Lobsters & Crabs

Friday, October 26, 2023

Ben and Justin flew in late Monday evening and to make matters worse, their flight was delayed. Alex and I picked them up at 1:00am. Tuesday I worked while the boys played but I did go with them for lunch at a place called “The Great Maple”. It was delicious.

After lunch I went back to work until it was time to head out to sea. Our boat was called “Alicia”.

Once aboard the Alicia, we stowed our fishing gear and headed out into the bay. There were ten people fishing aboard the boat and we all picked a number from 1 to 10. I was number 8. We had ten lobster nets (or traps) so the first thing we did was drop the nets in ten different likely spots. We then waited for an hour.

While we waited we would head off to what was supposed to be a likely fishing spot and cast out our lines. It is a good thing the view was stunning, because the fishing was lousy. There were ten of us fishing but not a single person had so much as a nibble.

At one point Ben thought he had something but when he pulled his line in, he had a little fish called a lizard fish hanging on to his piece of squid he was using for bait. The guy refused to let go but finally did and dropped back into the water. I ended up bringing a couple of lizard fish into the boat.

Even though Ben is acting like he is reeling in a monster fish, the biggest thing he got was that lizard fish.

The fishing may have been bad but the company was great and we still had a great time visiting with each other. We even played a few games of hearts while our bait was sitting on the bottom of the bay.

The main purpose of the trip was to catch lobster and the fishing was just to kill time between pulling in the lobster so after an hour it was time to pull in the nets.

Ben was the first one of the four of us to pull so we were all optomistic when he hauled in two lobsters. One was too small and had to be tossed back but the other guy looked like he would be plenty big enough for a meal.

Justin pulled next and I was excited to see that his net was filled with crabs. They were crawling all over his net. Even after throwing half of them back he still had eight that he could keep. Alex and I got nothing on that first pull. It was a bit disheartening.

On the second pull Ben got two more lobsters and was able to keep one, Justin got a bunch of more crabs and was able to keep five, Alex got nothing and I got two lobsters. My two lobsters were huge and the two biggest that were caught that day. One was estimated at five pounds and the other at four pounds.

On our third and final pull Ben caught and kept one more lobster, Justin got nothing, Alex got nothing and I got nothing. It was really disheartening for Alex to get skunked and he was quite dejected. Alex did actually catch a sting ray but that didn’t count for anything.

We then packed up our catch and headed for home. On the way, we stopped and enjoyed an In-N-Out burger, fries and shake. It was a great day.

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

There are more hydrogen atoms in a teaspoon of water 

than there are teaspoons of water in the sea.

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Flaming Smoker

Thursday, October 26, 2023

As promised, this turned out to be a great week. Let me start out by talking about last Monday.
While Lisa, Alex and his family were at SeaWorld.

I was in the back yard testing the latest version of my smoker. I think I finally have a stable and safe design that I can either sell or take into production. It has been a long hard road but I’m quite excited that I am now there.

The smoker was running perfectly but the TEG was gradually losing power because I believe I need to reverse the airflow through the heat sink. The way it is now I am blowing hot air from the combustion chamber into the TEG, I need to reverse that.

Finally the TEG voltage dropped to 8 volts and the soft ware is written to recognize that as the fire having gone out and it shutsdown because it thinks it is out of wood pellets. Normally, shutting down when there are still a load of wood pellets in the combustion chamber is how I would get a fire in the hopper. I thought this would be a perfect chance to see what would happen with this newest design where a fire in the hopper should be impossible. It performed admirably well. After I was convinced that there was no way the fire could get to the pellet hopper, I realized that the pellets sitting in the combustion chamber could sit there smoldering for hours so I turned on the blower to burn them up quickly.

This desigin in amazing and has a very intense flame. From ignition to smoking temperatures is less than four minutes. I knew it would burn those pellets up within minutes and everything was operating perfectly so I went back to my office to enter the data into the computer.

