Phone message

This is the phone message we heard on our answering machine recently:

Hi.
Hi Grandma and Grandpa.
It's Nathan.
I wanted to say Hi.
Talk to you later.
I love you.
Bye.

Well, actually that was only half the phone message. The other half were prompts of the same phrases done in a stage whisper close enough that I could make out what the phrase was supposed to be before Nathan repeated it. Do these prompts in the background make any difference? The prompts by my daughter Natalie did make the whole conversation sound like a talk or prayer in Primary. On the other hand, I can take it to be two messages - one from Nathan and another from Natalie. We're lucky grandparents to get two for one!

Thanks for the phone call, Natalie and Nathan!

A dramatic experience

Knowing how well that Tim likes to sing and dance and how well we've enjoyed the Chautauqua Theater's productions over the past 5 years, putting the two together just seemed like the natural thing to do. Jake wasn't in the program this year as he was too young but he learned from Tim the same numbers that Tim learned and you could hear him singing along in the audience.

Chautauqua has a summer program for youngsters between the ages of 6 and 12. It is a 3 hour per day program where they learn about the performing arts and prepare for a full length feature at the end. This year there were three groups of 10 students each. The feature consisted of each group performing four times and each performance consisted of a song number with some dance and short bits of dialog with some dramatic affect. As Carolyn put it, it was the type of program you attend only because you're a part of the family, not because it's a good program.

Boots Martin is the person in charge of this effort. She has been doing it for 25 years and still has the enthusiasm of a 25-year old. Thanks, Boots.

Water audit

Hey, it's better than an IRS audit!

Carmichael is moving to water meters! Ever since municipal water service has been available in Sacramento county, the service has been on a flat rate. It didn't matter how much we use, just how big our connection to the service is. I guess that is an absolute rate but it would only come into play if we had our water running full rate 24/7.

But beginning July 1, 2007, the water meter that has been attached to our water line since the house was built 15 years ago will finally be used for billing purposes. And although we're projected to actually have a decrease in our water bill, many of our neighbors might see an increase in their water bill. To assist customers in dealing with this increase, the area water utility is conducting "water audits" during this transition period and probably for some time afterward.

I wasn't particularly impressed with this water audit. The young woman assigned the task in our case was pleasant enough in her chatty way, as she measured the output capability of most of our indoor faucets declaring that we could restrict the output more in most cases. But we have gold colored fixtures and she only had silver colored restricters so that obviously wouldn't work. She gave us three "water bank" bags to hang in our toilets to reduce the amount of each flush but she didn't check to see if any of our toilets were wasting water already with large flushes or leaks in the flapper seal. She didn't want to check the outside at all although from her description, I can understand why. She was only going to see if any of the heads were misdirected or missing. Again, no check for leaking manifolds or valves improperly installed. Unrelated to anything else she talked about or checked on were a garden sprinkler and a moisture meter to see when watering is necessary. These she gave us pretty much as a gift with no explanation about how these would save us water or costs.

Still to come, according to the auditor, is a 6 page report explaining how we can save additional money by following recommended practices and saving more water. I can hardly wait.

$100 repair part

You've done it before. Admit it. You come home from work one day and there's something wrong in the garage. Upon closer inspection you notice that something is broken. In my case it was a drawer that was slumping the wrong way, threatening to dump its contents into the cabinet area below. In any case, a quick investigation reveals that you can probably fix the situation with a $1.49 part, or at worst with a $10 replacement drawer slide. You could go to the hardware store immediately but wait until Saturday when they're having a great 25% off sale. With a few minor exceptions, all the merchandise purchased this Saturday is 25% off normal price. You walk out of the store with the $1.49 part and $97 worth of other merchandise. What an inexpensive drawer repair!

Embarassing shower

Visiting with family often involves staying with family, at least if the invitation is extended and it's convenient and you'd really like to have more visiting time. But there are definite drawbacks - homes are not hotels and hosts are not professional hoteliers. There's some awkwardness if the toilet doesn't flush right, you can't find adequate towels or there's no bedding on the bed.

But this past weekend I had an incident I wish I could go back and do over.

Our hosts had been more than gracious in opening their home to us. "Our" bedroom was superbly prepared and welcoming. "Our" bathroom was just across the hall and, since we were the only guests, virtually our private bathroom.

