Neil deGrasse Tyson

So Monday night (March 6) Lisa told me that she had a surprise she wanted to give me while we were in Las Vegas but she forgot it and home and even though we had been home for a week she had still forgotten to give it to me. She then told me she had tickets to go see Neil deGrasse Tyson speak for tomorrow night. That would have been the next day.

I wasn’t sure who Neil deGrasse Tyson was but I didn’t really care, any astrophysicist who can sell tickets is probably plenty good enough to entertain me. When I saw his picture I did recognize him and I believe I have even seen him host shows on TV.

He turned out to be an excellent speaker. I can’t remember the name of the topic he chose to speak on but it was something like “Cosmic Oddities” or “Strange Facts about the Universe”. He did a great job and I could have listened to him all night. Thank you Lisa for thinking about me

Elder Palmer

There are three kids in Justin’s family, Jared is the oldest, and then Justin and the baby is Chelsey. Jared ended up marrying a girl from Temecula and we were quite excited to have some of Justin’s family with roots near us.  As it turned out they ended up divorced and Jared’s wife (Amanda) moved home with all the kids. Justin and Kira have remained in touch with them all but I have had little to do with them.

A month or two ago I was assigned to work with a young man who was going through the temple for the first time and as I was going through the schedule I found it interesting that the kids last name was Palmer. That was cool but there are a lot of Palmers in this world. What I found more interesting is that his escort was his bishop Cameron Riches who grew up in our ward.

I showed the schedule to Lisa during our preparation meeting and she nearly started crying. The Palmer kids name was Logan Palmer and he was Justin and Kira’s nephew. He had been called on a mission and was getting ready to ship out to Honduras. He was rather excited when I told him that I was his Aunt Kira’s dad and the whole temple experience was quite special. While he didn’t really know us we were the closest thing to family that he had there and Lisa was able to tell him all kinds of stories about his great grandpa Asael Delbert Palmer who actually has some pretty interesting ties to the San Diego Temple.

Lisa and I walked out the temple with them and they invited us to his farewell talk. The farewell talk was yesterday (Feb 27).

We listened to our wards talks on Zoom as we were driving up there and then we had a wonderful sacrament meeting with them. Logan gave a great talk most about service but he tied in his Palmer heritage and talked a lot about Delbert and a fourth great grandfather who also had some amazing missionary experiences. Apparently he was able to convert and entire mob who was bent on killing him.

It was also quite funny at one point in the talk where he suddenly stopped, stuck his finger in his mouth and started wiggling his finger around. He then stopped for a moment and said, “I think I just swallowed a mosquito”. After a moment or two he then said, “got him”.  He then carried on with his talk and the first thing he said, “…my summer job was selling pest control”. It was hilarious, after the mosquito incident he went right into pest control and the entire chapel burst into laughter.

The guy sitting next to Logan spoke last and he had an incredible story. He grew up in the LA slums among gangs. His story about he stayed active in the church while his brother ended up in and out of jail was incredible. His brother came to him once and asked for a blessing. After the blessing he got his act together and was able to stay clean until he died a couple of years ago. I really want to know what he died from.

The middle speaker was the Bishops’ wife. It was interesting to see the bishop sitting with his wife. That doesn’t happen often.

Last week we drove to Hemet for a baby blessing and the flowers were beautiful due to all the rain. They were still beautiful this week but not as nice as last week.

Vegas

What a great weekend this was. Last December Lisa heard somewhere that for his 65^th birthday, Donny Osmond was giving a gift to all his fans. On the day of his birthday they could buy tickets to any of his shows for 65% off. Well that was all it took for Lisa to decide that we needed to make a trip to Las Vegas to see Donny’s new show. The Donny & Marie show ended a couple of years ago but now Donny is back with his own show. The show was this weekend. To seal the deal she was able to find two round trip tickets to Vegas for $75.

