The Crystal Apple Award

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A few years ago the youth group in our church decided to have the kids in High School vote on which teacher in their school was the best. We have four schools in our stake and they choose two teachers from each school. Those teachers are then invited to the stake center and are awarded the "crystal apple" award. They get a real crystal apple. The teachers are recognized for their work and this year Alex's choice for the best teacher won and Alex was chosen to introduce the teacher. The "Crystal Apple" awards has grown into a pretty big event and we have all kinds of politicians and members of the school board attending. I decided the best way to recognize this teacher is to include in this blog Alex's introduction. The rest of this post is Alex's introduction to Mrs Lutgen.

Mrs Lutgen has lived in San Diego since she was three years old. She has been teaching for 21 years. Her first five years of teaching were at an inner city school in San Diego, she then taught for seventeen years in Rancho Bernardo and this is her first year at Westview. She came to Westview because she has two children who will be attending there and she wants to share their high school experience with them.

Mrs Lutgen has known since the tenth grade that she wanted to be a teacher and so she took three years of math in High School. She only needed one year of math to graduate and her friends all thought she was nuts. She was in college when proposition thirteen was passed and since this proposition forced big budget cuts a lot of teachers were getting laid off. Sounds familiar doesn’t it? She was attending SDSU and one of her professors told her that she should NOT become a teacher. She listened to him and graduated with a degree in math.

When she graduated she got a job in an office and she hated it. Finally her boss told her that she should be teaching and that was the encouragement she needed to go back to school and she got her teaching credentials.

Mrs Lutgen comes from a family of teachers:

She teaches at Westview
Her husband teaches at Rancho Bernardo
Her husbands brother teaches at Del Dios
His wife teaches at San Pascal
Her husbands mother teaches at Twin Peaks

I can’t go through the whole list because no less than thirteen people in her extended family are teachers but you get the idea.

I am very grateful that Mrs Lutgen went back to become a teacher because she has been very influential in my life. When we were asked to nominate a teacher I thought of her immediately because of her sense of humor. She really connects with her students and she makes it fun to be in her class. I know that she cares about not just me but all of her students. I have never had a teacher that would hold study sessions for her students the night before her math tests. She really works hard to make sure all of her students understand the subject. I never thought it would be possible to enjoy a math class but I look forward to Mrs Lutgens math class. With that I am honored to present this award to Mrs Lutgen.

Ten Years

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I was really scared that I was going to gain a lot more weight after that baked potato and watermelon. Today was a milestone for me. On May 11, 1998 I joined Qualcomm. That was ten years ago. Today I received a ten year award. It is hard to believe that I have worked at this company for ten years. I saw a new one today, I went for my run during lunch today and I jogged by the mail boxes on the street and one of them had a huge sign on it. This was a very professional sign with large letters that said, "Darrel cheated on his wife with a co-worker. K.O." I thought, "boy, that's going to ruin Darrel's day". As I left work today I saw a much larger sign pasted onto a huge transformer that said the same thing. Personally I think Darrel deserves it and probably much worse but it was really quite funny. When I went running today I thought I'd get brave and go for a longer run. I was trying for three miles but on my new route I ran into some construction and had to turn back. I still got a good 2 1/3 miles in. I'm starting to get used to this running business. It looks like my kids are all settled in for the summer with their summer jobs. Brandon was the first, he flew up to Mark and Dixies and is working for Mark. It is looking like he will get plenty of hours in up there. I hope Mark has a real good summer. Alycia had a job all lined up but the week before she came home it fell through. A very sad story that I will probably tell you on another day. Anyway, she went crazy on the internet and Lisa went into full gear for her and the day after she got home she went for an interview and by the end of that day she had two jobs. Both are part time right now but both could go full time soon. She is loving both jobs. Ben has always been a lot more casual about things so we really didn't know what he had planned and no matter how hard we try to help him it is always, "don't worry mommy, I'm working on it". Well unfortunately he came home sick and it was hard for him to do anything the first week. The people he was supposed to work for never did call him and they wouldn't return phone calls so finally he went and talked to the company Sharley works for "Moxie Pest Control" and took a job with them selling pest control. I've really tried to discourage my kids from these kinds of jobs because I hate selling so much and commission jobs scare me to death. Especially door to door selling jobs. Oh well, I figure if anyone could do it, Ben is the one who could. Ben had his first day on the job today and he made more today than Alycia did all last week. If every day is like today then Ben will have a good summer.

Mothers Day

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Happy Mothers Day to any mother who may happen to read this. When the kids were little we used to force Mom to stay in bed and we would bring her breakfast in bed. Lisa pretended to enjoy this but it didn't take me long to figure out that she didn't really like having breakfast in bed. We then decided that the best thing we could do is get up before her and make her a real nice breakfast. The only problem with that is that Lisa always gets up long before any of the rest of us. I set the alarm, the alarm then goes off and wakes up Lisa, she then wakes me up, I tell her to go back to sleep and then I get up and wake the kids, they grumble and complain but we make mom a real nice breakfast, she eats about a third of it and then we eat the rest of it. It has worked well. This year I decided to set everything up last night and then this morning I wait until she wakes up. When I go to head downstairs she tells me that she is going to prepare her lesson for young womens and that she doesn't need breakfast yet. That was real nice because I got to sleep longer. I finally did wake up and got breakfast ready for Lisa. That didn't take long since I had it all laid out last night. If you check out the table you can see a bowl of cereal, a fried egg, a broiled sausage, toast, two waffles, a flask of orange juice, a pitcher of milk, a cup of orange tea, jam, peanut butter and homemade pancake syrup. I also decided that the kids didn't need to get up early just to watch Lisa eat breakfast so I only woke up Sarah who I knew would have her nose out of joint if I didn't wake her up. The three of us ate Lisa's breakfast and had a good time. As Lisa was finishing breakfast and we were going to get the other kids up so we could open her presents we got a phone call from a good friend who was in extreme pain and wanted to know if we could run her into the hospital. Of course we did and three hours later she was feeling a bit better and we got back just in time for church. Apparently Ben and Alex did have their nose out of joint because I didn't wake them up. For mothers day dinner I barbecued some steaks, baked potatoes and green beans and watermelon. After dinner as we were going to open presents Kira and Brandon called. Three hours later we finally got to open presents at 10:30 at night. I hope she had fun and Tiffanie, I hope you're feeling better.

Grouting the Floor

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This morning Sarah comes into my room before eight o'clock. Saturday is the only day I get to sleep in and here she is bugging me to go run with her. Since I missed my run yesterday I knew I should go but it wasn't even eight o'clock yet. Finally I decided to get up but then when I was awake it dawned on me that she was expecting to run five miles. I assured her that that wasn't going to happen. Finally we compromised on three miles and guess what? I did just fine. It is a lot more fun to run with someone else so that kept my mind off my legs but now I'm thinking I need to up the mileage on my regular run. I think I liked it much better when I thought I was only good for two miles. Last night I was hoping to go on a date with my wife but she was too tired so Alex and I went on a "man date". We went and saw Iron Man. It was a good movie. It was eleven o'clock before the movie let out so we finished our "man date" today with a trip to Cotija's. Alex had a Carne Asada Burrito and I had a Carnita's taco. I would have gone for the Canita's Burrito but I don't want to ruin that new low for my body mass. I hope the extra large horchata doesn't mess me up. I really like their horchata's. As you can see from the pictures I did grout my tile today. That little decorative tile around the edges takes more grout than an area three times that front entrance. I'm using epoxy grout so there is no room for a mistake. If you make a mistake it is going to stay there for generations. That was so funny, I just uploaded the picture of my finished grout job and I saw that there was grout stuck to the edge of the step that I didn't get wiped off. It is as plain as day in the picture but that step is in the shadows and I can't see it otherwise. It's a good thing for the picture or that might have been one of those mistakes that would be there for future generations.

