cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Since distraction is one of my primary ways of dealing with stress, I guess it was a good week for The Millennial Adolph & Nellie Hafen Family Reunion to occur (http://www.walden3d.com/hafen/reunion2000). As I wrote this sentance, I decided to do a search in previous Thoughtlets on the word distraction. It came up 226 times (it is in the footer of each of the 209 Thoughtlets written to date). So I guess sometime, I will need to do a Thoughtlet on distraction.
I admit, I have been a little bit stressed about not having a paycheck after November 30th. Yet, when I stop and think about it, I don't understand why. After all, for the last two years our paycheck has been subject to Mr. Finstad sending cash to cover payroll, and he always kept the option of not doing so. However, the finances are simply a background stress. Family concerns are usually my biggest causes of stress. I worry a lot about each of you. Andrea, because you are naturally and justifiably stressed about our financial security. Mom, because you are in such a hard place. My sister Sara, because you carry such large emotional burdens. Roice, because he doesn't want much to do with me. Ben and Sarah because of the tremendous responsibility you have taken on with Ethan Evans. Ethan Evans because of the filthiness of the world he will grow up in, especially once he connects outside of his home. Paul and Kate because of your finances and health concerns (although I see both of these concerns as either temporary or pretty minor). Heather and Nate because of your finances and career concerns. Melanie and Jared because of the stage of your career planning and schooling. Bridget because you are at that transition between engagement and marriage when Satan works so hard to undermine the best laid plans. Audrey because of how hard it has been for you to break up with the non-member and because I am concerned about how well you are eating and managing all the things you are doing. Sara because of your attidude concerning spiritual things. Rachel because you are a teenager. Matt because you struggled so much last year. And these days I especially worry about Rob, because he is cutting me off, has continued to make scary choices, and is at such a very critical juncture in his life.
It can be overwhelming and thus stressful when one strives to describe concerns and the resulting feelings. I pray for each of you individually each day. Yet I freely admit I have not yet learned to face the trial of my faith simply through prayer. I find myself wanting to fix every problem every person I love faces. I have to continuously remind myself this is not what Heavenly Father's plan is all about. We each get to be tested individually. And we each can expect to be tested to the limit of our ability to handle the test. Several scriptures come up:
Having attempted to give a context for the week of the Hafen Millennial Reunion, let me describe what happened.
As I mentioned in my last Thoughtlet, the week started off great with an unexpected visit from Melanie and Jared on Sunday evening. Monday I spent working in the office. There was a very interesting phone conversation with Steve Joseph. I think it is worth sharing the bulk of the minutes with each of you:
I realize and apologize some of this is Greek to most of you. Most of my time during the week was spent cleaning up the Continuum laptop computer so I could take it back to Continuum on Thusday, on my way to the Hafen Millennial Reunion. Monday evening Andrea and I went to the LifeWay Parent's meeting called Climbers. Aggressive and Tough Love are the messages from there, and this is a hard message for me.
Tuesday Steve Slawson set up a lunch for Andrea and me at Pappa- deaux's on I-10 at the Gessner exit. Going around the table starting on my left was Linda Renner, Richard Uden, John Moran, George Marion, Heshang Yang, Stewart Jackson, John Pixton, David Wicks, Peter Duncan, Louise Durham, Rita Kompa, Susan Crawford, Rhonda Hartmann, Kim Tenberg, Dave Gilson, John Shaw, Jim Vetter, John Amason, Doyle Fuqua, Ajay Jaiswal, Mike Yates, Dave Ridyard, Steve Slawson, and Andrea. Michelle Anderson stayed and watched the phone, and they took her back a lunch. (Jared, you asked how I remember all of this stuff, in this case I made notes on the back of an envelope. As I mentioned when we talked, I started keeping my Missionary Journal weekly on P-Days, and have taught my mind to keep and remember one or two weeks of stuff at a time. This training of the mind is one reason why I think it is important to start keeping a Journal while you are young.)