So Friday (Feb 24) we dropped the boys off at school and we headed to the airport for a weekend of fun. We got off to a rough start. We got to the airport, parked the car, got through security and then we couldn’t find our gate. We checked the monitors and there was no Frontier flight to Vegas. We went back to the ticket counter and there was no one at the ticket counter but as Lisa was talking to another person she noticed that our flight was leaving at 10:10 PM, not 10:10AM.

After a moment of panic we decided to take another airline. We checked out Spirit but they were sold out so we moved on to Southwest. Southwest is always reasonably priced but they are rarely the cheapest flight. We considered driving but that did not sound like much fun so off we headed to Vegas.

We checked into our Hotel and then promptly made sure we knew where the show would be. When we found it, they had this cool display with some of his costumes over the years. They had his outfit from “Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat”,  his outfit from “Dancing with the Stars”, and my favorite, the Peacock from “Masked Singer”.

We then decided to go and get some fish & chips from Ramsay’s. They were easily the most expensive fish & chips I’ve ever eaten but they might also be the best.

We then decided to wander around the strip. It was pretty cold but we had planned ahead and were warm enough.

We then wandered across the street to check out the water fountains at the Bellagio. Those are probably my favorite attractions in Vegas.

And then it was time to head back to see Donny.

The Donny Osmond show was amazing. I’m in no way an expert of shows like this, and I have attended very few of them, but this one was by far my favorite.

Donny made me feel like he was talking just to me. Because we got the tickets so cheaply we decided we may as well get good seats. We were sitting on row seven or eight.

At one point he stopped and talked to us about how it is difficult to address all of his fans because they are from a range of six decades. He gave some examples, he mentioned how just a few weeks ago this little eight year old recognized him and said, hey, I know you, you’re the peacock.

Others would stop him and say, hey, I know you, you’re Joseph from the Amazing Technicolor Dream coat, Others would say, I loved your song “Puppy Love”.

Hey then told us that he wrote an autobiography but instead of an autobiography it was an “auto-rap-ography”. It was amazing and went from when he started show business at the age of five until today.

It was such a good show.

After the show we continued to check out the strip. 

The Bellagio has a room that is always decked out with flowers. It always has a theme from whatever the season is. The last time we were here it was Chinese New Year’s, and then Alycia posted about it a few weeks ago.

Well it was still Chinese New Year and it was still amazing. While we were checking it all out we realized that this is Lisa’s year. She is the year of the Rabbit.

From there we went to the volcanos. Those don’t go as often as the fountains but they are pretty spectacular.

Saturday morning we slept in, but mom doesn’t know how to sleep in so when I woke up at 8:30 she was sitting in the chair checking out her social media. We decided to go eat breakfast at the Mon Ami Gabi.

We had the perfect table right on the sidewalk and you felt just like you were on a street in Paris. We were right across the street from the fountains but they didn’t go off once in the whole time we were there.

After a wonderful breakfast we headed back to the hotel, checked out, and hitched a ride to the airport with an amazing Lyft driver. We enjoyed an uneventful ride home. Our uneventful trip home became rather eventful in the car park garage.

We have found the cheapest airport parking to be a groupon with the Laurel street parking garage but the downside is that they are obviously a dated garage and not really well staffed with the brightest employees. The upside is that I always buy a roof top parking spot because it is cheapest but more often than not when we show up they are full but rather than turn people away they valet park us. After the rush is over they will then move our car to a regular parking spot which has never yet been on the roof.

Yesterday when we arrived for our car they hand me my keys and says that my car is parked in 331. When I got to 331 it was not my car. I checked the entire third floor and couldn’t find my car. I go back down and the guy figured that maybe the first “3” was a “B” so we went looking in the basement. My car was not anywhere in the basement.

We then decide that he is going to drive me through all six floors of this parking garage while I look for my car. As we’re heading to his car he notices on my tag that there is a 240, 241 written on the back of the tag. We decide to take the elevator from the first floor to the second floor (the old man couldn’t handle one flight of stairs) and as we come out of the elevator there is my van. It was not parked in 240 or 241 but I was just glad to find my car.

It had been a long day so we stopped and had some nice kabobs for dinner and then headed home. It was almost dark by the time we got home but I still got most of my wiring finished in the back yard.