A Journal Entry

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Not much happened today. It is Friday and I always like Friday. The weather today was quite chilly and gloomy. Around here they call it June gloom. Normally it is much warmer than this. Right now it is 59°. I run Mon, Wed and Fri's so today I went for my run. I get in the dressing room and I'm completely dressed ready to go run but when I go to put my shoes on I don't have my running shoes. I wore dress shoes today and I didn't pack my running shoes. I wasn't about to run in my dress shoes so I got dressed back in my street clothes and went back to work all depressed. The funny thing is, later in the afternoon I was meeting with a guy and I look down and I have white socks on. How embarrassing! When I got dressed I forgot to change out of my running socks. I felt like a hick from Idaho (sorry about that Jackie). Oh well, it is now evening and I'm home trying not to eat too much and I'm hoping Lisa and I might go out on a date. We haven't been on a date for a very long time. Tomorrow I'm going to grout the last of my tile. It is quite embarrassing but it has taken me two years to do this tile. Oh well, it is going to look nice. I'm also going to find time to get that run in that I missed today.

Edmonton Young Adults

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Before my mission I attended BYU for a year. I loved it and had every intention of going back there after my mission. I got home from my mission in late August and of course I had not applied at BYU and so there was no chance I was going there. Mom, however had already applied for me to go to the U of A (Alberta) so off I went. For my first year I stayed with Greg and Gaylia and that is how I ended up in the Edmonton 5th ward. The 5th ward was quite a distance from the University and so it was a long way from the Institute. For the non-mormons who might need an explanation, the Institute is a church educational program that is tied to most Universities for the students to take religion classes if they want to. Most institutes have a building adjacent to the campus. Institute is where the single university students would normally go to church plus participate in many other activities such as dances. Since the Institute was so far away I decided to attended church with Greg and Gaylia in their family ward. To my delight, the 5th ward had a lot of single young adults and they actually had a class just for us. We had a ton of fun and although I can't remember what all we did I do remember that we were close and we had our own activities. Let me see how many names I can remember after all this time. Barbara Hodges (married my brother, Lester), David Gander (became my roommate and married Lisa's good friend Gaylene Cooper), David Butler (went to my mission), Carole LaBonte (in the air force and from Quebec), Wendy Wallbank, some MacDonald girl, Daisy and her sister (from back east and I can't remember their last names). There was a house full of guys but I can't remember their names. There were also others but anyone who knows me is probably amazed I can remember the names I did. I have many fond memories from my time with that group of people. Lisa wasn't old enough to attend that class but after we became friends she came along on all the activities anyway.

Jumping back to 2008, I have been getting a ton of requests to join Face Book. I barely have time to read my emails and I force myself to take the time to write my blog so I have been putting Face Book off for quite some time. Finally I gave in and signed up with Face Book. I haven't uploaded any pictures and I have done nothing except let the computer send out a friend request to all the email addresses in my address book. Within three days I had over thirty friends and I have a dozen requests to join some "mob wars". I think I'm going to have to check that one out. I'm thinking of joining Leslie's mob. So now that I'm in the Face Book world (albeit without a face) I'm seeing a lot of people that I haven't heard from in years and then earlier this week I received a message from some Carole Hudson. I almost deleted it because I don't know any Carole Hudson but out of curiosity I read through the message and it was Carole Labonte from our young adult group in Edmonton 5th ward. She is now married and has five beautiful girls. I don't think I've talked to Carole since I graduated from the U of A and moved to Bassano. The first picture is the Carole I knew and the last picture is Carole now. Thanks for looking me up Carole.

Journal Entries

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I'm torn about how to deal with days where there is just nothing to talk about and I'm too busy or too tired to come up with a topic that I find interesting. What I decided to do was to give you one or two lines about what I did that day but only post it after a couple of days have gone by. Here we go...

May 5 was cold (in the 60's) and looked like it wanted to rain. I had a typical day at work and then went to Hi-Z afterwards to help them out on a quote they wanted to prepare for JPL. All in all it was a good day. Got home around 19:00. Ran at lunch and made a new personal best at 16:40 for two miles. I'm getting better but I'm not there yet.

May 6 was raining in the morning and it made me late for work. That wasn't good because I had an 8:30 meeting I was late for. We're running a bunch of tests to see if we can use the new Li-ion chemistry that they're considering for electric cars in our cell phones. They have less energy density but they're much safer, cheaper and last longer. I think they will work for low end phones. In the evening I went to a scout meeting in Redlands regarding our scout camp this summer. Scout camp is going to conflict with the Leavitt reunion that is planned. Bummer, what should I do?

May 7 is still cold and gloomy and right now it is 63°F and a bit of a breeze. The cool weather makes it nicer for my run. I was a bit slower today, I'm feeling tired. Tonight I went to Hi-Z for a couple of hours and then went home. Lisa made some wonderful cheese encrusted pork chops for dinner.

Sheba

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When Lisa and I first got married she wasn't too excited about the idea of having pets. I, of course, grew up with a cat and I thought having a cat would be a good idea. I was resigned to the fact that we wouldn't have any pets but then something happened that changed her mind. After I graduated from college and accepted a job at Global we moved to Bassano and rented a small house in Bassano. My family helped us move and put all of the boxes in the basement. After I started work and everyone had left Lisa spent her days unpacking all of the boxes in the basement. One day when I was at work Lisa called me at work and she is hysterical. She's crying on the phone and I'm thinking something horrible happened to the baby or something but finally, through the sobs and the tears I figure out what she's talking about. Apparently she had been going through the boxes in the basement and when she opened one box a mouse jumped out of the box right into her face. We got a cat. Our first cat's name was Dragon. Dragon was a male and he wasn't the brightest of cats but we never had a mouse problem after that. Dragon used to like to get into fights and sometimes he would disappear for a day or two and then come home covered with blood. One day he never did come home. I assume he lost his last fight. Our next cat was named Shadow. Shadow was a female and she was a very smart cat. She was also smart enough to avoid the fights or good enough to win them but she always came home and rarely was she hurt. She immigrated to the States with us as well. Shadow lived to be a good ripe old age but one day she went missing. She had been rather sick so we were a bit worried. I suppose it is a good thing that I was the one who found her. We had all of our bikes parked in the garage side by side and apparently Shadow jumped on one of the bikes and knocked them all over. When the bikes fell over one of the axles caught poor Shadow in the side of the head and she was quite dead. If she hadn't been sick I'm sure she would have been faster and avoided the axle but alas, Shadow is in cat heaven waiting for us. It was a sad day in the Leavitt household. Even Lisa (the self proclaimed animal hater) was in tears. Next came Cyrus. Cyrus was another male and another dumb cat. Are you noticing a trend here? We got Cyrus just before we bought our house and maybe it is because we moved from a Cul-de-sac to a busier street but as it turned out, Cyrus wasn't smart enough to know that he should get out of the way of the cars. We only moved a few blocks so we had been moving everything in our cars. I was coming home with the last load of the day and as I drive up the street I see a dead cat in the middle of the road. I knew right away that it was Cyrus. We had the funeral cermonies in the flower bed that evening. The flowers are growing really nicely in that flower bed by the way. Since Cyrus we have buried several mice, several hamsters, a bird, a frog and many fish alongside him. Lisa, who never wanted a pet in the first place, has been quite tolerant. Our tortois (Shelly) isn't buried in the flower bed because we want to save the shell so he is in a garden tomb and some day when we're brave we're going to pull him out of the tomb and remove the bones and display the shell. So after Cyrus we got Sheba. Another female and probably the coolest cat you'll ever meet. She is also quite possibly bi-polar. She is the most loving animal one minute and she'll slash you the next. Brandon used to play with her all the time and she would hide in a corner and literally jump across the room and attack him with all twenty claws fully extended. She comes when you call her and she'll even go for a walk with you (if she feels like it). Sheba was born in 1995 and so is now 13 years old. I did that "real cat age" test that I was talking about with Bridget and according to the test Sheba is an equivalent of 82 .3 years old. Because she is in such good shape however, she has a "real age" of only 67.3. The poor creature is slowing down now. In her prime I've seen her take on a Doberman and win. She was truly fearless. Now she can't take the neighbors cat and she stays mostly indoors unless we're out with her to protect her. She can hardly jump up on the table anymore to eat breakfast with Alex. It is quite a site, she drinks the milk out of his breakfast bowl. I don't know how much longer Sheba will be with us but if we ever do replace her I think I've learned my lesson, we'll get a female.

