Dear Elder Davidson No. 7

Dear Isaac,

Sunday morning. I’ve been up off and on since about 4 am when Dottie had a doggie dream and was muffled barking in her sleep enough to wake us all up including Daisy, who then decided it was time to get up to go potty. So I took them out and they did their thing and were then pretty restless for the rest of the morning because Daisy figured since she was up it was time to start the day and there’s no other way to start the day except BREAKFAST which I made her wait to get until 7 am. Now it’s almost 9 am, they’re both sleeping again and I’m bleary-eyed at the computer wondering why we ever wanted to get dogs in the first place.

This is a photo from a few weekends ago, when I took them out on the front porch because it was raining and Dottie was still quite upset that she had to go out in the rain to tinkle.

I’m trying not to be a crybaby about the whole thing, but I’m having a hard time ending that sentence. I may have to take a nap before church.

I do love how Dottie is sitting there looking like a frog.

Trying to remember what I did for fun this week, and I’m coming up blank. Friday morning was the dentist. Saturday morning was Scouting for Food. That was kinda fun to get to hang out with Lexi, but I’m not going to say it was the most exciting thing. I washed dishes. I tried fixing the ice maker in the fridge. I’m not trying to be a downer, just dealing with a little seasonal depression that kicks in this time of year. I get out and get some sun and that helps a lot, so don’t worry about me.

Good news is it’s Mom who is teaching Gospel Doctrine today. Last lesson on Isaiah. The Old Testament is challenging enough, and then we spend a month on Isaiah and it gets even harder.

Oh – here’s something fun. I put some stuff away in the garage so we can kind of walk though there a little better even if there are two cars in there. YES, I do get to do exciting things.

Here in a few weeks Mom and I are going to do IOLS training with the council – Introduction to Outdoor Leadership Skills, if I remember right. That’ll be a nice break from the regular stuff. Mom signed us up partly because she needs the training, and partly because it was in danger of being cancelled because they didn’t have enough participants signed up.

I just ordered a new ice maker for the fridge. We’ll see how it goes with installation. Maybe we’ll end up buying a new fridge after I’m done, you never know. They tell me this is an “easy” repair, and should take only 30 to 60 minutes. Somehow, I’m skeptical.

This is usually how my repairs go. I guess I should consider myself lucky this isn’t a gas-powered ice maker.

I should be more optimistic about it all, but it gets harder as the days get shorter. I may need to see if I can relocate to Arizona for the winter and work remotely. They let me work from home for five years before I guess people who couldn’t do that complained, so now I do the same work in the cubicle that I did at the office, right down to still using the phone and the email to communicate with customers.

I’ll stop ranting. It’s not a good look.

Maybe if the ice maker replacement goes well I’ll ship you the old one for Christmas. Would at least give you something to talk about.

Oh. Forgot to mention when we were doing Scouting for Food, we got free donuts. That was nice.

We had to do our year-end review self evaluations at work last week. I hate evaluation time. I always rank myself as exceeding expectations because to do otherwise seems foolish and, you know, I do actually do some good work from time to time. My immediate supervisor always wants to see what we’re saying before we submit, but I kinda think that’s an invasion of my privacy and really, in the end, won’t do much of anything because we all get the same tiny raises all the time anyway.

I think I mentioned a few weeks ago that when we did the alignment on the Red Herring some of the warning lights went away. Ha ha, that was only temporary. The lights come and go now, which I guess is an improvement over being on all the time. I know Kevin still has some work to do on the car and may not have cleared the codes yet, so we’ll see what happens. We’re putting the work off a little bit because we had some unexpected medical bills come up that we’re working on paying, so the tires and other work will have to wait. Life is fun when you’re broke.

OK. I’m going to go get showered up and ready for church. Maybe I’ll walk to church today to get some sun.

Hope you’re doing well. We look forward to your calls.

