cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, Claude and Katherine Warner, Lloyd and Luana Warner, Diane Cluff, Maxine Shirts via mail.
"Interesting week. Actually got some feedback on my thoughts about communication, and based on some of the comments in phone calls and visits I expect to get even more feedback. That's good. Especially since communication is such a key component of what makes us people, and also makes us different from animals.
Several different comments helped remind me of one of the basic concepts in communication. It is simply that we each hear differently. As I hope you all realize by now, I am off the scale in terms of visual communication. I see stuff well, remember patterns, and this is why I am a good seismic interpreter. It is also why I struggle with remembering names, having a conversation, or knowing what to say when two ladies come across me in the bushes next to the jogging trail (../9903.html). Some of you are auditory dominant in your communication. It is interesting that the comments about the importance of calling up and talking came from musicians: Paul, Audrey, Andrea, and Aunt Sara.
They last key type of learning or communication mode is kinesthetic, or sensory experience largely based around the sense of touch. Intellectually I realize it is important to understand if someone primarily learns by their visual, auditory, or kinesthetic senses. However, like most people, I tend to just truck along with what I am comfortable with. I am comfortable reading, since it is visual. Since I do not have a test which helps me understand what other's are comfortable with, I tend to just keep on trucking with what I do best. It is hard for me to find words, and yet I can do it if I am reading what I am writing on a PC. In the meantime, thank you for being patient with me, and thanks for helping me understand how you best learn.
I guess I learn by doing. Sunday evening our Home Teacher's came by. Afterwards, Andrea and I watched a western movie with the star from P.I. Magnum in it. I enjoyed it a lot. I was making business cards for Dynamic Resources Corporation all through the movie. Then I watched another movie, and Andrea went to sleep. It was a TV version of one of the 'R-Rated' movies I didn't see in the theater. I really don't understand why they don't originally release movies without all of the language, sex, and violence they cut out to make them acceptable for airplanes or television. Oh well!
Monday was spent on the computer getting ready for the week. It was a long day. I worked from 6:30 until about 7:00 PM. Then I took a brief break and went to Academy to buy Andrea's birthday present (a workout/weight bench), fill up the car with gas, get cash for the week including the trip to Utah, get a haircut (My barber's Grandson served a mission in Thailand and he was married in the Mesa Temple a couple of years ago. We had a great discussion and she asked for a copy of the Book of Mormon, which met a challenge we had been given at Stake Conference to give a Book of Mormon to our barber.), went to the grocery store and got a card and some honey glazed almonds, and then kept working on presentations, confidentiality agreements, etc. until about 11:00. Then it took an hour to put together Andrea's exercise bench. I was really tired by the time I went to bed at 12:30. I thought everything was organized and ready for the next day. However, the printer stopped, and I spent Tuesday morning scrambling to get everything printed. Oh well!
Tuesday at 6:00 I took Rachel and Anna Schmidt to Seminary, went to Kinko's to bind a prospectus, and then back to the house where there were still materials printing. I finally got out of the house at 7:00 AM. At 8:00 I picked up Bob Ehrlich at Enron Field. At 8:30 we picked up Ricard Nehring from Hampton Court at San Felipe and I-610. We were early for our 9:00 AM meeting with Sam Judge and his team. They are drilling for low-resistivity sands in the Gulf Coast, and we believe we can help them. They need to have a success before they invest in Dynamic. Hopefully they will on the well they are currently perforating. We will see. We went from Alabama to Fountain View where we met up with Sam LeRoy for our 11:00 meeting with Larry Rearden and Carroll Richey. This meeting went very well, and I sense a nice partnership here. The four of us went to a Chinese buffet lunch afterwards. We went from here to our 2:00 at ADS. Neal Broussard and Heloise Lynn met us there and Joe Roberts joined us late. Joe had set the meeting up, and he brought an indian hide scrapper to show us, which he was very excited about. This meeting did not go near as well as the earlier two. I learned I had packaged Dynamic as a group of consultants. Which we are. Oh well!