Peter

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Today I want to make a tribute to another young man who graduated from college. Peter is Lester's eldest son. Lester is my baby brother, he may be taller than me but he is still my baby brother. Peter is taller than Lester so I feel quite small around him. I'm even more impressed with Peter because he graduated from the University of Alberta which is my Alma Mater. My mom and dad have thirty five grandchildren. I'm not sure how the older grand kids grouped together but I know in 1982 when Kira was born four of us six kids had a baby. Mom and Dad always referred to the 1982 grandkids as the '82 crop. Peter was part of the '82 crop and they all get along well. Kira really likes Peter. Besides Kira and Peter, Greg had Meagan and Jackie had Kristen. In 1984 when Brandon was born Dixie joined the team and we had five grandkids. The '84 crop was a real bumper crop. Greg had Lindsey, Dixie had Eric, Jackie had Melissa and Lester had Andrew. Fara is the only child who was barren that year. In 1986 when Ben was born, it was a lean year with only only Greg, Dixie and I having babies. Dixie had Wally and Greg had Phillip. After that we didn't double up again except when Alex was born in 1991. That year Greg and Gaylia had Damon. So where were we? Peter graduated last week and since he wasn't exactly sure what he wanted to do he figured he would work while he was trying to figure it out. With a degree in psychology he figured he could get a job anywhere he wanted so in Edmonton in the middle of the winter who wouldn't think of San Diego? We told Peter we would be glad to have him here as long as it took him to get settled in with a job. Peter and his friend Doug left Edmonton April 28 and took a week to get here. They went through Clinton, BC to see old friends, stopped in Washington to visit with Flora, saw San Francisco and East Los Angeles where he served his mission. He spoke Spanish on his mission. I never knew Peter all that well but in the fall I was in Edmonton for a couple of weeks and I made sure I took the opportunity to get to know him better. It turns out that he is a great kid. Lester and Barb, I'm sure you're tremendously proud of Peter and you have every right to be. You did well with this one. We'll keep an eye on him for you.

Tom

This morning at about 6:00AM Alex woke up needing to drain his bladder. He fought the urge for about 20 minutes and finally gave in and got up to go to the bathroom. He was walking across his bedroom floor when all of the sudden he had a stabbing pain in his toe. His first thought was that Sheba (our cat) attacked him like she has been known to do. The pain continued so out of reflex he kicked his foot and Tom goes flying across the room. Tom is Alex's pet python. The poor snake lay there not moving and Alex was afraid he had killed his snake. Finally Tom moved and Alex relaxed. He did not feel much like touching the animal that had just attacked him so he comes into our room and woke me up. I thought the story was so good I took a picture. So Alex does his business and then goes back to bed but his toe still feels like something is in it. He says to heck with it and goes to sleep. When he finally woke up in the morning we took a closer look at this toe and lo and behold, there are two teeth stuck in his toe. When Alex wanted to get a snake I made him study all about ball pythons before I would let him get it. He is actually quite knowledgeable. For example, I always thought that all snakes had two big fangs but Pythons actually have many teeth, much like a shark, so they can better hold on to their prey. It is probably no big deal for Tom to be short two teeth. When Tom first joined our family he was no more than a foot long. He quickly grew however and before long he was lifting the lid on his aquarium and crawling out. Alex finally solved the problem by placing a bowling ball on the lid. Last week when Alex fed Tom he forgot to put the bowling ball back and that is why Tom was crawling through all of the clothes on his bedroom floor. Tom is now about six feet long and at his widest point he is three or four inches in diameter. Tom is named after Tom Riddle in the Harry Potter books but when I hold him I always think of my childhood friend Tom Crooks. So did anyone notice in the second picture that Alex's second and third toes are webbed? Pretty interesting eh?

Sprained Ankle

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Right now Alex is in Volleyball season. A while back I showed you some of his cool “kills”. In those video clips you can see how amazingly high he jumps. Imagine what could happen if you came down from one of those jumps, land on another guys foot and roll your ankle. A day or two ago Alex did just that and apparently it hurts, I suppose Ben could attest to that as well because he had a very similar experience a few years ago. As you can see, Alex is now on crutches and his Volleyball career for this season is pretty much over. His big concern now is that he gets ready for football spring training. He is taking really good care of his ankle and for once is listening to any and all advice on how to experience a full and fast recovery. We bandage it up nice and tight in the daytime but at nights he needs to loosen the bandage. I’ve become the default bandager. Last night I took his bandage off and I was quite startled to see a huge, dark, purple bruise. I guess it took a day or too for the bruise to migrate to the surface but he now has proof that it really did hurt. His football coaches are very anxious to put him to work so here’s hoping for a speedy recovery.

Hurdles

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I think I mentioned earlier that we insist that each of our kids do some activity that will keep them physically active. Brandon is the only one who didn't do an organized sport in High School but he would go and run for five miles just to unwind. We were never sure what Sarah would end up doing. She is an active girl and has always done something, she did soccer when she was little and then basketball when she got older but while she really enjoyed them, they didn't seem like sports that she was going to excel in. One day Lisa decided that Sarah looked like a runner. We'd had no experience with cross country but Lisa signed her up for a cross country camp and here we are. Do you know what they do in cross country? It is crazy, they just head out for runs some times as much as seven miles. I can't even imagine running seven miles but poor Sarah, who had never really run before, was doing it the first week she started. Cross country is a fall sport so now in the spring Sarah is doing track & field. Her sports are the mile and 300 m hurdles but she has also done the two mile, 800 meters and 4 x 4 relay. It is a beautiful thing to watch her go over those hurdles. Today was her last meet and unfortunately it was against Rancho Bernardo and they are pretty good. She didn't win the race in the video but she did well. The race where I took the photograph she did win. Don't you like those pretty blue cleats? I'm going to miss watching her.

