"Saturday morning I was mowing the lawn (Matt I miss you). When I got to the back lawn there was the blue basketball. I had no idea how it got on the back lawn by the volcanic rock. Maybe it was in a neighbor's yard and they threw it back into our yard. Anyway, it was there, and I did not want to stop the lawnmower to move it. Therefore I planned my approach so I would just kick it across the pool, and then I would take it into the back hall and put it under the sink after emptying the last bag of cuttings in the compost pile.
I didn't want the ball to go in the pool, it was big and looked heavy, and so I gave it a good kick. So good that it flew across the pool, above the trellis shading the back porch, and right into the center of the bottom right window on the left side of the chimney. If I was playing soccer, and this was the goal, it would have been a perfect shot. However, I wasn't, it wasn't, and it perfectly demonstrated that a basketball going this fast is not stopped by an eighth inch thick piece of plate glass. Oh well!
Andrea came outside with `What is going on?' Oh well! It seemed pretty obvious to me. There was a broken window!
So my Saturday morning consisted of going to Lowes, whose glass cutting machine was broken, then to Home Depot, who no longer cut glass, then trying to find Lancaster Glass on Mason, who have moved since I bought the glass on the table in the office, and finally finding A-1 Glass and Mirror on Kingsland just west of Mason. The lady who cut the glass for me was about my age and looked like she had been strung out on 50 kinds of who knows what, for many years. As I sat and waited for the glass, and to pay my $16.+ bill, I couldn't help but consider the struggles of those in Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana who are busy cutting down trees, hauling cars to the dump, repairing roofs, sorting personal loss due to water damage, and even repairing some broken windows. The physics behind kicking a basketball too hard and a storm hitting into the Gulf Coast too hard are not that much different, just different in scale and consequences.
I was able to fix the broken window by noon. However, as I picked up the pieces of glass on the carpet by the window, I could not help but recall the night I went to the garage, got a crow bar, and put it through the television that was sitting in front of the other window upstairs (../9726.html and referenced in ../0341.html). Earlier that night I vividly recalled walking into Sara Ellyn's room and finding her and her two friends watching the same `R-Rated Movie' Marti had insisted on going to when she first made her break from what I had thought were jointly accepted family rules. I recall making Sara's friends go home. I recalled Rob refusing to turn off the television later that night, and me irrationally deciding to follow the example of the church member in Pecos, Texas - whose family I ate Sunday lunch with several times after church when I was working on a Mobil Seismic Crew in Pecos back in 1979 - and turning off the television for good. The television had been left with us by David Kessler from one of the times he stayed with us. I recalled picking up the glass from the television screen on the same carpet. I contemplated the anger I had bottled up inside me and how destructive and permanently harmful this anger has proved to be when it has erupted, resulting in broken psychological windows.
I pondered how much Dr. Nancy White helped me, and how she helped me purge the anger. I wished I knew how to help some of you kids do the same kind of purging. Especially the pain caused by my mistakes, since my mistakes are the ones I feel guilty for. I recognize this pain can cause someone to turn to God in what appears to others to be an addictive way (as in my case and particularly in my Mom's view), or this anger can cause someone to get caught up in other addictions, especially when there is a family history of addictions like alcoholism, which is certainly the case in too many lines of the ancestry of you 10 kids. As I picked up the glass from the broken window I cried and my heart ached.
I tried to talk to Sara Ellyn about these feelings on Sunday night after telling her about the broken window. She passed it off and said, `We should forget about that.' Just like it is impossible to fix a broken window pane, I fear it is impossible to fix some of the emotional scars I carry and have caused in the lives of those I love. Oh well! One of Nancy's teachings is that the first step in purging these issues is to talk about it. I write about my mistakes with the hope it will eventually create a basis for talking. I replaced the broken window, and to the world it now looks as it did before. However, I know, and now you know, the story and some of the emotions behind the moment.
Monday was Labor Day. I spent almost all day working on my Book of Mormon pattern finding project. By the end of the week I had finished editing the word triplets, and was started on putting them together with the summary of single and double word counts. I've been working on this for about a year now, and I figure it will take about 37 movies to get through this next phase of editing the file. Oh well!
Tuesday it was back to work and back to climbing stairs at lunch time (0536.html). When I got home there was a note from Melanie pointing out I forgot to write who the new Bishop for Nottingham Country Ward is in the Thoughtlet (0535.html). It is Bishop William (Bill) Harlan. I updated the on-line Thoughtlet, and recalled John Mouton's comment to me about my poor use of English: `Roice, your mind just works so fast you think you have done something and you have actually gone on to something else. While we were waiting for Rob and the Elder's to come over for dinner, we were watching the news. There was a story about $11,000 being raised through a bake sale for Hurricane Katrina victims, which was reported on Channel 2 news. People would come up and give $500 for a brownie. Touching. Elder Spitler from Bountiful and Elder Durham from Salt Lake City arrived about 7:00 PM. We had a nice evening, and I ended up giving each of them a packet from Prime Words. Reminded me how this is one of many projects I am way behind where I want to be on. Oh well! Rob didn't make it either Monday nor Tuesday, although he did call, apologize, and say he fell asleep on Monday night. Oh well!
