Month: March 2024

Now that Kyra is living here (and will be for the next year), she’s settling in. Today I saw her relaxing on the couch… the grey couch. Wearing her grey snuggie. Wrapped in a grey blanket.

I suppose if you’re going to lounge around, you might as well be color-coordinated about it.

For a few years now, Pepper and I have been planning to serve a mission for the church. These so-called “senior” missions are quite different than the ones the younger people serve. We’re so proud of all three of our kids for spending 18 to 24 months of their young lives sacrificing their time in the service of God, and I wanted to do something similar.

Well, we finally got organized and submitted our application in mid-February. Typically it takes a couple of weeks to receive an assignment, and then typically you head out “into the field” a month or so after that. The weeks went by, and we didn’t receive anything. Granted, our church has something like seventy thousand missionaries serving worldwide, which means every week there are around 1,400 either leaving or coming home. I’m sure it’s a complicated process. Still, I was impatient to go… or at least to know our assignment so we could plan.

The weeks continued with no word, but today we finally received our call. We coordinated a video chat with the kids so they could all watch us read it. In the olden days, mission calls were sent by mail, so you’d have this big envelope to open and a physical letter to read. Alex read his in 2015, and Kyra got hers in 2017. By the time Zack went on his mission in 2019, calls were sent electronically. It’s a little less exciting, but the end result is the same.

So I set up a camera to record a video of us opening our call, and it apparently only recorded a couple minutes before stopping– and that was well before we actually read the juicy parts. Here we are getting ready, looking at my computer monitor as we opened the web page:

Sadly we don’t have video of it, but when we got to the assignment we both smiled pretty wide. We’re going to serve in the San Diego Mission for a year, beginning in mid-May. To be more specific, we’ve been asked to work in the city of El Centro, California, which is about 120 miles due east of San Diego. It’s in the middle of the Imperial Valley, and less than ten miles from the Mexican border. We looked up the climate and were dismayed to learn that on average, it’s hotter than Phoenix… when we arrive in late May, temperatures will likely be above 100 degrees already!

But we’re going to be teaching and working with youth and young adults as part of the church’s religious education program, and we’ll also be serving in the community in whatever capacity we’re needed. We’re excited about the opportunity to dedicate a year of our not-so-young lives to a worthy cause.

Kyra moved to Montana today!

In preparation for our mission, we coordinated with her to house-sit while we’re gone for a year. Her best friend Hannah is going to move here as well, and the two of them will live rent-free (whee!) and take care of our home. So last night Kyra loaded all her stuff into her car, and this morning at about 3:30 she headed north.

Unfortunately she didn’t get very far. She hit a slick spot on the freeway, spun out, and backed into the concrete median at a pretty good speed. She called us– much to our surprise at 3:30– and we spent a few hours working out what to do. A tow truck moved her car to a body shop barely two miles away (benefits of a big city) and she waited at a nearby 24-hour McDonald’s (thanks again, big city) for the shop to open so she could figure out what they could do.

She told us the car didn’t look too bad, and maybe they could adjust the bumper a bit and she’d be on her way. Admittedly, it was dark and she was pretty flummoxed. Later, when it was light, she sent some photos of the carnage.

Hmm. I’m not sure they can simply “adjust” the bumper.

She ended up securing a rental car through State Farm– who was really fast and helpful– and with the incredible help of some of our friends in the area, transferred all her stuff to the rental car and drove north.

In the end, I’m pretty sure the car is toast, but she wasn’t hurt, and now she’s safely here and ready to spend a year in Big Sky Country.

Today I was at Rosa’s Pizza (as usual) and when I walked up to the counter to order my lunch, I noticed this.

After some head-scratching, I figured out my friend Kricket (with help from Pepper) had pulled this little prank. Well done, ladies, well done.

It’s been a while since Dirk (aka Nooch) and I have been together. We met up with the rest of the high-school gang last July, and we often chat via phone or video call, but hanging out together is always better. On a whim, he grabbed some airline tickets using his points, and we spent four days partying in the party house.

Of course there were a lot of board games. I taught him Utu, and after getting trounced in his first game, he figured out the strategy and did much better in subsequent games. Here he ponders a particularly epic map layout:

I also taught him Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, which he absolutely loved. Again, I trounced him in his first game, but he’s a quick learner and in the final two of our four games, he absolutely thrashed me.

We played a bunch of pool (he tended to win), ping pong (he almost always won), and a few other “filler” games. And between it all we chatted, watched movies, went to Rosa’s twice, and generally had a grand time reminiscing about the Good Old Days (of high school) and all the years in between. We’d break into song, or quote a movie, or scream “Acting!” in the spirit of Jon Lovitz’s classic SNL skit from sometime in the 80’s. Pepper wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, but afterward she told me she can see why we’re still friends after almost forty years. We’re peas in a pod.

It was a great few days hanging out with my oldest and bestest friend. Here’s hoping it’s not too long before we do it again.

