It is Still Hot

Boy, I really know how to kill a weekend. I suppose next weekend is the last weekend of the doldrums of summer and then I will have to get motivated. I cooked for the week and I finished a music compilation CD, which anyone who's made one knows they take forever, for my DJ friend for her birthday, read The Source, and not much else.

Now that the Inquisition has driven three significant rabbis back to the Middle East, I am completely fascinated by The Source and can barely put it down.

Both cats were restless all weekend, as if they sense change, and Cruiser whined until I gave him a good brushing last night. Then he got up on the back of the chair, put his arms around me and purred in my ear, and everything was right with the world.

In case you don't believe me, here is Cruiser drinking from the hose,


He prefers it if I hold the hose up, but it is hard to do that and take a picture.
And his favorite spot when it is hot,


This is Spit in one of her favorite spots when it is hot, and in an uncharacteristically unladylike pose,


Anyone notice that mail delivery slowed down? The postman took two days to take my rent check out of the mailbox. That is all I noticed this month, but I only have two letters a month that I mail. The IRS is late, too, or else it is the mailman's fault, my monthly bill arrived too late to pay on time.

I also went to CostCo this weekend, and I hate going on the weekend, but my membership is almost expired and I will not renew it right away, so I went to stock up on what I usually buy. I must have signed up right when I got here, since I signed up for a year. One tip about food storage, you need to find some self discipline. I bought that can of peanuts, a double large bag of raisins, and a large bag of M&Ms to make my own trail mix. This should last me more than a year, but I can't stay out of it. That is one reason I cooked for the week, if I have to chose between trail mix and cooking when I get home from work, I chose trail mix. Another tip, there are not as many M&Ms as you think in that trail mix, more like half of what you think.

Fortunately, the Five Tibetan Rites are holding the effect of that trail mix at bay. I am now at 10 reps of each and you would not think that when you add just one more rep that you could really feel it, but I do.

The heat requires the opposite routine as the cold and I am sorry when I forget. In summer in the morning I have to close the windows and the blinds to keep the heat out, in the winter I have to close the blinds to keep the cold out and turn down the thermostat so I don't cook while under the warm covers. If I don't remember to shut up my room in the morning, I can't get it to cool down enough to sleep.

Last year we had a mild autumn and it was winter overnight when the time changed in November. I figure we will have another mild fall this year to go with the late spring, but unlike So Cal, we really have fall here and it will arrive soon. One more month to do yard chores and then I am done for the year. Now that I am almost done, the backyard grass is mostly all green again due to it's new sprinkler, but the front is still half dead. Interesting that the dead part starts in a perfect line where the cast shadow of the roof ends, I'm thinking that it is not grass for full sun and has nothing to do with sprinklers or water. Next year I am going to plant one of those old roses I love in part of the dead grass section, forget grass, it is a pain.

I bought a super warm coat on super, super sale. It was a great deal, but hard to think about if I like it or not, as I am trying it on when it is 100 degrees outside. Super warm coats make everyone look like a round puff ball anyway, unless you are a six foot super model, and I guess if you are cold enough you don't care.

My prediction is that my boss quits by Friday. You heard it here.

What Next?

It's been hot. Every day for a week the weatherman predicted the following day would reach 100 degrees, but it never made it until yesterday. Today started gloomy and it is still gloomy with occasional sprinkles of rain and the weatherman will be wrong again. I did not realize that the week I arrived I got record breaking temperatures, 104° on August 26th and tied with 1996, and that the average temperature for the end of August is only in the high 80's.

Today I have a nagging stomach ache and every time I get up to do something I feel worse and have to sit down. I may be a good weekend to finish Michener's The Source. The rabbis stopped arguing and the Crusaders are just about finished slaughtering every person in sight, regardless of their religion. It is hard to comprehend that time and not wonder how Jesus' message got so lost. The book is much more interesting now and makes me think about finally reading Will Durant's History of Civilization, the series that I hauled all the way here and that fills more than one packing box, since The Source makes me realize how much of history I do not know.

Now that I am here a year and so much did not happen that I hoped for, I'm wondering what next? If I was enlightened it would not matter, I would be completely in the present, but I'm not.

