"Andrea and I drove back to Houston after the lunch party to show off Halle Nalise Wright (0625.html). It had been a long two weeks, and so it was with some trepidation I went to the office Monday morning. And I did go to the office.
Monday morning, the 19th of June, when I arrived, there was Fred Hilterman. This was the first time I'd seen him at GDC since he came and helped us get the TilesTM project started. We had a long discussion. We talked about developing a training program. We talked about the university program I discussed with several university professors at the EAGE. We talked about my desires to move back to Cedar City and to become actively involved in the Central Iron County Water Conservancy District (CICWCD, see http://www.walden3d.com/cedarcity/CedarValleyWater). At about this part of the conversation, Fred got up and said, "Well I need to get back to work." I came back from the trip to Europe, having had time to think and to work on my presentations when we were on trains, in airports, or in the hotels, convinced it was the right time to sell the house, move to Cedar City, and that everything would turn out just fine. Of course, none of this happened, and if the first two would have happened, the third one certainly would not have happened. Still, I was ready, and I was willing to tell anyone I was ready. Over the next few weeks I had several conversations with Phillip Miller about purchasing the house, so he could have a swimming pool for his kids to enjoy. I did not tell him my reason being to make it easier to move to Utah. I've calmed down on this a lot since then. A lot of the reason is because I could never get a serious audience with the CICWCD. Also, Andrea wanted to teach seminary another year, and she signed up for and has been teaching a Japanese 2 class at Morton Ranch High School this year. I do not have a financial plan in place which makes it feasible. And there is the fact we might find ourselves too close to family, and maybe it is better to retain some space for a while longer. The bottom line is this is the last time I have had this conversation with a senior person at GDC or Geokinetics about moving home to Cedar City, Utah.
On Tuesday Mike Dunn asked me to find out about "Facebook," which is a social web tool college kids have become hooked on. He learned about it from his daughter, and feels like a variant of it could be used at the GDC website to create more pull to our website. I sent some e-mails, did a little bit of research, and nothing ever came of the conversation. Maybe this is an advantage of getting so far behind on the Thoughtlets, i.e. looking over my notes reminds me of things I need to finish doing.
Wednesday Andrea and I went to the temple. We were late for the session, and the sun was still out when we arrived. I forgot to take off my dark glasses, and ended up going though the entire session looking like Mr. Yan Dun Shi and his dark glasses. Oh well. There was a black man at the temple recommend desk, and I recognized he was black even with my dark glasses on. This was the first time I have seen a black man at the temple recommend desk. I think it is really neat. After the session we stopped at Sonic and got a Cherry Limeade. Maybe this type of choice is why I don't loose any weight.
On Thursday I learned that the executive producer of "24" is Joel Surnow. Because they left the last season with Jack Bauer being put on a Chinese freighter on it's way to Shanghai, from which the previous year said they were going to take him to Xing Jiang. I was not busy at work, and so I spent some time attempting to find out how to get hold of Mr. Surnow. I thought it would be a great idea to tie Jack Bauer's escapades into oil exploration in the Xing Jiang Province, especially since we did training for folks from the Xing Jiang Oilfield (../0502.html, ../0504.html, ../0505.html, ../0506.html, ../0507.html, ../0502.html, ../0502.html, ../0517.html, and ../0518.html, ), and I came back from visiting there the Saturday before the episode of "24" where the Chinese threatened to take Jack Bauer to Xing Jiang. I never did find him, and I never did follow up on this idea. There are lots of them (ideas) that get lost in the shuffle.
Friday we got an agreement from Henry Ho promising GDC an Over Riding Royalty Interest (ORRI) on any properties we did the technical evaluation of. Of course, I can look back and see nothing came of any of this. I had great hopes (0639.html). Oh well! I spent the day interpreting time-slice seismic sections for the well locations for the Ji Dong Oilfield. I've convinced Dave Johnson that Ji Dong has the potential to become GDC's next Zilka. Zilka was a company that bought into Fred's AVO processing, signed an exclusive agreement with GDC, purchased a whole bunch of leases in the Gulf of Mexico based on working up this data, and sold the whole package to El Paso for billions of dollars. GDC made good money on the services, and nothing compared to the amount that Zilka made. Also, on Friday Mike Dunn started negotiations for the purchase of II&T. This is another thing which did not happen. Although when II&T had to move out of 7777 Katy Freeway, GDC did provide them an office space to sit in, so that there would be on-going access to Les Denham.
Sometime earlier in the week Andrea and Rachel took off for Utah in the silver Saturn, which I gave to Rachel as promised. So for the rest of June and all of July I was home in Houston alone, working on (An Open Mind," "Red Cove," and "CICWCD," all hours of the night and day.
Saturday the 24th of June was Night Court. Dick Coons and Carole had provided us with two tickets again. Since Andrea was gone, I called Rob and invited him to go with me. We got there early. Like last year there was a fancy car out front. Instead of the Batmobile (../0525.html), it was the original Hank Williams, Jr. Cadillac, with long horn horns on the front and fancy paneling on the sides. It was a hoot. We went inside, and waited. Carole did not recognize me, and Rob asked if I really knew who we were meeting. Later she recognized me. Dick was there, and two other couple friends and their daughter joined us. We had very plesent conversations. Rob made a fabulous comment as we were sitting and the words were flying around us. I asked him how he liked the dinner, and he said, 'I'm sitting here basking in the ambiguity.' And thus I got the theme for this week's Thoughtlet. Basking in ambiguity is a beautiful summary of how I like to live. It was very hard for me to watch Rob drink a cup of coffee. Oh well! We both enjoyed the show, and we had a good time. Hopefully there will be lots of more good times like this, and hopefully I can keep my disappointment under control as I did on this Saturday night.
Sunday evening, 25 June 2006, at 7:00 PM was Stake Priesthood meeting. I do not remember the talks, and I do have notes of a possible stanza written for Prime Words based on President Gillipse's talk and quote of Jeffrey R. Holland:
Ken Turner was at the Stake Priesthood meeting, and he asked me to follow him to Joe Robert's house, where he was going to show Joe his latest paintings. Joe had been cooking and I ate too much. Ken had a teenager with mental problems with him, Linda had a friend there, and when Joe got the young man to come in and eat, it was fun to watch how Linda's friend worked to help him have a good time and to think in ways he was not used to thinking. The paintings are as wonderful as ever. The conversation was great. Linda's friend is the wife of one of the richest people in Houston. And as I watched the events unfold, it was fun to be and to watch others basking in the ambiguity."