I didn’t wake till 9.am Boise time, which was great, because it meant I actually slept very well in spite of the changes of time. The house didn’t rouse up much until later, in fact, but my older son, Ben (who'd arrived the day before) and Celia and I spent our first ten minutes trying to figure out how to get the water to come out of the shower instead of the bath in the bathroom nearest to our bedroom. Our hostess, Cindy, arrived and saved the day: there’s a little round disk that needs to be pushed up - that’s all it is; very simple.
After breakfast - or maybe even before it (with all the guests mealtimes were a bit erratic around here) Chris (my future daughter-in-law's dad) showed Celia and me his workshop. Massive. Not only the main workshop but a toilet room, an office, a paint shop, and a cupboard in which there are two big pipes for sucking the dust and chips out of the main workshop. Everything is neat and there are places for everything: he’s in the middle of doing a walnut entertainment cabinet for someone, and has done a host of other similar projects over the years. He has stacks of spare wood and machines and tools - you name it. The ’tour’ took nearly an hour by the time Celia has asked about this and that. And he was pleased to tell her. They enjoy talking, these Idaho people - everywhere we go they’re happy to talk and tell you stories, and find out more about you. It’s great, really, and very friendly.
Cindy, Celia and I went and visited the place where the reception is going to be held. The colouring of houses and countryside is rather muted perhaps because all the grass is browned off and the trees are bare. I think it’s the lack of greenery that surprises me, but of course we've come from high summer. Everyone here has been expecting snow, but there's no sign of it, and the ski fields are getting desperate.
Celia and Cindy had a big sort out as to what we’d be doing for the meal (pretty much a buffet) for the wedding and have got it in hand. They went shopping this afternoon and bought in all the supplies. At the same time Liz (fiancée), Dom (son getting married), Ben and a friend of Liz’s called Heather who’d been at the house organising something else to do with the wedding - and me - all went into Boise, met up with Liz's sister, Sarah, and dropped her car off to her, and coincidentally met her father-in-law. Sarah and her husband Joel have an apartment above where Joel’s dad works, and also above the restaurant Sarah used to work. Joel has guns, and a massive collection of Lego - which impressed Celia. Guns are popular in Idaho, as we were to find out.
Then we went onto the airport and hired a car - Ben seems comfortable with driving and thinks that having an extra car would be good, but on this trip Liz drove back because we had some navigating to do.
In the end it had got dark by the time we dealt with hiring the car - the guy behind the counter was very friendly and chatty, as was the girl in the next booth, who came in to help - and so we headed onto the tuxedo place where the fittings needed to be sorted out for Dom and Ben. One of the girl assistants turned out to be from Russia even though she seemed to speak American English with no accent at all. Curiously she didn’t seem to know about Siberia being used as a prison area - don’t ask me how we got onto that…!
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