Utah

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What a great long weekend. As you could tell from Fridays post, Lisa and I went to Brandon and Serene's graduation at BYU. Brandon will be working for Mark and Dixie this summer so they are flying directly to Alaska meaning we had to move all their stuff (including their car) back to California and store it for the summer. It was quite a feat. Have you ever tried to put six gallons of dirt into a five gallon bucket? That is what I did. I'm kicking myself that I never took a picture of our van. To make it even more exciting, Alycia had her entire life's possessions in Utah with her so had we to bring half of it back with us as well so that her and Ben would have a chance of getting all of their stuff into the car when they come home later this week. Every cubic inch of the van was filled including the passenger seat. I had a huge car top carrier on the van and it was filled. The back of the van rode no more than three inches off the road and I was really worried about the springs. Brandon's car didn't fair much better, the trunk was full to capacity, the back seat was full to capacity and the passengers seat was filled as well. In fact, Lisa got pulled over by a cop on the way home (she had a headlight out) and Lisa looks at the cop and points to the passenger seat and says, "Do I really have to get the registration out of there?" She pointed out that it wasn't her car and she was just moving a student home from school and he let her off with a warning. I think he could tell she was telling him the truth. As you can tell by my weight, I wasn't a good boy this week. I actually ate very responsibly but I REALLY like BYU chocolate milk. It is so good and I probably drank a gallon all by myself. To make it worse, I didn't run either. Other than that I was pretty good. So I guess I fell off the wagon but I'm back on and today I ran and that was tough since it was over 90°F. Lisa's Dad also showed up to surprise Brandon. That was pretty cool and he fell in love with Serene (this was his first time to meet her) and he especially fell in love with their baby. I suppose you all know my kids but just in case, in the picture from left to right is Brandon, Ben, Boyd Shaw and Alycia. So Wednesday we drove to Utah, Thursday was convocation, Friday Brandon walked at 8:00 and Serene walked at 5:00, Saturday we loaded up the van, drove to Ephraim and loaded up the car and the car top carrier and then drove to St George. Before we left Ephraim, Lisa and Alycia went to a movie while Ben and I went and killed clay pigeons with his shot gun. That was quite fun. Since we were both quite sleep deprived we slept in Sunday morning and then drove the rest of the way home. That isn't much fun driving two vehicles but we both had cell phones and we kept each other awake. Today was back to the grind.

Brandon and Serene Graduation

Today I would like to say how proud I am of my son Brandon and his wife Serene. They have gone though one very stressful year and overcome tremendous challenges to achieve their goal. Today they both graduated from Brigham Young University. Brandon is in a biochemistry major which is a very challenging major. On top of that he is holding down a part time. Brandon has been doing research work in the Chemistry department to help support his wife and child. Yes, I said child. Brandon married Serene Quinn December 30, 2006 and nine months later his wife Serene blessed me with a beautiful little grand daughter. That wasn't quite how they planned it but here she is and we couldn't be more thrilled. To make things even more challenging, as his wife was going into labor he was studying for his LSAT and writing midterms. He wrote his LSAT just days before Sydney was born. After the arrival of this beautiful little girl Serene and Brandon started taking her to class with them. I guess that worked out OK until Sydney got a little older and started talking during class. The professers at BYU are very understanding but they can't allow babies to disturb their lectures. Serene also graduated today along with Brandon but if you think the birth of the baby made midterms challenging for Brandon how do you think it was for Serene? Can you imagine, she was attending classes even while she was carrying her baby. She did take a light load during the fall semester when Sydney was born but still, she had a baby while she was attending classes. This semester however she took a heavier load and in spite of it all she graduated Cum Laude. If you're like me and didn't really know what Cum Laude means, it means you're one of the top 10% of the graduating class. I can't imagine attending school the same semester as you deliver a child. Today Brandon and Serene graduated from University and I couldn't be more proud. Brandon is going to be attending law school at Pepperdine in the fall. We will be glad to have them closer to home.

Exploding Batteries

Now you have enjoyed (or endured) the five part series of Fred's career. Just in case you thought you were done there is one more aspect of my work here at Kyocera that I should share with you since it was such a major part of my life. That is the history of the exploding batteries. Before I start though, I just want to tell you that this morning I weighed in at 207.o pounds. I think I'm back on track. As I'm sure you have noticed, battery technology has grown tremendously over the last ten years. Remember the old NiCd batteries? Then came NiMH which had twice the energy and then came the first Li-ion batteries that had twice the energy of the NiMH and then over the first few years after Li-ion came out their energy density more than doubled. Well that was the period when I joined the battery world. We put tremendous pressure on the battery companies to get more and more energy out of them. Try and imagine the energy from ten of the old NiCd batteries squeezed into a package half the size of one of them. That is the definition of a bomb. To get the size down many of the companies would cut corners and that is where the problem started. In order to use the highly reactive elements (like lithium) you can't use an aqueous electrolyte so you use a hydrocarbon. The problem is that hydrocarbons are fuels just like gasoline and Diesel so they burn quite nicely. Now imagine that you get a short circuit between your cathode and anode and you have a tremendous amount of current (as high as 50 amps) going through a very tiny conductor and you have temperature excursions over 1,000°C. White hot temperatures surrounded by a fuel is not a good combination especially when the cathode breaks down at those temperatures and gives off oxygen. Just about every major phone company and every major laptop company has now gone through a battery recall but Kyocera, unfortunately, had the honor of being the first. It was the worst year of my life. Kyocera took the approach that we would be very proactive, we volunteered for the recall (before the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) forced us to) and if we get any phone call from a customer that is very freaked out or threatening a law suit, the lawyer and I jump on a plane and fly out to their house to calm them down. You may remember CJ, that is him in the picture. It is such a creepy feeling to walk through someones house that has burned. Our approach has been very successful and because of this we have only had one law suit. I have seen it all, burned carpet, burned purses, burned bums, burned kitchen counters, burned cars, burned couches and burned houses. I supposed the most interesting was a woman who slept naked with her phone and yes, I had to check out the pictures of burned boobs. I have two words of advice for you, 1) don't sleep with your phone and 2) if your phone bursts into flames, throw it into the middle of your carpet. You can get a brand new carpet that way. I am now an expert on what can make a battery safe and believe me, it can't be done with the most popular chemistry. There are some new chemistries that aren't as powerful but they are much more stable. You will see them first in power tools and cars but I think most phone companies will eventually make the compromise and go to these chemistries as well. Once again, Kyocera is leading the way, we are doing it now and I'm sleeping better at nights.

