Time for a vacation

Grace and greetings.

I have been more sporadic in my writing than I would have liked, but such is life. As of last Sunday, 20 July, was the 30th week of the calendar year, and on Saturday, 19 July, I officiated my 27th funeral of the year. I am tired and ready for my vacation.

The past week in Barrow, the rain has been early and often. It seems as though we received as much rain in the last two weeks as we did all last summer. We were hoping to paint the outside of the church, but the rain saw to it's postponement. Here on the North Slope, we live in a desert, less rain than the Sahara. So, after the wood dries out, and it rains, the wood soaks up all the rain deep into the wood. If we paint over the rain, the paint would just peel off, as it is doing at the moment. We had a group ready to come up from Anchorage to help us, but now it looks like it will be sometime next summer that we will try again.

The last two days have been wonderful, sunny and in the mid 40's. But today the clouds are back, not sure if it is just fog clouds or if the rain is returning. It is suppose to rain all weekend and into next week, (hence the canceling of the painting), which is just as well, since I did not really want to spend my first week of vacation painting the church. I am looking forward just to sit back and do nothing for a little while, but we will see how far that goes. There are still projects that I have not been able to do since we moved in 15 months ago, so I will be doing some of that as well.

We are planning to get off the slope for a couple of weeks, where hopefully I will be able to purchase a digital camera for my blog space.

Hope all is well were ever you happen to be.

Peace and blessings.