cc: file, Diane Cluff, Darrell and Nancy Krueger, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"It was really nice to have a travelling companion on this trip to England and Scotland. The last 10 days with Melanie have been a real blessing for me. One of the PAIRS activities was to draw a picture of our ideal world. My picture showed me holding hands with a travelling companion, each of us holding a small temple clothes sized suitcase in the other hand, and the whole world sitting out in front of us. Thanks to my mission, Amoco, Mobil, The Seismic Acoustics Laboratory, Landmark, HyperMedia, Walden 3-D, Walden Visualization Systems, and now Continuum Resources I have good friends all across the world. I am at the stage of life where you kids are grown up and choosing your own lives. So now is the time to enjoy some of the fruit from the seeds planted across and friendships developed over the last three decades. I could just wallow and choose to feel cheated because I do not have someone to hold my hand right now, and instead I choose to go forward and live life to the fullest possible within the circumstances I find myself. Circumstances are one of the blessings of free agency and I know I fought valiently in the Pre-Existence to allow each of us that privledge.
It was nice to have a travelling companion last weekend. I would not have stood in line for over an hour to buy a ticket to 'Beauty and the Beast' for just myself. Therefore I would have missed a very good musical with a very good message just for me; namely tempers can be tamed, eccentric creators can have beautiful daughters, and there is always hope as long as one rose petal is still on the bush. I would have gone to church without a travelling companion, yet I wouldn't have had anyone to talk about my feelings and the strong emotions of returning to The Hyde Park Chapel. I would have given my presentation to the chief technology officer of BP, and I would not have done as well as I did showing off for my daughter. I would have said my prayers each morning and each evening, and there is something extra that happens when there is someone else on their knees next to you. I would have attended my workshop, and I would not have sought out opportunities to go out to dinner, and spend time touring places like Edinburgh Castle. I would have done my job without a travelling companion, and I would not of had near as much fun.
It was nice to have a travelling companion who was interested in my work and striving to help me be more successful. Melanie, my self-justification for bringing you with me was to help with the workshop in Aberdeen. As you know, it didn't quite turn out like I expected. (Life never does!) There were not so many people in any of the demonstration sessions that David Chen and I could not have handled the demonstrations without you. I know you sometimes felt like a bump on a log, and I realize you feel I looked at disapproving, especially the last day. You were a big help with the workshop! I did not mean to look at you in a way that upset you! (I recommend you look inside yourself, and specifically at how you were feeling first thing Thursday morning.) You don't realize the difference it makes having someone making sure everyone has stereo glasses, turning the lights down, getting a glass of water for me when my throat dried out and I was having a hard time talking, finding out when the next group starts and how many people are in it, taping down cables, setting up chairs, taking everything down, running demonstrations, etc. I guess it didn't seem like much at the time, and yet I have done demonstrations without the support you provided. It is much, much, much harder. It is a fact I probably would not pay for someone outside my family (especially out of my own pocket) to provide the help you did. That is more because I am too cheap than because it wasn't valuable service. When I factor in the opportunity to spend quality non-distraction time together, the opportunity to introduce my daughter to my love of the history and pageantry of England, and to an opportunity to share a little about where I served my mission, it was a cheap vacation. Certainly less expensive than the EarthWatch Program we had talked about you doing (although I still want you to do this someday). Thanks for going with me!
It was nice to have a travelling companion spend Monday night listening to Roger Anderson and I talk about carbon-dioxide, Biosphere II, trading carbon-dioxide emissions to a green country like Nicaragua under the Kyoto agreement, the Lamont Energy Center, the possible impact of the visualization technologies we are working with, the steps I plan to follow to build a new house, the possible impact of this knowledge based design on low cost housing, potential immersive technologies, fun things Roger and I have done, and all of the other topics we wandered across, even through the noisy false fire alarm. I realize I can be pretty `boring,' and pretty `random.' Please recognize how nice it was to have someone I care about and love listening to stuff that is important to me. On this Monday night Roger hosted David Chen from VETL, Melanie, and myself at the Marcliff, one of the nicest hotels in Aberdeen.