The Qualcomm Years

Today we experienced a bit of a set back. I swear all I ate yesterday was two bowls of cereal in the morning and two sloppy joe's for dinner in the evening. The root beer float I had was really tiny, honest it was. Anyway, I weighed in at 208.1. I gained a pound and a half. That's it, no more ice cream sundaes and no root beer floats, even tiny ones. Maybe that is why they call this a low carb diet. Now on to Fred Leavitt part V - The Qualcomm Years. Qualcomm is the inventor of CDMA which is a very ingenious way of building a cell phone. The problem is, they had this new fancy chip but no one made phones that could use it. They decided that they had to build the phone themselves. I was hired by the phone factory as a "Supplier Management Engineer". My job was to manage suppliers and so out of necessity I would have to travel to the suppliers factories. My first crisis was connectors. They had just had this major problem with bad connectors and so shortly after I hired on I was off to Cambridge, England to visit the Elco factory. It was a rather freaky experience since I was so green and I had not traveled that much at Global or Hi-Z. It got even more exciting when Elco thought I was coming the next week so there was no one to meet me at the airport and no hotel room. After I solved their connector problem they added keypads and then cables and then switches and after a while I covered all electromechanical components. They then needed someone on circuit boards and then they had a major problem with batteries and asked if I wanted to take on that headache. All of the sudden I was home again, my entire adult life I had been working with energy generation and here I was back to batteries which is energy once again. The only down side with batteries is that all of those factories are in Asia and I would much rather travel to Europe. The battery in the picture is my design and I have two patents on that battery pack. You would be surprised what they will give you a patent for. When CDMA caught on and other factories started making CDMA phones Qualcomm decided to get out of the phone business and focus on their chips. They sold the factory to Kyocera. To make it even more complicated, Kyocera recently bought Sanyo's cell phone devision so if you see a Sanyo cell phone we make it too. To keep this story short I have now moved from Supplier management to Engineering and I am the person responsible for the design of the batteries so I am still very involved with the suppliers. It is a good job. I now have a guy working for me so I don't travel as much but in my life time I have been to the following countries and states. Canada, USA, Mexico, Belgium, Holland, France, Italy, England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Taiwan, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Washington DC, Virginia, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, Oklahoma, Georgia, Tennisee, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Kansas, Missouri, New Jersey, Alaska, Alabama, Mississippi, Florida, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Iowa and Indiana. I'm sure I missed something somewhere but you get the idea. The ironic part is that I've never had the desire to travel and I've ended up at all those places and yet Lisa would love to travel and she's stuck at home. Hopefully, I can get her out to some of these places. The one thing that traveling has done for me and is I really appreciate the good old USA.

MacKenzie

Today I didn't lose as much weight as I have in the past but that might have something to do with the fact that I had four pieces of pizza and an icecream sundae at 10:30 last night. Even so I still lost half a pound. This morning I weighed in at 206.5 pounds. Yesterday I pointed out how I'm not much into competitive sports. Well I'm also not much into the arts either. I was, however in the marching band as a kid. A really good band too. I've also appreciated the importance of encouraging kids to explore the arts as well. All of my kids are into music big time and they get so frustrated driving in the car with me because I just want to listen to talk radio and news radio. I do like some songs but it is quite random what I like and what I don't like. Kira actually figured out that I like songs that have a soft gentle melody along with a strong rhythm. One example of a song I like is "Dreams" by the Cranberries. Check out the link. All of our kids started piano lessons when they started school and each of them started an instrument in fifth grade. Kira started on a clarinet and switched to oboe later on. Brandon the violin and he still plays very well today, Ben the trumpet but he gave that up in high school for football, Alycia flute but she also didn't make it into highschool. Alex the alto saxophone and then switched to tenor sax. He also gave it up for football and then Sarah started on clarinet. I played saxophone, trombone and then baritone. It's a long story but I only got good on the baritone. So when it comes to the arts I've been exposed to most of it, band concerts (Kira), choir concerts (all of the kids), orchestra's (Brandon and Kira), ceramics (Alycia), drawings (Ben and Sarah). The one thing however that I haven't been much involved in however is dance. Sure, the girls did danced when they were tiny but I've never been to one on the high school level. That is until last night. Last night we went and watched MacKenzie Rizzo dance. MacKenzie is Alex's girlfriend. She is from Valley Center and she is a sweetheart. The dance concert isn't quite what I expected it to be although I'm not sure what I was expecting. The lighting and the dancing were very beautiful but the lighting was low and made it difficult to get good pictures (no flash allowed). Here are a couple of pictures for you to enjoy. She's a beautiful girl isn't she?

Alex's Volleyball and other Athletics

It's still coming off. This morning I weighed in at 207.0 pounds. That is more than four pounds since Wednesday, an average of more than a pound a day. The weekends are always the toughest though. Too many temptations. Wish me luck.

If you read my post a couple of days ago you may remember that the only "D" I have ever had in grade school was in phys ed. That should give you some idea of how inclined I am towards organized sports. Don't get me wrong, I love hiking and skiing and those kinds of things and I've always been very active but when it comes to competition it just isn't in my make-up. You can imagine what an adjustment it was for me then when so many of my kids have embraced sports. Kira was the first confusion for me, in high school she was on the girls volleyball team and the track team doing high jumping. She lettered in track. Brandon was more like me, he would go for a three or four mile run just for the fun of it but he figured football was quite barbaric. I think he may have changed his tune a bit on that one but he never did high school sports. Ben was the biggest adjustment for me though. Sports is his life. As a junior he lettered in football, basketball and volleyball. He would have done more sports if they had more seasons in the year. The very first football game I ever watched (that is including on TV) was Ben when he was a freshman in high school. I'm only now figuring out all the subtleties of the sport watching Alex. Alex's friend , Nate Turnwall, gave me a book called "Football for Dummies". It's actually good reading. Ben is even on a football scholarship in college right now. Alycia did field hockey and lacrosse and she lettered in lacrosse, Alex is taking after Ben, he plays football, basketball and volleyball and he has lettered in football and volleyball and if he wants to he will letter in basketball next year. Sarah is my biggest surprise. I never figured her for a competitive one but she is my only three sport daughter (I'm sure Kira would consider marching band a sport though). As a freshman Sarah is on the track team, girls basketball and cross country. They get that aggressive tendency from their mother.

So Alex had a Volleyball tournament this weekend. I love to watch him play. They won their pool last night and then this morning (at 8:30 groan) they had the playoffs. I attached a couple of his spikes (or kills or aces, I'm still trying to get the lingo down) so you could enjoy watching him along with me. Alex's number is #1.

Fred - The Hi-Z years

I am quite proud to announce that this morning I weighed in at 208.9. That would be nearly two pounds less than yesterday and two and a half pounds from Wednesday. You guys are really helping me here. Here we go for Fred Leavitt part IV - The Hi-Z years. It all started in Wales. I was at a thermoelectric conference in Cardiff (Wales) and I made an off the cuff remark to a guy from Hi-Z that he should come and work for us at Global. His response was that I should go and work for them. Well this was in the dead of winter and in the dead of winter in Canada, San Diego looks very attractive. One day during a blizzard I decided to call the guys at Hi-Z and ask if they were serious. To keep a long story short, I started work at Hi-Z, in July 1992. Hi-Z is a small company with about ten full time employees. They gave me shares in the company and I was the number three person in charge. Their technology was world class and working at Hi-Z was so much fun that I almost felt guilty getting paid for it. We worked on everything from wood burning stoves that make electricity to powering probes that land on Mars. The hand in the picture is mine and if you go to their website I was involved in just about every project you will see there although my name only appears on a few things since. I left Hi-Z nearly ten years ago. I have a patent on the module in the picture plus at least four other patents as well. I still consult for them. The only problem is that when we moved to San Diego we were a bit naive in the cost of living in San Diego. While my time at Hi-Z may have been the most fun part of my life it was certainly the poorest part of my life. That doesn't count my college years but then we were too dumb to know that we were poor. As the kids got closer to college age I went to the President and told him that when I came to Hi-Z I had counted on my shares being worth something and helping out with providing for my family. I pointed out that my kids were heading for college soon and I needed more money. I said I didn't need it right away but I needed to be heading in that direction over the next few years. He told me that I wasn't worth that much money. I then accepted an offer at Qualcomm making more than I had asked Hi-Z for. I can tell you that making a 65% increase in pay sure changes your lifestyle. Now all of the sudden I was worth what I had asked for. They offered to match my offer from Qualcomm and promote me to be president of the company. I pointed out that at this point in my life I can't afford to take that kind of a risk and offered to stay on as a consultant but I needed to accept the offer from Qualcomm. It was the right thing to do but not nearly as much fun. I owe a lot to Hi-Z and they are still very good friends. The problem is that they are all scientists and not business men. The company has tremendous technology and should be a multi-billion dollar company. I believe some day that will happen and when it does I hope to be involved.