Wednesday Elizabeth resigned from GDC. There goes the car pool. Oh well. I called Rick Zimmerman in the morning and left a message on his answering machine stating it has been 100 days since Memorial Day, and it would be nice to know if he intents to follow-up on the plans he outlined. Zehra Staheli had called back on Tuesday night and said that Logan was going to be ordained a Deacon on Sunday the 11th. Because of the short notice, because Logan doesn't remember who I am, and because of finances I decided to not go up to Spanish Fork for the ordination. However, I talked with Logan, and learned that his favorite class is English and that he would like to go to KFC when we take them out to dinner on some trip. Because I had promised, at Todd and Michelle's funeral (../0351.html), to come to the ordination, I stopped at Katy Budget Books on the way home and bought some Tarzan and some C.S. Lewis books for Logan. When I got home I was surprised to find that Andrea did not think it a good idea to send Logan this many books, and she was not sure it is a good idea to send the Staheli kids any more birthday presents. When I asked if Andrea would mail the books for me the following morning, and she outright refused I became angry, setting up my contemplative mood after the broken window on Saturday. Thankfully Rick Zimmerman called, and the moment was diffused. Even thought his call was to confirm he is not going to do anything with the Dynamic prospects in the foreseeable future. Oh well!
On Wednesday evening, we also received our first e-mail from Jim Siebert, our new choir director, inviting us to participate in Choir Practice on Sunday mornings. We have been going since the choir was restarted a few weeks ago.
At work this week I was building Infinite Grid type maps for Scott Smith to incorporate into d-TIPS. Over about six days I made 640 maps that took up about 55 megabytes of space. It was a tedious project, and hopefully the results will be worth it for GDC. Thursday after work I went to II&T to tie down the location for the two wells on the Casey Ranch. It turned out the geographic projection I had used the previous week was the wrong one, and Les had to restore another project with a different projection in order to create the displays Frank needed. I ended up working on this until about 9:00 PM. Andrea called me at II&T and read me the following important announcement from Melanie and Jared:
Friday evening was spent working on the Book of Mormon word pattern project. Saturday, after fixing the broken window, I went back to II&T and spent 5 hours working on the Shackelford County 3-D data set. I made a bunch of different images, and hopefully answered the last of the questions regarding the location. However, it appears there is another reef next to the Comanche Prospect, which will be worth drilling. This will depend on the results of the first two wells.
Saturday evening was a Nottingham Country Ward Party at the Windsor Lake Pool and Clubhouse, where the Beckstroms live, and where Paul and Kate had their reception. There were about 100 people there. It was a nice evening, although the mosquitos got a bit frisky about the time we left. I had my first semi-technical conversation with Jim Siebert as he was standing by the pool watching his son swim. He is a meteorologist, and sells his services to the oil and gas industry in the North Sea and in the Gulf of Mexico. He also has a lot of experience as a storm chaser and with lightening. I probably told him too much about the idea (0523.html), and hopefully he will treat it confidential and help me find the right data to help demonstrate the idea is correct. I took some digital photos at the party, and they are posted at: http://www.walden3d.com/photos/NottinghamCountryWard/050910_Log-in_Luau
Sunday I was very touched by the speakers in sacrament meeting. Tana Holmes (a) and Steve Holeman (b) are both emergency services professionals, and their topic was to help put in perspective the 9/11 tragedy, on it's anniversary, as well as the more recent tsunami and Katrina disasters. To me, my feelings are shown in the two possible stanzas for Prime Words which I wrote:
I was told I am on a back-up list of volunteers to go over and work on Katrina recovery. The plan is to leave Friday at lunchtime, and to return on Sunday evening. Melanie's Stake did it this week, and there were 50 men from her Ward and 150 men from her Stake that went over to Slidell to work. In addition, Andrea's niece, Kim Shirts, is getting married on September 24th, and that morning she told me she wanted me to come with her. I was scheduled to do the Primary Sharing Time on the 25th, and had taken my guitar to practice again with my class. Because it looked like I would not be there for the next two weeks, I talked to the Primary Presidency and switched to this week. I had 7 of my kids there, and they did a wonderful job. The idea was to review some of the things we have been studying. We sang `The First Prayer' (../0044.html), which I had printed out for them. Morgan started us by reading D&C 101:16, then Noah acted as if he were passing the sacrament during the first verse, Jonathan knelt in prayer for the second verse, Ashley demonstrated feeling a burning in her heart and listening to The Holy Ghost during the third verse, Tyler and Dylan were missionaries during the fourth verse, and Kirsten read Psalms 46:10 after the song was over. It seemed to go over fine, and meshed nicely with this week's lesson on prayer. It was certainly a better way to spend the day than Saturday morning's time fixing a broken window."