cc: file, Grandma Hafen via Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, and Lloyd and Luana Warner.
"I'm in my Mom's new room at Porter's. She has moved next door from number 6 to number 8. It is a double room, and the staff has done a very nice job of hanging pictures on the walls. The wheel chair is folded against the wall by a door leading into the back yard. The windows are open and there is a nice view of the grass and picnic table and trees. There are some pretty white, pink, and blue silk flowers on a set of drawers. Next to this on the wall to the east is a five drawyer dresser. On top of the dresser are some yellow Christhaniams that Des and Bryan brought down last Monday. Behind the flowers is Mom's 3 foot x 1.5 foot foot mounted photograph of a charging elephant. Then there is a curtian, for when the room is separated into two rooms.
Past the curtain, is a photo of Ben and Sarah. Then a picture of Uncle Des, Aunt Sara, Brian, and Bridget your in the picture too. Above this s a photo of my Dad, then a photo of me at about the time we just started Landmark Graphics. Under this photo is a bookcase full of books, and in the corner over Grandma's head is a reading lamp. On the south wall is the photograph of our family taken in about 1988 and the door into the hallway. Over my right shoulder are the sliding doors to Mom's closet. To my immediate left is a small bookcase, with the TV on it, and a pile of Color Country Spectrum newspapers. Next to this is the door into the bathroom, where there is a blue tiled bathtub, a toilet, a sink, and a mirror. Above the TV is another mirror.
There is an oxygen machine running, and Mom is asleep in the hospital bed with the head raised and against the south wall. She has a white sweater with pink flower on, and is covered by an orange, green, brown, and yellow indian style blanket. She seems to be very peaceful, considering the fact she is congested and breathing fairly heavily. It is Sunday, October 25th, 1998, at 2:45 PM Utah time. I have to leave to drive to Las Vegas to catch a 5:00 flight to Houston.
As is too common with my planning, I waited until the last minute to leave. This meant I could only spend a couple of minutes saying goodbye to Grandma and catching up on what had happened since yesterday. Then it was on the freeway and pushing the upper end of the 75 mph speed limit to get to the airport in Las Vegas on time. I got to the airport at 4:00, 5:00 Utah time, only to find out the plane had been delayed from 5:00 until 6:15. Then it was delayed until 6:30. This means I won't get to the house until after midnight. And so here I am writing this Thoughtlet out on the airplane. This type of rewritten schedule seems very common common in my planning.
I thought I would write about planning this weekend, because that is the theme of what I have been doing all week. Monday morning was spent getting ready for Blaine to go back to Norway and give the final report to PetroData and preparing a presentation for POSC. I answered some questions and was five minutes late for a lunch meeting with a friend from Landmark days. Bob Bacon wanted to have lunch and talk about how he could work with Continuum. He is one of the best salesmen I have worked with, and so, of course, I want him to help us be successful at Continuum. He made a comment about me being late, and implied he plans well enough he is never late. It was a very interesting lunch. Partly to watch Bob sell me, and partly to listen to the words I said to him. Like any good salesman, his approach is to get the person he is talking to to talk about themselves and what is important to them. In my case, as he knows, that is to talk about you kids. It is fun to brag about each of you, and Bob gives the appearance of sincere interest. Other than my cynical streak, I think he truly is interested.
Bob has just had a major `ephiphany' in his life. The kind that comes when a loved one dies, or there is a new birth in the immediate family. In Bob's case his Mom retired. When his Mom was the same age Bob is, 43, she went back to school, got a law degree, practiced law, became very well respected, was asked to finish out the term of a judge that retired, became one of the top Federal judges in Houston, and is retiring at 68 after a stellar career. Bob looks at his career at Landmark, 3DX, and other companies, and realizes he is not getting any younger, and he has the opportunity to start a new career now. Based on our lunch, I am quite confident he will be working with Continuum, and will help us meet the goals outlined in our planning.
I went from lunch to the professional building by the Katy Hospital to have my finger looked at (.../1998/9842.html). The doctor spent less than one minute with me and wants me to come back on the 16th of November. He did paint yellow stuff all over my finger, which made no sense since there is no broken skin to be disinfected, and bandaged my middle and ring finger together as a splint. He said to keep it bandaged for several weeks, and I must admit it does feel better with the extra support. His planning for my return seemed a little unethical to me, in the sense he seems to be milking the insurance comany by having me come back, based on the time he spent with me. Maybe Claude can explain why this is exceptable normal procedure to me.
I went back to the office and got a couple of hours of planning in, before leaving to go and pick Rob up for Family Home Evening. We cooked some hamburger as strogonoff, and had a pretty good meal over a couple of games of chess. Mike Reed got there in time to clean up what we didn't eat (Did I mention Mike's family moved to San Antonio where Susan is getting her MD, Mike got a promotion and moved back to Houston, and so he stays upstairs during the week). Family Home Evening seemed to go pretty good. I gave the lesson from the manual. The regular crowd was there. Troy behaved really good, and answered the key question about how to handle homesickness perfectly. Prayer is a wonderful support.