There were several funny and touching things at the lunch. John Moran originally sat by me, then he moved and said that seat was for the stripper they hired. Then Linda Renner, the ultra conservative Christian, sat there. Andrea explained how I asked her to iron my blue shirt Monday evening, and then I didn't wear it. John Amason came up and I said `Better me than you.' He said `I agree!' I explained how at this stage of our development I feel the product has a much better chance of coming to completion with a software manager than a designer. Andrea had said there would be a couple of folks in attendance who wanted me out of the company and were putting on a good political face. I agree with her interpretation. They gave me a nice card, a set of Chinese Worry Balls, and a beautiful boxed clock which is on a universal joint (Like the double elliptical pendulum harmonograh Dad and I built when I was a kid.). Also, Rhonda gave me a big gold star with the words `Forever Grateful, Rhonda' engraved on it.
Andrea and I went to Best Buy and looked at digital cameras after the lunch. There is a new Sony camera I expect I will buy. One downside is it does not use diskettes. However, the resolution is a lot better, and it might be able to replace the need for a scanner to turn many of the boxes in the garage and bedroom (atoms) into digital data (electrons). I also wanted to get it before the Hafen Millennial Reunion (although we ended up waiting to make the purchase). I went from there to a meeting with Mike Dunn at Geophysical Development Corporation. He is interested in Mr. Finstad's Persian Carpet Spec Seismic Survey, Global Geo Services, and the data mining Sam LeRoy and I have been talking about. He stressed the best way to do the data mining is as an oil company, and then to promote the leads. On the way home I stopped at Sam LeRoy's office and we agreed to put together a prospectus on the data mining lead generation machine during the month of September.
Wednesday's highlight was lunch with Ed Rogers, Ken Turner, and Andrea, the President of Heritage Galleries On-Line, at Rotisserie for Beef and Bird. I learned that Ed was the lawyer for NeoSoft when they sold to pdq.net and made Karl and Ellyn independently wealthy. Wednesday evening the Venturing Crew was to split with the Elders. However, the Elders were at the Houston Temple, and called and were not able to make it back in time. Brent Peterson and I ended up talking in the foyer until we gave up. Brent Weber came by, learned about my being fired by Continuum and about the Persian Carpet survey, and gave me a great contact in Conoco who will be intereted in the survey. When I got home I sent an e-mail to Mr. Finstad with news that the lawyers are going to give me a letter saying it is OK to sell and to interpret the Persian Carpet survey. I got a response from his Norwegian ISP (Internet Service Provider) telling me walden3d.com is still being used to forward spam e-mail. Hopefully we will finally get this issue fixed this next week.
Thursday was spent finishing up cleaning off the Continuum laptop. It took so long, I ended up canceling a lunch appointment with Dennis McMullin. Andrea drove me to the airport and Rachel picked up Matt from football practice. I got to the check-in desk enough before the plane left I was able to buy a piece of pizza for lunch before heading to Vegas and the Hafen Millennial Reunion. I called Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Luana and they were not home. So I spent the night in a $25. motel room in Mesquite, Nevada. It was nice to drive through the Virgin Gorge in the morning sunlight and to see the geology instead of at 10:30 at night like I often have.
As I arrived in St. George, I went straight to the library to make arrangements to use their computers for the workshop on sharing Hafen Genealogy on the Internet later in the afternoon. As I was talking to the librarian and she was telling me it was too late to sign up for 3:00 that afternoon, Andrea's brother Russell Shirts, the Washington County Recorder and 9 years ago the director of the Library, walked in. I introduced him to the librarian as my brother-in-law, and she made arrangements for us to have access to the computers. Russell and I had a good conversation ranging from why I was in Utah without Andera to family to Mountain Meadows (../9901.html). He was checking out a Harry Potter book for his family, and `just happened' to walk into the library at the same time I did. It was one of those coincidences (../9715.html) that convince me the spirit is alive and working in my life.
I went from the Library to the St. George Temple, where Mom's Uncle George Snow, his daughter Susan Staheli, Ralph McArthur, my cousin Diane Cluff, and I went through the 11:20 temple session together. I learned later there were several in the temple session at noon. After the session I changed in the parking lot, then went to R&K Books and spent some money on books it would have been better not to have. There were three folks who came to my genealogy workshop: Carol Rose Shannon, her daughter Julia Shannon, and Sue Staheli. They seemed to like what I talked about, and I think this seed can grow to be a very worthwhile activity. Then I took Mom out to dinner at a new restaurant above Hunan called The Painted Pony. It is Santa Fe type of southwestern food. We had a good visit. Mom has lost 30 pounds and did not eat that much. Mom and I watched the last of a movie, and about 8:00 I drove up to Cedar and stayed with Grandma Shirts.