Love,

Dad

A Collection of Little Things

So here's a collection of little things:

Randy. He had his sentencing hearing on Tuesday. He'll spend a maximum of 10 1/2 years in federal custody, likely in Colorado. Credit for time served, so about eight months.

I learned things at the hearing and afterward I'm not sure I wanted to know. I'm still processing some of it, so it's not going to be hashed out here.

Refrigerator. I took things apart yesterday. I didn't manage to fix anything, but I did manage to eliminate the water supply as a reason the ice maker isn't working. So I suppose the next step is to buy a new ice maker and a new valve and hope it all comes with instructions so I can figure out how to take the old one out and put the new one in.

I don't want to break things more, but trying it myself once is certainly cheaper than bringing a repair person in to fix it. Which seems silly. I should probably just to that.

New Church Schedule. Getting used, as a gospel doctrine instructor, to the new 25-minute schedule. I mean, it works. The only thing I miss from the previous schedule is getting a much longer break between lessons. I'm up to two lessons a month from one, and I'd rather be back to one a month, but it is what it is.

I know there are some people out there upset with the shortened schedule. I can see only four solutions to this upset:

1. Contacting the powers that be in Salt Lake City and using your considerable persuasive abilities to convince them to change back to whatever schedule you want (except if it's the schedule where Sacrament meeting is 90 minutes on Sunday with other meeting scattered throughout the week, because I will certainly go apostate if that is brought back.

2. Gathering like-minded individuals in your home on Sunday so you can lengthen your stride without bothering the rest of us.

3. Get used to it.

4. Depart.

I know which choice I'm making.

Work. I still have to go, despite my misgivings. At least another ten years. That doesn't seem fair, but it is what it is. I have similar options on this as I do with the church thing, and the only way to go on this is that head down, butt up that I learned as a kid. Just go to work. Though I do take a little inspiration from Homer Simpson:

For the record: I love my job. At least for the next ten years.

It's been a little harder as of late, as Albert retired and I can feel that life a-calling. . .

That's all I got. So. Very. Tired.

Way too Late at the Movies: Mon Oncle

I'm still on a Jacques Tati kick, this time with "Mon Oncle," a film in which M. Hulot develops his oddities a bit more.

The film is a satire of post-war modernism in France. Maybe making a larger statement about modernism as a whole, but it's certainly entertaining.

Again I emphasize while it's nice if you understand French to watch this film, once again you don't necessarily have to know the language to get the message.

And that message: Pretty much everyone living in the "old" Paris, representing the country as a whole, I assume, is happy. They get along. They enjoy each others' company. And though their houses and apartments are more modest, they appear comfortable.

Those living in modern Paris enjoy their modern conveniences but are often bedeviled by them. They gather because it's what one does socially, but they don't really seem to enjoy it.

And oh my gosh does that lady love to scrub things.

There's a little hope at the end, when Dad engages in a practical joke with his son as they watch M. Hulot depart for "les provinces" because Dad really can't stand to have him around anymore, but I won't say more than that so it's not spoiled.

The aesthetic of the film comes through pretty clear in the opening scenes.

And wow, that modern garden. Looks lovely. Is completely impractical every time they try to use it.

The dachshund in the sweater belongs to the modern couple, and also finds his freedom.

Thing is, when I lived in various cities in France in the 1990s the modern v. old aesthetic was still being fought.

On A M. Hulot Kick, and Walking Down Memory Lane

Watching "Mon Oncle" by Jacques Tati tonight. I love M. Hulot's house:

I love the hodge-podge that is old French architecture. His apartment and the way to get to it reminds me of a missionary apartment I lived in when I served in Blois, France.

The building, built before Columbus discovered America, had a presence on the main street in town, La Rue Denis Papin. Where the barber/tattoo shop is, there was a Singer sewing store. "Singer" in French is a verb meaning "to behave like a monkey," which was fitting.

While we did have access to the building from the street, our address was actually on "Les Petits Degres St. Honore," a staircase from the main street to the level above.