The weather was gorgeous today. Temperatures were in the upper 40s, but the sun was brilliant and since we’re coming out of the winter months, the 40s felt like 60s. Pepper and I had some pizza at Rosa’s and were heading to a friend’s house for a visit, but she was running late so we had about half an hour to waste in town. Without any shopping to do, we decided to go to the park near Bigfork Bay. We walked around a bit, just enjoying the sunshine and the quiet calm.

We visited our friend, enjoyed some time with her, and wondered what to do with the rest of our day. Given the weather, we felt like it would be a shame to just go back home. So we drove north. We went to the Park with a Capital P, also known as Glacier. Normally it’s pretty much deserted in the off-season, but there was actually a line at the entrance station! I guess the combination of nice weather and a weekend contributed to the crowd. The famous Going-to-the-Sun Road is only open to the north end of Lake McDonald, but the views along the lake shore were fantastic.

The lake was as still as glass, and the clear glacier water let all the wondrous rocks really show off their colors.

Yes, they really are that colorful! They’re far prettier underwater, so I took a shot looking straight down into the lake. It’s incredible how clear the water is; you can’t even tell it’s there.

After several stops along the lake, we opted for a hike up to Sperry Chalet. The round-trip hike is fourteen miles, which was a bit ambitious since it was already late afternoon, but we went a few miles down the trail. Despite the glorious weather, there were patches of snow. The trail was pretty much covered in ice.

Nothing a nice pair of crampons can’t handle! We slipped ours on and headed across the ice. Since the air was warm, the ice was melting so it was not only smooth but covered in a thin layer of water. That’s crazy slippery unless you’re wearing half-inch steel spikes on your feet. With the crampons, the hike was awesome.

After our hike we wandered down to the boat dock near Lake McDonald Lodge and admired the view to the north. Suddenly we heard a low rumble, like thunder. The sky definitely didn’t show signs of a storm, but then I noticed an avalanche rolling down the mountain. In the photo below, the area of the avalanche is right in the center, just above the trees.

I’ve never seen an avalanche in person! Unfortunately my camera was in my pack, so I didn’t have time to pull it out and take a shot while the snow was roaring down the mountain. We just watched in awe.

On the way back we enjoyed dinner at the Gunsight Saloon, and returned home right around sunset. A relaxing soak in the hot tub, while the orange and pink colors reflected on Flathead Lake, was a perfect ending to our day in the parks.

Today the temperature was in the mid-50s. For the past week it’s been sunny almost every day. The weather forecast calls for continued warmth in the 50s and maybe even the 60s over the next week.

Is it spring? Maybe not officially, but it sure feels like it. And the sunset tonight made us think about when we can get back on the water.

My latest creative challenge for myself is to design a board game that uses only cards. (Yes, even a card game can be called a “board game”.) For one reason or another, all of my previous games end up with hex tiles, bags full of pieces, or even dice. This time I wanted to keep it really simple, while still providing interesting and strategic play.

During our recent trip to Costa Maya and the Mayan ruins at Chacchoben, I had the stirrings of an idea for a Mayan-themed game. I decided to call it Itzan, the name of an ancient Mayan city in the jungles of Guatemala. I worked on the rules and mechanics on the airplane trip home, and finally sat down to design the cards. With the help of my trusty AI art software, even the first prototype can look pretty good when it rolls out of the laser printer on my desk!

Now that I have all the cards ready, and the rules bouncing around my head, it’s time to sit down and play a game against myself.

This is always an interesting moment… it’ll determine whether this idea has potential, or if it’s destined for the trash. Wish me luck…

A few weeks ago I went skiing with Zack in Utah, and had a great time with him. Today I rounded up a few friends and headed up to Blacktail Mountain. I love Blacktail for several reasons: it’s crazy cheap (even with this year’s price increase), it’s less than an hour from my house, and it’s rarely crowded.

The forecast called for clear, sunny skies and temperatures in the high 20’s, which is pretty much ideal for skiing. I love a lot of sunlight, and I don’t love warm temperatures turning the snow to ice late in the day. Well, the forecast was true to form and it ended up being an absolutely gorgeous day.

Here’s a shot from the lift with my friend Tom. He’s in his mid-70’s and still an excellent skiier.

And here’s Brandon, who was thrilled to have a new snowboard for the runs.

My friend Linda also joined us, although I didn’t get a picture with her. She’s about to turn 80 but in her younger days she practically lived on the mountain. She was in the ski patrol, and all her kids were really into skiing– several of them were competive slalom racers. Despite her age, she has flawless form and makes skiing look so easy.

Perhaps the best part of the day was how empty the resort was. I don’t think there were more than a hundred people in total, scattered across all the acres of the mountain. That meant we nearly always had the runs to ourselves. Here’s an example: Tom and Brandon are following me down the hill, and we didn’t meet another person the whole way down. Awesome.

Pepper spent the day shredding the slopes on her snowboard. Afterward we all enjoyed a big dinner at Tamarack Brewing, one of our favorite restaurants in the area. Today is one of the best days I’ve ever spent skiing…