The morning after our first night there I arose early to take a shower. I noticed that they had a new shower curtain and it was a fabric one. I was concerned that the weave was quite open but I had seen other fabric curtains work well in containing the shower to the tub area. I began the shower and was delighted to see that it was a good, strong spray. Enjoyable as the shower was, I took care to cut my shower a little short so that I didn't use up all the hot water. I didn't know how probable that was so I tried to err on the short side.

You can imagine my chagrin as I pulled back the shower curtain and stepped out of the tub and into 1/8 inch of water all over the bathroom floor. It appeared that the curtain had contained very little of the water so everything on the floor had gotten wet - some only damp others, soaked. My new change of clothes was partially soaked, the throw rug was completely soaked, my pajamas were damp, ... Well, you get the idea. Bathrooms are meant to get somewhat damp but not like this.

I immediately began sopping up all the water I could with my towel. I didn't even bother to dry myself off first. I didn't know if my clean underwear was dry or wet. Fortunately, the Arizona weather was dry and once I wiped up the floor or the wall or the toilet, the thin film of water remaining evaporated quickly. However, my supply of clothing was limited. I had to dress in pants of which one leg was completely soaked through. No way I could hide this disaster. Our hosts fortunately did not appear too upset but not particularly surprised either since they almost never use the guest shower. We're in the same situation in our home.

I don't know if Carolyn elected to use a different bathroom or delayed her shower but I did notice that our shower had a plastic curtain liner the next morning. And I didn't spill a drop on the floor!

Unexpected: trivial and important

The trivial:
Friday evening after we had landed in Phoenix we had about 5 hours to drive 3.5 hours for the 50th wedding anniversary we wanted to attend. We had no time to lose. In fact, we had decided to carry on our luggage to save the few minutes it would take to get our luggage at the claim station. We hadn't had lunch and we decided a well-known fast food restaurant like Wendy's would be better than taking a chance on a real sit-down place even if we knew of one in Payson, which we didn't.

As we were leaving we stopped in the restrooms. Just in case. Who should Carolyn meet as she came out? Her sister-in-law Jeannie and Jeannie's daughter Monique. They were making the same drive and just stopping for a potty break. What are the chances?

The important:
It's always nice to be able to plan a little flexibility into your travel itinerary because unexpected events do come up. This time it was Monique's husband's computer that had been left up in the Taylor area that needed to be in the Phoenix area Monday morning. Everyone going that way had either gone or would be heading there too late. Could we please bring it? With a few calls to the airline, we managed to change our flight for four hours later (luckily we had totally changeable tickets). That allowed us to deliver the errant computer as well as eat lunch and visit with Monique and her family and parents.

As a byproduct, we found that Monique and her sister Nicole are avid bloggers like me. Their blogs can be found at http://jackson-five.blogspot.com/ (for Nicole) and http://qafrostfamily.blogspot.com/ (for Monique)

Monique and her family have just relocated to the Phoenix area so it was a pleasant surprise for us to be able to visit with them during this trip.

Pioneer Day (concluded)

We concluded our Pioneer Day at the home and farm of Vicki and Norman. Normal gave us a tour of his animals including this beautiful pig and dog then he drove us around town showing us all the growth and change this part of Arizona is experiencing.

Although Vicki had prepared us a more conventional meal of lasagna that was absolutely delicious, I did want to share this recipe that was in the Pioneer Day newsletter:

Mouse Pie

5 fat field mice
1 cup macaroni
1/2 thinly sliced medium onion
1 medium can tomatoes
1 cup cracker crumbs
salt & pepper

Boil macaroni 10 minutes. While it is cooking, fry the field mice long enough to fry out some of the excess fat. Grease a casserole with some of this fat and put a layer of the cooked macaroni on it. Add onions, then tomatoes, salt and pepper well. Add field mice and cover with remaining macaroni. Sprinkle the top with cracker crumbs. Bake at 375 degrees about 20 minutes or until mice are well done. (Note: if you don't have 5 fat field mice, you could try 10 little sausages.)

We were treated to a downpour while visiting with Norman, Vicki and family. It didn't seem to affect the rodeo from what we could hear nor did it slow down the fireworks later that night.

Pioneer Day (continued)

Of course the parade may have been a BIG thing for the Day but it certainly wasn't the only thing. In addition there were activities like the following, listed in the event newspaper:

10K Fun Run

Kids foot races

Arts & Crafts Festival

Quilt Show

Pioneer program

Barbeque

Swimming

Historic homes tours

Softball tournament

Concert

Youth & Single Adult dances

Rodeo

We knew we couldn't possibly make it to all the events so we chose a couple that we could make - the craft fair and the quilt show.