Ministering

Today was an interesting day. Lisa and I currently have the best ministering brother that we have ever had. His name is Jeff Andrew and he jumps at every opportunity to help us out. He doesn’t just wait for us to ask but he looks for ways he can help us. Progress on my back yard has accelerated greatly since he saw what I was doing.

He doesn’t just come by himself either, his wife and kids have been here a number of times but he has also brought many of the youth in the ward as well.

As I’ve built the retaining wall I have been accumulating a huge pile of dirt that has been gradually taking over my back yard and when he saw that he emailed all the youth and this morning (Feb 20) I had a dozen or so kids show up.

It is winter break so they have no school and he figured that they would have nothing to do so they may as well be shoveling dirt. We were going to just dump it into the canyon but when Kyle Knaphus saw that we were getting rid of dirt he remembered a neighbor who was actually buying dirt. He contacted him and we hauled much of the dirt over to his yard. 

 

Leaky Roof

 My body is complaining this morning but it is one of those pains that make you feel good. There has been a leak in Sarah’s bedroom (or Kira’s if you go back far enough) for years and I have been making attempts to patch it for years. We have recently had some rather major rainstorms and since Yuchen keeps complaining about having to sleep with a bucket, I decided to fix it once and for all.

When Lisa realized what I had planned she panicked and promptly had three guys come out and give me quotes for fixing it. Two of them were quite sure the leak was coming from the fireplace but the cheapest quote was $1,350 to fix it. All three of them told me I needed to think about redoing the entire roof. They estimated that to be around $30,000.

The whole area was pretty bad but I fixed up the chimney and hoped for the best. Sure enough, another rainstorm hit and the leak was as strong as ever. I then took a deep breath and climbed into the attic to see where the leak was coming from. The problem is that the leak is in a portion of the attic that is extremely difficult to get to and I hate going up there. Better now in February than in August when it can get well over 120° up there.

I saw where the leak was, bought the supplies I needed to fix it and spent all day yesterday (February 18) on the roof until I was forced down by darkness.

If I don’t count the time spent finding all my tools, running to Home Depot and visiting with Jeff Andrew then I figure I made about $200/h. I lost a Saturday but I’m pretty sure the roof is fixed. I also realized that this work is so easy that I will just wait for another leak and then fix that portion of the roof. Eventually I’ll have replaced the entire roof for a whole lot less than $30,000.

 

Taylor Talbot

A few weeks ago, a new sister joined our Thursday Evening shift at the temple. Since Lisa is an assistant coordinator, she was involved in her training and got to know her pretty well. Her training is rather unique because Sr Talbot is blind.

She has a fascinating history but to do it justice would require a lot more writing than I want to do here so let me summarize. She started to lose her eye sight when she was around four or five but wasn’t diagnosed until she was eight. She has Retinitis Pigmentosa which is somewhat similar to Evan’s SMA. If both of your parents have the genetic defect then you have a one if four chance of inheriting it. Instead of the nerves slowly dying as with Evan, it is the gradual degeneration of the rods and cones in your retina. It starts with the peripheral vision and as it progresses you end up seeing things as if you are looking through a straw.

Sr Talbot has no vision in one eye and very little in the other. The cool thing is that Sr Talbot is a paraolympian. She competed in the Tokyo ParaOlympics, missed the next onebecause of Covid and is now training at the Olympic Training center in Chula Vista for the Paris ParaOlympics.

She had a serious struggle choosing between going on a mission or training for the Olympics and finally felt impressed to train. While here in San Diego she listened to President Nelsons recent broadcast to Southern California and loved it so much she sent him a thank you letter.

To make a long story short, the letter ended up in her Stake Presidents hand and that led to Sr Talbot being called on a Service Mission. She is now officially on a mission which involves her continued training, serving in the temple and giving a lot of speeches. Lisa invited her to teach her Relief Society class Sunday Feb 5. By all accounts she did a great job. We then had her over for dinner. She is a special young woman who is going to have a great impact on a lot of lives. She shared a lot of amazing experiences.