Tuesday morning started with an interview, and at 11:15 I left for the old Ritz Carlton on San Felipe to give a presentation to the POSC Member meeting. I was the second speaker in the afternoon. The talk was titled: "Human Scale Display, Immersion, Spatial Integration, and Collaboration." I will get it posted at http://www.walden3d.com/ wvs/papers this next week for those interested. It summarizes our planning in regards to providing immersive environments and services around this technology. The presentation was well received, and the best compliment came from John Amason's old boss. He said, "I not only liked what you said, I liked the style in which you said it." It is nice to have people say nice things about something you have put some sincere planning effort into.
Wednesday I was suppose to go to the VETL to talk with one of the professors about some research he has been doing in automatically deriving geologic shapes from seismic data volumes. However, he had some issues with his daughter, and we ended up not getting together. I used the time effectively to work on several things which had fallen behind. Sometimes it seems like almost all of my time is spent planning, and too little time is spent executing. However, if the plan is well thought out the implementation is typically easy.
The software development team and myself spent all day Thursday with Dr. Creve Maples from MuSE Technologies in a planning meeting. Creve is soooo smart, it was nice to have his comments about our planning efforts. He did say that most of the stuff we brought up was stuff he had put in the MuSE design documents 4 to 6 years ago. He also said we had obviously put some serious thinking into our planning sessions. He volunteered to come back to Continuum once a month for the foreseable future, to help make sure there is good communication on both sides as we move the technology from planning to implementation and operations.
Thursday evening was a Stake Priesthood Leadership meeting 'planning' meeting. So much of the planning, documentation, leadership styles I have implemented over the years in the work environment can be traced to my mission and to church leadership meetings like the meeting we had Thursday. It is fun to be at these meetings with my brethern. The Bishop decided to leave me in the High Priest Group Leadership, and not to call me as the Ward Single Adult Representative and the Choir Director. I must admit I laughed when he talked to me about leading the choir. I understand the perfectionism feelings there are with regards to Choir in The Nottingham Country Ward, and guess I would have been able to naturally burst that bubble. I'm glad it turned out like it did. I am certainly comfortable working with Corey Grua in the High Priest Quorum.
Friday was an all day Continuum Resources planning meeting. We had one of the Ph.D.'s from EI's Aberdeen operation with us. There were presentations and status reports. It was quite a good day. Our investor's son, Anders Finstad, was with us for Wednesday through Friday, and I spent a lot of time talking to him about our plans, when he was not participating in the planning meetings going on this week. I must admit, I am very excited about the potential of the work we are doing at Continuum Resources. Anders was also. He was particularly impressed with Scott Bowman's demonstration on Stratigraphic Simulation on Thursday afternoon. I really do believe Continuum is going to become a much larger company than Landmark Graphics.
A funny thing happened on Wednesday. After Rob and I went to scout meeting, for a Philmont preparation meeting, I called up Lynda, my date last Saturday, to tell her where in the New Testiment it described High Priests and Melchezedec. As we talked I mentioned Rob and Sara were not able to go on the Ward Campout with me on Friday, and since my Mom sounded quite ill, I was thinking about going out to visit her over the weekend weekend. I asked if she would like to go and visit Southern Utah with me. She asked if she would be able to see the temple. I said yes, from the outside. She said it was her friend Pat's birthday and she promised to spend Saturday with her. Anyway, since I had taken Pat out the week before in Dallas (.../1998/9841.html) we ended up having a three-way call, and I ended up inviting both of them to go to Utah with me. The tentatively agreed, and we agreed to talk on Thursday evening. When I told Rhonda her friends might be going out to Utah with me, I was really suprised by her response. She has worked for me for 6 years and I've only known these ladies for a couple of weeks, and I am taking them to Utah. I said, 'But you're married, and they're not.' Partly Rhonda's reaction is because she knows where my budget is and she knows I want to follow the Prophet's advise and get out of debt. Partly it is because she has heard me talk about Southern Utah and just wants to see it.
In reflecting on why this trip came up, I realized I had sent an e-mail to your Mom on Monday evening updating her on the missionary that was killed in Siberia, how my Mom is doing, and asking her if she would like to go to Utah with me. She had responded as usual:
I guess part of my rash invitation to Pat and Lynda was an emotional reaction. It is interesting how I immediately justified it to Rhonda and in my mind as a missionary opportunity. Anyway, Pat decided she needed to stay in Houston to spend Saturday with her family on her birthday since they had a party planned. Lynda had allready committed to spend the day with Pat, and Pat didn't release her from that commitment. So as I left the office Friday night, I called Grandma Hafen and asked if I could stay with her Friday night, called Sara and Des and asked Brian if I could stay with them on Saturday night, and called Randy Shirts' younger sister Anderea Nielson and asked if she would like to go out to dinner or to a play on Saturday night. I keep hoping your Mom is going to change her mind, and it doesn't appear she is. So I'm getting emotionally ready to get on with the rest of my life, and I don't want to do it alone (...1998/9828.html).