I walked into work Friday morning so much in my protective bubble that the administrator came over and asked me if I was okay. I guess she said good morning to me and I did not answer. There is a report due on Fridays and three of us take turns completing it and yesterday was my turn. Everyone hates it. We never get all of the information for it to be right the first time and that is intentional. For my boss it is about power and for me it is about how not to play the game. It was a week of small slights and by Friday morning when I was looking at having to do that report I had enough.

A conversation with the administrator got me back in the present and in the end it was a good day for my spiritual practice, which included making my boss go ballistic. The more I stay present and calm the crazier she gets, like a great example of light shining on darkness, or like I am water and she is the Wicked Witch of the West.

I am missing 60 Days of Enlightenment, which gave me a writing theme that paralleled what I was doing. I'm going to have to find something else. I moved here for a smaller, quieter life, which I thought would be more conducive to a spiritual life, so I think I might write about a time when things were simpler, maybe the turn of the century. As I was packing my lunch this week I was wondering what kids used to take to school for lunch before we had grocery stores with food from all over the world. No fruit that is not in season, no Ziploc bags, no nitrate-filled lunch meat, no snack pack pudding.

Along those lines, I read about fishing in Idaho by concussion in the 1870s. That means creating an explosion in the river and stunning the fish. The problem was that this would yield too many fish to eat locally and they did not have ice yet, so they could not get the fish to market. No one would consider fishing by concussion today, but makes me think about how portable ice changed the world. Here is the whole article,

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/08/14/v-print/1759932/most-pioneers-thought-idahos-fish.html

It is good fishing season here and hunting season, too. I watched my neighbor across the street leave this morning in his camo hunting overalls with his rifle. I am not interested in hunting, but I really should get out and try fishing again. The geese were quiet during nesting season, but they are starting to take off honking overhead again. I think that sound is one of my favorite things about Idaho.

Easy Being Green, It Is Not

Easy Being Green, It Is Not


Peter de Sève made this wonderful illustration of Kermit the Frog and Yoda discussing what it means to be green while fishing at a Dagobah swamp.
(Posted by Scott Beale http://laughingsquid.com/easy-being-green-it-is-not/)

I confess I did something I swore I would never do again, I bought a cheap garden hose. Never buy a cheap garden hose. They get a kink in them and it never comes out. The cheap hose was $10, the real hose was $40, $40 would have been worth it. I figured that hose season is short here and it wouldn't matter and I was wrong, at least about the not mattering part.

The green peppers are more forgiving than the cucumbers. They grow slow and leave you a long time to pick them, unlike the cucumbers that get huge overnight. How do they harvest baby cucumbers for baby pickles? Someone must sit there watching them sprout. I picked the last three strawberries, which were the best, and pulled out two of the plants to make room for the cucumber. There were still flowers on some of the strawberries, so I am giving them some more time. The cucumber is still at it and the green peppers are covered with peppers of various sizes. Sarah's raspberries are turning pink and her plants are huge, I know there will be plenty of raspberries to give away.

Yesterday I sat on the patio of Goodies with three of my friends, I had iced coffee and they had ice cream. Mary Kay brought me two Spudnuts. Spudnuts are made right here in Boise. It was hot yesterday and Mary Kay, the nurse, had them preserved with an ice pack from work. I put them in the freezer because I thought they were ice cream, but I ate one tonight and I think they are marshmallow. Marshmallow covered in chocolate and then rolled in coconut, it was pretty good, although I like coconut. Sitting out from 6 to 7:30 pm I got really sunburned. It seems late in the day to be getting sunburned, but the light is brighter here.

One of my friends couldn't make it, so we are making plans to go back. I'm trying to spend as much time sitting on patios as I can while I can. Next time I think I will have ice cream and I will take pictures of the inside of Goodies and it's soda fountain and shelves of every candy.

One Year Anniversary

The electric bill came. I am used to being really conservative with the air conditioning and the bill went up $5 to $21. I think I can afford to be cooler. It is hot this weekend and expected to be hot all week and I am going to run that air conditioning as much as I want. The gas company has filed to decrease it's prices, so I can afford to be warmer this winter.

