Maggie's Dance Recital

On Sunday, June 1, Grampy Dave and I went to Maggie's dance recital in Omaha. It was a hoot! Six little dancers, ages three and four, participated. It was held at their dance studio and attended by their adoring families, who pretty much filled the room. At age 4 1/2 Maggie was one of the older dancers. The recital lasted about 20 minutes and the girls got to show off their stuff.
After the recital we went to Dan and Jill's and continued Dave's birthday celebration by grilling out and spending the afternoon with the Jacksons and the Omaha Neeley family. Good times.

Grandpa Dave's birthday

May 31 was Grandpa's birthday; now he has caught up to me in age once again. We are 59 years old. I can hardly believe it!
I bought Dave some new books and a puzzle to share with Sam, Austin, Maggie and Shelby. It is an alphabet puzzle and we have had some fun with it. I also bought him some picture books of wolves and backyard wildlife. Liz got him socks, and Dan and Jill got him a gift certificate. Marge gave him a check and so did his Mom. He did a very nice thing with the money he received from Eleanor: he gave it away to a girl who is going on a mission trip to South America. She will use the money to make health kits to distribute while she is there. Cost Rica, I think.

Primary

I worked on the election board back a few weeks ago for the Nebraska Primary Election on May 13. My precinct is Bee, Nebraska, and this was my first experience as an election judge. I know, election judge sounds impressive! I arrived promptly at 7:00 a.m. and met the other four election board workers. Three were veterans of many elections and one other one was new, but his wife had done it for many years. We set everything up and got ready to open the polls at 8:00 a.m.

I voted right away because I wanted to try out the 'Automark' machine so I would be sure to know how to run it if we had a request to use it. Pretty easy to use, but it took longer than if I would have marked the ballot by hand. This primary election had very little to vote on, especially for me, a Democrat. True, I did vote for Hillary Clinton, although that will not really count for anything since our state held a caucus in February and selected the convention delegates at that time. There was one amendment to consider and the democratic candidates for Senate. That was it. If you happened to be registered as non-partisan, then you only received the ballot for the amendment. You have to ask for the Democrat or Republican non-partisan ballot if you want one.

Well, the five of us sat there until 8:00 p.m. That is 13 hours. Oh my. We had 64 out of a possible 265 people show up to vote. I am pretty sure that was repeated across Seward County; less than 25% of the people eligible to vote showed up to do it. I think there should be a better, less expensive way to do this. The five of us made minimum wage ($5.85 per hour) for 13 hours. Repeat that across the county about 10 times and that adds up. Couldn't we vote by mail or on-line?

Licorice

Licorice has never really been my favorite candy, but a few weeks ago we checked out this store in Lincoln: Licorice International

It was great! I don't think I have ever had really good licorice before, and this is REALLY GOOD licorice. We were walking around the Haymarket in Lincoln with our Minnesota friends, Jeff and Sue. Licorice International is at 803 Q Street, next to the 'From Nebraska' gift shop. You can buy any kind of licorice you could imagine. And, you can sample it first to make sure it really is something you would like to try. I am looking forward to a return trip!

It has been a month

I have started any number of interesting posts in my head, but they never get to the point of being typed. Maybe they wouldn't have been that interesting.
We have been kind of busy the past several weeks. Marge moved to Heartland Park Retirement community for a trial run at the end of April and decided to stay. We have been moving her things ever since. We have a small jeep and the two of us which is one reason it is taking a while. Another reason is that I don't want to just move everything into her small apartment all at one time and overwhelm her, so I wait until she asks for something that we have not yet moved. Seems to be working. The only draw back is that Dave and I are still sleeping in the basement bedroom instead of the master bedroom.
Some fun stuff: the first weekend in May was the Lincoln Marathon and our friends from Minnesota, the Johnsons, came to visit so that Jeff could run in the half marathon. He completed the run, a little slower than his goal, but pretty close.
Dave's sisters came to visit over Mother's Day. We had 15 people out here for dinner (four were kids) and it was a good time.
Son Mark and his friend Alan just left this morning after spending the last week here. We got to do lots of fun stuff with them including going to a Saltdogs baseball game and seeing the movie Prince Caspian.

The end of the recall

We tried, but it was an uphill battle. The petition drive in Seward County to recall the county sheriff and county attorney ended this past week. Read the Lincoln Journal Star story here.

When my son-in-law started this effort it sounded like it might be pretty easy to get the approximately 1700 signatures needed. About 50 people volunteered to take petitions around to their friends and neighbors and we didn't hear many negative comments. But, when it came down to getting people to sign on the dotted line it was another story. Some people were afraid to sign their names because they thought there might be some negative consequences such as harassment from the county deputies or county attorney's office. I think if you are afraid of your county officials there is a pretty big problem and you should sign a petition to place a recall initiative on the ballot. Other people thought it was too early--let the process work. I think there is no new evidence and the case will not be overturned. And, let's face it, I think most people were apathetic and did not want to get involved.

It turns out that it doesn't matter what I think.

Time for a blog entry

Yes, we did come home from our spring break vacation--two weeks ago, as a matter of fact. It was so nice to be in a warm climate with no real agenda or schedule. It was more than nice, it was fantastic. Dave may not agree since he was sick over half the time we were gone. I waited until we got home to get sick, much better to do it that way I think.

We stayed at the Four Queens in downtown Las Vegas and experienced the "Fremont Street Experience" the first night of our trip. The next day we drove our rental car to Phoenix, sightseeing along the way: Hoover Dam, Jerome, Payson and on to Mesa. It took longer than driving I-40 to I-17, but it was a nice drive.

We spent four days with Mark, his friend Alan, and the 3 dogs. One of the days was Easter Sunday and we worshiped at Christ Church Lutheran, where Mark is a member. Mark is not a contemporary worship kind of guy, but he accompanied his aged hippy parents to the Praise Service. They have a great praise band and choir at that church--the place was rockin'. Mark prefers a Bach Prelude to Shine, Jesus, Shine, but we all got along OK.

Dave and I visited the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix--been there before, but it is a great place to see again. Lots of cacti were blooming and it was a beautiful day.

The time went by quickly as it does on a vacation and soon we were on our way back to Las Vegas. We drove I-10 to Parker and then north through Quartzite. What a strange place! Then on through Lake Havasu City--I would like to go back and spend some time there. When we got back to Las Vegas we stayed at the Silverton for two nights, and did some sightseeing on the Las Vegas strip.