Meanwhile, back in my smoker, things were not going as well as I thought they were. The waterjet in my shop has been down for over six weeks so this prototype was kind of cobbled together out of old and modified parts that I had on hand. This left gaps in the combustion chamber where pellets could jump out and possible jets of flame could shoot out. This would never happen in a properly fabricated smoker and even if it did there is no where the burning pellets and flame could go that would be unsafe. This design, however didn’t have a bottom on the smoker and it was operating on a wooden bench top that was sitting on a plastic cart.

Apparantly either a burning wood pellet or a jet of flame (along with plenty of combustion air) ignited the plywood bench top which then ignited the plastic cart and my day went downhill from there.

Meanwhile, back in my office, I was enjoying the results of a perfect test and making plans for further testing when I got a phone call from Angelina asking if I could pick her up from school. I told her that I would be right there. For some reason I walked out to the kitchen where roaring flames out the back window caught my attention. My smoker was fully engulf in flames. I mean flames were shooting out from all four sides of the smoker and shooting at least a foot above the smoker itself.

My first thought was that I wanted to take a picture but this fire was destroying my smoker and it was also dangerously close to my pergola. I ran into the garage, grabbed our fire extinguisher and put the fire out. I was then late picking up Angelina.

Here is my smoker without the flames. This was actually a great test in and of itself. If you look at the wood pellets in the pellet feeder they aren’t even scorched. This means that I can have a roaring flame in the combustion chamber and my wood pellets barely get warm. Even the electronics board is mostly undamaged. The wiring is ,of course, destroyed that is not surprising since they ran right through where the fire originated. The reality is, that even with the faulty gerry rigged combustion chamber, none of this would have even happened if I had a bottom on my smoker.

It is probably also a good opportunity for me to build a new smoker from scratch incorprating this wonderful new design.

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

A dead body will some times sit up as it’s being cremated because muscles contract as they cook.

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Temple Trip

Friday, October 20, 2023

Last night Lisa and I made a trip up to the Newport Beach Temple. A trip to the temple is always a wonderful experience and I always feel so good after spending a few hours in such a peaceful place. Last night, however, the trip up there was anything but peaceful.

Lisa got home from work early so we were on the road before two o’clock. It was in the high 80’s when we headed out so the air conditioner was going and the air from the AC did feel cool but perhaps not as cool as it should have.

As we continued to drive however, Lisa started complaining and fanning her face and hitching up her skirt and talking about how the car we bought was a lemon and we got ripped off and how I need to take the car in and fix the AC and didn’t I just get the AC fixed, don’t they have a warranty on their work and… you get the idea. This went on for the entire trip.

As we continued to drive, the air from the AC was obviously warming up and even I was getting hot and the complaining from Lisa got worse. When we pulled off the freeway in Irvine, Lisa rolled down the windows and let the outside air blow through the car. This, of course, messed up her hair and so she added that to her list of complaints that she kept repeating over and over again. She couldn’t find a hair tie to try and keep her hair from blowing everywhere so she actually used a face mask to tie up her hair. That looked pretty funny.

Finally we arrived at the temple and before I turned the car off I noticed that the AC light wasn’t on. I asked Lisa if she had turned the AC off when she had rolled down the windows. She said that she hadn’t touched the AC.

I pushed the AC button and out blew nice cold air. The AC had been off the entire trip. We both started laughing.

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

The YKK on your zipper stands for 

“Yoshida Kogyo Kabushikigaisha.”

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Alex and Family

Monday, October 23, 2023

This is shaping up to be a great week. A few months back Alex called me and let me know that him, Ben and Justin were going to celebrate Halloween by making a trip to Knottsberry farms. Every year around Halloween they put on some evening events that they call Knotts Scary Farm.

On the following day they were planning to go to Six Flags. I am really worried about missing too much work. I have taken a lot of time off lately. I decided I would skip Six Flags (because it is an entire day and it is more expensive) and do Knotts Scary Farm because it is only an evening and less expensive.