We hit the craft fair early, before the crowds really got there and while it was still under 90 degrees in the sun. We were impressed by how large and diverse it was. There were at least as many artisans as we usually see in the Apple Hill fair. The fact that we flew to get here had a dampening effect on our purchases. We just couldn't see having to check or carry much of anything back home.

When it did start warming up and the fair booths began to get really crowded, we headed over to the local community college auditorium to view the quilt show displays. There we were treated to dozens of beautifully sewn quilts, only some of which I got to take pictures of before being told that was not allowed. Here are a few that we saw:




You'll note this last one includes four scout neckerchiefs at the four corners. It was done as a tribute to an Eagle Scout and contains memorabilia pertaining to the scout's progress.

Pioneer Day

Pioneer Day is an official state holiday in Utah (July 24th) which makes it a little easier for Utahns to celebrate the impact of the pioneers, especially the Mormon pioneers, had in the development of their state. In Arizona, California, and other areas where there is a significant Mormon population, the Mormons have to make do with a Saturday close to the 24th. In Snowflake, Arizona, there is also an effort to be inclusive and remember those who came as non-Mormon pioneers and even those who added to the town's growth by pioneering in other ways and times.

There were probably several pancake breakfasts that we could have participated in but we chose to eat breakfast prepared by our hosts Keith and Sue. Their daughter Nancy and her family joined us.

We then drove over to Snowflake to watch the parade. Not knowing where the parade route was exactly, we lucked into a spot close to the beginning of the parade with lots of good shade and an unobstructed view. The parade was well organized and moved along with few pauses. It lasted an hour. It seemed much more organized and stuck to the theme better than our town's Fourth of July parade which is about the same size.

Snowflake's parade was short on floats but they did have:

orchestra wagons


stagecoaches


carriages


pioneer family themes


and even a Bobcat popping wheelies

And for the kids watching the parade from our vantage point, it was better than Halloween. Almost every float, vehicle, group, or other tossed out candy or frozen cellophane Popsicles. Lots of fun.

50th Wedding Anniversary

It was a long way to go for such a short celebration but 50th wedding anniversaries just don't come around all that often. We recently attended just such a celebration that was produced for Carolyn's oldest brother Perry and his wife Carol Ann. The event was held in northeastern Arizona, an 18 hour drive from our home or a 2 hour flight followed by a 3.5 hour drive. But we felt that we didn't want to just get together for funerals.

(Perry & Carol Ann-first couple on the left)
This event was produced by the 8 children and spouses of the honored couple. Originally, I think it was going to be a "direct descendants only" sort of affair but enough of us complained that the siblings were invited. After all, in the next 14 years the rest of us hope to celebrate similar events as we reach that milestone.

It was a fun evening and included good food, family presentations and songs...

Several sons, including Lance, telling humorous incidents about their parents or completing the sentence: "You might be a Baldwin if ..."

There was even time for just general visiting and seeing the newest great grand child of Perry and Carol Ann. Their current count is 8 children, 52 grandchildren, and 2 great-grandchildren. What a heritage!

Letter to a Christian Nation - book review

"Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris is a quickly, but thoughtfully written response by Harris to the thousands of letters he received after his first book "End of Faith" hit the bookstores. Like a dentist who has hit a nerve, Harris tweaked the "faith" nerve of America and people wrote back to "testify" that he was wrong and/or attempt to convert this atheist. According to Harris, many of the letters were couched in distinctly non-Christian language and exuded an attitude of hate and intolerance. Many of the letters made it perfectly clear that they were written by Christians as they included chapter and verse citations from the Christian bible.

In this book Harris responds in kind - citing chapter and verse - and treating the beliefs of Christians with no more respect and tolerance than they have apparently shown him. Or that we all feel towards radical Muslim terrorists. Indeed, much of his argument is that Christians have no more reason to think their religion and God is any more certain than a Muslim feels about his. And they both can't be right. He even warns liberal and moderate Christians that their moderation will get them nowhere in a world where there appears to be no moderate Muslims.

Probably the scariest part of the book for me are the statistics on anti-science beliefs and attitudes in the United States and the idea that 44% of Americans expect AND WELCOME a cataclysmic end to the world within the next 50 years. If we have long term planners influenced by such people, we are indeed in trouble.

