Hawaii

As Mom pointed out in her last comments there are several other vacations that I totally forgot about. Perhaps the most memorable to me is a skiing trip we made to Brighton. We stayed in the lodge at the foot of the ski hill and we could literally ski right onto the balcony and walk into our rooms. Some day I'll dig out some pictures and talk more about that trip. Today I'm going to talk about our trip to Hawaii. The sad part is that this was perhaps our first vacation where we didn't have all the kids. Kira was married and Brandon was on his mission. I had accumulated a lot of air miles on my trips so we cashed about half of them in and off we went with our four youngest children. We had actually considered several other potential vacations and it finally came down to either Nauvoo or Hawaii. When we took the final vote Lisa voted for Nauvoo and the kids and I voted for Hawaii.

Next we discussed in some detail where we should stay. It seemed like everyone always stays in Honolulu around Waikiki but we decided we wanted to get away from it all and after some studying we figured out that most of the real cool beaches are on the north and east shores so we picked out a condo by turtle bay and made that our home base for the week.

If you've ever rented a car before and you're really cheap like I am you will quickly find that Enterprise Rent a Car is about as cheap as you'll get. There's a reason for that, they have the worst service you'll ever find. We landed in Honolulu and got to the rental car place to find that they didn't have a mini van for us. They offered to give us two cars for the price of one but then that would mean that our family would be split up for the week. That didn't sound like a lot of fun to me so we waited; and waited; and waited. Finally a minivan came in and about two hours after we landed we were on our way. We drove up the middle of the island and enjoyed the beautiful view of the mountains, we also drove through some very interesting pineapple plantations. I kind of wanted to go tour a pineapple farm but there were so many other fascinating things in Hawaii that I wanted to see that I knew we wouldn't have time. Our first full day in Hawaii was a Sunday. To keep the spirit of the Sabbath we didn't go swimming and we chose that day to get a feel for the island. We went to BYU Hawaii campus and checked it out. We went to the temple; we found dozens of beaches and scoped out their locations and then we drove up the west coast. That is where many of the locals live and there are no tourist sights over there. We were warned not to do too much over there because some of the locals hate tourists and are known to beat up the occasional tourist now and then. We met up with Scott Warner who was going to school there and attended with him at his student ward. It was very interesting.

It would be impossible for me to remember what activities we did on what days so I will just briefly discuss our days in random order. One day we just went beach hopping. We would go to one beach for a few hours and then hop in the car and go to another beach. Some of these beaches are quite difficult to find and are only visited by the locals. They are beautiful beaches and have very few tourists. They have them all up and down the east coast. Another day we dedicated to boarding
Waimea Bay and the area. On one of those days we went and hiked into a ritual site for the original natives. It was fun traipsing through the jungle and we saw some beautiful sites. Another day we dedicated to Pearl Harbour. You've got to spend at least one day at Pearl Harbour. It is very sobering and I wouldn't do two days because it could put a real downer on your vacation. Probably the highlight of our vacation was the day we spent at the Polynesian Cultural Center. What a wonderful place. You could spend two days there but we made it one very long day. Another day we spent snorkeling in Hanauma Bay that is famous for snorkeling. We saw many wonderfully colorful fish. On one of our beach days we swam with these huge Sea Turtles. It is very freaky when you're snorkeling underwater and they turn and swim toward you. I was sure I was going to get eaten but they were just checking me out. They are big.
We drove into the crater of a dormant volcano. That was pretty cool.

We ended up spending two Sundays on Oahu so the second Sunday we picked a random church meeting to attend. I really like the church meetings they have in Hawaii. After church they had a big pot luck on the back lawn. There was some very good food there and we made many good friends. One summer we sent Ben to a football camp at BYU. His room mate turned out to be a big Hawaiian kid from Laie. As luck would have it, the ward that we attended was having their Ward Conference and the Football kids dad was the stake president and spoke at the sacrament meeting. We introduced ourselves and he invited us over for dinner that evening. They are a very nice family and we enjoyed our visit. They have a beautiful view of the ocean from their house. I far preferred meeting with with the natives over the student ward.