It was nice having a traveling companion I could tease because every young waiter in the Stakis Treetop Hotel restaurant wanted to wait on us, stop and ask us if there was anything we needed, and kept looking back at. I felt like I was chaperone to a princess. Guess I was! It was nice having a traveling companion I go back to the room with and watch a movie with. Usually I just read or think when I travel. I find the television such a waste I seldom turn it on. On Tuesday night the movie was about a young boy whose dog Lucky was killed chasing some bad guys. The dog kept coming back so only the boy could see and hear him (in English). The dog was there to help him catch the bad guys and to encourage his Dad, a widower, to get up the courage to go out with a neighbor. Melanie, I didn't talk about the movie because I had two dogs named `Lucky.' The first was killed when a neighbor accidentally ran over him after he ran into the Union Field Lane to the east of my parent's house to follow me when I left for 4-H camp in about 1964. Then I had another purebred Beagle named `Roice's Lucky' (remember in the movie the puppy he got at the end was named `Luckier') that got ticks in its ears when Dad and I took him on a fishing trip in the Beaver Mountains. The ticks bit into his nerves and he would lie on the ground with his feet moving like he was running and with saliva coming out of his mouth. Dad had to put him away because we didn't figure out what was wrong soon enough. Melanie, the reason I didn't talk to you and turned my back was because I was crying. It seems very easy it is for me to tear up these days.
It was nice to have a traveling companion to keep me grounded on the practical when we were invited out to a very fancy dinner at Ardoe House, a late 18th century castle mansion. Melanie wasn't feeling well, and when she saw a menu of rabbit, pigeon, and other exotic stuff her stomach went wild. She didn't want to be there with what felt very phony to her, and so we left and went to McDonald's to pick up a meal to take back to the hotel room. We ate and watched another movie about an attack of cholera in a major West Coast city. It reminded me to a book on tape about Ebola I had listened to a couple of years ago. Another event came to mind, an event in church history on June 24th, 1834. It was on the banks of Rush Creek just after Zion's Camp had left Fishing River, where divine intervention of a hail storm with tremendous fury had disbursed a mob of several hundred preparing to attack Zion's Camp. To quote from 'Joseph Smith and the Restoration' by Ivan J. Barrett, pp. 290-291:
I had encouraged Melanie not to eat any beef in England, because of `Mad Cows Disease.' She was perfect, even though I ate beef stroganoff at one workshop lunch. Melanie, I think you were mostly homesick and tired. It turned out to be a good evening with a lovely traveling companion.
It was nice to have a traveling companion with me to go explore a new place. We spent all day Friday taking a 2-hour train ride to the south to Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Johnny Pinto from Venezuela went with us. Johnny says the word Pinto is Brazilian and pinto beans, the Ford Pinto, the Lone Ranger's horse Pinto, and all other forms of the word have a common origin. I told him briefly about Pinto in southern Utah, between Enterprise and Cedar City and St. George, where Great-Grandpa Adolph Hafen's descendents own most of the land. Johnny provided someone else for Melanie to talk to other than just me. The castle was neat, the tape-recorded tour well done, and I even enjoyed the shopping. There was a 3-D summary of Edinburgh at an observatory on Carlton Hill, which we also went to. Lord Nelson of Trafalgar fame has a tower built on Carlton Hill, and I climbed it to get a good view of the entire city. All three of us were wiped out by the time we got back to Aberdeen. Melanie still couldn't get to sleep, and thank goodness it was not my snoring which kept her awake Friday night.
It was nice to have a traveling companion as we got up at 4:30, caught a 5:30 taxi to the airport, flew to Gatwick, slept on the benches for a while, went to duty free and bought some chocolate for Rob and Sara and a T-Shirt with London on it for Marie Williams, and then flew back to Houston. Melanie liked the meals. I thought they were ok. The first movie was 'Titanic' (.../9806.html), and so I got to see it with each of my daughters. I cried several times during the movie. I chuckled to myself as I thought of how much Grandma Hafen liked how I compared her to the Grandmother star. The second move was 'The Wedding Singer,' which I thought was kind of crude and dumb, except for a fairy tale ending. And so it was with this trip. Marie and her sister picked us up. And as I came home to a big empty house with a burned lawn, my mind went back to the beginning of this Thoughtlet, which was started on my new PC Notebook on the plane ride from London to Houston. It will be nice to again have a permanent travelling companion to hold hands and to intimately share life with."