Saturday morning I went for a run/walk/run up to Ridge Road, past the property we sold, down past the new lighthouse at Providence Center, back to Sage Road and back to Shirts'. I took some mail to Audrey at Motel 6 where she is working and we talked for a few minutes. Then I went to Deseret Books, ordered the new release of InfoBase and bought some more books which could have waited, stopped at Mountain West Books (scoping out opportunities for HGOL, and then picked up Heather. We went by Eldon Schmutz to collect data about nitrates in Cedar Valley, to the Post Office to see about setting up a Post Office Box in Cedar (they were closed), to Ron Nelson's Sporting Goods to get a couple of USGS maps, and then we headed out to St. George.
Heather, it was great to spend the day with you and to get to know you better. I hope over time I can help build up your confidence in Fathers. You sure make me feel special. We met Paul and Kate at Kate's parent's house, and then we went and picked up Mom at Porter's Nursing Home. It was a hard ride out to Pinto for her, and we did not stay that long after dinner. Diane had put everything together very nicely, and other than a little too much wind, everything seemed to go just fine. Since we got back before sunset I took Heather, Paul, and Kate out to the golf course where Grandpa Hafen's St. George feedlot had been. It has changed so much I could not recognize where everything was. We walked around looking for pottery shards, and only found 4 golf balls, which Paul threw across the moon. Then we stopped at Larson's for a malt. When we dropped off Paul and Kate we had some fun watching Paul and Kate's Mom tease one of Kate's sisters who was going out on a date. Close family is wonderful. It was nice to spend some time talking to Grandma Shirts and reading `The Engines of Our Ingenuity,' which I had purchased at a lunch Alf Klaviness took me to on Friday, August 25th. This was the first time I had heard John Lienhard in person. His daily radio show, by the same name as the book, is what I started immitating when I started these Thoughtlets.
Sunday, Audrey called and said she was going to stay and listen to Apostle L. Tom Perry, rather than go to sacrament meeting in Pinto at the Millennial Hafen Reunion. I picked up Heather and Nate about 9:00, and we were in Pinto by about 10:00. I conducted sacrament meeting and started off with my testimony. It was the first time I had shared the experiences in Corvallis, Oregon (../9715.html) with any of the Hafens. It was well received, and the meeting seemed to go fine. The chairs were sat up so they were behind Roy Hafen's house and out of the wind, with everyone's back to the sun and me facing the sun. Paul and a few others mentioned how they just watched my face get redder and redder as the meeting went on. Oh well!
After the meeting I changed in the car, and then we sliced potatoes and cut up onions. Kate and I also sliced our fingers in the process. Oh well! Extra protein. Dinner was great, even if I had brought two store bought salads. It was nice to talk to Diane and to be able to piece together why Grandma Hafen and her and Chuck did not get along. My gross interpretation of what I heard is that Grandma was protecting her baby, Uncle Tony, from being rehurt by his x-wife and Diane's Mom, Irene. I will always feel a special bond with Grandma Hafen, and yet I learned another weakness on this trip. One evening I was describing to Grandma Shirts how Grandma Hafen had to sell the ranch to bail out Uncle Glenn's Vegas gambling debts, and she said `Why?' With this question I realzed it would have been much better for Uncle Glenn if Grandma had known how to practice tough love in this circumstance. It may seem odd, yet this brief conversation gave me hope that my estrangement from Roice and Rob will not be forever. Heather and Nate had a lot of fun riding horses. It was nice to talk to and to get to know some more of the Hafen family members. John Hafen and I even talked about some of my ideas for using Greek condensation pyramids to milking water from the atmosphere in the west. Time will tell which ideas have any value and which don't.
When we got back to Cedar, Heather, Nate, Audrey, Grandma Shirts, and I ended up with Brian, Sara, and Des, in their back yard. We watched the vultures land roost in their tree. Brian pointed out bats. We talked and enjoyed each other. We ate muffins, jelly beans, grapes, and macaroni salad. We moved into the house and talked. It was a very nice evening. Thanks Sara and Des and Brian. In fact, although I missed having Andrea with me, it was a nice week, and it was nice to participate in the Hafen Millennial Reunion. I hope you will all choose to participate in the future, as often as you can, in this type of family activity."