All too soon the week came to an end and we had to drive back to the airport. Usually on these vacations I'm looking forward to going back home and getting into our normal routines but not this time. I was quite sad having to leave the peaceful life we had for the week. It was a very beautiful place and we really enjoyed it. Sadly enough the Lord has arranged it so that we need to earn a living in this world and my employer was expecting me to show up and earn my paycheck. How sad.

--------------------trivia--------------------

At the time of Christ Africa was home to many races including whites, Asians, Pygmies (not considered black) and two races now called Khoisan and Xhosa. The blacks (Bantu) occupied just a corner of Africa. Due to a freak of nature the Bantu's gained a huge advantage over the other races and in a movement that closely parallels the European take over of the America's, the blacks engulfed the majority of Africa pushing the whites to the north, eliminating the Asian's and reducing the Khoisan and Xhosa to small settlements where the blacks didn't want to live much as the native Americans have been pushed to reservations in the deserts and other undesirable localities.

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A couple of cute girls I found hanging around the beaches. We were actually looking at a water spout that shot high into the air when the surf came in.








The east coast.













Alex walking along an empty beach.


















Three of the prettiest girls I know.













This is a beautiful island.











We found the coconuts fascinating.





















More scenery










The snorkeling was incredible.












You can't tell from the picture but this guy was at least five feet from nose to tail. He could really hurt you if he wanted to.









Probably the cutest snorkeler you'll ever see. She really wanted to get out there with us.

Vacations

So I think that is pretty much my autobiography. As I remember stories that I want to tell I will probably add them to the account but with Alex heading off to college I’m pretty well current. We used to go on some sort of vacation pretty much every year but as soon as kids hit high school it became very difficult. The first problem was with the kids going to Mount Carmel High School. If you wanted to be in the band program (as Kira was) then marching band was mandatory. In addition, band took up so much time that you couldn’t graduate in four years (at least not with all the University requirements) unless you took summer school. With summer school you couldn’t miss more than two days or else you were dropped from the class. So summer school took up all of July and Marching band took up all of August so out of necessity we were tied close to home. Westview has a better system but if you want to do sports then it is mandatory that you attend summer training. So with summer training, scout camp, girls camp then summer vacation was out. Over the years however there have been a few vacations that we have done as a family that do stick out in my mind. I think I would like to talk briefly about some of those. The problem is that they are all sort of jumbled up in my mind and I'm not sure which memory belongs to which vacation. The other problem is that these early vacations were before digital camera's and all of our print photo's are in boxes and only partially organized. I'm not up to going through all of them looking for photo's so you'll have to do with the pictures that I can easily lay my hands on. On one of our trips we camped at Zion’s Canyon. We hiked up the narrows a little bit and had a blast. The narrows are a portion of the river where it passes between two very steep cliffs. About half of the time you actually have to walk in the river. It was a hot day and walking in the water was a lot of fun. It was also extremely peaceful waking up in the morning and looking out onto the sun shining on the high cliff walls all around us. From Zions canyon we drove through Bryce Canyon but we didn’t really stop for more than to take a good look at the beautiful vistas. On another trip we stopped at Yellowstone Park and camped there. What a beautiful park. They had built a boardwalk out over a large area that had recently been burned in a forest fire so you could see how the vegetation was all growing back. It was fascinating for me to see the geysers and hot pools. I think my favorite was a place where you could sit on the bank of the lake and catch a fish and then turn around and lower your fish (still on the hook) into a hot pool and cook it. On one of our trips to Canada we stopped in at Rosemary and celebrated Canada day with our friends. It was wonderful for the kids to meet up again with old friends. I remember that Alex even won the greased pig contest. I think the locals were a bit upset to see a California boy catch that pig so quickly. I guess Alex still has a lot of the country blood still running through his veins. Of course there was the trip we all made to say goodbye to dad. What a great time it was getting together with all of my brothers and sisters for the first time in a very long while. When we still lived in Rosemary we always stopped in the interior of BC and camped. One of my favorite memories is stopping in those beautiful forests and taking a deep breath of the pine scented air. We always camped in a little tent trailer that I bought from the Gibbs. One time we coordinated with Lisa's Dad and Carol and met up at Shuswap Lake and camped there. That is when they decided to take Kira home with them for a week and then flew her back home to us. So began a tradition. After that when each of our kids turned six they flew them to Vancouver and kept them for a week. That is a tradition I hope I'm able to do with our grandchildren. Another time we drove down the Pacific coast and camped in the Redwoods. Those are some pretty massive trees. We stopped often and found all the cool things like the tree where you can drive your car through it. We also saw the oldest living tree and the world’s tallest tree. The oldest tree probably would have been the world’s tallest tree if it hadn’t been hit by lighting at some point in its life. We camped in the redwoods and in the morning we got to meet the infamous "Banana Slugs". Talk about gross. Those things seriously are the size of a banana. I remember waking up and seeing a huge shadow of something on the outside of our tent. I was quite curious about what it could be. Imagine a slug literally the size of a banana. Gross. We then drove on down the coast stopping various places. We stopped in this one town that Lisa found in her "book. They had several fancy old style houses and stores. The one place where we didn’t stop was the Hearst Castle. We really do want to get to that place some time. We have many wonderful memories and just talking about it makes me want to load up the tent and hit the road. What a shame that we need to earn a living.

