"Four weeks into attempting to keep up with Thoughtlets, and I'm getting in the habit of starting with chess moves. Roice made 22 moves and Colby made 12 moves this week. Note I don't talk about how often Roice beats me, just how often he moves. Nor do I gloat about beating others (except for Paul, and this is just because I am tougher on him than the rest of you). I do hope I am teaching those I happen to beat how to be better players. I enjoy making the chess moves and imagining what those I love are doing as they contemplate their next move.
I have been very good at doing my exercises each morning since I last visited Doctor Solis. It is only one more month and I have to go back for more blood tests. It takes 30 minutes to do 100 jumping jacks, 40 toe touches, 50 bicep presses with two 15 pound weights, 25 arms up to shoulder height with weights, 25 lifts of weights over the head, 40 deep knee bends holding the weights, 40 wheel stretches, 100 foot and head up back arches, and 50 legs and shoulder crunch lifts to 15 degrees. Then I jog over to Baker Road, and walk down to the bayou and back to the house, which is about 4:0 kilometers. Wish I was more like Matt and had learned to do this kind of exercise and to enjoy it in my youth. Oh well!
Monday morning I got to work at 9:00 and Les arrived at about 9:45. He came back to the office just as I was talking to Randy Bruner about my plan for him. It didn't work out. His $200/hour is too much for Layton Energy to pay for data loading. Les ended up spending the entire day at Layton's. I ended up agreeing to subtract it from payment due from Emerald, so I could get the three surveys fixed we were working on, and not force Layton Energy to pay for this. I left Les at noon and went to my monthly POPS (Pioneer Oil Producers Society) luncheon. I invited both Randy nor Daniel to go with me, and neither joined me.
When we arrive at the HESS facility we pay our $18, choose fish or meat, find a place to sit, and put $2 in the red bowl in the center for the food bank. I usually sit by someone I don't know. There are always good things to learn from these old guys. This time, they brought a visitor and had her sit by me. I am one of the youngest members of POPS, and she was about my age. Francoise Guido is the Business Development Director for ESS Support Services, an $8 billion per year business focused on providing food and janitorial and related services to the offshore oil and gas industry. I passed her contact information on to Sara, in case she could use the connection for her upcoming internship.
George Littell of Groppe, Long, & Littell spoke at POPS. I always consider this the best talk of the year, and it always falls on Martin Luther King Day. He said that for each 90 cents to $1.00 change in the price of oil the consumption changes by 100,000 barrels per day. Neither Japan nor Canada are using the amount of oil they used in 1978. He recommends a $1/gallon tax increase, specifically because the mechanisms are in place to collect this tax. The Peak in US oil production occurred in 1973 (see all of my ASPO stuff). It was 1979 before Prudoe Bay went into production. Iraq will be out of the oil market in 8-9 years (I do not believe this, I have seen the undrilled structures off of the Gulf of Homez). Depletion is real. We are producing the large fields first, and we can not find enough small traps to counter the depletion of the large fields. One bright spot is there has been little true exploration in Russia. The Gulf of Mexico production stated in 1947. Production in 2008 was 1.25 million barrels per day. They expect production to peak in 2013 at 2.3 million barrels per day, and then to go into decline. In 1965 deep water was 500 feet. Today we are producing in 9,000 feet of water, and exploring in 10,000 feet of water. They believe Peak Oil is eminent (2012). 9.7 million barrels per day is as much as Aramco can produce. Aramco has been a poor substitute for the Texas Railroad Commission. They expect prices to be at $80-90/barrel by May of 2009. If prices go to $120/barrel for four years, it will be followed by four years of oil prices being at $40/barrel.
The meeting was longer than usual, and Les was still working on getting wells loaded when I got back. My main accomplishment in until I left at 5:30 was to get the rest of the names for the wedding invitations: Sharon Black, Kelly and Jesse Dishman, Patricia Mercado, and Jeff and Heidi Caperton.
