"The Sunday beginning of this week included confirmation we were hosting Wednesday night's Young Women Dutch Oven and Geology evening. Sister McPherson seemed quite excited about the evening. The other thing which happened this Sunday came from a sacrament talk Sister Elin Young gave. Her family is moving to Billings, Montana where here husband has taken a new job with ConocoPhillips. She has been the Relief Society President for a few years, and she was the concluding speaker in sacrament meeting. I wrote the following possible stanza for Prime Words based on her talk (a) on the 10th of September:
Sometimes I feel like I am killing time. Work has been going fairly slow since I got back from China. There is not a specific project I am assigned to work on. And so I have been spending time working on the prototype Ward Abbott Outcrop Atlas. I hope we are able to bring the resources together to take this opportunity to market. Time will tell. Always does.
On Tuesday I noticed an interesting add in the Oil and Gas Journal, and then I found linked to some other note received on-line. It was for the position of Director of the University of Wyoming School of Energy Resources. It sounds interesting to me. However, the first preferred qualification is an earned doctorate. Oh well! I do fit the other four qualifications to a "T." Hope you kids never find yourselves limited in what choices you can pursue because of a lack of education. Tuesday Andrea purchased a new dutch oven for us. That night, while Marc and I worked on the computer, she cooked it in the oven, seasoning it for our first use.
Wednesday the GDC receptionist, Cindi Hall was talking about her first Pack Meeting with her son the night before. She said the older scouts asked the younger ones to explain how we can serve God and our Country. Her child said 'We can help the less fortunate, and this makes God happy.' She said, 'I can't believe how deep these kids think.' I found a tear swelling up in my eye. These two phrases each take two lines, and thus form another possible stanza for Prime Words when put together.
Wednesday evening was my opportunity to teach the Nottingham Country Ward Young Women dutch oven and geology. I am typically getting home about 5:00 these days, thanks to the new car pool with George Schultz and Mike Schoemann (this is nice, and almost makes the rest of the day at GDC bearable). Andrea had picked up the needed supplies (bag of potatoes, bag of carrots, bacon, 2 onions, hamburgers, cheese, cake mix for cobbler, drinks, paper plates, plastic forks, and plastic cups). I set up the projector from GDC in the living room, and my GDC PC in the office. Then I took the charcoal, three dutch ovens, and folding table out by the dutch oven pit and got it all set up and ready. I got a big bowl for potatoes, smaller for carrots, smaller for onions, and smallest for bacon out. I had name tags for everyone, and they turned out to be pretty useless. By this time it was about 5:30, and the girls started to arrive. Two were immediately shown how to peal potatoes, and put to work. As new girls came in they were given a job.
Berina Heaney had never pealed potatoes, and so I got her to cut them up. She proceeded to cut her finger. Oh well! We put some Neosporin and a bandage on the wound. I felt bad for her, even though I laughed it off and showed her all of the scars on my left index finger from Nelson Meat Packing Plant. I don't think the exploit made the Pat Gray talk show the next morning, and I don't know because of the car pool. It was interesting to watch the interaction between the girls. A couple of them were very social and only wanted to talk about boys and such. A couple of them were very good workers and jumped right into whatever they could find to do. One girl was king of the mountain, with her own servant getting her plates of food and otherwise helping her. Some were full of questions. One girl said, with great fanfare, 'That's my favorite rock.' About the third time she started to say, 'That's my fourth favorite rock.' Oh to be 12-18 again and if I could just remember a little bit of what I've learned over the last 40 years since I was that age the first time. Oh well!
At 6:00 I started the charcoal on fire. Andrea found some lighter fluid, so I did not use gasoline around the girls. I expect this is good. We finished up pealing and cutting the potatoes, cutting the carrots and onions and bacon about 6:15. Everything was put in it's bowl, the salt, pepper, and other spices were taken out on the little folding table, all the ingredients were outside, and we were just waiting for the coals to get going good enough. So we started the geology lecture. Everyone gathered around the fire pit, and started to ask questions about the rocks in the rock garden. I answered questions about a few of them, and then I had them go and find a big volcanic, metamorphic, and sedimentary rock in the back yard. Some of the kids actually climbed on the rocks, like I asked them to. However, most of the girls and all of the leaders sat around the fire pit and kind of watched what else was going on. After explaining some basic geologic processes, I put some more starter fluid on the coals. Then it was time to start cooking the bacon and onions. Then we spend about a half an hour with the girls pointing to a rock, asking about it, and me explaining where I found it, how it was formed, and answering their questions. I enjoyed this, and I think most of the girls enjoyed it also. Then it was time to put in the potatoes and carrots and to put on some salt and pepper and lemon salt and garlic salt, stir them all up, and put the lid on.
Then we went into the bedroom and I showed them the rocks in the glass case. There was a lot of, "Oh, this is my favorite rock!" and "Where did you get this!" They seemed to enjoy looking at the rocks and asking questions. And I think a couple of them actually started to think a little bit. Hopefully. One of the biggest hits was the salt from the Dead Sea, and taking turns licking this. That was good, because it set things up for my talk at the end of the evening.
