(written on the 17th)
It seemed to get hot pretty early inside the van this morning, which helped to wake me up (that bright summer sun rising early in the morning). The noise certainly helped as well 😅 (apparently, I accidentally shredded one of my headphone cords? so I only had one headphone pumping rainstorm sounds into my dreamworld last night. The other ear was getting mostly muffled semitruck sounds (provided that ear was pressed against the pillow. Otherwise, they… weren’t… mostly muffled. 🙃).
Waking up and finding myself still nearly an hour away from the Casper Temple isn’t quite as encouraging as waking up and only being 15 or 20 minutes away–but I guess that comes from starting my drive quite late. 🙃
Gratefully, it wasn’t a problem. Waking up when I did was pretty much perfect. 🙏 I wasn’t rushed and even had time to stop off at one of Casper’s recycling drop off locations.
I’m grateful for those. 🙏
I still have that darn mondo-sized beer bottle from the Utah mountains, though. 😆
One of these days I’ll find a place that does glass recycling. Hopefully, it’ll be before I start my Great Eastern Road Trip with my mother. 😆
After taking care of my recycling, I headed on up to the temple, realizing as I pulled into the parking lot that I never made a reservation–for anything. 😅
So I quickly looked on the app to see if there was anything available, and it looked like maybe just baptisms. So I got myself changed, grabbed my temple bag just in case, and headed in.
One of the temple workers at the front desk said that they had initiatories on standby and baptisms available as well. Of course, I love being in the baptistry, so that’s what I decided to do today. 😊
I found out after heading into the baptistry that apparently the AC in half the temple had gone out, so they had actually canceled the endowment and sealing sessions. 🥵
Despite not having endowment and sealing sessions available, the baptistry was still sparsely populated (perhaps it’s because most of the people who attend the Temple during the day are older and would have a hard time going in and out of the font). There were only three of us doing baptisms and then another older couple getting ready to join for confirmations.
Just doing baptisms and confirmations, I was in and out of the temple, seemingly in a heartbeat. Long drive. Short visit. Still wonderful. 🥰
After the temple, I headed into the Walmart that’s just a handful of blocks away, complimenting a gentleman who had a cool-looking hat (trying to lift the world. 😊).
While looking at a clearance rack in the men’s clothing section (finding a cheapish shirt and cheap pants 🎉), I noticed that the gentleman across the rack from me had an LDS missionary tag on, so after a little bit, I asked him which mission he was serving in, and he said he and his wife are at Martin’s Cove, busy as can be with all the treks going on right now (something like 10s of thousands of youth this summer! Maybe 20 or 30? Something like that).
We talked for maybe 10 minutes? his wife joining us mid conversation, and speaking of lifting the world, he very generously said he was impressed by my efforts (he used a more articulate word) to attend the temple regularly, given challenges and being single and all that. Very kind of him. 🤍🙏🤍
I bought some frozen mango fruit bars to go with my cheap clothes. 🙃 The Walmart at the west end of Casper carries those fruit bars, but the one on the East end doesn’t. 🤔
Weird.
My next stop was the UPS store to return an Amazon order, but I noticed the Verizon store was coming up, and Heather and Hans are considering switching over, and I’m on their current plan, so Heather suggested I stop in to check it out, so I did.
I didn’t really learn much more than what H&H had already mentioned, but that’s ok. From what I learned after, I guess T-Mobile has faster data speeds, but Verizon still wins out in rural areas. I wish Verizon had a try option like T-Mobile. That’s such a great idea.
Anyway, we’ll see.
The UPS Store was next, and I’m grateful for the young man behind the counter who managed to find a link on the Amazon page I somehow missed (after I’d been looking fairly extensively 😅) that let me change the drop-off location, choosing via a map instead of by proximity to one of my existing shipping addresses.
Many thanks, young man. 🙏
I let him know he was awesome. 😊
I forgot to order groceries last night, so I wasn’t able to try Walmart grocery pick up… again. 🙃 I’m used to delivery, but I’m out of the habit, and if I don’t schedule an order early enough, I miss my window for the desired pickup time slots.
Oh well, so I did my usual food shopping, and then I headed over to Sam’s Club to fill up on gas. The gentleman next to me was driving a Ford Transit, so I struck up a conversation with him about his transit, as when my van finally dies (hopefully not soon 🙃), I’m thinking about switching over to one of those.
Super nice guy. He was in town passing through having gone up to Cody, Wyoming for a Christian camp. 😊
Good stuff.
After getting gas, I parked in the Sam’s Club parking lot, remembering this time to take advantage of the super cheap Sam’s Club lunch. $1.50 hot dog combo (hot dog and bottomless drink) or the $2.50 jumbo pizza combo (extra large pizza slice and bottomless drink). 🙃
The line was short but took quite a long time, and then I got smart, or thought I got smart and when I was next up in line, I figured I would go ahead and do my order via the app, so I ordered and stepped out of line, only to find out that apparently they prioritized the people in line first, as it took probably another 20 minutes? for my online order to be fulfilled. 😅
I waited and waited, watching other people who had been in line behind me getting their food before me. 😆
Oh, and apparently Sam’s Club doesn’t really carry ice cream? 😶
I looked around and looked around, and there were a handful of kinds of popsicles, all super duper expensive, and only one kind of ice cream.
🤔
I asked one of the worker ladies handing out free samples, and she said that’s pretty much all they have.
Weird. I guess they expect you to go to Walmart next door for that kind of stuff?