I went out yesterday morning and got caught up in the Tour d' Fat. Everyone dresses up themselves and their bikes and rides over to Ann Morrison Park, parades around and drinks beer. There is no theme, actually I think the theme is no theme.

This morning I went over to Julia Davis Park to see how the roses were doing,











I was a bit late and it got too bright out for pictures, late afternoon may be better. The roses seem to be doing fine even with their late start and I was happy to see that they have my favorite old roses, although they were almost done flowering. I had two old roses in the front of my Simi house that I loved, and seeing them today reminded me how much I miss them.

One year ago today I arrived after two tough days of driving and two still alive cats. The house looked better than I remembered and the cats checked out the view and located the best hiding spots. My stuff arrived five days later on the hottest day of the year. Within a few weeks I met some people that I still see today and that I am meeting tomorrow to celebrate. I feel like I've know most of them my whole life. We are going to have coffee and maybe an ice cream at on the patio at Goodies in Hyde Park. I planned it for Monday when it is less crowded, since the summer weekends downtown are packed with everyone trying to be outside while they can.

In some ways I can't believe it has already been a year, but the big changes in seasons seem to mark and slow time. I am interested to see if I have as hard of a time with winter when I am not full of financial fear. It took me almost eight months to find a job. I now have medical insurance, which I don't really care about, but I do care about dental and have an appointment with the dentist in October. It is funny to be looking forward to going to the dentist, but I really am.

The first painting I did after I got here was the study "Over Boise",


and my favorites of the last year and two of the most recent are the mother goose and the fall landscape,



My painting has really grown over the last year. It seems to me to be more confident.

I am still surprised how much I like it here, since my choice seems pretty spontaneous, but I love being in what is really a small town, where people are more private and more real. In all of my driving through beautiful wide open spaces in the last year and a half I keep wondering why people live in cities.

I like being home and I like being on the road to see something new and I like being out with my friends and I like being by myself. I still do not understand the feelings and the urgency that led me here and I don't understand why I am still on the financial edge. I still feel the pain of loss sometimes, like when I saw those old roses this morning and remembered the ones I used to have that I chose and planted and fostered. They say when one door closes, another one opens, but I have not found that to be true for me. Being in Boise feels like a door I opened, but it opened with the benefit of all of the things that happened before it.

With that I will end with verse 79 from the ultimate book of poetry,

Tao Te Ching
A New English Version, with Forward and Notes by Stephen Mitchell

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
There is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
Fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing from others.

Action and Awe

I am going to finish 60 days to Enlightenment today, since I think the last entry is a disappointment and I do not want it to be part of my anniversary post tomorrow.

The next topic is Action/Doing with a quote from Mother Teresa,

"There should be less talk; a preaching point is not a meeting point. What do you do then? Take a broom and clean someone's house. That says enough."

I wondering if take a broom and clean your own house might be better, and by that I mean take responsibility for your own actions. The topic makes me think more of actions are louder than words, but I agree with the idea of that there should be less talk. If you cannot communicate your point in a few minutes, either you are not communicating or the other person isn't listening and any more talking is a waste of time. I remember trying to communicate how I felt to my ex-husband and it would turn into talking that went round and round over the same thing and I thought it was me that was not communicating when really he was not listening and I would finally cry to make it stop. I have not had to do that in a really long time, thank goodness.

The verses below reportedly were written on the wall of Mother Teresa's home for children in Calcutta, India, and are widely attributed to her,

People are often unreasonable, irrational, and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some unfaithful friends and some genuine enemies. Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and sincere people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.
What you spend years creating, others could destroy overnight. Create anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.
Give the best you have, and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.
In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

The last topic is Awe, with a poem by the author. The author! It is a terrible poem and I am not going to post it. I tried to find a different poem for the topic and it is a difficult topic for words, so I will give the author a break, but to end with your own poem and put it in the same category with the greats and use it for the biggest topic just does not seem very enlightened to me.

Thanks again to Colleen for giving me the book. I think she gave it to me in May before I left So Cal and 60 days only took me more than a year. I am not a poetry fan, but I learned about many authors and poets I did not know and enjoyed much of their work, although my favorite is still Gibran's The Prophet. Interesting that The Prophet is set up as a story with a series of poems on topics. Most of all, I enjoyed pondering different spiritual topics and writing about them on this blog when I did not have much else to write. One of my friends challenged herself to write a prayer every morning and that sounds like another path to enlightenment, or inner peace, wait, inner peace and enlightenment are the same thing.