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The meteor that recently turned night to day over Utah was the size of a washing machine and was traveling about 300,000 miles per hour. If you could drive that fast then a trip from LA to St George would take about 5 seconds.

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I wonder why they call these things "banana" slugs?




























































I have no idea why Ben is carrying the Brooks bands flag. This is the Rosemary parade.










Kira and her good friend Amy in races.














I miss the fire department.










Lets see if I can get everyone's names straight. Left to right: Boyd Shaw, Lori (holding Zoe), Kelly, Carol, Jim, Alex, Sarah, Brandon, Alycia, Zach, Kira (holding Jordan), Ben, Mike, Lynn, Doug, Andrea, Fred (that's me) and Lisa.

Alex

I wasn't going to talk about Alex leaving home since he left long after I started blogging. I finally decided that he deserves his own special entry just like the others. Alex is so very different than the other kids in many ways. He usually likes to do things his own way and isn't too interested in what you have to say but in the end if I decide to offer my suggestions he seems quite willing to try them. I have no idea if that is why he is actually the one who has completely followed my advice about dating and college or if that is simply what he wanted to do. While Alex has dated far more than any of the other kids he has only really had one girlfriend. Sure he has had a few girl friends who lasted for a week or two but Mackenzie was a part of our lives for quite some time. It was a sad day in our house when they broke up. We like to joke that we like Mackenzie more than we like Alex. Oh well, teenagers really shouldn't be going steady anyway.

Alex went off to college with no strings attached and as far as I can tell he is following my A, B, C rule completely.

Alex is a combination between Brandon and Ben. He is totally into sports like Ben and played Football, Basketball and Volleyball in High School just like Ben but he also was much more into his academic classes similar to Brandon. He was very social and loved to party like Alycia but also had a bit of a shy side to him like Kira did. Most people would think I was nuts for saying Alex was shy but I saw it all the time and I would watch as he carefully hid the shyness and insecurity and forced himself into uncomfortable situations. It was near impossible to get Alex to call an adult on the telephone. He was deathly afraid of that.

The amazing thing about Alex is how dedicated he is to doing the right thing. He certainly had his "wild" side and loved to joke around and get a bit crazy but as far as I could tell he has always been very serious about following the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has always taken his responsibilities very seriously.

