cc: file, Andrea, Tony Hafen, Sara and Des Penny, & Maxine Shirts
"Finally we got the e-mail forwarding working again. Wednesday I resent Thoughtlet 0435.html and Thursday Paul, Melanie, Sarah, and Bridget acknowledged receipt. Bridget note also said:
Thursday Robert Shirts sent us a note saying:
Friday Ben acknowledged receipt, Saturday Aunt Sara, and
Sunday Audrey wrote:
Then Sunday, Aunt Sara wrote:
I agree with most of these points, and as Aunt Sara stated, this
does not change my mind. Hopefully each of you are also forming
your own opinions, and my comments are only one factor in your
individual decisions. I realize Kerry is a Catholic, and is
personally against abortion, sort of. However, it is part of
his party's platform to kill babies, and I can not get past
this issue (I love you guys too much, and have taken too much
flack for too many years by liberal scientific colleagues about
not killing some of you, rather than letting you be born).
Specifically, I can not understand why people can not realize
there are orders of magnitude more deaths by abortion each year,
just in our country, than have occurred on both sides in
the Iraq war, or from all of the nuclear tests that have ever
happened http://www.religioustolerance.org/abo_fact.htm
gives the numbers as 1,211,000 in 1995; 1,222,000 in 1996;
900,000 in 1997; 884,000 in 1998; 862,000 in 1999; 857,000 in
2000; and it continues today). I've worked too hard to give
my 10 kids and step kids a chance to live and enjoy a reasonably
good life to ever justify the selfish driven murder of hundreds
of thousands of God's children each year. And then there are
the Gadianton Robber issues. So, even with Aunt Sara's rational
and logical response, I will proudly vote for Bush. And I love
my sister and I respect her right to choose for whom she will vote.
It has been long enough ago that I do not remember all that happened that week. Going by the notes on the back of my swallows counting sheets, I was started working with Mary Cole, who now works for Magic Earth, which is now a Landmark Company, which is now a Halliburton Company, on my talk for the SEG Visualization Theater in Denver (0442.html). I remember being very busy at work, and so this is probably why there are not many notes. The key activity for the week was my flight to Macallen, Texas on Thursday night. I stayed at the Holiday Inn in Reynosa. This was the night of the first Bush-Kerry Presidential debate. I ended up going up to my room and watching it. Then early Friday morning caught a cab to the airport and flew to Poza Rica with our agent Luis Viertel. Luis told me that the Spanish newspapers all reported that Bush won. I didn't think he did very good because he looked so sullen and angry. I was right. Oh well!
We got to Poza Rica, where Randy served much of his mission, about 8:00 and were in the Pemex offices by 9:00. As we drove through the third world jungle, I couldn't help but wonder how much it is like where Sara Ellen is at. Work in Pemex is pretty laid back. There was a lady in the office we were in that worked for Landmark and who came to Pemex from Venezuela. She asked for my autograph. So, now I'm famous, it seems appropriate to get full of myself, again. I hope not. The important manager we flew to Poza Rica to meet was tied up, and we were not able to talk to him before lunch. He had some others rounded up and I started on my presentation to them before lunch. We talked about 2 hours, from 12:00 until 2:00, and then we broke for lunch.
The took us to lunch on a place on the other side of town. The drive to and from involved driving over a very steep mountain, with sidewalks and houses built on 30-40 degree slopes. As we drove over the mountain, I couldn't help but think of my plans and dreams for Red Cove (0436.html). Lunch was at `Max & Miligan's.' I had prawn fettechini. Really good homemade noodles, and there was not very much sauce. Very nice lunch. However, everyone there talked Spanish for two hours. So I looked out the window and watched the rain come down. I got thinking about Paul's Master's Thesis, and how he has had to start over. My mind wandered to flow, and the kind of air and fluid flow modeling Paul want's to build a visualization engine for. Then I got to thinking about other kinds of flow, like traffic, money, work flow, and pictured a generalized mathematical solution to flow. This is the kind of thing that can get someone a Noble Prize. Paul deserves this. So when I got back to the hotel in Reynosa, I called Paul and we talked through my weird ideas. Paul, I was glad to see you quickly agreed they are weird. Oh well!
Lunch at Pemex is from 2:00 until 4:00, and then they work until 9:00 in the evening. After getting back to the Pemex we got the group back together and restarted the presentation. I had put together about 200 slides on Thursday, because this was suppose to be a 4 hour seminar. The guy we came to see finally came into the room about 5:00. So from 5:00 until 6:30 we went super speed through the material I'd prepared. It went well. We really needed to leave for the airport by 6:00. We got in the cab about 6:35. It was a mad cap taxi ride to the airport, over sidewalks, up back alleys at 80 miles per hour, etc. The result was only to find the plane back to Reynosa was a half hour late. Luis' wife picked us up and they dropped me off at the Holiday Inn Hotel. I got up early Saturday morning, and after having to wait for them to call another cab that could go across the border finally made my way to the Macallen airport. I got to the airport as they were loading the plane. I made it, and was in Houston by 7:30 AM and back at the house by 8:30 AM.
It was General Conference weekend. I had told Paul I thought the two new apostles would be international, and one would be from Latin America and one from the Far East. One of the new Apostles, Elder Dieter F. Uchtdorf is from Germany. The other one, Elder David A. Bednar, was the President of Rick's College. Guess that shows how good my inspiration is. NOT! Oh well!
In my Sunday calls I learned that Colby fell down and had 3 stitches put in above his left eye earlier in the day. It is hard for a Grandpa to accept that one of his grandsons is no longer perfect. Oh well! Also, I learned that Rachel won a 20" flat screen television in a soccer raffle. She has never won anything before and it made her feel a little bit like the wonderful, special, talented, beautiful, intelligent, strong young woman she is. Right Rachel? Maybe I'll be able to convince you of these truths when the day comes I'm able to take you on a trip to someplace like Poza Rica."