Having finished the book, am I enlightened now? I think enlightenment takes more than 60 days, even when you spread the 60 days over more than a year.

Nonviolence and Comparison

As much as I love those long summer nights, I am enjoying that it is dark by 9:30 now, it means I can get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I finished the Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest and then a PD James book and now I picked up The Source again. I was more than half way through and then the Rabbis started debating writing the Torah and they just go on and on, if the darkness doesn't help me sleep, that book will.

The next two topics in Wisdom of the Ages are Nonviolence and Comparison. Nonviolence includes part of an essay by Martin Luther King, Jr. This is not the one included in the book,

The Power of Non-violence
Martin Luther King, Jr.
June 4, 1957

From the very beginning there was a philosophy undergirding the Montgomery boycott, the philosophy of nonviolent resistance. There was always the problem of getting this method over because it didn’t make sense to most of the people in the beginning. We had to use our mass meetings to explain nonviolence to a community of people who had never heard of the philosophy and in many instances were not sympathetic with it. We had meetings twice a week on Mondays and on Thursdays, and we had an institute on nonviolence and social change. We had to make it clear that nonviolent resistance is not a method of cowardice. It does resist. It is not a method of stagnant passivity and deadening complacency. The nonviolent resister is just as opposed to the evil that he is standing against as the violent resister but he resists without violence. This method is nonaggressive physically but strongly aggressive spiritually.

Here is the link to the entire essay:
http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=1131

I do not completely agree with the idea of nonviolence, but perhaps I really believe in self-defense. I stood in the way of a raised hand and stopped it's effects with reason, I know it can be done, and understand the power of positive thinking and love. I also understand the film, No Country for Old Men, and believe that kind of evil exists and cannot be answered with nonviolence.

There is a better story in the book of Buddha. A man decides to test Buddha's reputation for peace and nonviolence. The man follows Buddha around for three days and is verbally abusive. For three days Buddha responds with love and kindness. The man finally asks how Buddha does this and Buddha replies, "If someone offers you a gift, and you do not accept that gift, to whom does the gift belong?"

The next topic is Comparison, with a poem by Ogden Nash,

So That’s Who I Remind Me Of
By Ogden Nash

When I consider men of golden talents,
I’m delighted, in my introverted way,
To discover, as I’m drawing up the balance,
How much we have in common, I and they.

Like Burns, I have a weakness for the bottle,
Like Shakespeare, little Latin and less Greek;
I bite my fingernails like Aristotle;
Like Thackeray, I have a snobbish streak.

I’m afflicted with the vanity of Byron,
I’ve inherited the spitefulness of Pope;
Like Petrarch, I’m a sucker for a siren,
Like Milton, I’ve a tendency to mope.

My spelling is suggestive of a Chaucer;
Like Johnson, well, I do not wish to die
(I also drink my coffee from the saucer);
And if Goldsmith was a parrot, so am I.

Like Villon, I have debits by the carload,
Like Swinburne, I’m afraid I need a nurse;
By my dicing is Christopher out-Marlowed,
And I dream as much as Coleridge, only worse.

In comparison with men of golden talents,
I am all a man of talent ought to be;
I resemble every genius in his vice, however heinous—
Yet I write so much like me.

I suppose it will help if you knew who all the people he is talking about were. Don't compare your insides to other people outsides. If you could put your problems, or your faults, in a bucket with everyone else's and then had to take some out, believe me you would pick your own.