Tuesday I was at Layton Energy from 9:30 until 2:30. I got home early, and was reading the First Presidency Message when my Home Teaching Companion, John Boyce, arrived right at 6:00. We Home Taught the Minors, the Chinese Family, and the Schmidts. Good visits each place. Scott Minor is refinishing a truck, and is very excited about it. Dong's son has joined the military and just left for Basic Training earlier that night. It is fun to talk with Brother Boyce as we drive between places. He gave the lesson and did a better job than I typically do. Michelle Schmidt did not remember telling me about the importance of using alcohol instead of a deodorant (see ../0340.html), and they all made fun of my smelliness. Oh well! I remember how out of the box it was to learn the impact of aluminum in Alzheimer's. And ever since I stopped using deodorant, I have never had one of the cysts under my arm, with the trailing inflammation that looked like it was following a blood vessel. I remember talking to my cousin, Dr. Claude Warner, about this, and he said there is aluminum scattered through our environment, and not just in deodorant. Chris has done some very nice remodeling of their house. It is nice to have neighbors who are friends and who can tease and be teased.
I was tired and went to bed at 9:00. Sister Heaney called and asked Andrea for me to come and assist in a blessing. Probably because I was partly asleep, I did not hear the word assist, and called John Turner to go with me. Turns out the Heaney's son Caden has moved here, and was there. I anointed, Caden sealed, with John and I joining the circle. There was a very good spirit there. I fell right asleep after getting home.
I was at Layton's office from 9:30 to 4:30, mostly working on extensions to the successful well in Wharton County. On the way to work and home, I was listening to conservative talk radio talk about Obama's first day in office. His first three actions as President of the United States were:
On the way home I went by Dick Coons house to talk about his meeting at Layton the following Wednesday. He is going to present his "Gronagen de Norde" Prospect, which is potentially a 10 TCF (trillion cubic feet) gas prospect in Denmark. Dan is interested in this one. He is also going to show a time low and depth high due to a shallow gas velocity anomaly offshore Louisiana. He wanted me to get him production histories for wells in North Padre Island producing from shallow gas, and also well logs for his prospect offshore Louisiana. Randy does all the subsurface geological work, and so I took it back to Randy on Thursday, who said, "Do I work for Dick now?" When I went to get in the car at Dick's house there was a condom on the lawn. I carried it home and threw it away, only to have Andrea ask if there was something going on she needs to know about. The next time I was at Dick's there were a couple of little kids, Colby and Taylor's age, playing on this same piece of grass. This is not what I like to see in modern society. What I like to see are things like a note Susan Walker, when I got home, forwarded from her son, who was just transferred to Novosirbirsk on his mission. I forwarded the note to Paul, who served there on his mission. I also like to see things like happened later in the evening. Phillip Miller, Matt Feil, and two Priest age scouts came over to look at rocks (not originally in their plan), to play pool, and to have a planning meeting. Phillip left his coat here. They seemed to have fun, and Phillip said he was glad I did not sell his coat on e-bay, when he got it back.
Thursday, the 22nd of January, I was at Layton's office from 9:30-4:30. On the way home I stopped at the grocery store and bought roses, a singing birthday card with the song "Why don't you move it, move it?" (in memory of Melanie and Jared's sound cards), and Andrea's favorite dark chocolate for her 2009 birthday.
Friday I did not go to work, because it was the 23rd, and Andrea's 2009 birthday. She turned 54, although no one can tell anyone I told her actual age, even though it sounds so young when put next to my 59 years old. She wanted me to take the car in and get it serviced. So after doing my exercises and run/walk, I took the Prius over to the Toyota Center east of Mason, with my book, "A Pattern Language," which is about optimal building plans. The tires were wearing through, and one even had chords showing through. They only had two tires in stock, and so I had them replace the front tires, which were the worst. I took the car back in Saturday morning, and read some more out of my book. It only cost $69 in taxes for the four new tires. The tires only have 40,000 miles on them, and are suppose to be good for 75,000 miles. I'm glad we got the tire replacement program.
Andrea and I left the house about 11:00. We went to the office, and I downloaded some data for Wulf so he could put together his presentation on Bushy Creek. Then we met Wulf for lunch at "The Red Pepper" on Richmond. It is the best vegetarian place I have eaten at. There was no parking, and I ended up parking a block away. Wulf pulled up just as someone left, and was right in front of the restaurant. Very nice lunch and conversation. As we were leaving, Wulf gave Andrea a 6 ounce red porcelain enamel cast iron dutch oven for making natural bread for her 2009 birthday present. Of course, he wants me to eat better too. It was really nice, and fairly heavy to carry to the car.