I'm appalled that such a book as this has to be written but I would definitely recommend this book.

Smoke-free Campus

There's a tree in the parking lot of Alta California Regional Center that is called the smoking tree. It doesn't smoke but it seems to attract those who do.

For several years now, the Regional Center has had a strict no-smoking policy that extends to the entire grounds of the Center. So why is an employee or visitor who pulls into the parking lot greeted with this impressive display of butts?

It's not so much a matter of principle as a matter of practicality. We've tried taking away any encouragement to smoke, such as this ash tray/trash can but then the ground gets littered with butts. We're tried patrolling the area. The smokers move to a nearby bus stop shelter and make it a severe health hazard.

So the ash tray remains and the butts remain.

You Know What They Say: - book review

You Know What They Say: The Truth About Popular Beliefs by Alfie Kohn punches holes in all the conventional wisdom you thought you knew. Well, maybe not ALL the conventional wisdom but a great deal of it. In one section of the book he pairs opposite sayings showing that it would be impossible for both to be right. Such things as "too many cooks spoil the broth" and "two heads are better than one". In another part of the book he points to scientific research that disproves such "common sense" as "no two snowflakes are alike" and "boys are better at math than girls".

This is one of Kohn's earlier books, written before he set his sights on the education field and narrowed his aim a bit. He had written "No Contest: the Case Against Competition" before this but subsequently went on to produce

The Homework Myth : Why Our Kids Get Too Much Of A Bad Thing

Punished By Rewards : The Trouble With Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise, And Other Bribes

The Schools Our Children Deserve : Moving Beyond Traditional Classrooms And "Tougher Standards"

Unconditional Parenting : Moving From Rewards And Punishments To Love And Reason

According to my wife Carolyn, Kohn does have a good reputation among educators, at least early childhood educators. I wonder how his messages of needful change are received by administrators and parents.

To roof or not to roof

A good solid roof that doesn't leak is one of those things that you really don't think about until it's raining or the magpies are pecking away at it like they've discovered some bird seed heaven. At least I don't. But our neighbors were thinking about redoing their shake roof and thought that if we got bids at the same time, we might both save some money. It sounded like it wouldn't hurt to listen.

Turns out the first roofer that came over and did a thorough inspection began suggesting that we really didn't want a complete replacement of our shakes. Total replacement would cost in the neighborhood of $35,000 for our 5,000 square feet of roofing while less extensive repair and refinishing with fire retardant would only cost $11,000. A bargain. We were impressed with the professionalism and credentials of this roofer but we also visited and spoke with several people whose roof had recently been worked on by this company.

Being the kind of people who want more than one opinion, Carolyn contacted another local roofer who came and looked at our roof as well as our neighbor's. He was even less enthusiastic about replacing the shakes or even repairing them. "You have no holes or 'hot spots' to even worry about," he assured us as he extended his tape measure and pushed a shake back in place. "Pulling out shakes that aren't loose will just damage more of the underlying felt." While at first he had said a $500 repair is the MOST we could need, he ended up saying he would recommend we wait for 3 or 4 years to look at the situation again.

No, I take that back, he actually ended up by saying, "You know your house is just so full of Feng Shui. I can feel the balance and peace and harmony."

Bradykinesia, observed by Jacob

Slow, limited movement or bradykinesia is a common symptom of Parkinson's disease. Sometimes it is so subtle that I'm not even aware that it is affecting me. But the other evening when we were having dinner with Ed and his family, 5-year-old Jacob watched me for a couple of minutes then asked, "Grandpa, why are you drinking so slowly?"

I, of course, answered in the only way I could think of that would make sense to him. "Because, I'm really a robot," I explained. "Okay," he replied.

Geocaching on the road

We're usually so busy when we're on vacation that we can't take the time to look up caches in the places we're visiting. But for this latest trip (just in case, you know) I looked up and printed out information on 10 caches each in St. George, Murray, and Springville. Although we weren't able to use the ones in Murray and Springville, we did end up with a free morning in St. George. It had to be a morning because you really don't want to be geocaching in 110 degree weather. Even 80 degrees was a little risky as the caches might be hiding near metal that can easily burn at such temperatures.

We found this little guy in a cache location close to our hotel. Finding six others led us to some delightful shops including a camping supply place where we picked up a camp shower and a couple of extra tents "just in case".