I liked this Nash poem much better,

Portrait of the Artist as a Prematurely Old Man
By Ogden Nash

It is common knowledge to every schoolboy and even every Bachelor of Arts,
That all sin is divided into two parts.
One kind of sin is called a sin of commission, and that is very important,
And it is what you are doing when you are doing something you ortant,
And the other kind of sin is just the opposite and is called a sin of omission
and is equally bad in the eyes of all right-thinking people, from
Billy Sunday to Buddha,
And it consists of not having done something you shuddha.
I might as well give you my opinion of these two kinds of sin as long as,
in a way, against each other we are pitting them,
And that is, don’t bother your head about the sins of commission because
however sinful, they must at least be fun or else you wouldn’t be
committing them.
It is the sin of omission, the second kind of sin,
That lays eggs under your skin.
The way you really get painfully bitten
Is by the insurance you haven’t taken out and the checks you haven’t added up
the stubs of and the appointments you haven’t kept and the bills you
haven’t paid and the letters you haven’t written.
Also, about sins of omission there is one particularly painful lack of beauty,
Namely, it isn’t as though it had been a riotous red-letter day or night every
time you neglected to do your duty;
You didn’t get a wicked forbidden thrill
Every time you let a policy lapse or forget to pay a bill;
You didn’t slap the lads in the tavern on the back and loudly cry Whee,
Let’s all fail to write just one more letter before we go home, and this round
of unwritten letters is on me.
No, you never get any fun
Out of things you haven’t done,
But they are the things that I do not like to be amid,
Because the suitable things you didn’t do give you a lot more trouble than the
unsuitable things you did.
The moral is that it is probably better not to sin at all, but if some kind of
sin you must be pursuing,
Well, remember to do it by doing rather than by not doing.

You never get any fun out of things you haven't done. I should have saved that for my anniversary post, since that sounds like, go ahead and go on that adventure to Idaho.

Appreciation and Forgiveness

This afternoon I had a good conversation with my boss' boss. She is tough but also kind and I really admire that combination. She initiated the conversation and I appreciated being able to be honest. It appears I have some job security, at least as much as you can nowadays. I think that is the first conversation I've had with a boss where we talked about people being intimidated by me and they did not tell me I had to work on not being intimidating. I also had someone else at work describe me as calm, hah! It must be my efforts to deflect the spinning top that works next to me.

Last night I decided to go by Lowe's and buy some replacement sprinklers and accidentally got on the freeway. I got caught in traffic and I had to slow down to 50 mph for a while. I replaced three sprinklers. Replacing sprinklers is not my favorite home improvement job, but I replaced a whole lot of sprinklers in my life and really the hardest part is buying the right replacement. I figure the cost of sprinklers that actually water will be offset by water savings, but we are not talking about a long sprinkler season here.

Before I went on my trip I treated my car to an oil change. It didn't really need it, but it's been 8 months and I was driving pretty many miles. With using cruise control half of the time and the oil change, I got 59 mpg. That's awesome. To celebrate, I pealed off the last of the LA carpool lane sticker left on my bumper. It's no good in LA anymore anyway and was the last identification with Cali left on my car.

Once it got hotter, my cats stopped being cuddly, but they are back at it since I returned from my trip even though it is still hot. Spit lays across me when I watch TV, aren't you hot Spit? Cruiser lays next to me with his arm across mine and his chin on my hand when I go to bed, aren't you hot Cruiser?

It was much cooler this morning and this must be the hint of fall before it gets really hot again. It's hard not to think about all of those things that need to get done before winter that you don't think about in Cali. I would like to paint my room, but I would have to do it while I can still open a window all night, which gives me to about October. I did rearrange my room. The best place for the dresser was right on top of the air vent and this didn't seem so bad in winter, but this summer I felt like I wasn't getting any air in my room, so I moved the dresser off of the vent and against another wall. This means that my bed has to be right under the window, which is a bit weird and not good feng shui, but at least it is on the second story.

Some other funny things here are the spider webs and how I have to keep up with the indoor trash in summer. All winter I can't open a window, which really bothers me, but the house never smelled. Now that I can open all the windows, which are open almost all the time, I have to keep up with the trash and clean the cat box straightaway. Onion peels go straight in the outdoor trash and the broiler pan gets cleaned right after dinner. Things are also sprouting or molding quickly even in the fridge, I threw out a new garlic bulb because it was all sprouts. I have not noticed my house to be more spidery than any other house I've lived in, but there are webs outside everywhere. Once a week I am outside sweeping webs away and I think if I left them my house would look perfect for Halloween.

The next two topics from Wisdom of the Ages are Appreciation and Forgiveness.

