Rain

Rain.

 It's raining in Fresno.

 Finally.

 What a perfect day to......

 Plant flowers!

I now work for a living

I now have a job. And even an assignment. I am currently working at Saint Paul Public School District in Minnesota. I will be there for a month doing what I like best, programming. Just some fun, no pressure work for a change.

I am staying at the Residence Inn located right next to (a half mile away) the Mall of America. This is a destination unto itself. I was surprised to see how big it really is.










It has a Carrousel.

And a ferris wheel.

 And not one.

 Not two.

 But three, yes, count them, three roller coasters.

I think I may have to ride them before I leave. I may even get around to shopping.

YSA Conference

A couple of months ago, Suzanne and I were asked to be the co-chairs for the activities portion of the Fresno California YSA Conference. We had done this three years ago, the last time they had one, so we of course said that we would do it. It's a lot of work. We organized two dances, lots of games, a speed dating activity, Haka and Hula dance lessons and all the stuff to keep the YSA's busy after all the workshops were over.

Here are a few pictures of what we did. Did I mention that it was 109 in the shade that day?

Preview Edition

A lot has happened since my last post. Where has the time gone? Here is a sample of what I will be catching up on in the next few blogs.

Toured downtown Salt Lake City

Went to Disneyland

Visited my SistersWent to Disneyland

Learned how to operate a manlift.

Built a sun.

Had a JMFR.

Went to Disneyland

Spoke at Girls Camp.

Did I mention Disneyland?

And, I GOT A JOB!!

All this and more in the upcoming episodes of 'Marshall Views'.

Ray Marshall 1936-2012

My brother passed away a week ago. I spent a week in Orem Utah with Kay. Funerals are a bitter sweet experience. Tough to say goodbye but there is always a family reunion at the same time and that was nice. Nice to see family that hadn't been together for a while.  It's nice that life throws you a bone every so often.

Electricity 101

Our stake is getting ready for a Youth Musical, and, as usual, I have been asked to help with the lighting. The stage has some minimal lights but a terrible system for controlling them. Basicall, it's a set of light switches in back of the curtain. For any theater buffs in the crowd, you know that you can't run a show from behind the curtain, so I set out to design a way to run the lights from a set of dimmers with the controls located in the back of the cultural hall, where the operator can see what he is doing.

It was simple. Cut into the cables going to each circuit and put a plug on it so that we could plug them into the dimmers. Sounded easy. I asks Art, my brother-in-law to help. $150 later, and two days it was done. Here is how simple the process was.

Build a simple set of three way switches mounted in tandem boxes.

Locate the wires leading into the switches and tap into each one.

Cram it all back into the box that never was designed to hold even half of it. Nice to have a professional helping me. Piece of cake.

World of Color

As you may know, Suzanne loves paint. I've never figured out exactly what that means, but she really does love paint. We have been in this house for a bit over eleven years. In that time every room has been painted at least once and each room in a different color. We have also painted many many other objects. Needless to say, we have lots of paint in cans that are slowly dieing. It was time to get rid of some of them. As we dumped paint onto a plastic garbage bag to dry and took inventory, 'That's the front bathroom ceiling.', Oh look at this one. It's from that parade float.' 'Here's the front door.' we realized that Dutch Boy must love us.

Grandpa's little helper

Desh visited today while Allyson and Ken celebrated her birthday. He played in the water, said hi to the piano girl and stayed clear of the pool. Good boy.

Nice water.

Nice girl.

Nice pool.

Nice gnome.

Nice snail. See the snail right under his left hand? He handed it to me right after I took the picture.

Free zoo, who knew?

Went to the zoo on Monday with the marshall kids. Entrance to the park is free for seniors and the zoo is half price. Not a bad deal. We went to winged Wonders Bird show. The pictures are bad because we couldn't take too much time posing due to the crowds around us.

It was either get McKay in the picture or the eagle. As it turned out, neither one showed up very well.

Fed dollars to the crow. Smart crow.

And leaves to the giraffes. Stupid giraffes.

Conference Saturday

This weekend is our Church's General Conference. That means that, instead of going to church for three hours on Sunday, we get to spend much of our Saturday and Sunday watching five two hour televised sessions of conferences broadcast from Salt Lake City Utah . As it works out, since this always occurs on a wonderful spring day each year, Suzanne and I usually lay out a couple of projects to do while we watch. This weekend, we finished painting the office, planted flowers in our patio pots, rearranged the living room, bought new blinds for the bathroom and removed, painted and replaced the chandelier in the kitchen.

Listened to some pretty cool talks, too.

Thriller, spiller, filler.

See the before spot?

Two coats black, three coats of hammered.

She rearranged the shelves, too.

Secret Number One

I love to cook. And lately, I have been working on Mac and Cheese. Last night I made some, and it came out quite good. Suzanne even took some to work today for lunch, which is high praise in deed. I didn't use a recipe and not too many seasonings so I was actually a bit baffled as to why it was so good. Here's the technique that I used.

Cook two strips of bacon in a pan. (I intended to add them to the dish but forgot to, so go ahead and eat them if you wish.) To the bacon drippings, brown two chicken breasts chopped in small pieces. Remove the chicken and in the same pan, cook a large handful of baby portobello mushrooms and some leftover asparagus that i'm sure you have laying around the kitchen.

In the mean time, make a béchamel sauce with butter, flour half and half. Season with salt and pepper and some nutmeg. Add this to some cooked elbow macaroni, and then add the chicken, mushrooms and asparagus. Stir in a generous supply of grated medium cheddar, put in a baking dish, cover with grated parmesan cheese and breadcrumbs and bake for 15 - 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

And now for the secret...... It's the bacon drippings! I cooked everything in the bacon drippings! Really. It was very good. Try it.

Next week, secret number two.

I love springtime

Because that's when the wisteria blooms.