cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts
"One Thoughtlet out of 480 (see ../9642.html) dedicated to Austin. Doesn't seem like it is enough, especially since this is already about the 318th of Thoughlet I have written. Upon reflection, when I wrote the words `I hope someone would pick up the ball and write these Thoughtlets after 480 (40 years x 12 months per year), I think I meant after 40 years x 52 Thoughtlets per year, or 2,080 Thoughtlets. It blows me away to realize I am over 15% of the way to what I anticipated to be the end of my life, from when I started the Thoughtlets. And one Thoughtlet out 2,080 dedicated to Austin definitely doesn't seem like it is enough. Between Roice, Melanie, and Sara's schooling in Austin, research and teaching activities tied to UT Austin, my working for the BEG (Bureau of Economic Geology) in Austin for about a year, friends who live in Austin (Laura Pankonien and her family, and now Ron and Linda Burgerner), Ken Turner's paintings of Austin and the history of Austin, the beautiful scenery, libraries, parks (like Zilka Park and the swimming pool), conference centers, Pleny Fisk's Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems, and other activities in Austin, I anticipate there will be more than one Thoughtlet about Austin. And like most things in life, the `more than one' start with the first one.
The first time I ever remember anything about Austin was when living in Maplewood 2nd Ward. There was a sophomore that came home from school for the summer and shared her testimony about how wonderful the Institute Program at UT is. I remember the event, because of the intensity of my anger and emotional reaction, and it was certainly not based on anything the young lady said. I have thought about it often, because it was such a very specific example of citing my mind forward (Alma 13:1) and feeling the future. It is a specific example of knowing I have been given a gift to sometimes see or feel or experience the future. A lot of my professional colleagues refer to me as a visionary, because I have done a reasonable job of predicting oil and gas exploration technologies. Haven't done a very good job of capitalizing on this gift for personal benefit. And maybe this is a basic requirement of a gift. You can use the gift, if you use it for the benefit of others, and not for yourself. Certainly the insitute program at UT had a most wonderful impact on Melanie. And it is certainly not entirely the Institute's issue Roice and Sara choose not to attend. My experience was so dramatic, and so personal, so real, and there has been so many things happen in our family tied to UT Austin, that the experience has often been recalled from my memory banks. It was on the way back from Austin, from going to an event tied to Roice's schooling, that I heard the word divorce the second time (0237.html). Over the years, I've concluded the emotions from this event was what I experienced in advance and what was the basis for my anger and emotional reaction at a Fast and Testimony meeting in Maplewood 2nd ward.
One of my musings has been to wish I was closer to the spirit, so I would know when there is danger to those I love. The issue here is it is too easy to play `What if ...?' games (0239.html), and generally these just leave you emotionally drained and are of little to no specific benefit. I imagine how, with a clear enough picture of the future, I could put in place the barriers and protections needed to save all of you from unnecessary grief and pain. Maybe this has happened, and when I see my whole life from our Savior's perspective, it will be obvious. I expect the fact is pain and loss are supposed to be a part of our lives. Pain and grief are where we learn the important lessons, and so naturally we will not be able to avoid them. However, like Ethan being worried about what is outside of the window, life's test is not set up with unpenetratable barriers. Especially for things which rattle through our minds. Guess this is why it is so very important to control what we let play out on the theater of our mind.
In terms of my week, Austin was the key theme, especially Friday and Saturday. On Monday I got hold of Rob and invited him to go to Austin with me. He had other things he had to do, and so we agreed to go out to dinner together on the 4th. However, he just called and canceled dinner. Said he would come over at Thanksgiving, and asked me to call him when our plans for Thanksgiving are finalized. Hopefully none of you will ever experience the hurt being felt in these quarters right now.