Now that wireless access to the Internet is becoming so common at hotels and motels, we might be able to just haul a laptop computer around and not print out all the potential cache's until we need them. It's even becoming routine for some geocachers to download information into their cell phones or wireless equipped GPS devices. I'm not quite there yet.

The Sacramento Room

The prized Sacramento Public Library's Special Collection is housed in one of the best kept secrets of Sacramento - The Sacramento Room. This room is located on the second floor of the Central Library in downtown Sacramento.

Home to more than 21,000 carefully chosen printed items which are available to researchers, writers, teachers, students, and others - all under the watchful eye of the Sacramento Room librarians. Included in the collection are signed first editions by Sacramento authors, Sacramento telephone books dating back to 1899, Sacramento city directories dating back to 1851, a best seller from 1490, historical photographs, postcards, and other ephemera of Sacramento.

One of the more popular collections for young people is the collection of local high school, middle school, and even elementary school year books. Young people can see what Mom and Dad or even the grandparents looked like in their teen years.

The Friends of the Sacramento Public Library recently held one of our monthly board meetings at the Sacramento Room. The library has asked the Friends to donate $150,000 as "seed money" for a $2.5 million endowment fund to expand the Sacramento Room's inventory and hours of availability to the public as well as begin a major digitizing effort.

If you're downtown in Sacramento on Sunday, Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday afternoon, you might consider visiting this well-kept secret.

Pension Protection Act

Let's say you're a businessman who has two options for providing your employees with a pension benefit. One way you guarantee the benefits and take all the risk that you are putting enough away to meet the guaranteed benefits. The second way, you promise to set aside a certain amount each year and provide an investment company for your employees to use. But otherwise the employees take all the risk.

If you're following along, you'll already see that the scales are tipping in favor of plan number 2. But there are some real benefits for the employer who picks number 1. One advantage is that once a plan is completely or nearly completely funded, an employer can significantly reduce pension contributions. Another allows a significant investment in the company's stock.

Now add government intervention and oversight - mainly on the first type of plan - mandating accelerated funding and disallowing investments in the company. The result can reasonably expected to be a stampede of companies away from defined benefit plans (number 1) to defined contribution plans (number 2)

An article in the Sacramento Bee on July 12 described how the move from defined benefit to defined contribution pensions is accelerating. And this somehow comes as a "surprise" to the Employee Benefit Research Institute and many government officials. Don't make me laugh! As explained above, the Pension Protection Act of 2006 was designed to do exactly that. Why should we be surprised when a new law does exactly what it was planned (perhaps unwittingly, but planned anyway) to do? Simultaneously, there has been a big PR push to explain why defined contribution plans are so much better for employees (even though they now have all the risk).

I'm not opposed to defined contribution plans as they have several advantages. In my opinion portability is probably the greatest. And if they're adequately funded (it's more difficult to tell if they are) the resulting benefit can be as good or even better than a defined benefit. But let's not be surprised at the effect of this law.

New families for our family

Our grandson Jacob came into our family room the other day and, upon seeing these five packages, squealed with delight. "Look, grandma's got new families for us to play with!" He then carefully examined each package to make sure we did indeed have five different version of this family representing five different ethnicities.

Interestingly, we thought we'd open the white and Asian families as they are most like our family. Jacob selected instead the black and Native American families. Probably look more like some of his school buddies.

Scanning old photos from RevaBeth

One of the highlights of our Loveridge Family Camp the past two times was the slide show that RevaBeth put on for the benefit of those hardy souls who stayed long enough to watch it. She had culled through all the family photos in her possession and made about 150 of them into 2x2 slides. These slides were then shown to the group with a carousel slide tray and projector - a technique almost universal in the scientific and business world until about 10 years ago.

Those of us who saw the show expressed interest in sharing it with non-attendees but the expense of duplicating the slides as well as the difficulty in finding proper projection equipment were significant barriers.

Since I had recently scanned and converted about 1,400 of our family slides into computer jpg's, I offered my services and was pleased that RevaBeth agreed. I'm about a third of the way through the project, at the end of which I hope to have a CD available for anyone interested.

Here are some of the treasures so far:

Elwood:


Reva


Bernell:


Woody:


Arnold:


RevaBeth:


Mac:

A professional Fourth of July

Golly, has it been a week already since the Fourth of July? I meant to write this at that time.