As it turned out, Six Flags is closed on Wednesday. (I’m not sure why) so they decided on a Lobster/Fishing trip. That is more money, but it sounds like a lot more fun. It is also a night time event that goes from 5:00 to 11:00 so I will only miss an hour or so of work.

Alex and his family arrived Friday evening and we spent a good portion of Saturday at the beach. The weather this week is not expected to be great but it was perfect at the beach.

Yesterday we went to church and I spent a good portion of the day like this.

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

Scientist are genetically engineering a perennial wheat plant

so you don't have to replant it every year.

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Ring of Fire

Monday, October 16, 2023

I just had a great weekend. I got lots of work done on my yard on Saturday and yesterday was a good day at church and after church. Lisa and I were both quite concerned when they split the ward a few years back but we are both counting our blessings right now. We have a great ward family.

Saturday morning I stopped work at a little after 9:00 to check out the solar eclipse. From San Diego it wouldn’t be a total eclipse but we would still get about 70% occlusion and that was still pretty amazing. I tried to take pictures with my camera through a filter but it is difficult to focus properly through the filter.

People with the proper equipment can get better pictures like this one. Of course, without a telescope we couldn’t see quite this much detail.

This picture is more like what I was able to see.

They call this eclipse a “Ring of Fire” because the moon is further away and so it isn’t big enough to totally block the sun. On April 8, the moon will be much closer to earth and there will be a total solar eclipse. It is also passing right over Brandons house so I have already bought my ticket to go and see it. Saturday evening we had Andrew and Lisa Jones over for dinner. They are moving to Spain soon and we wanted to see them before they leave. Unfortunately we failed to take any pictures but we had a great meal.

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

The pain you feel from a sunburn is your skin cells 

effectively killing themselves before they mutate into cancer.

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My Wedding Ring is Back

Thursday, October 11, 2023

 
Last year on January 6 Brandon moved out of his house prior to his divorce and I flew out to help him. He took almost nothing with him so he didn’t really need my help, but I wanted to be there for moral support. It must be a tramatizing experience to leave your family. While moving, I tripped and fell and dislocated my finger. It instantly swelled and my wedding ring was cutting the blood off to my finger. To make a long and gruesome story short, I had to cut my ring off of my finger. You can read about all the gory details on my April 12, 2022 journal entry.

The doctor warned me that it would take a year for the swelling in the finger to go down and even then it would never be the same size it was before and he was pretty much right on. I could have had my ring repaired last January but after not wearing it for over a year I was not used to having it, and it took me until now to remember to take it in. I picked it up yesterday. It is all shiny and new looking and it feels good to have it back on my finger.

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

Human beings only use one nostril at a time. 

Each nostril takes a turn at being dormant (about 5 minutes), 

as the other nostril does all the work.

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Mutual

Thursday, October 4, 2023

As a second counsilor in the Bishopric, my primary job is to work with the youth and in particular the Deacons. That means that I now go to all the mutual activities. Last night was a combined activity lead by the Priests and we played a game of Kahoots!. It was more fun that I imagined it would be. Kahoots! Is an app for smart phones where a leader can create a quiz and anyone with a smart phone can answer the questions on their phones. You get points for a correct answer and speed. The quiz was questions about things that happened in General Conference on the weekend. It was fun.

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

You sneeze with enough force to kill you, 

but your body knows how to mitigate it.

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Les Miserable

Thursday, October 5, 2023

Last night Lisa and I went to the musical “Les Miserable”. I have seen both the movie and the play before but it is such a great story with such amazing music that I will never tire of watching it.

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

A blue whale's fart bubble is large enough to hold a horse.

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Temple Sealing

Tuesday, October 3, 2023

If a person has already been sealed in the temple and then gets a divorce, they need approval from the first presidency of the church before they can be sealed to another person. This process is often quick, but can sometimes take a very long time. When Brandon and Ally got married, they didn’t want to risk a delay from Salt Lake messing up their plans so they decided to get married civily first (see my 1 Jan 2023 journal entry) and then get sealed later. Well, they just got permission to be sealed to each other. For a number of reasons, they didn’t file the paperwork right away but once they did file the paperwork this came sooner than I had expected.