Alex got very close to Alycia the year before she left for college and then in his senior year he got very close to Sarah. He was also very protective of her. I have to tell one story about Alex that exemplifies this well. I hope I tell the story correctly but if I'm not completely accurate in the details you will certainly get the main idea. Sarah has often been the victim of teasing through out her life. I think it is partly due to her very gullible personality and partly due to immature boys who have a crush on her but are too stupid to flirt and so they tease instead. In one of her classes there were two boys who teased her mercilessly making fun of her being Canadian and of being Mormon. Finally it got so bad that Alex could see something was wrong and during one of their breaks she told him about the boys. Alex says in a very harsh tone, "who is this guy? Show me who he is!!" Sarah points him out and so Alex gets a bunch of his football buddies and explains what's going on. Of course Alex's football friends all love Sarah and they say, "guy's, today we're all Canadian Mormons OK?" They then proceed to find and corner one of Sarah's tormentors. Surrounded by a circle of huge linesmen, Alex gets in the boys face and says, "so I hear you've been giving my sister a hard time!?" The poor boy is terrified and literally shaking in his boots. At first he denies everything but when Alex actually quotes some of the things he has been saying he changes to serious apologies and promises to never do it again. One of Alex's faults is that he doesn't always know when to stop and in this case he brought this boy literally to tears. Finally Alex makes the kid promise to apologize to Sarah and to never give her a hard time again. The boy proceeded to do just that and of course with Sarah's forgiving nature she readily accepted his apology and I believe they actually became some what friends after that.

After tormenting the first kid, Alex and his friends went looking for the second guy but apparently he got wind of what was happening to his buddy and he was nowhere to be found.

The one thing that was very different about Alex was his deep reluctance to leave home. All of the other kids were either very anxious to get out of the house or if not anxious, they were at least excited about it. Not Alex, he dreaded it from day one. He refused to even talk about it. We had to force him to pick out some schools to attend and in the end Lisa more or less picked the schools for him. In the end when he did get accepted at a few different schools he picked the University of Utah. Finally, just mere weeks before heading off to school we saw some excitement in his face.

Picking a major was just as frustrating. Lisa spent hours grilling him and asking him what he thought of various occupations. Finally it took two serious football injuries to get Alex actually thinking about medicine. He thoroughly enjoyed biology so that gave us some idea that he might like that kind of thing but after tearing his AC joint in his shoulder and then breaking his arm he became good friends with his orthopedic surgeon and at least for now he is planning on medical school. He promises to rethink that idea if Obama gets his socialized medical plan in place. Since I think it is ridiculous to get a useless undergraduate degree his bachelors degree will be in exercise physiology. While psychology, political science or zoology may be good for getting high grades what kind of job can you get with one of those degree's? You have no choice but to go on to graduate school. I think it makes much more sense to get a degree that will get you a job just to play it safe.

So in between Alycia's wedding and Peters wedding we drove Alex up to Salt Lake City and got him settled into his dorm room. His first week was a tough one because he was just not meeting anyone and I could see him getting a bit homesick. Finally his ward started getting some activities and he joined the LDS fraternity and he quickly became thoroughly engulfed into the college life. He is actually a councilor in his wards Elders Quorum and I can tell he is taking the responsibility very seriously.

As it turns out some of Trevor's good friends (who actually live in the same building as Alycia and Trevor) had some openings in their apartment and invited Alex to move in with them. They live in the same ward as Alex so we strongly encouraged Alex to move in with them. It is saving us a ton of money but while he lives very close to campus it is a little more traveling for him.

So that is it. Alex is gone and Sarah is an only child and hating it. It is very quiet around here but the breakfast cereal lasts much longer. I guess Sarah was right, Alex was the one eating all the food.

I know Alex is doing the right thing for his future but I sure do miss him. Can't wait for Thanksgiving and then Christmas is right behind it.






















Do you notice the new hair doo? This is when Alex changed from a boy to a young man.




