Fred - The Canadian Years

So Kira thinks I should eat more fiber. Actually, I have been eating fiber every morning for a while now. I remind myself of Dad. I remember him eating his bowl of bran every night before he went to bed. At the time I figured it was his excuse for an extra bowl of cereal but now I understand. So I'm happy to report that this morning I weighed in at 210.6 pounds for a reduction of almost a pound. I know it is only a pound but you have to start somewhere. Now for Fred Leavitt part III - The Canadian Years. As I approached graduation in 1983 it was right in the middle of the biggest recession I was ever aware of. There were no jobs anywhere. I figured I'd end up in the oil and gas fields as a welding expert but there were no jobs available anywhere. While in school I worked on a research project for one of my professors developing submerged arc welding processes. One day I was riding up the elevator at the U of A and one of my professors stepped in and when he saw me he said, "how would you like to live in Bassano?" I asked him what country Bassano was in? It turns out there was a small company in a small rural town in Alberta called Global Thermoelectric. They were a spin off from 3M company who used to make thermoelectric generators for the space industry (I'll bet you thought they only made tape). In fact the thermoelectric generators that the Apollo missions left on the moon were made by 3M and used the same technology that Global had. That is a thermoelectric generator sitting on the ground in the picture. The astronaut pulling the plutonium fuel rod out of its shield and he will insert it into the generator. 3M heated their thermoelectrics with Plutonium-238 but Global just burned propane. Since they ran off heat and had no moving parts these generators could run for years with no maintenance and so powered things like microwave repeaters and cathodic protection systems. Since Global brought their technology from 3M with them they had the recipes but they didn't have anyone who understood them. I was the first materials guy they hired and they showed me a dozen boxes of files and said that for the next six months my job was to read the files and learn what was in them. What more could you ask for than that? I was hired by Global and I was the only person in my graduating class to get a job right out of college. It was a stressful time since I graduated in June and didn't get my job offer until July. I started work August 2, 1983 (Aug 1 is a holiday in Canada). It was pretty scary. Bassano is a town of about a thousand people and we rented there for a year at which point we bought a small house in Rosemary. What a wonderful place to live. Someday I will have to describe Rosemary to you but that would take a book. It was a great place to raise our kids while they were young. Rosemary had 317 people (Lisa did the census so we know) and two of their ten streets are paved. I worked at Global from Aug 1983 until Jun 1992 at which time I accepted a job in San Diego. At the time I was the Engineering Manager at Global. It was a good job and I owe them a lot. Sometimes I feel guilty about how I just up and left them but I needed to move on. Tears were streaming down all of our faces as we drove out of Rosemary on July 1, (Canada day) 1992. We still have many good friends in Rosemary.

Fred - The college years

Do you remember a week or two ago when I told you that Brandon and I had a bet to see who could lose the most weight before Ben's wedding? Well I didn't like eating less so I've been running two miles, three days a week. All that has done is made me eat more. I'm going to try a new tactic. I figure if I publicly tell everyone what my weight is that morning then I will have more pressure on me to cut out the garbage food. So here we go, this morning I weighed in at 211.3 pounds. To beat Brandon I have to get under 200 pounds so you need to help me get there. I will weigh myself at the same time every morning before I eat breakfast. Now the pressure is on. Last time I did this I lost almost a pound a day.

OK, here we go for Fred Leavitt part II - The college years. I left off in part one with me heading to BYU majoring in Civil Engineering. What a shock that was for my system. I was a straight "A" student all through grade school and except for Mr Brady's grade eleven English class I doubt that I did more than three hours of homework the whole time. Mr Brady was a pain in the but. He was from England and figured everyone should do homework just as a matter of principle. I have a real problem with homework, I think the school system here goes way overboard and I believe it does more harm than good. One thing is for sure, I definitely didn't do too much homework, that is until I hit BYU. In my first week there I did more homework than I had in my entire life before. Once the shock wore off however I settled into a routine and enjoyed college life. Boy do I have stories to tell but that will have to be for another time. I did my first two levels of calculus but I barely got through those classes. And then it was off to Belgium on my mission. After two years off from my studies I was really not thinking at all about school and I arrived home late in August 1979. Mom really didn't want me going so far away from home and the Canadian dollar was low so she had applied already for me to go to the University of Alberta. So here I was late in the summer, already accepted at the U of A and I hadn't even applied at BYU. I give my Mom full credit for the career I have today. She was an inspired woman. I'm sure we all knew that already. I get my student loans and head off to live with Greg and Gaylia. Little did I know that Greg home taught this cute little sixteen year old girl named Lisa. She was one of the first people I met when I moved up there but that too is another story for another day. In my first year of school I had a wonderful experience and a very stressful experience. After two years of no academics I headed straight into my third level calculus class. Simultaneously I had differential equations and I flunked them both. I also had a materials science class. As much as I hated calculus I loved material sciences. I was taking statics and dynamics and the whole time I could picture what was happening on the molecular levels to these materials. It was a whole new world that I hadn't even thought about. BYU didn't even offer a materials science program. I immediately switched majors to materials science and I've never looked back. I love my career.

Fred - The growing up years

Well that sure woke me up. I went for my run during lunchtime and when I hit the showers there was no hot water. The cold shower wasn’t as bad as I was expecting however since it is 90° outside and I was dripping with sweat. Since there isn’t anything specific going on right now I thought I would talk a bit about what I do every day here at Kyocera. I heard it said once that most men love to talk about their careers. I don’t know if that is true for everyone but it is definitely true about me. It would be impossible for me to describe my career in one short blog so I think I will do it in a five part mini-series. Part I will be entitled, “Fred Leavitt – The Growing up Years”. As long as I can remember I have loved science, even before I knew it was called science. In elementary school my favorite class was science and then in High School when I learned I could take a physics class and a chemistry class and a biology class and auto mechanics and graphic arts I thought I had died and gone to heaven. The only thing that marred my life was English and Social Studies. I was about 13 years old when I rebuilt my first Briggs & Stratten motor. Dad had an old lawn mower engine that didn’t work so I cleared out a spot in Dad’s shop and took it apart cleaned it up and put it together again. It worked great. In ninth grade the principal of the school was Alma Sommerfeldt. He picked me and about 4 other guys out of math class and taught us separately. He figured we were some sort of prodigies and that small group setting gave me a huge head start in algebra. At about 15 years I rebuilt my first car motor, it was an old flat head straight six. A beautiful engine. My partner and I rebuilt our engine a month before anyone else did. My idol was my brother Greg. He was the closest thing to a scientist that I knew and I envied his lab. It was a happy day when Greg went on his mission and I inherited the lab. I really wanted to build a rocket like he did in the worst way. I was a bit handicapped however since I had no way of getting high strength steel pipe and powdered Zn. When it came time to go to college I took an aptitude test to see what careers I was inclined towards. My results were very strange. Mechanical Engineering scored 96%, Civil Engineering scored 93%, Forest Ranger scored about 95%, Electrical Engineering scored around 75% and then the next highest career was below 50%. I guess I didn’t have a well balanced character but it was pretty clear what I should do. I loved the outdoors and the mountains and I knew I would love being a forest ranger but if I did that I would never be able to do the sciences. If I was to be an engineer however I could still hike the mountains and enjoy nature. My brother in law Mark Hansen had recently started his career as a Civil Engineer so I headed off to BYU to become a Civil Engineer. The funny thing is that I didn’t apply for a single scholarship. I really didn’t think of myself as a particularly smart kid but years later when I looked back at my grades I had “honors” in five classes and good grades in the rest. I’m not sure what honors meant back then but I know it was a high A. I had honors in Physics (by far my favorite class), chemistry, biology (I remember I had a 100% in that class), Calculus, and Auto shop. I do know that my only “D” in grades 1 through 12 was in PE. My kids love to tease me about that one.