I know that the letter itself says that copies of the letter should not be kept for “personal record keeping”, but Brandon did share it in a text and I couldn’t help but include a copy here. We are all excited. Brandon and Ally’s original plan was to get sealed here in San Diego, but, since our temple is closed for the forseeable future, and because my Dad has become important to them (see 2022/12/20 Journal entry) they now plan to get sealed in the Cardston Temple in June 2024.

Cardston was my dads temple, he married mom in that temple, Lisa and I got married in that temple and my Dad was the Engineer in the Cardston temple during the time that it was remodelled. Since it is the temple where both Lisa and I were first endowed, we view the Cardston temple as our temple. I do have to admit that after attending and serving in the San Diego temple for forty years it is also our temple but Cardston was first.

I always used to think that the Cardston temple was one of the uglier temples. I mean look at it, it is just a big lump of granite sitting on the prarie but looking at it now I can see the beauty in it. I understand the architec wanted it to blend into and enhance the beauty of the mountains behind it. I think he achieved what he was going for. It is a beautiful temple.

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

In 1920, 30% of Americans were farmers, today, 

less than 1% of Americans are farmers.

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Adalaide

Monday, October 2, 2023

What a wonderful weekend we just had. Lisa has gone a few days over due and was scheduled to be induced yesterday, Sunday, October 1st. Their little girl decided that she didn’t want to be induced and Lisa was in early labor pretty much all day Saturday. Things got serious Saturday evening, and around 8:30 Alex took her into the hospital.

Lisa’s psiatic nerve has been bugging her for weeks now and the contractions were making it so much worse so she promptly got an epidural and was finally enjoying some relief from pain.

Once they were in the hospital, they saw that Adelaides heart rate was gradually slowing down. They mentioned this a bit casually but it made Alex quite concerned. Finally it got to the point that they wanted to have this baby out quickly, because they figured the cord might be wrapped around her neck. They were going to break her water but decided it would be gentler on the baby to put Lisa on pitocen to strengthen the contractions. At one point they considered a Caeseran section but Adelaide was so far into the birth canal that it was no longer an option.

They then called a doctor to suction her out but as soon as he walked in Lisa did it on her own.

Adelaide was born at 3:03 in the morning on October 1, 2023 and she is a beautiful baby. This is what Alex texted the family shortly after the birth.

A lot happened. Cord was wrapped extremely tight around her neck and she came out not breathing. They had to immediately take her down to NICU which is where I am currently. She is hooked up to oxygen and they are monitoring her and doing full checkups every hour. Lisa got to hold her for about 30 seconds, I have not held her yet.

But we have our baby Adalaide 7 pounds 11 ounces. 21 inches, born at 3:03 am.

Alex was obviously (and understandably) unnerved at her birth. He said that her body was limp and unmoving, she was blue, and the cord was wrapped tightly around her neck. They struggled to get a finger under the cord so they could cut it right then and there. You can see the third picture how long the umbillical cord is. They have since cut it shorter.

They let Lisa hold her baby for about thirty seconds and then whisked her off to NICU where they put her on oxygen and constant surveillance.

Her oxygen levels quickly returned to 100%, but they wouldn’t let her out of NICU until her breathing rate dropped below 60 breaths a minute. Come morning Lisa had her new baby in her arms. It wasn’t until then that Alex even got to hold his baby. Looking at these pictures it doesn’t look like either one of them is ever going to let this baby go.

Once Adelaide was released from NICU, she was just another beautiful, normal, baby but boy was it scary for a while there.

In the morning, Alex and Lisa’s friends who were watching James brought him to the hospital so he could see his little sister. He was quite taken by her and was telling everyone he saw that this was his little sister.