Oh well, it kept me from buying more ice cream, because I didn’t want to bother going back to Walmart. It’s probably for the best, because my goal, eventually, is to get back to my vegan ways.
I’ll start with vegetarian, first, though. 🙃
After finally getting my food, I sat at one of the tables and started eating, striking up a conversation with an older lady who was taking care of her granddaughter. Cool lady. 😊 She spent many years as a nurse, and she’s lived all over the country.
We probably chatted for maybe 20 or 30 minutes, and I enjoyed multiple fountain refills. 🙃
There was what looked like an Amish gentleman there with a super cool hat, and I complimented him on his hat. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one. 🙃 It looks like some kind of vintage something or other, but super cool. He just thought of it as an old worn out hat. 😆
Awesome. 😊
Not wanting to let myself get too far behind on my journal, I sat in my hot van in the parking lot finishing up yesterday’s entry, gratefully getting that done, before turning the New Testament back on and heading home.
Unfortunately, it’s a lot harder to pay attention to the book of Acts and all the letters and what not. The gospels are easy to pay attention to in comparison. 😅
Also, the person doing the voice recording for the rest of the books with the recording that I was listening to has sort of a low, airy voice, making it a lot harder to discern words… at 3x speed. 😅
I like listening to scriptures quickly to get the satellite view and storylines, as well as digging in deeply with the microscope view.
Unfortunately, my mind was all over the place. I don’t know how much of it was the recording, how much of it was the fact that it was the middle of the day and easier for my thoughts to be pinballing themselves all over the place… 🤷
I definitely didn’t get much out of today’s listening. 😅
But I did prove that I can listen to pretty much the entire New Testament on a single Temple trip drive. 😊 (even restarting over and over again in multiple places, I got all the way up to the beginning of Revelation 😲).
Fun fun fun. 😊
For whatever reason, I don’t know if it’s just Sam’s Club gas or something else, but my gas mileage was worse when I did the fill up calculations this time, and on the drive home, my fuel gauge needle was dropping super quickly. He was dropping quickly enough to make me wonder if I had a leak. 😶
Usually, that very first quarter of a tank lasts longer, trip odometer wise, than any other quarter of a tank. Of course, that’s just the way it shakes out electronically, but it’s a little disconcerting to have it go down as quickly as it did today. Usually, I’m probably going to get about 200 miles with that first quarter tank. Today, I only got just over a hundred?
I don’t remember for sure. Might have been more like 125. Still… not encouraging for my mpg stats. 😅 It seemed like maybe it could even out in the second quarter. We’ll see.
Was a bit worried about a friend who was having a super rough day today. I reached out, but… I know what it’s like to not be ready to connect with others during dark times.
🙏
I stopped off at JH Keith Park on the way back, filling up my drinking water bottles, chatting with some locals for a bit, then with some guys in town for work. I also took a dip, and that was nice. 😊
Gratefully, I remembered to dump Little John in the long drop. 🙏
I’m still having trouble finding a place to get sawdust. I finally stopped off at a place in Lusk that was supposedly a wood shop, but when I pulled up to it, the windows were all boarded up, and there was a for sale sign.
No sawdust for me. 🙃
Maybe I can get some from Home Depot? I imagine the one in Casper is like others where they will cut wood for you for free. They’ve got to dispose of that sawdust somewhere. 🙃
It was fun to get back to the homefront and find Curly and her mate hanging out in front of the trailer. 😊 Curly has been hanging out mostly in the Northeast horse pasture ever since I accidentally hit her with a piece of banana I was hoping to share with her. 😅
It’s nice to see her back hanging out by my van and in front of the trailer. 🥰
I mucked and dragged, managing to do both without scaring off the bunnies. 🙏 Not sure exactly the cause, I’m guessing maybe the new hay source, but Fiona’s apples have been even more goopy than usual. 😅
Definitely more of a mess to muck out the barn. 💩
Today was one of those days where I took the opportunity to reach out to a whole bunch of people that I don’t usually reach out to, so I had a handful of conversations in addition to conversations I had with people I reach out to regularly.
Interestingly, and rather meaningfully for me, I noticed a message in my Facebook Messenger from 9 years ago from an old student of mine that I taught while I was teaching writing at the University of Utah way back in 2008!
Not sure how I missed the message, but apparently, about 9 years ago, the student had sent me a message thanking me for everything he learned from my class, saying that I was one of the few professors that he remembers at all from his whole college experience and that what he learned from my class has been super helpful for him in his professional life, being able to communicate well in writing, because of the principles he learned. He even thanked me for being a tough teacher who didn’t take it easy on them.
🥰
That was really cool. 😊
I responded to his message, 9 years late 🙃, and he actually replied shortly afterward, and we messaged for a bit.
Feels really nice to have made a difference and to be remembered. 😊
Makes me think of the high school students that I taught the following year. I think most of them think poorly of me at this point? having heard false rumors about me.
I’d love to have a reunion with all of my students from the back then, but I don’t know that I would really be all that welcome. Not even the one who stayed in contact with me the most will respond to me anymore. 😕
But that’s ok. I did the best I could, and I loved them the best I could, and… it is what it is.
One day, they’ll know my heart and learn the truth.
I hung out with Heather and Hans for a bit, ate the lovely dinner that Heather made, and then spent the next several hours backing up blog posts before finally trying to call it a night sometime after 3 a.m.–but struggling because I was wide awake. 😅
[contented sigh]
I’m grateful to feel real, sustained, peace and happiness again. Certainly, I have my stormy times, but my climate is shifting. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 