Written December 5th, 2015, John's house in Boise, Idaho

Hi Mom and family,

I'm sitting at the kitchen counter in Boise, we all are all getting ready for their carol-singing party tonight but I decided to take some time out to write you an update.




John and Kathy say "hi!"

Here's some photos of moving furniture, etc. to get ready for the party.  John recently spent a couple of days changing over his part-singing program onto newer, slim-line computers, with quite a bit of difficulty. They are both really glad to have this done, because before the last two year's carol-singing parties, there have been panicky moments where there was difficulty with one or other aspect of the old system he used (the big fat computers with the orangey screens and gray music notation.

Moving the big chair to the garage, vacuuming the area where the chair had been, and discussing (at length) which way the tablecloth should go.

I had a difficult time getting everything done on Friday. I got confused and paid the water bill on the vacant trailer next door rather than ours, and my water got turned off. It took longer to go through my bills than I expected, and I had to get Ziggy up to the boarding kennels before leaving at 5:30 to go in to my travel club's meeting at the Thai Elephant in Tempe.

As a result I drank "leaded" coffee late in the afternoon, and thus had trouble sleeping for the even the few hours which remained after I finished packing, getting the chickens with double feed and water, and setting up the cat's food so that the guy who is going to come feed them could find everything.

The travel meetup went very well. I continued the strategy of just plain interrupting the lady (the one whom we call "the talker" behind her back), whenever she started off on one of her tangents, and everything moved along swimmingly.

I had bought the tickets late, and the plane was full, so I was very surprised that I got in the "A" group for both flights. Because I was in the first group to get on, I was able to pick a  window seat, which allowed me to sleep solidly through the first flight (Phoenix-Las Vegas) and part of the second (Las Vegas-Boise).

This photo looks like it's the tops of clouds, but it's actually part clouds, and part snowy landscape:

I also got a good one coming down into Boise:

John and Kathy picked me up, and took me back to their house. Kathy fixed us a quick sandwich and, for me, a welcome cup of strong coffee. We had to hurry because the guys whom John jams with every Friday afternoon were due to show up. John has two different groups he jams with, one where the musicians are really good, and this one, which is two guys whom Kathy met at her Spanish literature club, plus a drummer that one of them works with.

He also has been going to another music jam, on Tuesdays, where the musicianship level is much higher, but he has continued this one as well.

I had a good time jamming with these guys.  Mostly I just tried to keep the chords going, and joined in on the chorus for singing. They rotate around choosing songs, and the drummer always chose old rock standards with rousing choruses "All right now, baby it's all right now", I realized that I'd never really jammed with people who played that genre of songs, and they were really fun to sing!

So that's about it,
more tomorrow.

Love, Lennie