From here we went to the Houston Museum of Natural History. Andrea tells me this has become a tradition for her birthday. I didn't remember that part. We went to see the presentation on early Christian and Judaic artifacts. The most interesting artifact was called the Jeselsohn Stone, or the Gabriel Revelation, as reported in the New York Times on 06 July 2008, and as translated by Ada Yardeni and Binjamin Elitzur in 2007. It reads like The Book of Mormon, in prophesying concerning the coming of Christ. I thought it was very interesting. We also went to see "Body Worlds - The Brain." I had not seen this much inside a body since I worked in Nelson Meat Packing Plant. The exhibit was tastefully done. There were a lot more male organs than female organs displayed, and they are both part of the human body. There were a couple of quotes I liked. The first was from William Woodwsorth, and there was a quote from Saint Basil the Great, each of which could be a stanza in Prime Words:
From the museum, we drove to the temple, munching on a loaf of bread Wulf gave Andrea, along with her new bread cooker. We were the witness couple again. There is a real peace in the temple. I love going to the temple and doing an endowment session and thinking about the story of the creation and why we are here on Earth. There always seems to be new things to learn in the temple, even though I have seen this film far more times than any other film I've ever watched. I find this fascinating.
There were multiple calls from kids. During the week Andrea talked to all four of her kids. Some forgot it was her birthday, and called the next week. Thanks to those of my kids who called and wished her a happy birthday. I think the calls meant more than roses, a card, chocolate, lunch, a surprise present, the museum, or the temple combined. All in all, I think Andrea had a good 2009 birthday.
Saturday morning I took the car over to the Toyota place first thing, got the tires replaced, and read some more in "A Pattern Language." When I got home, Andrea and I went on our Saturday morning walk. It rained. I was not particularly interested, and because Andrea wanted to go, I went with her to the Katy Building to see the Katy Stake History that Brenda Bingham and her committee had spent the last year putting together. My reactions are multifold, starting with the fact that in 24 years here I've never had a stake calling other than stake missionary, so I'm obviously not part of the stake history. It seems to me there is too much agenda driven history, what I call "Fawn Brodie historians." The video they put together was nice. It was good to see friends. I especially enjoyed the conversations with Corwin and Andrea Slack. We left the Katy Building, picked up our mail at the Barker Post Office, and went to Pappasieto's at Gessner on I-10 to meet the Pickerds, Salts, and Gillipses. Mike and Marion had come into town for the history meeting. Andrea and Marion have stayed fairly close to each other since teaching seminary together. It was an interesting lunch. I was at the end, and not part of the conversation, so I ate too much. Oh well! We also talked to Lyle and Naomi Rowbury at the Stake History Meeting. Lyle is "no longer part of the in-group" and felt pretty out of it. He had bought two extra tickets for a show Saturday night for the Hagen's, who could not attend, and so he gave us the tickets. I drove, and it was not too long after we got home from the lunch that we picked up Lyle and Naomi. I really enjoyed The Lowe Family show (see http://www.thelowefamily.com) at The Cullen Performance Hall at The University of Houston. Parking was a bit of a fiasco, and I will do better now that I know how the automatic teller works. It was almost 11:00 by the time we got home.
Sunday morning I called Aaron Boyce, read the paper, prepared my lesson, and worked on the Bride Wars Thoughtlet (see 0903.html). Sacrament Meeting talks were by the Primary Presidency. Andrea played for the kids. She was worried, and she did great. I captured a couple of possible stanzas for Prime Words:
There were 6 of the 9 kids in Sunday School in attendance. Hopefully they will keep coming, and the two who have not made it yet, will join with us. I was asked to do Sharing Time for primary next week, while the Sisters all go to a Visiting Teaching Conference. When we got home, I worked on Thoughtlets and wrote the first draft of a letter about the Nelson Reunion. In the evening was Stake Priesthood meeting. It is no fun to go to these meetings alone. Oh well! There is no question about the fact the highlight of my week was Andrea's 2009 birthday."