For Appreciation there is a poem by Dorothy Parker,

On Being A Woman

Why is it, when I am in Rome,
I'd give an eye to be at home,
But when on native earth I be,
My soul is sick for Italy?

And why with you, my love, my lord,
Am I spectacularly bored,
Yet do you up and leave me- then
I scream to have you back again?

Sounds like a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side issue to me, and that is not unique to women. The enlightened answer, again, is to live in the present. That is hard when you are really hating the present. When I was not getting a job I kept reminding myself what I was doing at that moment, right now I am brushing my teeth, right now I am updating my resume, right now I am making a call. This helped me stay in the present. Then I was also walking into rooms and forgetting why I was there, which my friends told me might be due to menopause.

For Forgiveness there is a poem by Langston Hughes,

Cross

My old man's a white old man
And my old mother's black.
If ever I cursed my white old man
I take my curses back.
If ever I cursed my black old mother
And wished she were in hell,
I'm sorry for that evil wish
And now I wish her well
My old man died in a fine big house.
My ma died in a shack.
I wonder were I'm going to die,
Being neither white nor black?

I just do not understand what the big deal is with Langston Hughes. Forgiveness is for you, not for the person you are forgiving. Ever been consumed by anger towards someone? You are the one who is consumed, not them, they are probably happily going about their business without a thought about you. If you think about forgiveness as something you need, and you need it in order to live in the present (that persistent enlightenment topic), it is easier to find. I have a meditation book with a great meditation on forgiveness where you imagine who you need to forgive as a dove in a cage, you take them out, tell them you forgive them, and let them fly away. It worked for me, although I still think about my ex-husband dying a slow, miserable death as guilt causes him to rot from the inside out. Okay, so maybe it didn't work 100%.

New Picture

In honor of my upcoming one year anniversary, I thought I would take a new picture of myself. I find it really embarrassing to do myself, but I knew my neighbors were gone this morning, so at least I could embarrass myself in private.

I have to set up the tripod and the timer and find something to focus on in place of myself. Then I run back and forth posing and then checking the picture, glasses off for the picture, glasses on to check the picture. Every once in a while the auto-focus decides to adjust itself to the background without me in it and I have to put back my stand-in and focus again. All this on top of me not thinking that pictures of myself look like me anymore. I confess that I did some retouching and removed this age bump I have near my eye, but really I think that the $10 Ponds has done a better job than the $80 Elizabeth Arden anti-aging, anti-wrinkle cream.

When I came home from my trip there were two big cucumbers waiting and I picked another one today to give to Sarah. I swear those things grow quick, one day there is no cucumber and the next day there is one 6 inches long. I picked a few green peppers. I'm not sure how big they are supposed to get and the ones I picked look smaller than the ones in the store, but they look ripe and green. Those darn strawberry plants are hanging on and producing a few berries a day, they are small, but I have picked more than the dozen I thought I would get. I might even get a third planter and give the strawberries their own planter to themselves next year. Sarah's raspberry is growing taller than the fence and full of green berries,


Seems to me this is late for raspberries. I went to the fruit and vegetable stand this morning, which for some reason I always have a hard time finding, and the guy said everything is late. They just got corn and it is looking a bit small, but it is from the second crop they planted this year because the first crop drowned. They had raspberries and I bought corn and raspberries and local honey.

This afternoon I took a shot at raisin bread. Every time I use raisins in baking they turn out like small rocks and I never knew the trick is to soak them first. I soaked them in warm water with cinnamon. Kneading the raisins and walnuts into the bread was a bit of a pain and I think the bread could use twice as many,


Next time I will try twice as many raisins and spread them on rolled out dough and roll them inside, like Sarah Lee.

The Drive Home

When I set out for Bruneau Dunes I felt really happy for no reason and anyone driving by me on the freeway would have thought I was listening to a really good joke. On my way to Idaho Falls last Saturday morning I felt the same way and I wondered if maybe I should just buy an Airstream and drive around the US and enjoy the freedom of the open road. By Monday morning I was sick of the road and the hotel bed and getting in and out of the car. I drove straight home and did not take one picture. I did stop at Malad Gorge State Park near Hagerman to see if I might need to go back, and I will go back on a cooler day.