It seems like each Fourth of July we've been in Sacramento, we've tried something different as far as the fireworks celebration goes. We've tried watching the neighbors' fireworks displays, our kids firing off their purchases, the show at Raley Field, and one year we watched the display at Del Campo high school.

This year the Del Campo display was called off and moved to the La Sierra community Center, less than a mile from our house. It was free, easy to drive to, and had plenty of parking. We found a nice grassy spot to set up our chairs and listen to the Sacramento Symphony Band while waiting for it to get dark enough for the fireworks. It was hot enough that Carolyn sprang for sno-cones for the group.

The display was well-done and without any "voice-over" or annoying music to distract from all the oohs and aahs. Tim and Jake started "claiming" various starbursts as "theirs" using some color or bursting characteristics. The explosions were so close that we had a little cool ash drift on us and some of the casings fell close to our chairs. I think this was the best year ever.

Seeing double

I installed a second monitor on our main computer at home expecting Carolyn to be impressed. All she said when she saw it was, "I wondered why you hadn't done this long ago."

She's right, of course. We bought our most recent computer over two years ago. There was really no option to get it without a flat panel LCD screen so we ended up with an extra screen that has just been sitting on the desk, dark, ever since we finished transferring all the info from the older computer and turned it off for good.

I decided to clean up all the cords and stuff from the old computer and it struck me that I could use the old monitor screen on the "new" computer. An article I found at C-Net, complete with video clips, really helped. I had to make sure I had a video card that was compatible with both the monitor and the new computer but that was fairly easy to take care of.

Configuring took a bit of time and we're still learning what happens when you begin a program. You can never be 100% sure which screen the program will open up on. But already I'm enjoying the extra screen real estate, especially with those operations where you'd really like to have two programs running, each open on the full screen. Now we can.

Snacks

Take a good look at the items pictured above and guess which pile has the most calories:

2 cups lightly buttered popcorn
20 pretzel sticks
10 1/2 peanuts
1 Dove dark chocolate piece

As you probably guessed, each has the same number of calories, namely 42. This is, of course the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything as detailed in the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". But I digress.

I was munching on my second most favorite snack (pretzel sticks) the other day and noticed that the nutritional information listed exactly 48 sticks as a serving size. I began to wonder if I had had more than one serving at this point. Then I started wondering how this compared to my first and third most favorite snack (popcorn and peanuts) and my most favorite treat (not to be confused with a snack) Dove dark chocolate pieces.

Before long I had put together this photo montage so that I could visualize the whole idea. As I suspected, popcorn allows me to eat the most for the least cost to my waistline. And chocolate can only be considered a treat, not a snack.

Underwear - it's a guy thing

It's a guy thing. As far as I'm concerned my underwear should be clean, comfortable, and out of sight. Anything else is just a bonus. If it has a few more holes than it had when I originally bought it, so what? If I can still figure out which holes are for my legs or my arms or head, what do I care if the seams aren't as completely sewn as they used to be?

The other day Carolyn bought me 8 new sets of underwear, T tops and brief type shorts. These are special "Mormon" underwear so she had to go out of her way to get them. So she was a little chagrined when I began pulling out of my underwear drawer the 6 sets that I already had - still in their original packaging. "But your underwear are falling apart!" she exclaimed. "So am I," I cleverly returned. She wasn't impressed with my attitude or my arguments. I like the new underwear. I really do. I just don't think it was all that necessary.

Happy Birthday, ME!

Yes, I had another birthday and I was treated rather royally by my family and colleagues at work. At work I was treated to lunch at the Macaroni Grill because it is my favorite place for grilled salmon on spinach orzo pasta. But this time I was treated to a piece of birthday cake large enough to share with the well wishers.

Macaroni Grill also provides an operatic singer for delivering the greetings in Italian and in tune. Much more appreciated than the usual crowd of waitpersons who gather around, clap their hands, and make more noise than music.

On the family side, I got telephone calls from most of my kids. We didn't make it easy for them as Carolyn along with Ed and family took me out to the Buggy Whip where I could use the Buggy Whip's birthday coupon for a free meal. Then we dropped by Emigh's so that Edward could use another birthday coupon I received in the mail to buy me miter box and saw so that we could finish installing the baseboard on our kitchen tiling project.

All in all, a good, happy birthday. Thanks, everyone.

Woes of a blogger

The feedback I get from people who learn that I maintain a blog, especially those who know what a blog is or have actually read mine, is interesting and as varied as the people are. Most of the feedback is mild curiosity: "And what do you do this for?" or "Don't you have a real life?"