Spring Break

This week was spring break for Alex and Sarah in High School. In the past we have tried to go and do something fun for spring break but it just wasn't going to happen this year. Besides not having any money, they are both in sports and need to be around for practices. Fortunately, Ben gave us free tickets to Disneyland that he had received from Cotters and Lisa won free tickets to Sea World on a local radio station. The Sea World tickets also include dinner with Shamu. To buy this package would have cost us more than $400. Thursday we went to Disneyland. Unfortunately the Disneyland tickets were "2fer" tickets meaning you could go twice within thirty days. The first day had already been used (which is why we got them) but we were more than thirty days later so we had to pay real money for the tickets. That is OK however since we had a blast. We went on all of our favorite rides and came home dragging we were so tired. We weren't too tired to eat In-n-out on the way home. We had originally planned to do Sea World the next day on Friday but for a number of reasons we had to switch to Saturday. That was a blessing as it turned out since none of us were really up to two days in a row like that one. This morning was a nice and relaxed morning and after a good breakfast we headed down to Sea World. Since the day was nice and hot (high 80's low 90's) we didn't mind getting wet. Our first destination was the Shamu show where we sat square in the middle of the "soak zone". Boy did we get soaked. We then went to "Shipwreck Rapids" where we got soaked again. Next was the "Atlantis" ride where we got soaked again. We then met up with the Sanchez family and eventually made our way to the dolphin show where we got soaked again. One more ride on Atlantis and we were done getting soaked for the day. Dinner with Shamu was wonderful. It was an all you can eat buffet and it was good food. For dessert I had a huge plate of trifle. That was the best part. If you look at the picture of Shamu, that was taken from our table while we were eating. The whale is literally within arms reach of our table. It was a wonderful day and a fitting end to a wonderful week. I love spending time with my kids and I feel truly blessed to have kids who love to spend time with me. I'm a lucky man.

Ben was Robbed

Tuesday morning Ben woke up from a peaceful nights sleep. His peaceful demeanor quickly turned to mild panic as he prepared to go to class and he couldn't find his text books. His primary concern of course was that finals are quickly approaching and he needs the books to study with but he also remembered the hundreds of dollars he forked out at the beginning of the semester to buy the books. He mentioned to his room mate that two of his text books were missing and his room mate told him that was funny because he was missing a text book also. When Ben was on his mission he was called as an assistant to the president in which position he ended up dealing with a few missionaries who were less than forthright. This skill of being able to detect deceipt came through now and he suspected that not all was well with his room mate. Based on a hunch he went through his room mates drawers and imagine his surprise when he found some of the gift cards he had received for Christmas presents along with some tools from his tool box that the Cotters had given him. With his suspicions confirmed Ben decided to go check the on campus book store. He told them his story and that he suspected that his room mate had stolen his books and asked them if they had any records of this person selling any books. Not surprisingly, his room mate had recently sold back three text books, the two Ben was missing along with his room mates own history text. Ben went to his coaches with this information and the coach bought back Ben's books with his own money (what a nice guy) and then Ben went to his landlord. He told her what had happened and then he told her he was moving into a different apartment (same building) with some friends that had an empty room. He asked if she had a problem with that and of course she didn't. She then told Ben that she was calling the police. The sad part is that this room mate was a nice guy and both Ben and Alycia liked him. It turns out that he needed some money quick and made a very bad choice on how to get it. He is now being arrested, he's kicked off the football team and he had to pay back the coach the retail price of the text books. Alycia went to check up on Ben at his new apartment and was quite surprised to find the door locked (it was never locked before) and a NO TRESPASSING sign was on the door. It also said, "no one is to enter this room with out permission from one of the residents". It is a hard lesson to learn but our decisions can sure have a major impact on our lives.

Bridget

Let me tell you about Bridget. Bridget is my dog. We had a Border Collie when the kids were young but when the dog was shot by one of the farmers in the area where we lived we resisted getting another dog until Kira was in high school. I had always said, we live in the city and it wouldn't be fair to a dog. Dogs leave hair everywhere and they poop in the yard. Finally I said that we would get a dog IF it was free, had short hair, was small and everyone signed a contract to pick up the poop. That held them off for years until that fateful day on April 1, 1999. Kira's friend had a Beagle that had a litter of puppies and now I was stuck. That is how we got Bridget. Of course I'm the only one who picks up the poop. Bridget was a hyperactive puppy and ran all over the place but she has one fatal flaw, she eats continuously and since we were used to just keeping the cats dish full we did the same with Bridget. In a very short time she became very fat and to make things worse she has very painful joints. I took her to a vet who said that her sore joints were either arthritis or some congenital problem (I don't remember what she called it). She told me that for a mere $250 she could take an x-ray and tell me what the problem was. I asked her what we could do for the poor dog. She said there was nothing we could do. I then, very politely, told her that I wasn't about to spend $250 if there was nothing I could do for the dog. So we have a lazy dog that can hardly move, she cries once in a while because of the pain (we give her Ibuprofen) and all she wants to do is eat. We take her on a walk and we end up carrying her home. To top it off she has this massive mutant mole on her right hind leg that grosses everyone out. So Lisa forwards me an email one day that has a link to a real age test for your dog. With my poor decrepit Bridget you can imagine that I couldn't pass up this test. I swear I answered every question honestly. When they asked if I take her to the vet I answered "never", when they had the pictures of the different sizes of dogs I selected the "fat" dog. When they asked what kind of dog food I fed her I selected "the one on sale". When they asked if she ate garbage I said "yes". You can imagine my surprise when they came back and said that Bridget was an equivalent of 52 years old and almost a full year younger than the average beagle her age. I hope that means that I'll have my dog around for a few more years but if she pee's on the carpet again I might just toss her into the canyon.

Water Heater

I got home late last night and while I was trying to eat my dinner at ten o'clock Alex calls from upstairs complaining that there was no hot water. Apparently he was trying to take a shower but no matter how long he let the water run it never got hot. I put down my fish stick and went out to the garage to see what was going on with the water heater. You can imagine my disappointment to see the water heater surrounded by a rapidly growing puddle of water. The water heater was twenty years old which I am told is about twice what you can expect from them. I tried to turn off the hot water line so we could at least have our cold water but unfortunately the valve was frozen. I filled some pitchers with water so we would have something to drink and then turned the main water valve off. This morning I skipped work and removed the old water heater but then I had a meeting at 11:00 that I couldn't miss. From my meeting I headed to Home Depot and forked over the better part of $500 and got a new water heater along with the necessary valves, hoses and pipe. I was quite surprised by how well everything went, I only had one unexpected "event". The first thing I did was put a valve on the water inlet line so I could turn on the cold water and flush the toilets and pour a drink of water. What I didn't think through was that I had turned on the bathroom sink to let air in and drain the water lines. Since the valve was one of those single taps, when I turned on the main water line the water went from the cold water line, through the valve and into the hot water line. From the hot water line it came back to where the water heater would have been. You can imagine my surprise when water came shooting out of the hot water line flooding the garage. It took my brain a moment to register that water was coming out of a line that wasn't connected to anything. Other than spending my kids college money on a new water heater the whole event went quite smoothly. We loaded the dishwasher, Lisa did laundry and Alex got his shower albeit twenty four hours late.

