"Sister Melissa Jones asked me to substitute for her Primary Class several weeks ago. The first lesson I taught was titled `The Holy Ghost Helps Us Know the Truth,' and I believe this was the Sunday after a heartbreaking conversation. I think it really helped me to get back my perspective, faith, and hope by teaching this lesson. I took my guitar and sang `The First Prayer' as part of the lesson. It was fun. I felt like I was going to be called to be the CTR Primary Teacher on a permanent basis. However, I went back to Sunday School and High Priests the next week. Then I was asked to teach a lesson titled `Forgiving One Another.' I took the Hungarian mandolin and the Urumuchi violin. The kids fought over who got to hold them. I came home this Sunday, June 26th (0526.html), I wrote a song about the kids I have been the substitute CTR Primary Teacher for:
The next week I was asked to substitute again, and taught a lesson titled `The Lord Helps Missionaries.' This time I brought a stick from Australia and the knocking gourds Sara Ellyn brought back from Africa. Then I was suppose to teach High Priests, and I felt like it might be better to let one of the others do it, and sure enough, I was asked to substitute as the CTR Primary Teacher. This lesson was `I can Be a Missionary.' I brought my guitar again, and we sang `I Hope They Call Me On a Mission' a couple of times. It has been a lot of fun teaching these kids. Johnathan Schmidt has an attention span of about 2 minutes, and is quite active. However he gives the most wonderful and sincere prayers. The other kids are well behaved and it is a real pleasure to teach each of them. Maybe this is the important thing I have been sensing is around just the corner. Time will tell.
This week Luis Viertel was visiting from Mexico. He likes to come in my office and talk, which is not my normal style. However, it is probably good for me to get my nose out of the computer. One of the things we talked about this week was the War of 1897 with Spain. I didn't really know much about it. Turns out that the Spanish history books still claim the U.S. warship sunk in Port of Havana was sunk by the U.S. soldiers, even though it killed several U.S. soldiers. The idea is that it was an excuse to start a way, kick Spain out of the U.S. and become a colonial power in the Caribbean and the Philippines. I brought in a Time-Life History of the US from this year and it basically says the same thing. It does say that it is still not known who was responsible for sinking the ship. Interesting what one can learn about our own history by listening to someone who grew up being taught history by the other side. I do enjoy Luis. He has some good ideas for improving dTIPS and other GDC products. He suggested I should read `Homage to Catalonia' by George Orwell, so I have put it on my list of books I need to buy someday.
Tuesday it was my turn to drive our three person car pool: Lizabeth Rey, Carlos Venegas, and myself. As we were driving down the HOV lane, I got thinking about the wasted space this lane creates, and wondering if there could be some way of using this space. So I came up with a new idea, `Hydroponic Median Farming.' The idea is to create a type of saddle bag, full of water and nutrients and seeds, with a hook that could be automatically picked up by driving down the lane. The idea is to use the HOV lane at night to do the `farming' by putting new crops out, watering, weeding, picking whatever is grown, and picking up the saddle bags after the crop is harvested. Instead of rows and rows of corn or beans or whatever makes economic sense, there would be two rows which would be miles long. It would make the commute nicer, i.e. looking at agriculture and changes over the seasons instead of just cement barriers. It could soften the impact when someone hits one of the barriers. The key business issue is proper crop selection. On a negative side, it could attract bugs to pollinate the flowers, which will create messy windshields. Just watch, 8 years from now someone will make millions of dollars with an independent variation of this concept. Oh well! In the meantime, Tuesday was Ella Dawn's birthday. We forgot to send a card. Oh well! We did call and talk to Kate. Paul was working in Clear Lake on a Boeing project.
Wednesday I was officially told that Jeff Harwell, one of the best guys at GDC and manager of the processing team, Singh Khubbar, a very nice man from India who helped Carlos get me started on walking the stairs, and Pamela West, the sexy Tiles salesperson, have each turned in their resignation. Seems like a lot of folks, all reporting to Lee Bell, leaving at one time. Oh well. Another person who likes to come in and talk to me is Bee Bednar (0519.html). Bee is doing some design of new migration software for GDC. Bee always talks about his old boss, a cigar smoking Mormon in Oklahoma, who was his favorite person in the world. I've now become Bee's favorite Mormon. Whereas some people have a favorite Martian, I'm his favorite Mormon. This Wednesday's discussion was about the hurricane coming towards the South Coast. Bee was concerned that he does not have any way to get his large sail boat out of the water and the way if the storm swings north. I said, `Bee, you're retired. Just go get in your sailboat and go over to New Orleans or someplace out of the way.' He smiled and did a little dance, like a Scottish jig. I laughed.