Andrea spent her entire birthday going to the store, making salads, grilling garlic bread, seasoning steaks, cutting up fish, and had everything ready for me to cook outside when I got home. I got the charcoal started, grilled 24 sirloin steaks and 12 salmon steaks, cooked Dutch Oven potatoes and Dutch Oven cobbler (../9737.html). I just about had the cooking done when everyone started arriving. It was a fun evening. Attendees included Richard Nehring from Colorado Springs (he left town just after they caught 5 of the 7 Texas escapees), Bob and Sarah Ehrlich from Salt Lake, Neal Broussard and his wife, Rose and Sam LeRoy, Blaine and Judeth Taylor, Mike McCardle and his 'significant other,' Dick Coons and his fiancee, Dave Agarwal and his wife, Les and Lisa Dehnam, Heloise Lynn, Albert Boulanger, Andrea, Matt, and Rachel. Matt wasn't shy, and he showed everyone the bottle rocket he made at school. It was neat. Rachel, you are shy, and that's OK. Andrea , thanks for giving up your birthday and for helping us have such a successful night.
Wednesday I started working with Ed Rogers on the agreements at 8:00, and finally left the house at 9:30 totally frustrated. It ended up taking all day Thursday to get the agreements printed out and ready to go. I messed up on giving directions to Andrea, who spent the day doing logistics to help our first meeting as Dynamic Resouces go smoothly, and she was also late meeting everyone there. We got started at 10:05, and I talked until 10:40 on the philosophy, plans, and existing agreements of Dynamic. Peter Duncan and his staff gave the other presentations prior to lunch. Chroma has good stuff. Alf Klaveness sat by me at lunch and he is interested in helping me raise money. He also knows a series of small gas fields which Texaco walked away from because they were too small, and he thinks he can get them for Dynamic to drill. Richard Barren, who was a marketing V.P. at Landmark and just left Geophysical Development Corporation, joined us, and he is considering helping me raise investment money. Richard Nehring started out after lunch. Great technology and great knowledge of the U.S. oil fields. Heloise helped keep us on track, time-wise. Bob Ehrlich and Neal Brossard gave an excellent presentation on their data cleaning and data mining technologies. Sam LeRoy's presentation on Dynamic Pressure Fields opened my eyes as to the depth of understanding of this team of people. Dick Coons talked about his work in North and South Padre Island and his work with seeps, gas chimneys, and seismic velocity issues. Heloise talked about her naturally-fractured gas reservoirs. Alf summarized some of his work. It was one of the most intense and exciting days I have had in years. We set our next meeting like this up for Friday, 23 Feb 2001, at II&T downtown (0109.html). I was totally wiped out when I got home. We went to the nursing home for our venturing crew activity. I was mostly just there as an adult watcher. Although the guys did go with me to the barber shop and listened as I gave my barber her copy of the Book of Mormon, as promised Monday night. And I bought the guys a box of doughnuts. I went to sleep pretty soon after I got home.
Thursday was spent getting agreements put together. Richard Nehring's was redone changing the name from Dynamic Oil & Gas Corporation to Dynamic Resources Corporation. Residuum Energy's (Bob and Neal), EarthView's (Sam and Rose), Lynn, Inc. (Heloise), as well as Albert Boulanger and Roger Anderson all needed Buy-Sell Agreements, Vesting Agreements, tax agreements, and Master Agreements. It created a lot of paper. Richard came by and ate lunch with me and we went over his initial plans for the concepts he is going to develop for Dynamic. His work is really exciting. Ken Turner came by and I worked up a price sheet to take to Deseret Book next Tuesday when I make a sales call for Heritage Gallery On-Line. Ken commented on the number of words stacked on my desk. I went to the Galleria area and had dinner with Albert. I'm excited about what Albert and his friends are going to build for Dynamic. Heloise was at the house when I got back from the Canyon Cafe. She leaves for Italy on Saturday, and Walt, her husband, is in Japan this week. I feel sorry for her two kids. I worked until about 1:00 in the morning getting ready for the trip to Utah.
