"This week started off with a POPS (Pioneer Oil Producers Society) luncheon on Monday. Phil Whitman, a Forensic Engineering Consultant talked. It was not very good, and a couple of the folks at my table left before he was finished. I found it somewhat interesting, and did not realize there are folks who spend their life reconstructing engineering failures for legal and other purposes. I happened to sit next to Bob Scott, who was the former historian for POPS, and who was the Exploration Editor for World Oil when I wrote the 12 articles which were eventually published as "New Technologies in Exploration Geophysics." He is available as a consultant, and I expect there are several ways he could be used by GDC. However, none of them will probably happen. Oh well. We exchanged contact information.
Monday was our anniversary, and so we went out to dinner at a new place. Andrea wanted me to decide, and I wanted her to decide. We ended up going to a place at Fry and I-10 neither of us had heard anything about, named "Willies." It wasn't very good. Too much pepper and lots of deep fried food. We went from here to HEB, where Andrea bought some sushi and I bought an ice cream bar. Oh well!
When we got home and Andrea went upstairs she discovered Colby had written on most of the walls and chairs upstairs, and also on the carpet and bedspread. She was not pleased. I was caught up in working on 'An Open Mind,' and meeting the arbitrary deadline I had placed in my mind the previous week when I read about Jan Miller and her company that brokers intellectual ideas (0620.html). Andrea expected me to drop what I was doing, and I expected her to understand I was working on something important. There were words when I didn't come upstairs and help her, after she said something to the effect of "Well, it is obvious, what you are working on is much more important than helping to clean up the mess your grandson made." My response is not appropriate to write out here. Oh well! Since there has been a lot of time pass, and nothing has happened with getting an advance towards the publication of 'An Open Mind,' it is pretty obvious I was wrong in responding so strongly to Andrea's comment. Oh well! Hopefully Andrea won't denigrate what I'm working on because it comes across she does not think most of what I do has any value, and hopefully I will not make the same mistake in responding next time. I do know that when I fall down, it is time to get up, and keep on trying to improve, and I hope each of you can learn this lesson.
Tuesday I was taken to lunch by Stewart Lowery. Stewart was one of our early employees at Landmark in the hardware and support areas. He moved into sales, had some stock options, did very well with all of this, and now owns his own ranch and has considerable investments. He also met Melanie at some function at UT Austin, and thinks she his hot. It is funny (and sad) to have a former co-worker making sexist remarks about one's daughter.
Wednesday evening Andrea and I went to the Stake Center for the biannual renewal of our Temple Recommends. I'm not sure Andrea had forgiven me for my profane sarcastic response to her comment about how important what I was working on was. However, she met with President Gillipse, and spent quite a bit of time talking about how the stake should consider other options than organizing the seminary classes by year in High School. I met with President Steed, and after the interview he asked me questions about geophysics. I think I mentioned he followed his father's footsteps, and is a geophysicist. However, he works for Exxon Production Research in Houston, while his father worked for I think it was Marathon in Casper, Wyoming. I'm not sure why, but right after mentioning the interviews, my notes include the phrase "Take the lead." On the way to or back from the Temple Recommend interviews, Andrea told me about an experience that happened in her seminary class that morning. She asked the kids who they most want to meet when they die and are on the other side of the veil. When it was John Farmer's turn, he simply said, "The real Alex Beckstrom." Both of us broke into tears as she said these words, and this emotional moment is why I used this phrase as the title for this week's Thoughtlet. For those of you who do not know Alex Beckstrom, he is very handicapped mentally. He has progressed much farther than the Doctors thought he would. However, the most significant thing I've seen Alex be able to do is to make it through the sacrament prayer on Sunday, and even then it is very hard to understand the words because of the cadence and the emphasis he puts on the words. Alex has recently (months after this experience) turned 18, and his parents are facing the fact he will be at Taylor High School for several more years, and will always need someone to watch over him and help him. How blessed we are with the health and mental abilities of each of the 10 of you.
Dave Johnson has a habit of picking up kolachi's and bringing a box of them to work and putting them on the kitchen. My notes had the word kolachi, and no explanation. I remember one morning Dave was in my office, and Carlos called to tell me there were kolachi's, and Dave had a good laugh about how the word spread around the company. My notes also refer to a call from Chevron New Orleans, although as I'm writing this many months in the future I can look back and say nothing came from this call. Tecton was in to look at their data on my Landmark license on Friday. I spent some time on Friday looking at toyota.com in preparation to fulfill my promise to provide Rachel a car after she graduates from college (see 0630.html).
Saturday morning started with the spreading of another load of mulch in the yard. It is a lot of work to move 3 yards of mulch, although not as much work as the previous load, as it had rained all night on it, and the baptism was earlier in the morning than the one this Saturday. Noah Inman's baptism was at 12:00. He was in my Primary Class (he has since moved to Oklahoma with his family). The program for his baptism read:
As the program says, I talked on Baptism. And I kind of set a trend, which I carried on with two other talks, both on The Holy Ghost, for kids in my primary class (0642.html). The precedence was singing with my guitar and introducing something new I am working on that relates to the topic. I started of pointing out the uniqueness of the opportunity to talk at Noah's baptism, as Noah was one of 8 saved from being permanently baptized anciently. I sang "The First Prayer," and "The CTR-8 Song." Noah's brother Jake later asked me if all of those kids were really in my class. I introduced the concept of a spatial language, and the patterns of 16 phrases (4 hieroglyphics x 4 hieroglyphics) which I have found over and over in my latest reading of the book of Mormon. I talked too long, and Noah's Mom asked her brother to talk shorter on The Holy Ghost. After the baptism Sister Inman told me I am the best Primary Teacher any of her kids have ever had. That felt good, although Noah missed too many classes for me to take it too seriously. Sister Siebert caught the importance of my message and was quite excited about it. She asked if I was going to write a book about it, and pointed out how this ties into patterns in some of the work of some of the great classical musicians. I have learned over the years to keep this type of new idea to myself, as they seem to scare those I am close to and care about. It felt really good to have what felt like a second witness to the importance to my discovery.
Saturday afternoon Andrea and I went to see "The Di Vinci Code." It seemed to follow the book fairly closely, and did not have the ritual sex scenes the book described. I enjoyed it. Many did not. It is not a great Grandkids movie, and will probably never be consider a classic. Mostly it will be considered Catholic bashing, sort of like the upcoming movies on Mountain Meadows Massacre will be considered Mormon bashing.
Sunday Patrice Peterson spoke in Sacrament Meeting. I pulled words from her talk as a possible stanza for Prime Words:
My primary class, Sister Peterson's talk, and the whole week reminded me of the blessings we have, and how important it is when ever we meet anyone to search for the real person they are, the real Alex Beckstrom."