Summer Saturday

Today's the first official Saturday of Summer and, yes, the morning dawned just exactly the way you would wish a Summer Saturday to be.  It's perfectly clear and there's no wind.  After all the huffing and puffing Ma Nature has exhibited for weeks and weeks, it's so welcome when she takes stops hyperventilating.  Summer actually started here on the day it was supposed to start--the Summer Solstice.  Somebody upstairs who controls such things flipped an unseen switch and, POOF, just like that it was Summer.  If often works like that around here for three of the four seasons: Summer, Fall and Winter.  It rarely works that way for spring.  The transition between winter and spring is a long, drawn out ordeal.  The sudden change of the other three seasons is one thing we dearly love about living in Idaho.  We eagerly await the "flipping of the switch," as we call it so that we can officially enjoy Real Honest Summer.
Heck, the ice cream trucks were even prowling the streets this week and little kids in bathing suits were eagerly lined up to happily slurp sugar.  There are once again lines at the snow cone shacks peppered all across the city and vendors are setting up their gypsy tents to begin selling fireworks.  The next few days will be a popping with all sorts of stuff that goes "bang."  Scofflaws go over to Wyoming and bring back real he-man fireworks to shake up their neighborhoods with high explosive and airborne pyrotechnics.  Susun's flowers are in full bloom, the dandelions have gone back to sleep, the yard looks lovely and, well, that's what is supposed to happen when summer arrives.  Yippie, Skippie, SUMMER'S HERE!

Our July Fourth celebration will take place tomorrow on June 25.  We won't be doing our normal July 4th gig.  Nope.  Miss Susun is going in for extensive oral surgery July 1 and will be pretty much confined to quarters to recuperate over the July 4th weekend.  It's a good thing we're of a mind to hang out all summer here in the city as she will need to be close to dentists for a long time to come.  At this point, we don't think her dental issues will postpone our trek back to Arizona but it is a possibility to be awarer of.  We all wish her the best of success of weathering her upcoming dental detours of life and we will all be praying for her comfort (relatively speaking, of course) this coming Friday morning.  Luckily, she has one of the best and brightest stars in the local oral surgery world.  He is a very impressive young man by anyone's standards.

Yesterday was a wonderful day.  Hey, did I say it's Summer?  You would have thought we would have been out and about doing something to soak up the sun and have some fun.  Well, you would have been wrong.  For some inexplicable reason, we both decided to have out in the basement messing with stuff.  Strange, but true.  In fact, Little Yonni spent almost 10 hours in the basement, finishing his project down there as the clock neared 8 pm.  Yonni finished an almost extreme makeover of his workshop and reloading area in the old coal room.  After tinkering with this room since early 2008, it had finally become a Point of Pride here in the local household.  Sometimes it just takes an all-out, all-day effort to put a project like that across the elusive finish line.  We are both very pleased with the results.

We had a new muffler and tailpipe installed on Samantha but otherwise, there were no ten cent store visits or other fun errands.  It was all nose-to-the-grindstone stuff.  Oh, almost forgot--we did get a free lunch yesterday.  Our bank decided to have a Customer Appreciation Day and served BBQ with all the picnic fixin's under a tent in their parking lot.  It was good, old-fashioned comfort food.  We joked with other banking patrons that at least we were getting some interest on our money there in an enjoyable manner and fashion.  This is a bank that insists we deal with them totally online.  It was refreshing to see real humans associated with the financial institution.

The Snake River has dropped down around 18,000 but that doesn't mean things are quiet in the Upper watersheds.  The Upper Snake is finally coming unglued and the snow is melting really fast.  There's over 24,000 cfs going through the Snake River Canyon above Alpine, Wyoming.  Everything's ripping.  Luckily, water managers have a handle on it and they are just kicking back and letting Jackson Lake and Palisades Reservoir fill to capacity.  We're betting their timing will be perfect this year.  Good job, folks!

We're watching Yellowstone Falls.  It has a chance to go into record territory soon.  We won't be able to go over there due to the dental thing but it sure will be fun to imagine what it would look like.  By the way, Shoshone Falls peaked over 20,000 but is back down around 9000 now.

Mike V. and Family will be coming tomorrow for a picnic lunch to help celebrate July 4th.  We're looking forward to our get together.  Kelli sent along an album of her wedding photos.  Once we get permission to post a link here, we will do so.  Not much else to report. 

Create a Great Day & Many Cheers!  jp