On Wednesday evening, July 13th, I got the following from Melanie:
Melanie, I am very proud of you and the Mom and the leader of youth you have become. I also got a message from John Benard:
I responded with:
John sent a nice note back almost immediately, confirming that his plan is to drill the Vossler Anomaly. If we are correct, this prospect has 80 BCFG (billion cubic feet of gas), which at $6/MCF (thousand cubic feet of gas), is worth $480 million, and Dynamic's 1% ORRI (Overriding Royalty Interest) is worth almost $5 million. And we can't pay all of our bills this month! Oh well!
There was another funny dance in my office on Thursday, kind of making me feel like a CTR Primary Teacher during the week too. Dave Johnson came in my office, and when I referred to his muscle shirt, he showed me his muscles, just like one of the boys in Primary. After Bee Bednar's dance the day before, I became convinced I work well with children. Andrea had Relief Society, and so Thursday evening I took Frank (Yu Guozhu), Luis, and Jack Caldwell to Canyon Cafe for dinner. It was a nice evening with nice discussions among very nice professionals. Frank is eating up American Culture like he is drinking from a fire hydrant.
Friday there was a nice note from Rhonda Hartmann. She has put together an everlasting website at mem.com for her husband Michael Hartmann (0516.html and 0524.html). I feel so sorry for Rhonda. Christian Singfield called and gave me a report of his activities. He old me a couple of things I did not previously understand: (1) my 80,000 options are at $0.50 per share instead of $2.50 per share; and (2) he has gone to his Board of Directors and requested that the shares the Founders were not able to buy be given to us as options at $0.05 per share (0526.html). This is all real good news, if he is able to keep the company alive until there is an opportunity to exercise an exit strategy.
Saturday morning there was a ward breakfast for Pioneer Day, the 24th of July, at the big park on Crescent Green. There are only a three families (Dan Jones, Steve Feil, and Collins Steward) who have been in the ward longer than I have. And two of them were there (Dan and Bishop Feil). I took some digital photos and put them at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/NottinghamCountryWard/050716_Pioneer_Day_Breakfast. One of the new families, with several small children, are the Warden's. They home school their kids, and one little girl is very interested in geology. Andrea told them about, and then I invited her to come over and see my rock collection (0528.html) on the way home. Her Mom wanted to lay some ground work before coming over, so they did not come over that Saturday. Oh well! It started to rain just after we left the pioneer breakfast. I spent the day working on maps of the water wells in Cedar Valley and watching John Wayne movies. Life does not get any better than this. I did slip outside about 5:00 and mowed the lawn, because of the rain in the morning. Saturday evening Brother Harlin called and asked me to be to church early. I told him that he could just issue the calling over the telephone. He said we needed to get together. I gave him a bad time about not talking to me at the party that morning because we had spent quite a bit of time talking about his new business and some places we have crossed paths before.
So we got to church at 10:30, and Brother Harlin called to be the CTR-B Primary Teacher for kids 6 and 7. I knew I was going to be released, because the week before I had gone Home Teaching to the Schmidts, and Chris mentioned he had been called as the new Ward Employment Specialist. Opps! Sundays Sacrament Meeting (July 17th) included talk by Michael Kinnerson, including examples of things from Andrea's seminary class. I wrote a possible stanza for Prime Words based on the talk:
Roshella Burkholder, new member of the ward also talked, and I extracted the following words from her talk:
Then it was time to go to Sharing Time. Johnathan Schmidt was really acting up, and so I went and got Chris and asked him to sit in with me and help calm Johnathan down. It seemed to work, but it backfired the next week. My first Primary Lesson after being called as the CTR Primary Teacher was `The Holy Ghost Can Help Us.' This time I pulled some rocks from my rock collection (0528.html), a giant Trilobite and a pyrite Ammonite and took them to class. It is amazing how things around the house can be tied into lessons for little kids. The lesson I taught the next week, which, since I'm almost caught up on writing these Thoughtlets, was last Sunday, was titled `The Age of Accountability.' A couple of points from the lesson manual which I wish all kids knew:
With all of the garbage going on in the world, it is hard to teach these principles to kids today. Maybe I will do better this time around, at least through being a CTR Primary Teacher.
I don't remember all of the conversations with each of you this Sunday night. I do remember having a very nice conversation with Joshua. The more I get to know him, the more convinced I am Audrey has married a real jewel. Too bad I didn't see past the beard and fancy car the first time I met Joshua. I also recall that when I told Sara Ellyn about my new calling, her response was, `Well maybe it will help you to be able to communicate with Ethan.' I'm still processing this statement, and hopefully this processing will be helped with my new calling as the CTR Primary Teacher."