I spent most of the week getting business cards entered into the computer, making new business cards, cleaning up the office, and doing all of these maintenance things I keep putting off. I did the Family Home Evening lesson on Monday evening, and read the book "My Turn On Earth" for the lesson. Neither David nor Matt had heard it. It is really good. Maybe we could read it one evening during Christmas. I teared up and Matt ended up finishing the reading. So maybe one of you can read it to the rest of us at Christmas.
Tuesday evening I went out with the missionaries. Good kids. I enjoy going out with them. It is not easy for them to fullfill their assignment in this area, and even though it normally feels like we don't make much progress when I go out with them, hopefully I build them up a little bit, and help them rededicate themselves to the work. There was a nice discussion with the Elder I was with about the colors and patterns used to mark my scriptures. It is hard to do missionary work in an affluent area. And West Houston is definitely affluent.
There were several very interesting business phone calls and e-mail messages. I have interpretation jobs I am working to close and to get started on in the Cook Inlet of Alaska, in Syria, with the Cook Field in West Texas (the biggest oil field in the U.S. during World War II), and possibly in Georgia (formally part of the U.S.S.R.). In addition, the Price-Waterhouse folks sent e-mail talking about bringing me to Beijing the end of November or early December. Paul and Kate might not be able to get visas in time because Kate's needs a new passport, Chuck and Diane changed their e-mail and haven't let me know their new e-mail address, and Ben and Sarah are next on the list (www.walden3d.com/thoughtlets/china.txt), if I actually do end up with a couple of extra tickets to China. Ben, sorry I didn't think to mention this when I called. And of course there is all of the Nigeria work. I thought we would be adding synthetics to several of the other wells in OPL-229 last week, and expect it will happen this week to get ready for the visitors next week. However the digital well logs have not arrived yet. Expect I will see them early this week. It is a lot more fun and fullfilling to do the actual interpretation than it is to do all of this selling and getting the projects started. Oh well! The selling and getting the projects started is part of what needs to happen in order to have successful projects.
Thursday I went to the Quilt Show with Andrea. Really interesting. I have always been interested in art and in patterns. The quilt show is full of both. I was particularly impressed with the use of colors, and how the colors are blended, contrasted, graded, and put together. I expect there is a lot to learn by thinking about all of the work quilters have done which has a direct application to how we color seismic sections. There were several quilts made of falling cubes. Because 3-D seismic sureys are basically cubes, I could imagine a very interesting quilt made on seismic images transfered to cloth. I could also imagine Ken Turner's paintings transferred to cloth, and quilting done around each of these images. Maybe, if we are blessed with money again, and once I commission the paintings (inheritance) for Heather, Audrey, Rachel, and Matt, we can take all 12 paintings and incorporate them into a quilt for each of you kids. I'm sure it would be machine based quilting to do something like this, and that is not pure like Andrea and her Mom like to do.
The other thing interesting about the quilt show was the people. First there was the reaction of me going down there with Andrea. There were three ladies from the Ward that went down, and there were comments about me being there. Then we ran into Carolee Weber, and her reaction was really interesting. She says Brent would never come to something like this with her, and I think she simply needs to invite him and he would enjoy it at least as much as I did. Of course, most of those attending were women. Most of the women were in their own world, and so they were comfortable, and not dolled up and trying to impress anyone. I couldn't help but think what a good thing it would be to bring young men down to the quilt show and to tell them to look at the women and think about their future. This is most likely what your wife will look and dress and act like, and what you need to be interested in, in order to have a lasting relationship. There were a small percentage of the women who were obviously very rich and or attempting to give the impression of being very rich. However, most of the attendees were regular folks. Melanie, I anticipate the Quilt Show is very similar to your scrapbooking conventions.