Lisa and Adelaide went home Monday morning.

Mom and I were on the phone with Alex and he was showing Adelaide to us and we were trying to decided if Adelaide looked more like Alex or more like Lisa. Alex says, “she looks like you Dad”. That is very funny because my mask for my CPAP machine looks an awful lot like the oxygen mask Adelaide is wearing in the photo below.

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

A female pregnant corpse will build up enough gas 

to expel the foetus even after death. 

They call it a “coffin birth.”

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Water Heater - again

Friday, September 29, 2023

Desiree Heaton called me the other day and asked if I could fix something on her kitchen sink. I said, “no problem”. When I went into the garage to grab some tools I saw a tiny stream of water trickling under my work bench. My heart sank. There is no good reason for a trickle of water to be in my garage.

I knew it had to be the water heater and, as expected, that is what it was. I was quite frustrated because in my mind, I had just replaced that water heater and I figured it was way too early for it to fail already. As I thought about the last time the water heater failed I smiled because I actually posted a blog about it. I went back and looked for the post and it was actually April 8, 2008. You should go and read it but here is the picture I took at the time.

My water heater was fifteen years, five months and nineteen days old when it rusted out. According to google, the average life of a water heater is eight to twelve years so I guess I got my moneys worth from it.

They say they can last up to twenty years with regular maintenance but since my water heater had zero maintenance, I guess I can’t expect that.

Since it is just Lisa and I living here I decided to go with a tankless water heater. We use so little hot water that it doesn’t make sense to keep 40 gallons of water hot 24/7 for the few times we need it. They should also last much longer because you don’t have stagnant hot water sitting there for hours at a time. Except for the twenty-minute shower once a day the tankless water heater is full of cold water which won’t corrode so badly.

After hours of research, we decided to go with a Rheem water heater from Home Depot. My first trip was to buy the water heater and all the connections that I thought I would need. My second trip was after I got the heater hung and I realized that I couldn’t use any of the connections I got so I returned them and bought all new connections. I was able to use the gas line. My third trip was at 8:00 last night to return a connector that was the wrong size (it looked like the correct size and was in the wrong bin at the store, I hate it when that happens), to buy an elbow that I was short because I can’t count and to buy a drain tube.

I started at 11:30 this morning and ended at around 8:30 at night. For nine hours of work, I probably saved a grand or two of installation costs. Now I just have one problem. I always shower until I run out of hot water. Now, how will I know when to end my shower?

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

An elephant can smell water from 12 miles away.

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Jack Leavitt

Monday, September 25, 2023

A week ago was Ella’s baptism and this last weekend was Jacks baptism so it was another road trip. We arrived in Mesa late Friday night and we decided since we are near a temple we would catch a 7:00 o'clock session at the Gilbert Temple. We would have preferred the Mesa Temple because it is only minutes from Bens house, but they didn’t have sessions that early.

The baptism was at 10:00 and it was wonderful but very different from Ella's in St George. It is interesting how different Stakes do their baptisms. They had all the kids being baptised in the Chapel and we went and did the baptisms as families.

In St George, they broke the meetings into smaller groups of no more than two families and we each had our own meetings with talks given by family members. They staggered the start times of the meeting so that only one group was at the font at a time.

We then returned to Bens house, changed and headed to a Parkour Gym where we celebrated Jacks birthday. His birthday was in July but I guess this was the best date to do the party.

The Parkour gym was rather amazing and would be any kids paradise. It is basically a huge room full of obstacles that you climb on, climb over or jump over. I would have gone out there myself except I didn’t want to embarrass myself.

After the gym, we headed back to Bens house where they prepared for a taco dinner. Sadly we had to get back to San Diego because I had a Bishopric meeting at 6:45 and Lisa was teaching Relief Society. I could have missed the meeting but it is my week to conduct and I already missed last week.