If I did that trip again I would take a week. I would stop and hike around the Grand Tetons for a day and I would continue up to Yellowstone and hike around there for a few days. I would also stay in single cabins, which I saw a whole lot of as I was driving around Wyoming, although I think you have to reserve them well in advance. And I would take a hiking partner.

I enjoyed listening to AM radio on the drive home, since I do not get the chance during the week anymore. I listened to Rush Limbaugh talk about the so called budget agreement as the stock market crashed and I listened to the press wait as Obama was almost an hour late for his own press conference. He might as well have walked to the window of the Oval Office and flipped the public the bird. Although I spent two days in beautiful country and I have the pictures to show for it, I came home with the same unease that I felt before I left.

I have now seen a great deal of southern Idaho and so far I think my favorite is Bruneau, that is the town not the dunes. It looks like high desert, but it is on the Snake River, so it has patches of desert and green with the blue river running through. I would like my farm there, maybe I will go back and take a closer look, but I need to get one trip north before winter. My neighbors went to Cascade lake and McCall this weekend, quickly letting me reciprocate for them taking care of my cats last weekend.

I am surprised how much of Idaho looks like the Midwest, although the sky is very different here, it is blue. The sky in the Midwest is never blue and I could not live there. Today the sky in Boise is not so much blue, it is hot and hazy with enough humidity to suck all the motivation out of you.

The Grand Teton Guide that I picked up while there includes tips on lightning safety. Avoid mountaintops, ridges, open areas and lone trees, do not stand on tree roots, if boating, get off of the water, and afternoon storms are common in summer, so get to a safe place before storms hit. Sounds like morning hikes are a better idea, but what's the problem with tree roots? It also sounds like driving up to high ground to get a good picture of a dramatic storm is probably a bad idea. There were warnings about feeding the bears in the Grand Tetons and food storage is required, which means your food is in your car or in a bear-resistant food locker unless you are eating it. Or you could just eat Frosted Flakes, bears won't eat Frosted Flakes, which makes me wonder what is in those things. Wyoming was also picky about people bringing in aquatic invasive species and I saw regular boat inspections on my drive. Idaho is picky about invasive species in general and is just as concerned about invasive plants as it is invasive mussels.

I am glad to be home, although I was not glad to be back at work, and my cats do not seem to be too pissed off at me.

There was a bit of fall in the air, which I thought was just me, but my neighbor felt the same way, and I felt myself worrying that winter is coming on way too soon and I need to hurry up and get out in the heat. Tonight there is some drama going on across the street and I am thinking winter is not so bad, it is super quiet in the winter and there may be drama going on inside, but no one is outside sharing their drama with me.

Grand Tetons

While driving through Idaho and Wyoming last weekend I must have seen every motorcycle owner in the entire northwest headed east to South Dakota for the 71st Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. The rally started August 8th and I'm sure I saw more motorcycles on the road than cars. There was a big group meeting up outside of Twin Falls, but mostly they traveled single or in pairs.

As soon as I headed out of Idaho Falls the landscape got greener,


This is Swan Valley,


I'm too busy looking at the view and I missed my turn to Victor and went down to Alpine and back north to Jackson, which cost me more than half an hour. I guess they call it Jackson instead of Jackson Hole now. I walked around Jackson and could have spent a few grand in the Pendleton store, but I didn't. The galleries were closed, since it was Sunday, although I did see a small Terpning in the window of one, so I ate breakfast in Cafe Genevieve.

My family went on two big driving trips, one when I was around 10 across the US to Michigan and back, and one when I was 15 north through Washington to Canada and then back down through Yellowstone. My dad took a whole lot of pictures and I remember a whole lot of waiting around bored until he was done, so I never wanted to subject anyone to waiting for me to do the same, but by the time I was sitting in Cafe Genevieve, I was tired of being by myself. Maybe it was because I was sitting at the bar next to a hung over guy having a Bloody Mary and watching a group of bikers forget their jackets and not sitting on the patio having a conversation with my breakfast. Anyway, Jackson Hole was one of the few towns that I've seen in the last 5 years that did not look sad, it looked like it was doing really well.