Alex was so worried that he wouldn't be a good shot with a gun. He figured being a good shot was an essential part of being a Leavitt. He needn't have worried. For his first time shooting he did very well.



How embarrassing














My third Eagle. Thank goodness. That was a tough one.















Mackenzie and Alex went out for some time. We all love Mackenzie.
















Just a few of Alex's many dates.


















































This is my favorite girlfriend.

Alycia

When it comes to Alycia growing up and leaving home I don't even know where to start. Of my three daughters I think Alycia is the one who is most like me. I guess I should qualify that however. Alycia has always been the life of the party, very fun and very popular. Everyone loves Alycia and they all want to be with her. In all of those respects she is like her mother and not at all like me. On the other hand she is smart, stubborn, argumentative and very reluctant to admit she is wrong but she is usually right and seldom wrong. In that respect she is much like me.

For most of her life Alycia and I were very close. We talked about everything and often got into very deep discussions. I would go and tuck her into bed at 10:00 or 11:00 and it would be midnight before I would get out of her room. Once she got into serious dating however her interests drifted elsewhere.

Alycia decided that she would go off to Snow College and spend one year with Ben and get to know him better. Ben had returned from his mission and was going to Snow so off she went with her brother. She was planning on getting a Social Science degree with a teaching composite. She wants to be a High School history teacher. She loved her first year at school.

Alycia is actually the one child who did take my advice when she went to college. She had a serious boyfriend when she went to college and they did agree to date other people. I fully expected that she would find some nice young man at college and completely forget her boyfriend that she left behind but unfortunately when she returned home and her old boyfriend returned home from NAU they hooked right back up again.

After her first year at Snow and especially when Ben decided to head off to Mesa College she decided to transfer to the University of Utah. This time when she was at school I began to hear more and more about this boy named Trevor. Trevor was from St George and had been on a mission to South Africa. We all expected to see a diamond by Christmas but the actual diamond didn't show up until the wedding plans were well underway.

Alycia and Trevor were married on August 11, 2009. One day before my birthday. It may have been the best wedding present I've ever had. Trevor and Alycia could both be graduating from the U of U this coming spring but Alycia will be doing one more year to get a minor in ESL and also to get her credentials.

Over the last year or so Alycia and I have regained that closeness that we used to enjoy. Trevor is planning on going to law school (what is it with my kids and law school) and I'm really hoping it will be somewhere near Southern California. It has been so wonderful to have Ben and Brandon within visiting distance and I would love to have Alycia where we could go visit without spending a day on the highway. Like I've said so often, the hardest part of being a parent is sending them away. Of course, the other side of that coin is that one of the best parts of being a parent is to see your kids make good choices and become well balanced contributing members of society. If everything else in my life ends up a failure at least I know that I've brought some really wonderful kids into this world.

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Hospital-related infections leading to death are greater than breast cancer, car accidents and heart attacks combined.

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Benjamin

You would think that by the time Ben left home I would be used to it but I was to learn that you never get used to it. You would also think that the younger kids would learn from the mistakes of their older siblings and start taking my advice but as teenagers often do, Ben had to learn the hard way. All through high school Ben had a girl friend. She was a wonderful girl and the daughter of very good friends of ours. I had told Ben many times that he should not make any commitment when he went to college. It wouldn't be fair to him or to her. It was her senior year and she should be able to date and Ben needed to date also while he was at college. When Ben and Laura were still dating just mere months before he left for college I also told him that he shouldn't break up with her. Just agree to date other people and then go to college. The relationship would probably die a natural death and no one needed to be hurt. Ben of course did everything in about the worst possible way. He certainly wasn't mean, just inexperienced and thoughtless. He broke up with his girl friend at the worst possible moment and then to rub salt in the wound he decided to start dating another girl just a month before he left for school and then to top it all off, he promised this girl that they wouldn't date other people while they were apart. Of course you can probably guess how that all turned out. The old girl friend was devastated and no sooner did Ben get to school when he decided that he did want to date other girls and he broke it off with the new girl friend. There were two broken hearts where there didn't have to be any. Finally, no sooner did Ben get up there than he started going out with a new girl and totally forgot about my A, B, C rule. Ben decided to attend Snow College. He actually did get accepted at the U of U but at Snow he could be on the football team and he really wanted to play college ball. As it turned out he ended up being red shirted. Snow College is a two year school and was the #1 rated two year school for football in the nation. It was a good place to go if you wanted to get a good preparation for college football.