I had to share this picture of Kira and her crazy hairdoo. Mom said something about it looking like something from a science fiction movie. That is when Kira told us it was based on Rey Skywalker from Star Wars. She told me she did her hair like that because she didn’t have time to wash it. I like it.

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

There were still mammoths roaming the earth

as the pyramids were being constructed.

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Sunsets

Thursday, September 21, 2023

I really like this picture Lisa took of me mowing our front lawn last night right at sunset.

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

If a piece of paper were folded 42 times, it would reach to the moon.

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Ella’s Baptism

Friday, September 22, 2023

Last weekend we headed to Saint George to attend Ella’s baptism. It turned into a great weekend where we were able to see family members from four of our kids.

Piper and Ella have become good friends, so Justin decided to drive up from Arizona with Piper so they could join in the celebrations. At the last minute Ben decided to come as well with his kids. Sadly, Sharley was in Idaho to be with her family for a wedding.

Alex, Lisa and James drove down from Highland also.

And then of course, Lisa and I drove up from San Diego.

We got there fairly late, somewhere around 10:30 and I was promptly put to work installing three light fixtures for Alycia. As always, what should be a simple job, turned into a bit of a nightmare and took me more than an hour.

Ben and his carload arrived around 11:00.

Saturday morning Justin and I decided to go for a run. As we headed out for what we thought would be a three mile run, we saw the new Red Cliffs temple in the distance.

To me it looked pretty close, less than a mile away so we decided to just head there and back. It wasn’t long before we realized that what we thought would be a short run, would be much longer than we had anticipated. In the end it was a four and a half mile run.

The baptism was at 10:10 which to me seemed like an odd time to have a meeting, but once we got there, I realized that this was no ordinary baptism, but a regular production.

Since it was a Stake Baptism in a fairly large stake, they apparantly had a lot of baptisms secheduled in order to keep it small and personal, they only had two kids baptised per session and they scheduled several sessions throughout the morning. Ella asked me if I would give a talk at her baptism.

After the baptism we all went to Alycia’s house and the kids played on an inflatable water slide and I ate much more that I should have.

At 5:10 we all had appointments to go to the St George Temple open house. The temple was amazing. I have only been to the St George Temple a couple of times so I don’t remember too well how it looked before the remodel, but it is sure beautiful now.   

You might notice in this picture that Princess Lisa is in a wheel chair. She is expecting a baby girl any day now and there was no way she could be on her feet for an hour let alone climb the hundreds of stairs that this temple has. It took some persuasion, but she rode in the chair and took elevators.

We were asked not to take any pictures inside the temple but apparantly Lisa managed to sneak a picture of this light fixture. During the remodel they found a few of these light fixtures in the basement. You can’t see the etching on the glass globe very well but it has a picture of cotton blossoms etched into the glass. They copied this light fixture and variations of it are found throughout the temple. It really is beautiful.

I do have to admit, however, that with seven adults and nine children it wasn’t the most reverent of temple tours I have been on.

We then all went back to Alycia’s, ate more food and then we attempted to put the kids to bed. The girls were great, but the boys were becoming a nightmare. They were fighting over who would sleep in what bed and finally, in exasperation we told them all to sleep on the floor in the family. The next thing we knew, the girls were out there sleeping with them. We turned on a movie and they were all asleep within minutes.

Sunday morning Ben, Justin and kids all headed south and Alex and family headed north and Lisa and I and Alycia’s family headed to church. Alycia also gave me another job to do. She wanted this beautiful mirror hung in this corner. It was a much easier job than hanging the lights the night before.

At one point on Sunday, mom and I decided that we wanted to go on another Temple Tour without all the kids, so we planned a visit Monday morning before we headed home. Alycia also mentioned to us that she was planning to go again without all the kids, so Monday morning we dropped her kids off at school and we all headed back for a second temple tour. We then said goodbye to Alycia, June and Holden and headed home.

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

The toy Barbie’s full name is Barbara Millicent Roberts.
Woody's full name is Woody Pride.

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