I dropped Rachel off for Seminary at 6:00 and drove straight to Intercontinental. I was tired. They would not let me carry the Moroni painting on, and it was checked at the terminal. It was OK when I got it back in Salt Lake. I slept most of the way to Salt Lake. The last hour of the flight I spent outlining the paper I need to get done for the OTC by the 8th of February (0107.html). Audrey was waiting for me when I got outside the Salt Lake Terminal. Her Senator gave her the afternoon off and so we went to lunch and she dropped me off to spend a couple of hours working with Parker Gay. She ended up taking notes for me as I took photos of prospects Parker has identified. We left Parker's at 4:00 and got to Paul's about 5:00. We transferred the paintings and suitcase to Paul's car and I drove to Cedar City. I spent a half-hour catching up with Des and Sara before going over to Grandma Shirts' house. We had a good visit. She likes the paintings and prints. The conversation reminded me how visually dominant I am. It would be so nice to be more balanced between visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Oh well! I slept well.
Saturday morning I picked up Heather at 9:30 and we went to St. George. We spent some time with Ward and Fern Abbott and I finally started taking pictures of some of his outcrop photographs. It felt so good to start this again, after talking about it for over a decade. Hopefully these photos will help me close the financing I need to get started. Then we went to lunch with Mom at Hunan and had a nice visit. Ben and Sara, I had the digital camera and showed Mom some of the pictures we took of Ethan. Heather looked at all of them. It was fun. We stopped at Uncle Tony's on the way back to Cedar and returned his video tape of the 213th. Heather, I'm sorry I forgot to go by the art center as we were leaving town. My consolation is you forgot to remind me too. Oh well! We stopped and got groceries for Heather, and I succumbed to buying another Tom Clancy Op-Center novel. This one is 'Divide and Conquer,' about the oil fields in Azerbaijan. Then I went by Sara & Des' and took digital photos of the photos of Bridget and Jared's reception in Cedar. They will be showing up on the web soon. The Cedar West Stake lost the Ken Turner painting of Nephi's vision I gave them about 6 years ago. I met the Stake President and we went through the entire stake center looking for it. Andrea knew Tom Hulet (and Aunt Sara went to school with him), and had set the meeting up for me. Sara, Des, and Brian took Grandma Shirts and me out to dinner at Milt's. They have opened a whole new section at Milt's since the last time I as there, and a whole new parking area. It was a wonderful dinner. Andrea, I missed having you with me. When we got back, Grandma and I talked some more, and then I started reading my new book. I was still reading at 10:30 when Richard Messer called and told me he knew where the painting was. It was at the old cannery, where we used to can meat from Nelson Packing Company as a Stake Welfare Project. We made arrangements for me to pick it up at 7:00 the next morning.
It snowed Saturday night. There was about an inch (or two) of snow everywhere when I got packed and left Grandma Shirts' for Provo. Richard was very nice. The frame would not fit in Paul's Saturn. In fact, the picture almost didn't fit. It was a long drive to Provo in the snow and the truck spray. No problems. Got here about 10:00. Paul and Kate had left for BYC (Bishop's Youth Council) and other church meetings before I got here. I read a couple of chapters and went over to their ward at 11:00. Their sacrament meeting was good. Lot's of little kids. And it reminded me of other happy times. They have a lot of turnover, and so they have a getting to know new member's meeting in Sunday School each week. Paul volunteered me to teach the lesson in High Priest Quorum. It was on the Sabbath, and I had fun teaching the lesson. It was special to be asked to ordain my son a High Priest. Thank you Paul, more than I have words to say. It was a wonderful experience. After Church, Kate brought me back to their house, and I showed her all of the Turner paintings I am going to show the lady at Deseret Book tomorrow. Kate fixed a nice lunch, and set me up on the computer to type out this week's Thoughtlet.
Paul is the Ward Executive Secretary and he is still at church at 5:50, as I finish writing this. Kate is the Young Women's President, as of last week, and she has been busy calling kids to get them to go to a Stake Fireside tonight. What a great way for a newly wed couple to be spending their time. They seem very happy, and certainly are busy.
Sara, I will get your address in France updated on the address page this week, and will forward some mail you received at the house. How are you doing? Audrey is jealous. I told her Andrea and I would have to bring her over when she finishes up at the State Senate internship on February 28th. She likes the idea, and so do I, even if it is pretty unrealistic. When is your break? The one Roice is not joining you to go skiing during?
I'd be interested in hearing from each of you concerning your learning style. What percentage are you visual, auditory, or kinesthetic? Have a great week."