Outside of Jackson Hole is the National Elk Refuge,



Then I am in Grand Teton National Park,






I'm not sure I want to live anywhere where the wildflowers do not come out until august, but I really liked the forest there, especially the Targhee Forest, because it was full of aspen and not just pine trees. The best wildflowers I saw were on my way out of the park, towards Victor, the way I should have gone the first time, but there was no place to stop and the grade was so steep going up that all I could think about was that my car was going to explode going 40 mph.

From Victor I went north to Driggs and the Grand Targhee Resort, because I heard that there is a better view of the Grand Tetons from the Idaho side.




Then back to Swan Valley,





I thought the landscape from Victor to Swan Valley looked like what I think Wyoming looks like, but this is still Idaho. Driggs was full of partly finished planned communities with giant homes that must have got caught in the housing crash, but I wondered what in the world people did in Driggs, Idaho, population 1,100, to pay for a giant house.

When I got back to Idaho Falls it rained again and I got some cloud and sun drama,


Does it rain every summer night in Idaho Falls? People said they had a long winter that lasted to June.

Waterfalls

Sara and Joe had a poker party, which I missed because I was gone, and they hung white lights from the tree to the garage and the house. They're not the little white lights, they are big and round, more like circus lights, and when they are on it looks awesome. I hope they leave them up for a while.

Saturday was about waterfalls.

I drove from Boise to Bliss and then turned down the 30 towards Hagerman. From Bliss to Hagerman there are cliffs full of waterfalls,


There were not very many due to the time of year, and sorry it's not a great picture. I was not too interested in the Hagerman fossil beds, so I did not stop, but this is the scene out of Hagerman, towards Twin Falls,



That is the snake river and most of the scenery around the snake river looks like this, with a patchwork of yellow and green.

Then I went on to Twin Falls and the Shoshone Falls. This is where Evil Knievel tried his jump,


You can see part of a rainbow that seems to always be there at the base of the Falls.




Then I went over the Perrine Bridge which is 1,500 feet long and 486 feet above the Snake River. It might be impressive to look at from below, or to look down from, but it wasn't much to drive.

Then I went straight through from Twin Falls to Idaho Falls. That part of the trip was almost all yellow and sagebrush, until you get to American Falls, which is on a reservoir. After all that sagebrush it was quite a surprise to come up on all that water. Idaho Falls is not much, with a failed attempt at a revitalized downtown which just looks sad. My hotel was next to a green belt and more falls. I do not know what was originally there, but Idaho has harnessed the falls for energy and it looks man made,



That is a Mormon Temple in the background.

I had some time to relax and eat and then I went to the "Idaho Paints Idaho" reception at the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho. There was the usual about half nice work and political award winners. I was surprised to see some really nice, and really expensive, oils and one of them done in the spirit of Sargent won best of show, so it wasn't all political, although the subject had nothing to do with Idaho. The museum had a patio with a great view and I was out on the patio thinking I would rather be out photographing the great sky that was rolling in that be at that reception when I met the wife of one of the museum directors. She was pretty interesting and helps put on the The HeART of Idaho Century Ride,

http://www.theartmuseum.org/Century.htm

When I met her husband he said he would buy my painting of Glenn's Ferry if he had more room and he might get his sister to buy it. Overall my paintings were smaller than everyone else's and some of the few watercolors. My favorites were two pastels, but my favorites tend to always be pastels lately. Here's the view from the museum patio,


Then I went out headed for higher ground to try to get a picture of that dramatic sky that was rolling in and it started to rain big raindrops. Then it started to thunder and lightning. In So Cal I wouldn't think about driving to the top of a hill and walking around with lightning, it is really too far away, but I don't think that is true in Idaho. I took a few pictures, but it got dark fast,




But I did get a better shot of that temple,



It was too much driving and not enough sleep and I am glad to be home. I stayed in the same hotel both nights and they had a door issue. Heavy doors that loudly automatically slammed shut. It was a long day of driving on Sunday and someone came in after 10 pm and made four trips up and down the stairwell, in the stairwell door, which is next to my room, slam, into their room next to mine, slam, then up at 6 am, slam.

The Grand Tetons post tomorrow.