I thought I was going to leave the Quilt Show early, and work on the OPL-229 synthetics. However, they were not delivered, and so Andrea and I went to lunch at Kim Son on Louisiana. It was good. Didn't taste Chinese. On the way home we decided to stop and look at a new (used) cars. We stopped at the first place past Wilcrest on the Katy Freeway. The price, payments, and particularly interest on buying a used truck was more than Andrea could handle. So she said we should go to the Saturn place. We did, and Joe sold us my 7th Saturn, and the first car we have bought together. Zero down, zero interest, and no payment until the end of January. Hopefully we will have the taxes, my car payment, and schooling for Heather, Audrey, and Rachel paid for before this expense starts up. I'm optimistic about everything except Andrea's reaction when cash flow gets tight. Rachel Lunt works there, and she told us she recently saw Rob at the Mall. He recognized her voice, and she couldn't believe he knew who she was simply by her voice. She was dressed up as a doctor for Halloween.
When we got home, there were tiki tourches in front of the house, and a bunch of kids on the front porch. Matt and David had just left to go to the Brannings to watch a movie. I watched the special on Galileo, which had been on Tuesday and was recorded because I went out with the missionaries.
Friday morning I left at 6:00 for Austin. There are a lot of memories and emotions tied to the drive to Columbus and up Highway-71 to Austin. I accepted the job at the BEG with the hope of Marti would change her mind if she had some space. And so there was a lot going on emotionally as I drove to and from Austin for that year. Emotions don't go away. They are low frequency, closer to gravity and the spirit and the other side of the time-space continuum (the other side of the veil). Maybe this is why it is possible to `site your mind forward' and remember emotions of the future.
This was my first experience at the Austin Convention center. I could not believe what a nice convention center they have, specifically that I have never been to an SEG nor an AAPG convention in Austin in this nice facility. I expect I will be over the next few years. The conference center was too big for the 1,500 attendees at the Gulf Coast Association of Geological Societies (GCAGS). I spent the morning at the session about the future of oil and gas exploration in North America. It was really good. Now is the time for students to come into the oil and gas business. The industry is in exactly the same place it was when I got back from my mission in 1972. I will save detailed comments about the things said for another time. Several of the notes I took are certainly going to make it into my current writing project: An Open Mind.
I co-chaired a session Friday afternoon titled `Reservoir Modeling and Visualization.' The first five papers were detailed engineering papers, which are the kind of material given at the SPE (Society of Petroleum Engineers). Interesting stuff, and a ways removed from what I do. The last two papers were invited by me. Professor Dr. Bernd Frohlich flew into Austin from Germany to give his presentation on `New Interaction Concepts and Real-Time Algorithms for the Exploration of Geological Data in Virtual Environments.' He is with the VR-Geo Consortium, which Bowen Loftin and I helped start several years ago. Dr. Jerry R. Duncan flew in from Illinois representing John Deere to give his talk `Off-Road and Sub-Surface...Similarities in Virtual Space.' In the room where these last two presentations of the day were given was my co-chairman, the two speakers, and four other folks. I was so embarassed. Obviously not the forum, nor the time of the day/week for state-of-the-art presentations on Virtual Reality. Oh well!
After the session, I went from downtown to north-central Austin, to where Roice works. He showed me what he has been developing. It looks like Continuum Resources for airplane flight paths, on PC's. Very interesting, and direct relationships to the Infiinite Grid(SM) and some of the other things I have been working on for years. Then he showed me the solar system simulation program he has built and which he wants to sell as `freeware' for about $25 per license. It is amazing stuff. For those of you who saw the MuSE solar system demo, it is similar. Only you can put in multiple suns, multiple planets, multiple moons, rings, and then watch the various paths of the orbits, or put in a plane to show the gravitational distortion of planet movement, etc. It is elegant.
After the demonstration I turned to Roice and said, `Let me see if I have this right, you came into your office one day, and the program to do all of this had just materialized on your computer?' His answer was, `NO! I made the program.' Roice and I have had a conversation for years which revolves around a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon. The first panel shows Calvin saying:
The second panel shows Calvin's parents and him
sitting at the dinner table, and his Mom says:
`Just eat your dinner. OK?' To which Calvin
responds `Eternal Consequences, that's what!'
