March 22nd - Finally some rain!

Finally got some rain today - the yellow pollen had so thoroughly covered everything that the whole world was one color!  It rained hard enough to pretty much wash it away.  Of course, by tomorrow I am sure it will all be back!

Had a presidency meeting this morning and we covered a lot of ground.  It still is so hard to discuss all the compassionate service needs in our ward.  There are so many people struggling with so many things.  I was happier when I didn't know all that was happening - but then, I was also unable to offer support and prayers.


I got a call from Billy.  He was happy that Wednesday had been his last day at IBM.  He said a lot of people stopped by his desk to wish him well.  Several even mentioned that they would love to be able to find another job and get out of there themselves.  He had accepted the new job in Des Moines a few days ago, and then yesterday got another offer that was much better.  He was trying to decide what to do.  The new offer is a contract position for the state of North Dakota, so he would be in Bismarck at least through the end of the year and probably for two years.  The pay is 50% more than the present offer and the job would be doing exactly what he wants to do.  The down side was that it is North Dakota, which is further away and kind of out in the middle of nowhere.  Bismarck metro area is a little smaller than Cedar Rapids, but he likes the small town.  It is the state capitol so should have plenty of good things to do.  They have a lot of beautiful parks and bike trails, with a river right through town and several lakes nearby.  Oh, but it gets so COLD in the winter!  Anyway, bottom line is he called back later and said they had offered another dollar an hour on top of the previous offer and he had accepted.  He will start middle of April.  So I guess we will be going to Bismarck, ND, sometime.  I have been in ND before, but only barely over the border - never up into the central part of the state.  I am happy for him, as he is pretty excited about the job.  (We will see if anything changes in the next few days.)

The rest of the day was pretty much all the normal things - no need to run that list again!