Last month, I drove to Clover Valley, in Elko County, Nevada, to attend the funeral of an aunt, my mother’s sister. As we drove south on Highway 93, out of Idaho and into Nevada, the rugged, imposing, snowcapped Ruby Mountains came into view, powering skyward from the valley floor of the high desert country.

Although not as engulfed in pomp and ceremony as the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, no less treacherous and fraught with peril is the annual sorting of the bulls in the Basin, east of Oakley, Idaho. Similar ceremonies are no doubt held on ranches from Yakima to Yoakum.

I’m pretty good at doing a lot of things at a high level of mediocrity. Not unlike a good share of the folks I know, I have several irons in the fire, as it were. Too often, I’m afraid, one of the most common byproducts of my activity – or malady, depending on your viewpoint – is that some of my projects are poorly done, done late, done late poorly or not done at all.

It was one of those days when Mr. Murphy’s law ruled supreme. As a matter of fact, I think the entire Murphy family was in on the act. It seemed as though any event going to occur that day was going to go wrong for me.

So I was at a county 4-H leaders’ council meeting the other night. I was there on behalf of the county fair board. Seems there were some questions from leaders regarding some of the rules of the livestock shows at the county fair. They wanted their concerns addressed before the beginning of the official weigh-in two weeks hence.

Last spring, my wife and I proudly attended the commencement exercises at Utah State University, where our second daughter graduated magna cum laude with a double major in political science and some sort of social work.

This winter has been one for the ages; at least it has been in my neck of the woods. In the years and decades to come, we’ll talk and reminisce about the winter of ’17. She was kind of late arriving, but once she got here she made it clear that she was serious and intended to be in charge – not completely unlike an obnoxious mother-in-law or the shirt-tail relative who shows up at funerals and brandings.

Well, I’ve got another mess on my hands. It’s not life-threatening, but it’s going to be a real joy to clean up. On top of the responsibility to clean up this mess, I have the extra burden of guilt that so often accompanies the scourge of procrastination.

Old Man Winter has really been in the business of making winter this year. Within a two-week period, we had a couple of storms that have dumped around 2 feet of snow in the valley, 30- to 40-mph winds to blow it into 6-foot drifts across the road and a five-day stretch where the high temperature was -10ºF.

As I was sitting at the end of the bench in my role as assistant junior varsity girls’ basketball coach during a game, I felt my phone buzz in my shirt pocket, alerting me of an incoming text. In my attempt to maintain proper decorum, I ignored it until halftime, when I snuck a peek as I walked to the locker room.