It was good to see Grandma. I didn't get to her house until 12:30 AM Saturday. She gave me a long talk about always being so late. She pointed out she has only been late once in 93 years. That was when Grandpa Morris bought a new electric stove and electric refrigerator. They were the first ones in Southern Utah, since he was on the Board of Utah Power and Light. Their house was open for anyone in the community who wanted to come in and see this new fangled stuff. Grandma had to do the dishes and if she didn't do them at lunch she had to come all the way straight back from school and do them, and she didn't like to do that. So she looked on the clock on the stove and saw she had fifteen minutes before class started and she quickly did all of those dishes from the visitors. Then she went to class, only to discover someone had unplugged the stove and it was 15 minutes slow. She was so upset about being late, and she swears it is the only time in 93 years she has been late. Grandma fixed me a wonderful breakfast of eggs and sausage and applesauce and toast with apricot jam and milk and juice. Reminded me of the breakfasts of my youth. We talked for a while, then went to sleep.
I went through two endowment sessions at the St. George Temple Saturday morning. Then went and visited Mom. She is very tired. She only opened her eyes for a second, and although we talked for a while, she was obviously very tired. I mentioned how nice her room looks, and she said: `Well, you should move into it for 8 weeks and see if you still think it's so nice.' Obviously there is nothing wrong with her mind, she is just limited by her body. She said she wanted to see Sara again before she dies, and I reminded her Sara visits every Monday.
Shortly after I got back to Grandma's house, Mom and Grandma's friend Candy showed up. We talked a while and then I took Grandma and Candy to see Mom. She still didn't open her eyes much, and she had this really nice smile on her face. She was obviously glad to be visited by Grandma and Candy and me. In that sense it was a pretty good visit. Also, I finally figured out the origin of the friendship with Candy: she was an early rodeo queen, joining the Professional Rodeo Association in 1944. After I dropped Grandma and Candy off, I went to the LDS bookstore and got a couple of gifts (`Are Mormon's Christians?' for my new Baptist friends) and a new book on an alphabetic script and languages found in ancient America and Israel for me.
It was about 5:30 pm when I got to Sara and Des' house. Des taught me to play cribbage, and, believe it or not, I beat him on my first game. I had a great string of double rolls. We talked as they fixed and ate dinner. Sara puts all of these fresh vegetables in her spegetti, which looked soooo good.
I fixed up some flowers I had purchased for Andrea. And I went over to Andrea's house at 7:00. As I mentioned above, Andrea is Randy Shirt's little sister. She is four years younger than us and the only sister among four brothers. She spent 4 of her first 5 years of life living with her family in Iran, and likes adventure. She went to China last year with a friend. She served a mission to Japan in 1974. She is the Primary President in her ward. She has been divorced for 9 or 10 years. Her X-husband's parents were alcholic's and there were emotional scars and insecurities which caused him to go off, leave the family, and move in with another woman. He has recently repeated this with his new wife. As I recall, Andrea was one of the KeyNotes' most enthusiastic fans, in the days the Beetles had thousands of women screaming at their concerts. She has a degree in speech, taught Forensics at Cedar High School for several years, and is currently the Assistant to the President of the largest manufacturing plant in Cedar City. She has 4 children: a son 11, a daughter 14, a daughter who is a senior at Cedar High School (whom I didn't meet), and a daughter who married last year and doesn't live in Cedar.
We had a very nice dinner at Milt's Stagestop, and talked until curfew. She is a very nice lady, and I told her I still and always will love your Mom. However, I am starting to see the possibility of marrying someone else, someday. It seems reasonable there is only so much required rejection before our planning can be adjusted. Based on a nice story from Ben about a couple who waited some 50 years to refind and marry each other I expect this conversation is hard for you kids. I'm sorry if it is, and it seems the best thing for me to do is to continue to be honest and let you know where my head and heart and planning are.
Sunday morning I got up and drove down to Bloomington and went to church with Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Luana. It was the missionary farewell for a young man going to North Dakota. I wrote two stanza's to possibly add to Prime Words:
There was a wonderful song sung, "His Hands." And Bishop Bruce Williams gave 10 steps to follow to insure spirituality:
This is a great list, and I recommend it to each of you as you do your planning. As I told Uncle Lloyd and Aunt Luana, over a wonderful lunch they shared with me and his Mother, if we do this stuff maybe we can each become perfect like the Warner's are. They just smiled at me. I hope all of you are smiling too. Have a great week."