Running

Nearly 50 years ago on August 12, 1958 at 3:30 AM I entered this world weighing 8 lbs 10 oz. From all I've been told I ate quite voraciously and quickly grew in stature over the next several years until 1972 at which point I was 6' 3" weighing about 125 lbs. By the time I entered college I was weighing just under 150 lbs but when I graduated from college and the food supply grew I quickly jumped up to the mid 170's. That is where I stayed until I accepted a job offer at Qualcomm and that is when things started going downhill (or uphill depending on how you look at it). I recently read an article that said that people who sit for most of the day have a metabolism that is only half that of a person who stands most of the day. Well two things happened when I joined Qualcomm, for the first time in my life I sat more than I stood and I started traveling quite frequently. When I travel I essentially have an unlimited supply of food. You can imagine what happened when my metabolism was cut by half and I started eating a lot more. My weight gradually but surely climbed until at one point when it hit 220 lbs I scared myself. I quickly went on my version of a southbeach diet and lost a pound a day for a month bringing my weight down to nearly 190. Unfortunately I like to eat more than just cheese, tuna and sardines and just last Christmas as my weight was starting to creep back up I made a bet with Brandon. He too was bemoaning his sedentary life style so we made a bet to see who could lose the most weight by Ben's wedding. If I won he was buying me an In-n-out hamburger and if he won I was buying him a steak dinner. Seems a little lopsided but who's counting. Well Brandon promptly went back to school and lost his 15 pounds but I didn't change a single pound. I then made the tough decision that if I didn't want to eat less then perhaps I should burn more. I came up with an exercise program that sort of fit into my very busy schedule but running was not a part of it. I couldn't picture my flabby body bouncing down the sidewalk and I was also worried about my back. Well about this time Alycia texts me challenging me to run with her everyday that she was home for spring break. I figured that if she actually wanted to spend that time with me that I'd better get to the point that I wouldn't totally embarrass myself. I started running two miles once a week and riding my bike to work and back (26 miles) once a week. Running is probably a poor choice of words as Sarah can testify. She came with me on that first trip and she was kind enough not to make too much fun of me. Well by the time spring break came around and Alycia came home I could actually do the 2 miles without walking. To make a long story short, Alycia only ran with me once but I give her full credit for getting me started on a running program. My first 2 miles (in February) was about 25 minutes and today I hit a personal record (at least a record for the last 25 years) of 17 minutes. I still wonder if I'm going to make it the whole way but at least I'm no longer seriously worried about having a heart attack. Obviously there is no picture on todays blog because I'm now the guy I always used to make fun of. "Look at that fat slob running down the sidewalk. He looks like he could do with a little longer run."

Mom and Dad

Fifty nine years ago today a wonderful thing happened. My mother and father were married. What a wonderful heritage they have created. Everything I am I owe to them. My children will all testify that I quote my dad almost daily. I suppose I should write all of these quotes down. I don't even know how many there are. "Things like "measure twice, cut once". "If WE don't do it then who will?" "A half a**ed job will always be a half a**ed job." "If it doesn't fit get a bigger hammer." There are many others but you get the idea. Mom on the other had was not quite as eloquent but I clearly remember every day when I came home from school, I would walk into the house and call out "mom". I just wanted to know that she was there. Often there was the smell of bread baking. Just knowing that she was there made me comfortable and happy. I would make myself a sandwich (often with fresh baked bread) and sit down and watch Star Trek knowing that all was well with the world. I love these memories and my only regret is that half my children never knew my mother and the other half barely remember her. And that my father never got to see my children grow to be good responsible adults who love their Father in Heaven. Once in a while when I'm in a reflective mood however I can't help but feel that my parents are still there watching over me and giving my children the occasional helping hand they need to get through their trials. I guess they aren't that far away.

The New Family Crest

Some time ago a decided that I wanted to use the Leavitt family crest on various personal items. I had seen the Leavitt crest and I remembered it being rather boring. I went on line and confirmed that indeed it was quite boring. I then decided that I would make my own family crest. After all, someone had to make it in the first place and I believe I'm just as qualified to make a crest as he was. Well I went to work and what you see here is the result. Now before you laugh let me explain all of the various components to you. The wolf - The Leavitt name can be traced back to Normandy France (in the 1400's) where it was spelled Lovet. Lovet is derived from the Latin word for wolf. The Wolf on the left side of the crest symbolizes our heritage. I also believe it is a fitting symbol since wolves associate as strong family packs and while separate they are formidable creatures, when they fight as a pack they are invincible. The Latin word for wolf could also be translated as a fox too and I personally believe the women in our family are foxes. The Unicorn - On the right side of the crest is a unicorn symbolizing purity. The Hammer - The Leavitt's are builders. My father was a carpenter and my great grandfather was a blacksmith. I feel the hammer represents this well. We all have a desire to build and if we are not building tools and homes we are building character, relationships and people. The Atom - The atom represents our willingness to embrace technology. We all have a strong desire to understand how the world works. The Book - The Leavitt's love to learn. The Lord has commanded us to study all good books. The Sheath of Wheat - The sheath of wheat symbolizes our ability to bring forth the fruits of the field. We can cause the earth to bring forth it's bounty. This also symbolizes our ability and willingness to work in order to achieve something worthwhile. The Olive Branches - The olive branches represent our desire to live in peace. While we are willing to fight if necessary our first desire is peace, not only with our neighbors but also with nature. We are good stewards of the earth. The Banner - Honour, courage and virtue are self evident.

My Newest Daughter

I want to talk about my newest daughter. Her name is Sharley Cotter but on May 31, 2008 her name will be Sharley Leavitt. When our family moved to San Diego in 1992 one of the first families that we became friends with was the Cotter family. When Sarah was born it was Sharley's mother (Jean) that we called to come and watch the kids while Lisa and I went in to have Sarah delivered. I'm sure that Jean couldn't have even imagined then in 1993 that the little seven year old boy running around the house would eventually become her son-in-law. Sharley was born in 1998 and Ben has known her most of his life but Ben was friends with Sharleys brother Taylor so Sharley was just the annoying little sister. It wasn't until last summer after Ben got home from his mission that things changed. Ben and Sharley got to know each other over the summer during young adult activities. If you want to know more about Sharley she is keeping a blog for her and Ben at www.leavittlove.blogspot.com. It is actually Sharley that inspired me to go ahead and start my own blog. If you go to Sharley's blog she has a survey to see what school they should transfer to. You will notice that two schools are in San Diego and two are in Utah. I want all of you to vote for one of the San Diego schools. We want them to be close to home. I love Sharley.

Little Children

Aren't little children the most beautiful thing? Here are my two beautiful grandchildren. This was taken at Christmas time. Speaking of children, Lisa and I have an announcement to make. I guess it is more of a miracle since this wasn't supposed to happen. You guessed it... we're expecting a baby!!! I've been telling her for a while that I would love to have another child. She is obviously a little concerned being forty five years old and all but it will work out. Did you happen to notice the date on this posting? I think it said something about April first or in other words, April fools day. As much as I would love to have another child I think we will leave that job to the next generation. I still think I have the most beautiful grandchildren in the world. I still can't get over Sydney's hair doo. I think Evan is a little taken with her too. Evan was born July 15 and Sydney was born October 8.