Much more important than football however was Ben's academic experience. Ben had always been much too into his sports to worry about a silly thing like grades. As long as he was passing that was good enough for him and the only reason that was a concern was that if he didn't pass he couldn't play his sports. As a Junior Ben was a varsity player on the Football team, the Basketball team and the Volleyball team. He would have played more sports too if there had been another season in the year but alas, you can only squeeze so many sports into one school year. I'm not sure what it was but once Ben got to Snow he started getting A's and B's in his classes. It was a rather amazing thing to behold. The original plan was to take two semesters of school and then go on his mission but the coaches suggested to Ben that he leave on his mission as soon as possible and then he could be back in time for spring training so that is what we did. We were very fortunate with Ben that his mission call came while we were up there picking him up for Christmas. Since he wasn't going back to school we had to pack up all of his possessions. We were all in his apartment when he opened his call. He looked at it and then he announced, "I'm going to Mexico!". Since that is where Brandon was we all thought he was joking. Lisa said, "Yeah, right, where are you really going?". It took a while but he finally convinced us that he really had been called to Mexico. Brandon was in the Mexico Sinaloa mission and Ben was called to the Mexico, Guadalajara South mission. At their closest point the two missions are only a hundred miles or so apart but as far as the character of the mission is concern they are a world apart. Sinaloa is the drug capital and Guadalajara is the manufacturing capital. His mission actually included the south half of Jalisco, all of Michoacan, a small part of Guanajuato and all of Colima. Most of his mission was very devout Catholics. Almost fanatically so. He never once had to deal with the kind of violence and threats that Brandon did but he had to deal with some very angry Catholics who did not want them around. He had drunks throwing bottles of beer at him and that sort of thing.

I have some rental property in Pensacola, Florida. Unfortunately it was a direct hit by hurricane Ivan and I suffered severe damage. I learned the very hard lesson that hurricane insurance does not cover flood damage so I was severely under insured. Since Ben wasn't leaving on his mission until March and he was sitting at home with nothing to do I took the Month of February off and Ben and I went down and fixed up my house. It was a month of very hard work but what a wonderful experience it was to get to know my son in a way that you can't do in any other way.

One of the biggest tests that Ben had to deal with was near the end of his mission. His mission President pulled him to the side and told him that he would like Ben to extend his mission a month so he could call him to be the Assistant to the President. Of course it was never a really decision for Ben but in his heart he sort of knew that by staying he would miss most of spring training and quite possibly he was giving up his dream of college football.

Ben returned home from his mission and it was a wonderful reunion. He was also a changed man. He was bigger (hard to imagine) stronger and much wiser. He had gone from a boy to a man. That summer he just did odd jobs for friends and stuff because it was only a short while before he had to head up to Snow for summer training. During the short time he was home however he came to know the sister of one of his friends quite well. It wasn't too long before we started seeing much more of Sharley Cotter around the house. It didn't take me long to figure out that this was much more than just a summer fling. I asked him how he figured it was going to work with Sharley going to school at BYU in Idaho
and him in Ephraim Utah? He just assured me that they would make it work. They did too. Sharley totally wore out her car and they spent a ton of money on gas but before Thanksgiving Sharley had a shiny rock on her finger. they were married May 31, 2008. What a joy it is to have her as a member of the family.

