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It looks like spring is here in old Nauvoo, finally.

Volunteer Daffodils in our backyard...

...grass across the street...

...some of the early Tulips are beginning to show their sunshine at the Temple...

..Hyacinths are popping up here and there...

...ooooo, pretty!

The Tulip beds in front of the temple are all in full growth and should be popping up pretty early this year.  They ought to be pretty magnificent, and early!  Last year we got here about this time (yes, we got here almost one year ago) and they were nowhere near this far along.  So, I may be taking a lot of pictures of lovely Tulips when they start blooming in their short, 3 week season.

For the last couple of days, I've been working inside the cooling tower for chiller #1.  It had some rust on the galvanized upper section, the bottom is stainless steel.  I had to use a powered wire brush to get all of the rust off then clean it and add a coating of epoxy paint.  While that is not all that much fun, getting into the cooling tower, through the little opening, has been a bit of an exercise similar to "tank diving" back in my submarine days.  Also, it makes my chiropractor happy as I hafta visit him afterwards to straighten out my spine from the contortions I need to get into to get inside the tower. But, at least one is sort of done for now.  I still need one more trip inside for last minute clean up then I put it back into service, that'll be tomorrow.  Next, I need to plan out a time to work on tower #2 when it's not raining or hailing for a couple of days.

The actuators for #2 tower valves seem to be fairly stable and seem to be working now, at least for the time being.  Let's hope the boards don't go bad like the last ones did.  But, I am getting better at changing them.  I'll be glad when I can finally wrap up that onerous project.  I still have some settings to adjust on all four actuators and am waiting on the right software/hardware to do that.  Hard to believe that it takes an $850 device to talk to the actuator.

As of Saturday, the old Head Engineer left and we have a new Head Engineer, Rick Jensen.  He's been here for several years and has earned the right to lead the Engineering group here at the temple.  They promoted Blake Duncan, the Asst Engineer to Senior Engineer, taking Rick's place.  They have, apparently, but have not announced, that they have replaced the Asst Engineer but we don't know who it is.  He will most likely be working nights along with me.  Hope I can get along with him for the 7 months I have left here.  With shutdown and pageant just around the corner, that's going to be kind of essential.  Rick and I got along fine.  Change is always hard but I will not be here for the long haul as I am "just a missionary" as everyone reminds me frequently.  Good thing, too!

In about another month we need to start thinking about what we are going to be doing after this mission and start making plans for that.  It takes a fair amount of time to get prepared for the next mission so we need to start moving in that direction.

We have started filling out the paperwork for Kevin's application at BYU-Idaho.  There are a lot of things that need to happen between now and January, including him taking the SAT/ACT, which he didn't in high school.  Just a little oversight.  That is going to be a bit of a problem but one that can be dealt with.  Just not easily.  Whether he goes in January or a year later still remains to be seen.  Working on the details.

Have a Happy Easter and hope you enjoy conference in a couple of weeks.