The Wedding

I proposed to Lisa just before Christmas 1980. I believe it was December 22. I was home for Christmas and Lisa was at her Grandma Ashmeads so I picked her up and we drove to Henderson Lake in Lethbridge and we parked where we overlooked the Lake. Lucky for me (and for my kids) she agreed to marry me. After juggling dates around so we wouldn't conflict with Lester and Barb getting married we chose July 11, 1981. My timing for buying a diamond couldn't have been worse. If you look at this chart you can see that diamonds made a record breaking peak in price right about the time I was looking to buy one. For a student trying to put himself through school it was pretty tough but even though her diamond is small it is a good quality diamond and really does sparkle. I also love the design she chose. I figured out early on that Lisa is very specific in what she likes and doesn't like and I was not about to take any chances on buying a ring that she didn't like. We picked the ring out together and then we put it on hold. I paid on it as I could afford it.

Lisa actually graduated early in January 1981 and got a job as a clerk/typist/receptionist for the City of Edmonton Law Department. She made a wonderful receptionist and she was a great typist.

We didn't have any money so we got married very cheaply. Lisa decided to be brave and sewed her own wedding dress. It was a source of much stress for her at a time that she didn't need it. Luckily Dixie was there to help her finish it up the day before the wedding. Just the other day she was telling me how grateful she was for her help. We got married in the Cardston temple in the morning and following the wedding Mom threw a dinner in our backyard for our older relatives who wouldn't want to make the drive to Lethbridge and also to give us something to tie us over. Our reception was in the Colhurst school. We had a sit down dinner and I really don't know who cooked and served the food. Someone went to a lot of work and I feel bad that I don't know who did all the work. I couldn't afford to take too much time off work during the summer so our honeymoon consisted of driving to Fernie to visit Lisa's great grandmother and we postponed the real honeymoon until the end of summer. We had a reception in Edmonton the following weekend. That reception was at the 5th ward chapel.

My job during the summer of 1981 was another very interesting story. I figured since I picked up a decent job the previous summer by looking out the window of my bus I would try that again. It just so happened that right across the street from the Edmonton Football Stadium was Canadian Liquid Air. The bus would go right by it every day and I got to thinking that it would be fascinating making liquid air. One day I hopped off the bus and applied for a job. They hired me on the spot. As it turned out, making liquid air was VERY fascinating but I didn't get to do that, I filled high pressure oxygen cylinders. That was very boring. Boring or not, it paid well and I needed money. I worked with the dregs of society. They were crude, dirty and alcoholics. They would go and get drunk during their lunch breaks for heavens sake. I heard jokes in that job that would I would never repeat and many jokes that totally went over my head. It was also a fairly dangerous job and we all had to wear gloves and steel toed boots. One day there was a worker on the loading docks who wasn't wearing his gloves. He put his hand on the wall to steady himself and jumped off the loading docks. His wedding ring caught a nail sticking out of the wall. The ring peeled the skin right off his finger.

All of the cylinders are hydrostatically pressure tested every ten years. They use water because it is a non-compressable fluid but before they used to just pressure test the cylinders with air. One time the valve blew off of a cylinder and it flew like a rocket right through the roof of the building, across the street and landed in the football field.The worst thing that happened to me was when I dumped a pallet of cylinders. That made a very loud noise and it was very embarrassing but the steel toed boots saved the day. The interesting things that I got to see however was when they made acetlyne gas from mixing water with Calcium Carbide. Another was the cracking tower where they literally cool air until it liquifies and then they pass the liquid air through a cracking tower where the various gases condense out at different temperatures. It is the exact same process used to separate crude oil into its varous components except that it is done at 200° below zero. They let me look into a huge tank of liquid oxygen and it is a beautiful blue color. They get oxygen, nitrogen and argon from the air and then the carbon dioxide falls out just like snow. They literally shovel it into a pile and sell it as dry ice. Come the end of summer I quit my job early and we went on a honeymoon to Utah. We had many wonderful experiences that I'm dying to tell you about but this entry is already going long and I will have to continue later.

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Scientists have just discovered a frozen sea near the equator of Mars. The sea is about the size and depth of the north sea. It has been protected from sublimation by a layer of volcanic ash but the pack ice is clearly visible.

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