Hello everyone. It has been another three months since I wrote last. In October I was still fixing some things up on the other house in preparation for the Relief Society party there: lightly sanded and varnished the lower stairs on the front staircase, finished repairing and assembling the large walnut Armour that matches the Victorian walnut bed, raked leaves at both houses, etc. Mom was in California for a week that month, so I fixed a problem shown by the engine light on in the Hyundai. The code read a bad purge valve for the gas vapor canister. So I got a new purge valve and when taking out the old one noticed that a wire to it was broken. Repaired the wire and all was well. Took the new purge valve back.Then some time after that the engine in the Hyundai started to miss. The spark plug wires measured OK, so replaced the spark plugs which had 60,000 miles on them and the gaps were very large having been worn down by the long usage. Car ran fine for a couple of days, but then acted up again. The problem being missing in cylinders 2 & 3. The engine has two spark coils with two cylinders on each coil. So I presumed that cylinders 1&2 were on one coil and 3&4 on the other so that the coils were not the problem. Later on checking more carefully I found that 2&3 were on the same coil. So ordered a new set of coils online for $18. The new coils came a couple of days ago, but in installing them found that the distance between the two mounting holes on the new bracket was about 1/16 inch larger on the new bracket. So I had to take the new coils and bracket out again (not easy in the cramped space) and drill out one hole so the bolts would fit. With the new coils the engine runs smoothly, and the check engine light went off after a couple of days. So I hope it holds up and something else is not wrong. I have to get the car inspected this month. I had worked on the Hyundai in October and besides the broken wire had replaced several dead lamps as I thought it had to be inspected in November – wrong – it was the Nissan Titan that had to be inspected in November and it also had a check engine light alert – bad oxygen sensor on left cylinder bank. Got a new sensor and installed it, but engine light did not go off by itself. Had a shop turn it off and then drove 100 miles and it did not come on again, so had it inspected and it passed. We have to get a smog inspection every year in Utah county. More rural counties in Utah do not have to get smog inspections on their cars.


I am continuing to go to the gym six days a week for 4 swim days and 2 weight days. But because of the Christmas season, presents, etc. put on about 5 pounds. Now that Christmas is over I am beginning to return to my normal weight of 143 pounds. With encouragement from Mom I decided to stop making the large Christmas stockings for everyone – to the dismay of a few, and instead took an idea from one of my home teaching families to get some small metal Christmas tins (lunch boxes) from the dollar store and use those instead. I loaded each with the cream of the Christmas candy (Sees, Lindt truffels, candied ginger, fancy nuts, orange slices) and distributed them to the Utah family members over Christmas week). They were enthusiastically received by the grandkids and pleasantly received by their parents. I had apples and oranges also available, but not in the small boxes. That saved me a lot of time (took only a couple of hours to fill the boxes and less candy to shop for). So Mom and I had a relaxing Christmas eve and day and not a lot of wrappings to clean up and dispose of. The afternoon of Christmas we went over to Nora’s house for dinner when I distributed my boxes to them and Nathan’s parents. Liz and Rick and sons came down in the evening and we sang carols and they got their boxes. Merrill and sons came down on New Years day to ski and stopped by that night to visit and then got their boxes. On Dec 23 Annie and Les celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary with a party at their home with many of their family and included us in the dinner.


Dec 16 was my 83rd birthday so we had a party at Nora’s on that day. Joe came down on Thursday and stayed until Monday morning, so that was a special surprise. He helped me on Friday to clear out more of the upper garage so both cars would fit in it. We took a lot of stuff to the lower garage where it will be put in cabinets, and consolidated other things that were in the upper garage. Took a few items to the DI – one being the lighted display case for the Buddha from Richard Ballantyne that we used back in August. I had bought it at DI for $15, but fixed it up a bit and saw it on the DI floor afterwards for $25. It disappeared from DI shortly afterwards so I guess someone else had a use for it. Anyway, it is nice to be able to get both cars in the garage again, especially with adverse weather outside. In anticipation of Joe’s coming I had organized some of the cabinets in the downstairs garage – getting all the metal parts drawers into the cabinets instead of stacked on the floor (about 10 sets of 18 drawers each). I had to take the drawers out of their cabinets to make the cabinets light enough to lift into the shelves, and then put the drawers back in. Otherwise the cabinets were too heavy to lift, as some individual drawers were loaded down with metal screws, bolts, transformers, etc and weighed 10 or 15 pounds each (200 lbs per 18 drawer set). I also stacked up the small cabinets with plastic drawers next to the big metal ones, so now all the sets of parts drawers are accessible .There are about 576 parts drawers all together, but they came from different labs, so many need to be consolidated so the similar parts are in the same place. It has been nice to have the parts accessible. I have used them many times since to get parts I need for some project. I also took the mower deck off the tractor and put on the snow plow blade so I could use it to remove snow from the driveway of the new house. There are so many pine needles always falling on the driveway that would make using a snow blower difficult, as the frozen needles would jam up the blower. So I think the plow is preferable. So far we have had almost no snow, so I have not tested the rig yet on that driveway, but it sits up there in the garage ready to go.