As Roice took ownership for his program, while
saying in other conversations there is no God,
my thoughts went to Alma's comments to Korihor:
Hopefully writing this will prove useful to one
of you, and hopefully it will not be offensive
to Roice when it gets back to him I wrote it.
We went from Roice's work to Sara's apartment. After some nice discussions with Mary and some friends, Roice, Sara, and I went to north Austin and ate dinner with Ron and Linda Burgerner and Tyler and his wife and baby. I enjoyed the evening a lot. Maybe because the conversation ended up being about explosives and I told a bunch of stories from my youth, which had everyone laughing. During the conversation Tyler's birthday came up as being on April 6th, and the fact the church teaches this is the birthday of Jesus Christ. Ron pointed out it is revelation and referenced the D&C where it says:
I immediately countered with, the scripture does
not say this was Christ's birthday. And as I
looked at Ron's face, I could see how I have
intellectualized some of those I love the most
right out of the church with comments like this.
President Kimball and other prophets and apostles
have specifically said April 6th is Christ's
birthday, and this is good enough for me. When
it comes right down to it, it does not matter to
my salvation when Christ's birthday is. As Roice
pointed out later that evening when we got to his
apartment, `Which came first, the chicken (the
Calvin & Hobbs cartoon referenced earlier) or the
egg (a rock egg, which I gave him one Christmas
with an inscription taken from the cartoon:
`Eternal Consequences.').' For what it is worth,
my conclusion is the chicken came first, because
God brought it from Kolob and planted it in the
Garden of Eden he had created and which we know
as Earth. Besides that, Roice gave me the cartoon
before I had the egg inscribed with words from the
cartoon. And to top off my day in Austin, Roice
beat me twice at chess. There is nothing quite
as fullfilling as being beat by your kids or by
your nephew in a good game of chess.
I got up early and was at Sara's apartment about
7:40 AM. She fixed me a wonderful breakfast of
oatmeal and apple slices and migas (scrambled eggs,
mushrooms, onions, and cheese). Then we went to
southeast Austin and planted 3 of 128 trees planted
in a new park as a service project for one of the
groups in her school of management. I have left my
mark on Austin! In fact, I took several pictures
of the event with the digital camera (
)
and they are at http://www.walden3d.com/austin, at
least for right now. It was a fun project, and it
was especially nice to do something with Sara.
From here we went back to her apartment, where we were met by Cole (one of Roice's engineering friends), Mary (Sara's roommate), Roice, and Sara Nemec (Roice's girlfriend). The six of us went to lunch at a Persian buffet. It was good. I ate too much. Sara called Rob and we each wished him a happy birthday passing the phone around the table. It was a good time. After going back to Sara's apartment, everyone left, and I drove Sara around Austin to run several different errands. As I drove back to Houston, I stopped and bought a package of white chocolate dipped pecans, to top off a pretty much perfect day. When I got home, Andrea and I went to see the new movie `Tuck Everlasting,' which was a nice conclusion to the day.
Andrea bought `me' a beautiful rocking chair at a garage sale for my birthday. Now `I' have something to rock the three muskateers (our three grandsons) in when they visit. Maybe it will even replace the blue lazyboy for the Christmas present opening chair. There was a nice card and check from Andrea's Mom, which will go to a new pair of shoes. Sunday after church Andrea made her halloween dinner of meat and onions in a pumpkin, with a cheesecake birthday cake. Also also framed the Roland Lee watercolor of The Great White Throne for my birthday, and we hung it up after dinner. Mom and Audrey and Rachel and Melanie and my sister Sara each wished me a happy birthday via the telephone. And with the exception of a spotlight on my ongoing lack of interaction with Rob, it was a good week and a wonderful trip to Austin.
As I was getting this finalized for Andrea to proof read for me, the following e-mail came in from Ron Burgerner in Austin concerning http://www.texansfortraditionalmarriage.org:
And so the last word this week, comes from Austin."