It was during this year of school that Ben gave me another surprise. Consistent with his new found ability to get good grades Ben ended up setting the curve in his business law class. He was going for a business degree but he enjoyed this class so much that he has since decided that perhaps he will go for a law degree. All I've wanted is for one of my kids to become an engineer but now I may end up with two lawyers. What did I do to deserve this?

Ben's football team was undefeated for their entire year and was ranked number one in the nation (again). We actually went up to their play off game with Butler which was played in the U of U's football stadium. It is a wonderful facility but the game ended up being played in a blizzard. It was snowing so hard that they had to shovel clear the line of scrimmage before every single down. We could scarcely see the other side of the field. Unfortunately Snow plays a passing game and Butler plays a running game so Butler had a clear advantage playing in the blizzard and Snow lost their one and only game of the year. In any case, Ben still has a honking big ring on his finger.

At the end of the year Ben's coach told him that he was going to give the two starting wide receiver positions to a couple of black guys. Ben was so upset that he decided it was time to focus on more important things like his new wife and getting an education. Since he wasn't playing football anymore they decided to finish up Ben's AA degree in Mesa Arizona where Sharley has a lot of family. Ben now has two AA degrees from Mesa college and if he wants to apply for it he can get a third one from Snow. He graduated with straight A's and that is while carrying 15 credit hours and working part time at a mortuary. Pretty impressive for the boy who was happy with C's in High School. He is now attending school at Fullerton where they have a brand new business school and Sharley is finishing up her fine arts degree at Long Beach. It is really nice having them only 90 minutes up the highway. We see them often and I look forward to their visits. It makes it much easier to send our kids away when they stay close to home.

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World wide about 5,000 people have died from the Swine Flu. Every year in the United States alone about 36,000 people die from the seasonal flu.

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What is Napoleon Dynamites brother Rico doing holding Ben when he was a baby?

Bird Watching

This weekend was scout camp. Did I mention that I love to camp? This was camp was a little more interesting than most however. The scout master (I'm the assistant) decided the kids would like to go bird watching. My first thought was, "that's kind of lame". Being the supportive guy that I am however I loaded up my camera with the telephoto lens and my binoculars and off we went. The camp ground we went to was one I'd never heard of before and it is only twenty minutes away.

So I left work early and watched Sarah run her last race of the season. From the race I immediately met up with my scouts and off we went. Dinner was a new one for me. We had hamburgers and baked bread in a dutch oven which wasn't new but the cool thing was the onions. Rick put two big onions in the dutch oven. Absolutely no preparation, just two onions with their skins on and all. When he pulled them out we just peeled off the outer layer and ate them. They were really good. I'm going to have to try that again sometime.

The problem with "bird watching" is that you have to do it early. I got up at six in the morning. I never do that on a camp out. The camp out was on a small lake (more like a big pond) called lake Kumeyaay. The lake is actually a dam that was made by the Kumeyaay Indians in the sixteen hundreds. It was made under the direction of some Priests. At first all we could find were water fowl. That was still pretty cool but I wanted to see some other birds. I could hear them singing all around us but we couldn't see any of them. The trail went out onto a small peninsula that extended into the lake so there was water on both sides of us. At one point we could hear some rustling in the brush but we couldn't see anything. I suspected it was a deer but I could tell the boys were kind of freaked out about what it might be. Suddenly two deer popped out of the brush and one deer went on either side of us. It was pretty cool, even for me but the boys were really thrilled.

Lake Kumeyaay is the home of an endangered bird. There are only a few hundred in the entire world and most of them make their home here. We saw a lot of birds but we didn't get a clear sighting of the Bell's Viero. We did see one bird that looked like it could be one but it was too far off to say for sure.

I pulled out my camera to take some pictures of the birds that we spotted but I soon realized that I didn't have my battery in the camera. I had taken it out to charge it up and in my rush to leave I forgot to put my battery back into the camera. That was a real shame because we ended up seeing a lot of birds. I had to pull all of these pictures off the internet. Everyone of these birds I saw personally with my own six eyes. The two I was born with, my glasses and my binoculars.