Good ol' Number 12. From the main street, we had to go up two flights of stairs to get to our apartment. From this door, it was one flight down.

I loved that apartment. We had a bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. Part of the way through my stay there we had to swap apartments with the sister missionaries, who were living in a modern building on the ground floor, which wasn't as secure as the mission wanted for sisters so, alas, we had to move.

Back to M. Hulot. A commenter on the video posted above says he/she knew the building had been in their neighborhood, but has since been replaced by a car park. Just what Jacques Tati was commenting on in the film. Old vs. New.

Puzzled

People are puzzles.

Dump the pieces out of the box

Look for the edges

Prop up the box somewhere nearby so you can see the shape this particular human takes.

But pieces stick to your forearm as you puzz.

Others get bumped off the table and the dog eats them.

Then you look at the box and the picture has changed and some of the pieces on the table don’t have any color on them at all, no matter how many times you flip them over.

But keep puzzling.

Keep puzzling.

Some of the edges you’ve assembled

Spontaneously detach themselves

And there are some pieces that are too big to fit with the scale of the puzzle

Some are too small.

The box, momentarily with the photo on it, shows it’s a thousand-piece puzzle

But there are only 496 on the table.

And it doesn’t matter because the picture fades again as you look at it.

And what you thought was going to be a pleasant picture

Distorts and beautifies as you assemble more pieces

The puzzle is missing pieces

It has holes in it.

Some of the pieces are from different puzzles of different sizes

But you still have to put them together

And hope you don’t mix up your pieces with the pieces of the puzzle the person next to you at the table is assembling.

The dog coughs up the piece it swallowed and it’s a mess, but you pick it up anyway.

Your memories of the image on the box fade and twist

Sometimes you invent new facets, or find forgotten facets that fell on the floor or were swept up by another puzzler and rejected for their puzzle because it doesn’t fit.

Sometimes they fit and the puzzler who got it won’t surrender the piece you need, so you use one of theirs.

It might fit.

You might have to jam it in there.

And the puzzle is never finished.

Just like people.

Dear Elder Davidson No. 6

Dear Isaac,

As always, good to hear from you.

I wish I had exciting things to report. I do not. Life continues to be boring, which I guess is a good thing.

When I left for work this morning, it was still raining. It had rained all night. The street up the road from our house was flooded curb to curb – we know now the house right on the curve is where our new stake president lives. John Adams was also flooded a bit, and the geyser at John Adams and Curlew was bubbling away. I hit a lot of standing water all over town as I drove to work. We may have to start figuring out what a cubit is and building an ark.

I’m sure Lexi told you that she and Keaton had a waterfall flowing into their basement from one of their windows. I went over and looked at it (that was about all I could do; all anyone can do until the rain stops, except for manning the pumps). Keaton and I think there’s a French drain in the window well that’s collecting water from somewhere else and is overflowing. Once the rain stops, he’s going to dig around in there to see what’s going on. I’d say not to worry too much about it as we’re getting some exceptional rainfall, except for they had some minor flooding in there in May after a few rainy days. Keaon caulked some, but the water was really flowing in, this time through the gaps around the window.

It did inspire me to go home and check our window wells. Everything looks good, but I do need to get up on the tall part of the house to clean gutters out. I either need a really big extension ladder or to borrow some scaffolding from Albert. That or Liam will have to hold the ladder for me as I climb up onto the house from the garage. But I gotta do something because the gutters overflow even in a moderate rain. Wish you were here to go up there for me. I promise to take pictures if I end up falling off the roof or through the roof into the house. I told Liam maybe he should stand on the ground with a mattress he could throw on the ground if he sees me falling and can estimate where I’ll splat on the ground. That or set up the trampoline again . . .

What I need to do is clean them out and then put some kind of lath over them to let the water in but keep the leaves out. Worst thing is that they’re really not our leaves, but leaves from the poplar trees next door.

