.
Historically it is significant.

Everyone should read it as one of the most sophisticated bits of satire ever written.
Don't take him seriously – even though he was serious about the social problems he was addressing – but he was not serious about his solution.

Reading List

May 5, 2011

The Book of Were Wolves by S Baring-Gould

I like that his name sort of sounds like Ghouls.

Okay – I have to be honest. I chose this book off of the Kindle free list just because it sounded were-wolfy. It wasn't too bad. It was bad, but not too bad. Understand that it was written in 1865 by a man who was trying to show that there were were-wolves in a pseudo-science way. He does a lot of historical referencing and psycho-babbling and in the end, presents a lot of grizzly "proof" that were-wolves are really just people who think they turn into wolves and in that mental state perform horrible acts. Some of the historical horrible acts really have nothing to do with were-wolfs, but they do make modern atrocities fairly lame in comparison – women using fresh blood to clear their complexion, princes getting off on a kill the children fetish – that sort of thing.

Still, I like the hairy transformation were-wolf idea better. It is more – shall we say "romantic". Heck, by the Baring-Gould definition of a were-wolf, Jeffry Dahmer qualifies.

Howwwwwwwwwl – but not only at the full moon. I tell you, Lupin would be disappointed in this book.

Don't read it. I give it a two.