The Adventure Continues....

Salem finally cooled down this week. Interestingly, it cooled down just as soon as we signed the contract with the air conditioning people to put in central air conditioning. That is a pretty good racket that the air conditioner installers have with the weatherman. They just wait until all the orders are in, and then they cool everything off. Last week while it was hot, we tried to make some ice cream with our ice cream maker. It was too hot out, and we ended up with liquid milky stuff. We decided that enough was enough, so we went to buy some fans or anything to beat the heat, but it turns out that everyone in Salem had the same idea. Instead, we did find one of those ice cream makers that you put in the freezer, and then make ice cream. I think I will never purchase ice cream again. The homemade stuff was so good and tasty that I didn't really mind the heat for about 7 minutes.

We really like it here in Salem. We have found that the people are really friendly. After you run into a stranger, they start chatting with you, and soon they have promised to name their next child after you. And that even happens at the grocery store, not only if you give them mind altering chemicals. We have made good friends so far with Joe the furniture store guy, Cathleen the hairstylist, Peter, the weird old movie theater usher, 4 waitresses, and the Charles, Leann, Jenny, and her son John from the neighborhood.

We have some neighbors next door who are very nice. Tom works construction and Valerie has some mysterious job that she doesn't talk about, but, we think, involves international espionage. They have a beautiful yard, and a swimming pool, and have invited us over to swim when it was so hot. We haven't yet agreed to do so, mainly because we are concerned about espionage, but otherwise we like them.


Work is going well; nobody is dead yet from anything I've directly done to them. I hope that streak will continue.



Alicia decided to confuse everyone we've met this week. We had just met everyone in the ward and the neighborhood, when she decided to change her hairdo. See picture to the right. She went to the neighborhood sewing class and then realized that she didn't know how to sew. No problem, however, because nobody recognized her. They thought that she must be some exotic woman from Portland.


I'm concerned that she did it so that she could hide from the law, but Valerie our neighbor may be on to her. Even still, she is super sexy (see above), maybe even more so. Also, see below. I'm the luckiest guy around.