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We’ve had our paved driveway for almost two years. It’s been great, but in order to keep it great we need to take care of it. The asphalt should easily last ten years, and we’ve been told from multiple sources that having it seal-coated can extend that to twenty years. Given the exhorbitant cost of so much paving, we figured it was worth the additional cost to seal it.

After an impressive series of delays, it finally happened today. Because the crew needed to spray the coating directly onto the asphalt, they had to clean it first. Following a bit of magic with a sweeper truck, all the winter sand and pine needles and dirt were gone. Then they walked the length of the driveway– all 1,800 feet– and coated it.

The result looks gorgeous.

Of course it won’t take long for it to be littered with debris again, but for just a moment it looks brand new.

The strange thing about this particular house project is that we’re a thousand miles away. I arranged the contractor and coordinated the work, but it was all done while we’re in California. Greta sent these photos. Our house continues to get better, even when we’re gone…

As Pepper and I work on our Spanish we’re doing our best to decipher billboards and store signs. There are some billboards that say “BURN A BALE, GO TO JAIL”. This area produces vast quantities of hay, and apparently there are problems with arsonists. We saw a billboard in Spanish…

… and we wondered if it was as catchy as the English version. It rhymes, as you can see, but when translated it reads “HE WHO BURNS HAY RECEIVES CONDEMNATION”. Pretty harsh stuff.

This week we’ve been touring the missionary apartments– something we do every month to make sure everything is working properly and they’re treating their housing well. While doing that today, I remembered I hadn’t sent a text to Elder Davis’ mom. Every time we meet a new missionary, Pepper and I take a picture with them and text their moms to tell them how much we’re enjoying serving with their son or daughter. When our kids were on missions, we loved getting texts like that, and hearing that they were working hard.

Elder Davis probably thought it was a bit odd when I abruptly asked him, “Hey, what’s your mom’s phone number?” But after I explained he understood, and I sent her a text.

She loved it. They always do.

It rained today!

For a place that gets one or maybe two days of rain a year, it was pretty magical when the water fell just now. I stepped outside to snap a photo. It felt like being in a sauna: it was still brutally hot (well over 100), very humid (obviously), and the raindrops had a weird warm feel.

Within five minutes it had stopped, and now the sun is out again and the sidewalks are dry. But for just a moment, magic.

My friend Jessie received my latest mission email (I send them weekly) and apparently her phone scanned the message and determined that there was an event scheduled at 4:30 in the morning on August 9. The event is called The fun betwixt the work because that was the subject of my email.

I daresay using AI to scan emails for possible calendar items might go awry at times…

Every month, the San Diego senior missionaries get together for an activity of some sort. This month, it was a baseball game at Petco Park between the Padres and the Rockies. It was a beautiful evening for a game:

Twenty of us had tickets together, and we all sported our name tags:

Given my Colorado roots, I felt obligated to cheer for the Rockies. So when they scored the first run of the game with a solo homer, I whooped and hollered. The rest of my section– including the other missionaries– soundly booed. Whether they were booing me or the Rockies was hard to tell. Another home run by the Rockies a couple innings later led me to cheer loudly again (and led them to boo).

In the end, the Padres walked away with a 3-2 victory. Even though “my” team lost, it was a great time.

We visited the Museum of Photographic Arts in Balboa Park today. I thought it might showcase different photographic techniques, or show the history of photography, or even include a few old-school cameras.

Nope. It just had a bunch of artwork. Like this:

It’s a little hard to read the title of this piece, but it’s called Ceiling of My House. And, true to form, it’s a photograph of the ceiling of this guy’s house.

I guess I’m too lowbrow to understand art.

A couple years ago, Zack was sporting quite a hairdo.

He’d just let it grow and grow until it became a massive curly explosion. Finally I think enough ladies said they preferred it to be a little more trimmed, and now his hair isn’t quite as crazy.

But tonight we saw a parking attendant with an amazing ‘do.

I wonder what the ladies say about it…

Walking along the streets of Seaport Village, I couldn’t resist a pose beside this little beauty.

We bought a museum pass for Balboa Park, which has a number of museums– some more well-known than others. For the next year, it lets us visit any of the museums at any time. We dropped in on the Air and Space Museum with our friends the Knudsens:

Then, with some time before our dinner, we decided on a whim to take a look at the Model Railroad Museum.

It was so cool!

There were many enormous models of landscapes, towns, scenes, and of course miles of (scale model) train tracks running through all of it.

I loved the little “Easter eggs” scattered throughout the scenery.

In some cases, I wondered how you’d even build a model of, say, a car accident where someone lost a load of caged chickens.

Notice the little white chickens running amok. There’s even a tiny rooster right in the center of the shot. The attention to detail was astonishing.

There were even scale models of local areas, including some of the canyons in the area, and El Centro itself (as it was around the turn of the 20th Century).

In short, a museum that I thought would be pretty dry and dull turned out to be a ton of fun. We’ll definitely go back… hopefully at some point with Ollie!