At this point most of the girls went swimming. A couple sat out and talked about boys and other important things,. The leaders all sat around and talked. I started to cook the hamburgers. Andrea had got two big boxes of 20 hamburgers each. They were fortified with textured vegetable protein, which she did not realize. I quite liked them, which is a good thing because I was eating them for the next week. When the hamburgers were done, they got out of the pool, I mixed up blueberry and peach cobbler for the other two dutch ovens, and everyone ate. Andrea had got some ice cream, and we had some with the cobbler. The cobbler actually got a little too done. Oh well! I think everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. After they had all finished eating, I got out my guitar, they gathered round by the greenhouse where there was some light, and I sang them "Froggie Learns the Gospel." Comments from the audience included 'an evil frog?' and 'that's absolutely my favorite song!'
It was 8:15 by now, and the activity was suppose to be over at 8:30. So I had everyone go in the house, I got the GDC PC and carried it into the living room and connected it to the projector, and then I gave them a presentation on salt entitled 'Firm as the Mountains Around Us.' The presentation and the photos the girls took are at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/NottinghamCountryWard/060913_YW/. My basic premise was that the girls would have no idea there are 25,000 foot tall salt domes underneath Katy, Texas. And I was right. I think some of the Mom's and Leaders actually liked the talk more than the girls. After my brief talk, they called on one of the girls to say a closing prayer, and her words included, 'we thank thee Brother Nelson was able to share his love of rocks with us.' I knew it was a good evening, when as she was leaving I overhead Sister McPherson say, 'What am I going to do next week to even compare with this evening.' I cleaned up everything while the girls were leaving. Some of the mom's stayed and talked to Andrea for a while. There was one girl who came to seminary for the first time the next morning as result of those conversations. It will be interesting to see if there is any follow up activities as a result of this evening of young women dutch oven and geology.
On Thursday morning, 13 September 2006, there was an article titled "Puny black holes can eject Milky Way's Stars" at NewScientist.com new service written by David Swhiga. This news service is now on my google desktop on my PC. From the article I wrote the following possible stanza for Prime Words:
When I got home there was a message from Hans Sheline. He has a major oil well planned in Louisiana, and if it is successful he is interested in some of Dynamic's wells. Told him we need to get together for dinner sometime. He agreed. That evening Andrea and I went to the temple. One of the sisters in the ward was there in tears. Her daughter is struggling with postpartum depression and has been threatening suicide. Everybody has problems.
Friday I listened to Brian Schulte's talk for the Calgary SEG luncheon a couple of more times. The last time was with Fred. Fred is a very good teacher, and he sat with Brian after we had gone through he presentation and spent a couple of hours helping him clean up each page and particularly removing some of the extra words. Friday evening Andrea and I stayed home and watched more of season 2 of 24. We had already seen the Numb3rs.
Saturday morning there was a very disturbing e-mail forwarded by Eddy Rogers. After reading the paper I went out and mowed the lawn and started to cut down the cypress tree branches which were hitting the Lozier's garage. I went in the house to make a call about the e-mail and ended up having an argument Andrea. The whole experience was very disturbing. I ended up not making the call I intended, and on reflection Andrea was most likely correct in her advice. I worked on trimming the cypress tree until after 2:00 PM and I was really tired. Andrea ate one of the hamburgers from the young women dutch oven and geology night. I was still angry, and so I went to Hartz Chicken and ate from their buffet. I also went to the vitamin store and bought some more Turmeric Curcumin for the arthritis pain which was in my hip, and has not been there since I started taking these pills. That evening I wrote an e-mail response to Eddy Rogers, which I polished until I sent it on Monday morning. This is one of those communication exchanges which will be in the inheritance I plan for each of you to receive when I die. It will be interesting for me to watch the reactions of those of you who choose to explore this material from the other side of the veil of death. In times of great frustration and hurt I long for those days and to leave this world of tears and hurting and misunderstandings and pain.
Sunday there was a nice note from Bridget. Justin and her have started a blog (thoughlets were started well before any blogs) so everyone can keep up with them. It is at http://theleefamilytree.blogspot.com/ and it looks really nice. I need to set up www.walden3d.com so it can be competitive with these types of places, so you kids will use this site and there will be a permanent family record on my disc drives, which will be packaged and given to you with your inheritance. Time, time, time is not on my side for things like this.
Sister Warden talked to me about the young women dutch oven and geology night. She said her daughter came home talking about how 'he knows so much.' Then she said, 'I think you have a little fan. In fact, I think you have a lot of little fans.' This was a nice comment.
Even though I haven't been calling you kids on Sunday nights, we did call Paul and Kate because it was both of their birthdays this next week. We had a nice conversation. Paul took Grant camping at a park, and walking into the park there are a lot of rocks. He told me he told Grant how much Grandpa loves rocks, and how Grant said he wants to bring me to this park when we visit. The comment about loving rocks made me wonder if some of you feel I have loved rocks more than you, and it reminded me of the comment made in the closing prayer of Tuesday's young women dutch oven and geology night."