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.
"Audrey and Bridget thanks for responding. Glad to hear the mail forwarding is working. Bridget, I enjoyed your comment:
In terms of a summary of lifetime activity, this is what we all spend our days doing: learning, earning a living, and making family plans for ourselves, our children, and then our grandchildren. Ethan, I've been wanting to talk to you about your wedding plans! Opps, maybe it is a little bit too early for that discussion, even for Grandpa.
As I was thinking about a theme for this week, it seems like Bridget's words `Things are pretty much the same here,' gave a pretty good summary of our week. It is nice to have a quiet week. The only thing particularly unusual, was the fact, due to travel schedules and other meeting schedules, I had 6:00 AM meetings twice this week. I have always been a morning person, and so these meetings did not seem either unusual nor unnatural. It seems like I have always subscribed to the folk saying which says that:
Benjamin Frankiln, one of my heros, wrote in Poor Richard's Almanac advise realitive to the early bird:
King Benjamin, another one of my heros, called all of his people together in order to teach them. The description of the people gathering is one of the early bird:
And they heard wisdom:
In fact, after he finished speaking the words from the angel of the Lord, and the people were filled with joy, King Benjamin continued to teach them about the early bird:
One last scriptural reference to the early bird:
Monday I got up at 6:00, just as Rachel was leaving for seminary. Andrea and I ran down to the church and picked up the car. Andrea was disappointed to learn it is only 2.0 miles to the church, and it took us almost 30 minutes to run down there and drive back. Pretty slow pace. The day was spent attempting to figure out why the Sun converts e-mail attachments of MicroSoft Word documents to binary files. Andrea and I did not go to Climbers because Marti was going to go, and she didn't want me there. Marti didn't go, saying she didn't realize what time it started until it was too late to go.
Tuesday I got up at 5:30 and ran around Crescent Green to Greenhouse Road and back down Kingsland to the house. On Tuesday, Dennis McMullin and I finally had our postponed lunch. He is really enjoying his work with Proxicom, where `E-business is their only business.' He wants to get me on retainer with them, and will be working this for the next few weeks.
Just before lunch I went to the Circuit City next to Macaroni Grill where Dennis and I were having lunch. They had the Sony Mavica CD 1000, which I had been looking at for some time to replace the digital camera I used to have access to through Continuum (../9848.html, 0036.html, and 0039.html). I bought it from a guy named Howard, and when he saw my credit card he said `I will certainly remember your name.' He showed me a picture of his son and said he is a single father. I learned his wife left him after 18 months, because it was so much work to keep up with the baby (Sarah I am so proud of you). He said his life revolved around his son and his God. I asked him which church he goes to, and he said `I'm between churches.' I invited him to ours, and he said he will come today. It felt like I got two worms (someone to serve the church too, and a significant consulting opportunity) in two hours. He didn't come.
We received 13 wonderful photos of Ethan from Sarah (and Ben). The first thing I did with the new digital camera was to capture them and moved them to: http://www.walden3d.com/photos/Family/02_BenSarah/01_EthanEvans/ .../000819mBenEthanGrandpa.jpg is a good picture of the three of us. It is exciting to have a Grandson, although Dallas is a little bit far away. Need to work on how to coordinate the visits.
Matt's football game was at Katy High School. We sat with the Salts, and Nathan was on the opposing team. After Matt's football game he and I went Home Teaching together for the first time. We went to Richard and Colleen Moore's house (they moved back in the ward from nine years in the Middle East a few months ago). Matt used his trumpet skills to play a very loud note on their 4 foot curling hollow Africian antelope horn. I bought him dinner at McDonalds and we went to Haden Hudson's home, to discover his older daughter Hersey is living with him until she gets married next month, and moves to Corpus. She was addressing wedding invitations. So Bridget, I guess making wedding plans is just normal activity in many houses.