In early November we got a new Brondel bidet toilet seat to replace the leaky one on our bidet toilet that I installed a few years ago. The new one works fine and doesn’t leak. We have our city water pressure here of about 90 psi, which is quite high. I guess the bidet is not really designed to handle such pressure over an extended period of time. So it began leaking. We sent it back for repairs in case the new one also fails. Because we have this fancy boiler that heats the floors and driveways in the new addition, I am supposed to test the water each year for hardness, Ph, dissolved solids, etc. So I finally got around to that after 3 years and found everything OK, except the water was too hard. Our GE water softener has a bypass valve so one can regulate the hardness. I closed down the bypass somewhat to bring the hardness down so now it should be fine. I also added a bag of salt to replenish it after 3 years, so now it thinks it is OK for another 999 days. It turns out our average domestic water use is only 17 gallons a day, so the water softener doesn’t have to recharge frequently. That low usage is because it does not include the sprinkler system, or the water to the toilets or the cold water to the kitchen sink. All the other hot and cold water in the house is softened. I needed a metered Variac a couple of weeks ago, to test some Christmas lights, so found one among the stuff in the basement garage. It had been modified by the addition of a bridge rectifier, large capacitor and bleeder resistor. But that addition seemed to be burned out and all the diodes tested open, so I removed it and the rest of the unit worked fine, except the ammeter glass had apparently been dislodged in the moving. So I took the whole thing apart to get the ammeter out and the case and glass removed so I could re-cement the glass. Got that done and it all works fine. Christmas lights: In past years I have put lights on the branches of our apricot tree in the front yard, but noticed last year when I removed the lights that many strings had burned out sections in them: one light in the section opens up, and the section goes dead. There is no way to figure out which light is open except to remove and test each one separately, which takes forever! So this year I decided to be content with just a couple of strings on a small bush in front, and then would order some red LED strings after Christmas (when they should be cheap) for use next year. A couple of days after Christmas I went to Home Depot to get some cheap lights, but found them still too expensive for my Scottish taste, so I went online and ordered four strings of 100 red lights which should arrive in a couple of weeks. They were about a third the cost of the Home Depot lights on sale. If they are OK, I will probably order some more so I can light the tree again next year.


On Dec. 20 Martha scheduled a meeting with our newly elected mayor to discuss the proposed extension of our street to Seven Peaks boulevard. I believe that would very greatly increase the traffic in front of our houses, so we oppose that plan, as do over 90% of our neighbors on this street. The city council member for our district (George Handley, whose parents Martha knew in New York) and three of our neighbors were also present. The mayor (Michelle Kaufusi) had grown up on this street and also made a commitment prior to her election to stop the extension. It was a useful meeting and we will have to follow up to push it through the city council. In December I played the organ for three meetings, since one of our organists was out of town. So I had to review my Christmas music which I only play once a year: A couple of medleys (Yuletide echoes – William Hodson; Angel Carols – Lani Smith), an arrangement of Joy to the World by Don Hustad, and several pieces from the Christmas edition of The Organist (Nov. 1981: Lani Smith, Coventry Carol – Robert J. Hughes, He Shall Feed His Flock – Handel; One Bright Star – Esther S. Higgins [I really like that one]), etc. Last Sunday I played again: Simple Gifts arr. by Rick and Come, come ye saints arr by Clay Christiansen Vol 2 “From the Tabernacle”. For the postlude I planned to play Festival March by Handel (Asper collection) but never got that far, as Martha collapsed during the passing of the sacrament and stopped breathing for a minute or two. Two doctors and an EMT immediately came up, by then she was breathing again and lay on the floor of the stand, In a few minutes the ambulance arrived and 3 EMT’s and a policeman came in with their radios blaring and supported by two men (one was Dr. Gill who is a trauma surgeon) was able to exit the chapel to a rolling stretcher to the ambulance. I drove down to the emergency room as did Dr. Gill and shortly the ambulance arrived and she was hooked up to the monitors and given many tests: Xray, blood, virus, etc. After a few hours all the tests came back negative except the virus test that showed she had the flu which was the reason for her cough. Dr. Gill’s diagnosis of the problem was correct – the medicines she had taken to suppress her cough had combined to cause her to go unconscious. She was released after 3 hours and we came home. She has been battling the flu the past week and is now improved enough to eat well, and walk around and talk on the phone. The cough persists, but is not as severe as earlier. She continues to praise Dr. Gill for his immediate help and supportive bedside manner. We both had flu shots last Fall, but apparently they are not that effective this year. I have had only minor symptoms – a little coughing of mucus from my bronchitis. Love, Dad, Grandpa, Joseph