This is:

1. The kind of high-quality Old Man Whining you’re missing out on.

2. Going to happen to you when you get hit by the Old Age Truck.

So, as Ernest says, “Yuk it up.”

This was part of our view on Saturday, in the rain, from the Conant Creek trestle on the Ashton-Tetonia trail. Up high where we were, fall had already passed, but in the gullies and valleys like this, there was still some color. When I look at places like this I think it might be fun to live there – but don’t catch me there in the winter. Way too much snow and wind.

But wouldn’t it be fun to own that property and build a little cabin on the flat with an outhouse and just a log stove for heat in the winter. Until you went mad having to dig your way to the privy after every snowfall.

I’m a fair-weather homesteader, to be sure.

We’re headed to Pocatello tomorrow for Randy’s sentencing. I’m grateful he’ll finally know what lies in the future for him, but I’m sure he’s nervous. I’m nervous too. I’m going into this not knowing what to think. Anything could happen.

We (Albert, Serena, Maaike and I) aren’t heading out until 11 am, so I’m debating going in to work for a few hours beforehand. I probably should, because I forgot to activate my out of office email and remind my boss I’m going to be gone. But frankly I’d like to go in so early I could disappear before the bulk of the others arrived. Maybe the dogs will have me up at 3 am again. 

That’s my ideal job right there.

Well, I can’t keep my eyes open any more. This old man is going to go collapse on the basement floor and start drooling.

Love, Dad

Way too Late at the Movies: Mr. Hulot's Holiday

I've long been aware of Jacques Tati's Mr. Hulot character, and the "modern silent" films he made, but I'd never seen one start to finish.

Remedied that this weekend by watching "Les Vacances de M. Hulot," or "Mr. Hulot's Holiday," on YouTube.

I want to watch more full films. Had this been my only Tati experience, I might not have bothered with any more. It's slow, the visual jokes come and go, but many of them are subtle; but not near as subtle as some of the jokes based on sound, and the story - such as it is - felt a bit choppy.

Nevertheless, glad I watched it. It's primed me for more Tati.

I marve4l at visual comedy, particularly that done without computer-aided special effects. Everything in the film is done practically, and I'm sure through a lot of effort. Watching that paint pot drift in and out with the tide then come back makes the film worth watching.

Hey, Donothings . . .

Sent to Sens. Jim Risch, Mike Crapo, and Rep. Mike Simpson

Please tell President Trump, and remind yourself, that you can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding.

President Trump seems to think he can fix the fuel problem by making a deal with Russia and sell out Ukraine, rather than stopping the idiot war with Iran he should not have started in the first place.

If you do nothing, you are complicit in shaking the devil's hand as well.

Fully expecting you to do nothing but toe Trump's line, I remain an unsatisfied constituent.

Sincerely yours,

Brian Davidson

Ammon

Soggy Hiking

Today as the remnants of Tropical Storm Rachel began dumping its load locally, we went on a hike.

We tagged along as the support vehicle for Troop 1010's 20-mile hike to finish up the Hiking merit badge. They opted to hike the Ashton-to-Tetonia Rail Trail State Park, which is a favorite of ours.

Michelle and I decided at one point to hike from Drummond to the trestle bridge over Conant Creek. It was a great hike, though we hiked during a pretty good downpour from the storm and got soaked.

Still, even in the rain, the views are spectacular.

Though fall is mostly over along the upper elevations on the trail, but down in the hollows and gullies there was still some color to be seen.

Begone, Bag O' Wipes

Story time with Brian.

See that bag of wipes flopped over in the hallway? We've had it since Covid Times. The hallway is where it lives. Though I know that is where it lives and occasionally use a wipe from the bag, I am also constantly tripping over it or kicking it and having to put it back into place.

Also, the wipes have dried out a bit, so they're more of a slightly abrasive pad than a wipe, but we do not throw things away in this house.

Today I took a wipe out of it, and noted there is only one wipe left.

I will be glad to see it go.