Wednesday I got up at 5:30 and repeated Tuesday's exercise. There was a call about the RC-SIG at 10:00. It looks like our existing committee will continue, and the next meeting will be with Carolina Cruez-Niera in Ames, Iowa at the VRAC (Virtual Reality Application Center, see 0018.html). It seemed like all week was spent backing up computers and finding solutions to printing and e-mail issues. We only have 6 folks signed up for the GCAGS, and we have planned on 200. Many of the OTC abstracts have not been submitted. And even though I get up early, I don't seem to get much of what I want to done each day. Wednesday evening the Venturing Crew had a sports night and played vollyball at the sand courts east of Kingsland Baptist. It was fun.
Thursday I got up at 5:30 and repeated Wednesday's exercise. I finally got Tracy Stark's comments opened on last week's Walden 3-D Journal (0039.html). They were well thought out and wonderful. It took most of the day to rework the draft of the first Edition about the Walden 3-D Design Process. I have worked on the second edition, about Maps, since then. It is a lot of work to document these ideas. Dick Bostrom, friend at SGI, sent an e-mail and said it seemed like weekly was too often for the type of material I am writing about. Good advice, and we will see what happens. I had a nice lunch with Dick Coons, a friend whom I have worked with for 15 years. He used to be at Gulf Oil, and I met him when he worked for Forest Oil. He has some major prospects in South Texas, and he has access to some data which is very valuable. He is raising $300,000. to do some reprocessing and interpretation of the data. I hope I can help him, partly because it would be an extremely interesting project to work on. Thursday evening included another Home Teaching visit, this time to the Hollemans.
Friday I got up at 5:00, shaved and showered, read the newspaper, and was at the Holiday Inn Select at 5:45 for a meeting with Kjell Finstad and Mike Dunn, President of Geophysical Development Corporation. Interesting meeting, and it will be interesting to see where it goes. Kjell is also still talking to Wulf Massell. All day Friday was spent working on system issues. Too often it is the mundane maintenance and system upgrade things which keep me from getting any real work done. In the evening Rachel, Andrea, and I went to see the movie `Beautiful.' Sarah, Heather, Melanie, Audrey, Bridget, and Sara (notice this list is by age) I think you would all enjoy the movie. It is a spoof, full of cowboys vs indians, false faith and misrepresentation, and as long as one does not try to look for deep eternal truths (the whole premise is based on immorality and dishonesty) it is a cute movie.
Saturday we got up at 6:30 and I went to Greenhouse Road while Andrea ran down to Greenwind Chase, over to Baker, up to Kingsland, and back to the house. I picked Angela Moore at 7:55 and we went to choir practice. I have not wanted to commit the time to start going to choir again, because it seems there is so much to do. However, the Christmas concert is coming up again, and I don't want to miss singing in it. The entire practice was songs from the hymn book. I found myself crying as we sang:
I spent the rest of the day working on the Maps Edition of the Walden 3-D Journal. I will share one paragraph I struggled with, mostly for Sara, because it is tied to the book, Ishmael by Dannial Quinn, she suggested I read and I suggest each of you read:
Saturday evening Andrea and I went to Broadway Nights, an evening of entertainment put on by the Memorial Ward. They really did a nice job. Matt and I went and played a little tennis afterwards. It was fun, and I hope we do more of this.
This morning I got up at 5:15, shaved and showered, and was at the Holiday Inn Select at 5:55 for another meeting with Kjell Finstad. He leaves this afternoon, and when we talked on the phone yesterday, Sunday morning was the only time he was available. Good meeting. He offered to put me on retainer for GGS. I told him I need to have a letter from the State Department first. We went over several things. He is proceeding with his project in Nicaragua (../9821.html, ../9827.html, and ../9828.html), and asked if I am interested in being his representative and going with him down there the 18th-22nd of October. I checked my calendar and said I could rearrange the other commitments I have then. I like and enjoy Kjell, even though he fired me, and probably because he is genuine.
So all in all, even though `Things are pretty much the same here,' it seems like a good week to remind each of you that `The early bird does get the worm,' and I hope each of you are early enough to rise to get the righteous desires of your heart. Have a great week."