As it turned out, I really enjoy bird watching. I have always thought that bird watchers were kind of weird. Who wanted to take the time to go and look at birds through a pair of binoculars? I can now understand why they do it. We had a chart with pictures of all the birds in San Diego county so when when ever we saw a bird we would take note of any distinctive markings we could see and then compare it with our chart. It is very exciting to find a new bird. I think I might have a new hobby here. Who would have thought? I was really surprised at how many different birds we did see. Once I got used to it we were seeing birds all over the place. It was one of my more favorite camp outs.

After the camp out I came home and built a work bench in the garage. I really need to get that garage cleaned up so I can park my car in there. It has been too long.

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64% of men who call into a help line for problems with electronic gadgets admit that they haven’t read the instruction manual (24% of women haven't read the manual). 12% of of the men (and 7% of the women) simply needed to plug in or turn on their appliance to solve their problem.

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Research and Development

Anyone who's ever worked in research knows that it can be a pretty tough environment at times. You can go months or sometimes even years with very little to show for your work but then every once in a while you come across a success or a new discovery and it makes it all worth it. Some people can't work that way and to be honest it is a real drag when you're fighting one failure after another but right now I'm smiling. I started with Hi-Z in February and we've been up against a deadline to meet a milestone by the end of the year but it has been an uphill battle all year. To make it worse, most of the problems have been equipment failures and not technical problems. Well recently we've been having a number of successes. We have demonstrated all but one of the critical components for our project and we just demonstrated that last component today. Now we are ready to put it all together and since it is now November it is none too soon. Wish me luck.

Since I've started working at Hi-Z everyone thinks I hate them because I rarely answer my phone if I'm at work. It really isn't true, I do love you but around Hi-Z it is highly frowned upon to talk on the phone. The few people who do talk on their cell phones are really frowned upon. For me it is even worse for two reasons, first of all I'm a manager so I need to set the example and secondly, the deadline I face is extremely important and could potentially affect the future of the company so I'm expected to be very focused when I'm there. It is so bad that the other day Norb (the majority owner of Hi-Z) told all the girls in the front office that they are no longer allowed to direct any customer calls to me. Anytime someone calls for technical help they always used to forward the calls to me but now all the other people get to cover the calls and I can focus on my work. He even told our patent attorney that I can't work with him anymore and he is writing the patents himself. In the summer I had Alex working for me but right now I have four people working for me plus I'm working with another engineer to get this done. It is very exciting and with our recent successes there is an almost electric feeling in the air.

One of my recent break throughs improved a process that took several hours to produce mediocre results to a process that takes five seconds with excellent results. I was just sitting at work one day trying to figure out better ways to complete this task and suddenly it all appeared in my head. I jury rigged a simple fixture and tried it out and bam, there it was. Perfect results in my very first attempt. I was amazed. That is very rare to get such a success on your first try.

Anyway, I hope you all understand that if I don't answer my phone when you call me at work it is probably because I have left my phone at my desk and I have my head in a test fixture. Please remember that I really do want to hear from you so please don't give up on me.

Photo's

1) In this photo the astronaut is unloading the isotope fuel rod that he will insert into the thermoelectric generator already on the ground. This generator produced power to run the experiments on the moon for nearly twenty years before they turned it off. This generator was designed and built by 3M and is the technology that I learned when I started at Global.

2) This is a 500W thermoelectric generator made by Global that I helped design when I worked there. It is cooled by water heat pipes and uses the same 3M technology that is in the moon generator.

3) This is Mike Rowe, a professor at Cardiff University in Wales. The car he is showing off has a thermoelectric generator on its exhaust that converts some of the waste heat going out the exhaust into electricity. The thermoelectric generator on this car uses modules made by Hi-Z.

4) The three cylinders protruding out to the left of the Voyager are three thermoelectric generators fueled by plutonium isotopes. These probes launched in the seventies are still operational thirty years later. That is one heck of a generator.