"This week was Sarah and Ethan's spring break, and I wanted so bad to go to California and spend time with them. Andrea had missed too much seminary between the trips to Ciudad Del Carmen, Mexico (0612.html) and Matt's Basic Training Graduation (0613.html). We still have most of the credit card bills I ran up when attempting to start of Dynamic Resources Corporation, and it makes no financial sense to get on a plane and fly to California. And next weekend is General Conference, which I love, and which I doubt Ben and Sarah would be interested in me watching if we were there for the weekend. So we didn't go to California. I feel like I'm failing as a Grandpa. Yet I kept my kids from their Grandpa Nelson, and so it makes sense to me the distances and choices to create distance are behaviors I taught by example. Oh well!
Even if I don't have as much influence on my Grandkids as I would like to, at least I have my Primary Class. Sunday was Fast & Testimony Meeting. Kirsten, Noah, Morgan, and Jared all got up and bore their testimonies. Then Sister Jennifer Turner got up and bore her testimony about how neat it was to see these children follow the guidance of their teacher, as she was working on her divorce and making arrangements for her re-marriage, which has since happened. However, this negative was countered by Floyd Lunt who got up and said he needed to follow the example of the Primary kids and express thanks for Brother Nelson. Nice words, and made me think maybe I'm not such a bad guy as I usually think I am. When I got home I wrote a song about my Primary kids called 'CTR-8 Testimonies.' The words go:
The big news for this week was the fact Paul Sullivan came to Houston to interview with Geokinetics, Inc./GDC.
Paul R. Sullivan and his family lived in the Nottingham Country Ward two different times. Both times he had a big impact on me and my family. He was one of the leaders when Roice and Melanie went to Dallas for a temple trip and there was an accident on the way home where a man who was walking across the freeway was hit and killed. Roice was in the car that hit him. Melanie was in the car that drove over him. Paul Sullivan was the Priesthood leader on the trip who kept his cool and was able to bring a sense of stability to a tragedy.
The first time Paul moved from the ward it was to New Orleans, where he became the engineer responsible for the Mars Deepwater Platform, one of the most expensive projects in the Gulf of Mexico at the time. He was called as a Stake President in New Orleans. Then the Sullivans moved back for a short time, bought a house in Windsor Park, by the Beckstrom's. It seems like they were only here for a few months. He built a water sculpture in his back yard, and I never even got to see it before I learned he had been transferred back to New Orleans. Oh well!
When Paul Sullivan got back to New Orleans, he was put almost immediately called as the Stake President again. However, he was transferred to Europe. Both Paul and Todd Staheli both worked for Shell Oil. When Paul transferred overseas to work on the Ukraine Pipeline, he got Todd transferred to his group, and Todd ended up doing a lot of the field work. After Todd and Michelle were murdered Paul Sullivan was assigned by Shell Oil to follow up on this and bring it to closure with the family and with the Brazil government.
Paul also became the worldwide director of Shell Research. This position was headquartered out of Risjwick, in The Netherlands. Once when he was visiting the ward, Andrea bore her testimony and described how scared she was by me being out of work, and us not having a regular income. Paul came up and asked what he could do. This is how I ended up getting the contract to build a Best Practice of Real-Time Drilling for Shell Oil. The project turned into a disaster, and I have often felt like I failed Paul. Based on what Shell told me they wanted, I attempted to bring Roger Anderson and friends into my contract. This got the Shell folks very upset. They assigned a young girl to be my contact. She did not do a very good job, and I became quite sarcastic with her. Then they didn't pay me for the work for several months, and it became a serious cash flow problem. They had a consultant they had hired to do something similar, and he ended up acting as if I was taking work from him. I did tell Paul about all of this after it was over, and he bluntly told me the parts which were my issue. He also admitted that Shell had not performed very well, and he had never seen quite such a bureaucratic break-down as this project represented, particularly in regards to paying the bill. Oh well! I know I have no desire to do any consulting work for a major oil company after this project.
When I left Landmark Graphics, one of the reasons was to work with Bob Sneider. Paul Sullivan was still on his first stay in Houston, and expressed a strong interest in leaving Shell and working with us. Bob invited Paul to dinner at the Crowne Plaza on Highway 6 at I-10, and proceeded to tell him he was not good enough to work with Bob and his team. It kind of blew me away. And Karen later told me it hurt Paul a lot. Oh well! I'm sure the fact I was involved in setting up this dinner was one of the reasons when Dave Johnson mentioned it would be nice to have an engineer with deep water experience to work with us on some of the projects we are pursuing in Mexico and China and The Gulf of Mexico, I suggested Paul. He knew Paul by reputation from Shell, and asked if I really thought Paul would consider this. I told him yes, and proceeded to get hold of Paul, invite him to Houston, and make the arrangements.
Paul flew down Monday evening and spent Tuesday in the office with us. Paul more impressed Dave, Mike, and Lee. It was a good day, and it was a lot of fun to catch up again. I met him at the Omni Hotel for Breakfast. Dave was having breakfast with Steve Webster, one of Geokinetics' Board Members. They said Hi, and then Paul and I had a chance to catch up and lay the groundwork for the day. He had extensive interviews with my three bosses, and then we went to lunch. Lunch was fun, because it was the first time I had Lee, Dave, and Mike with a long-term Mormon friend who didn't drink tea nor coffee nor alcohol. And Paul is so good. He served a mission in Hong Kong and speaks fluent Chinese. He had all kinds of stories to tell, and he also got me telling some of my stories. For instance, somehow I ended up telling about my first trip to Dehra Dun, the Swami, my yogi classes, and the whole experience. At one point in the lunch, Paul made a comment about thinking out of the box, and followed it up with, 'There are very few people like Roice, who doesn't even know there is a box.' All in all it was a very good visit and a very good day. Paul is very expensive, and the bosses are still interested in using him.
I do not have a lot of other notes for the week. There was an interpretation group meeting on Tuesday. I got sick. I made some maps, probably for Ji Dong Oilfield. I had a prescription called in, and ended up sending Andrea to Walmart to pick it up instead of Walgreens. Opps! Oh well! At least there were good discussions and meetings with Paul Sullivan."