Another common reaction is horror that I would dare to expose so much of my life to others. But don't we all routinely describe in great detail the minutia of our lives to friends, neighbors, and often complete strangers?

But I was really surprised the other day when we invited a couple to go to dinner with us and attend a play afterward. The man was enthusiastic because he was aware we had a lot of interests in common. He had read my blog. She had also either read my blog or at least had heard about it and was insistent she wasn't going to be "put on that blog of Arnold's". I'm usually pretty good about getting people's permission but maybe I'll have to start getting something in writing.

What do you think about my blog?

Watering schedule

With all the hot days we've had lately (several days have been over 100 degrees), I finally decided it was time to ramp up the watering for our yard. We have to be a little careful this year because we're finally going to see our water bill affected by the amount of water we use. What a concept! Until this year, Sacramento County residents have paid for their water based on the size of their connection (1/2 inch, 3/4 inch, 1 inch, etc.) or the number of households for rental units. You could run your sprinklers 24 hours a day for the same price as 10 minutes. I guess the feeling was that we were a "river city" and excess water usage would just re-enter the groundwater system so there was no harm in using so much water.

They're still going to phase the new billing system in gradually. I think between 10 and 20 percent of our water bill will be based on usage with the rest being a flat rate for the "connection". But now I'll feel a little better when I see the neighbor's lawn runoff running past our house for hours on end. It'll cost him.

Random listening

As I mentioned earlier Carolyn and I have passed many a mile listening to a book on tape or CD. Recently, we were puzzled that a book on CD we were listening to seemed to have duplicate tracks and often presented the segments of the story out of order. The first two CD's had seemed to be fine but disks 3 and 4 were really jumbled.

We were about ready to give up on a book so difficult to follow when we noticed that somehow the CD player "shuffle" feature had been activated. We were indeed listening to the story in random order. Not something I recommend.

Patriotic toe (red, white, & blue)

It wasn't quite the truth when I reported that the family camp/reunion went off without any injuries. I managed to pack some folding chairs too close to the rear door of our car so that when I opened the door, a couple of the chairs fell out onto the ground - and my toe. I knew that was going to happen but thought I could move out of the way fast enough. Nope. I'm not as fast on my feet as I used to be.

I managed to hobble around the rest of the day and probably no one noticed because that's just the way I walk around nowadays. But when we got back to our motel and I took off my shoes I could see that I had done a bit of "redecorating" on my toe. Now, four days later, there are only a couple of small bruises, just enough red, white, and blue to celebrate the Fourth of July. I'm grateful that the circulation to my feet appears to be as good as ever.

Loveridge Family Camp 2007

This is one view of the beautiful Jolley Ranch camp and picnic grounds up Hobble Creek Canyon above Springville, Utah.

We just returned from a family camp and reunion of my siblings, their spouses, children and grandchildren. All 5 siblings were in attendance at some time during the camp as were all 5 spouses of the siblings. There were 15 children of this group in attendance along with 11 spouses.

And there were 26 grandchildren of the siblings (here we have the Peck twins Ava & Liam with the youngest camper Gavin Loveridge - age 6 weeks). I think that comes to 62 all totaled. Of course they all weren't there at the same time but the majority of them stayed for most of Friday and Saturday.

In addition to wonderful meals prepared be each of the family groups, there were lots of fun activities.

Revabeth had purchased t-shirts for everyone expected at camp and had the fixin's for each person to decorate his or her t-shirt.

There was foam finger painting,

painting with markers and construction paper,

painting and constructing portable sundials, sun-warmed hot air balloons,

a coin and toy search (with the treasure hidden in hay and paper strips,

puzzles, running through the meadows, swinging on the playsets, wading in the creek or playing with the squirt guns. There was virtually something going on for the kids throughout both days.

The adults participated in some of the arts and crafts for the kids as well as learning how to sew quilt blocks and fire small arms at the nearby shooting range. A couple of us even searched for and found a geocache which had been placed in our camp area since the last time we were here.

Revabeth had secured DNA sample collection kits for those adults who wanted to participate in a study by the Sorenson Molecular Genealogy Foundation to add our DNA to the 50,000 people who have already registered their DNA with the Foundation.

Probably the best thing about the whole camp is that everyone was in relatively good health before, during, and as we left camp; no one had any serious accidents; and we had lots of time to visit and swap stories.