Paradise Lost

This week brought another trip to Dallas for business. North Dallas and Plano are busier places than ever. There is major construction going on with 635. It looks like they are making it a double-decker freeway. Our hotel was next to a Benihana's and the consensus among my coworkers was to go there.  We walked to the restaurant that was on beautiful grounds with very healthy looking Koi.

  Inside was a picture of this guy with a Benihana Chef.

There were photos of other celebrities as well, from tiger Woods to Yoko Ono. Alas, when we discovered the wait was 1 hr for a table, we opted to go to Pappadeaux's instead.

My boss ordered a plate of oysters for the table. Needless to say I didn't participate.

I came back home on Wednesday evening. We discovered Friday morning that Tucson was covered in a smokey haze. A fire apparently started in the Rincon Mountains. I rode up on the hill to get above it. The city is in the haze in the background.

Haley returned on Saturday. Eric drove her to the airport. Eric stayed in Rexburg to seek an internship which we hope he obtains. Here we are a Buca di Beppo'...which Alison introduced us to.

I have been reading Milton's poem Paradise Lost written in 1660. John Milton wanted to write an epic poem on Christianity to match Homer's poems on Greek Mythology. It is not an easy read but it is fascinating how much Christianity at that time had in common with Mormonism. Having rejected many traditional beliefs in Hell, Satan, and pre-mortal life, modern Christianity is further away from Mormonism than Milton was. Paradise Lost appears to be near LDS views on the nature of the Godhead, Satan’s rebellion and the War in Heaven, the Creation, the fortunate fall, free will, obedience and repentance, the Atonement of the Son, and the Apostasy. Christ is described as the creator, having been appointed by the Father. Michael leads the war in Heaven with the Christ finally casting Lucifer out.

In his paper, Making a Mormon of Milton, John Tanner says some of Milton's beliefs are uniquely shared with LDS doctrine. Milton subscribes to the then heretical belief that the earth was not created from nothing. Milton also describes Adam learning of the future atonement of the Savior and the hope for redemption of mankind.

No One Likes a Frowny Face

Felicia made it back from Houston where she visited the grand-baby.

We were asked to substitute in primary today for Sis Moeller's class. We had one girl that answered every question, one boy who huddled in the corner to shy to say his name. and two others who fit somewhere between. We had them put a bean in their shoe and walk around. Having a bean in your shoe is kike when you sin. taking it out is like repenting.

Sin looks like this.

Repentance looks like this.

The monsoons have greened things up a lot.

As american influence fades under the current administration, the world has become more unsafe. We can expect many more frowny faces across the globe.

We Are the Brave

Felicia left for Houston to see Gordon, Alison, and John on Wednesday. 

The dogs had to deal with being home alone. They seemed to manage OK. They are extremely focused on food when I come home, especially Kirby. He bounces like Tigger until fed.

I mostly worked on writing performance reviews for my work section. I have 11 people to review and two need formal performance improvement plans based on their ranking. One, I think, is unfairly ranked too low.

I went for a short ride Saturday to break  up the day of writing reviews and to see what the monsoons had done to the trails.

This area had a slightly deeper groove making it a little trickier to turn out of at the top in order to avoid the rock.

There some rocks that rolled off the mountain into the trail.

Later I went to see the America movie by D'souza. The movie critics did not like it. The same critics loved Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 when it was released (go figure).  The objective of the movie was to counter college professors who believe America has been a force for evil that was built on the backs of black slaves, stealing land from the Indians and Mexico.

The show was in one of the small theaters but was packed, though mostly by people older than me. I sat between two older women. At the end, everyone clapped.  We started getting up to leave and this song by Madison Rising started during the credits. Everyone stopped, standing where they were, until the song was over.  It was moving.

Land of the Free and the Hope it will stay that way

In a continuation of the battery story from last post, I went to get in my truck to go to work Monday morning and the found that the doors would not unlock using the remote. I opened the door with the key and found that nothing electrical in the car would work. I opened the hood and measured the voltage across the terminals of the new, 2-day-old battery. It measured less than 2 volts. My first reaction was that Jiffy Lube had lousy batteries. My second reaction was, "How am I going to get to work?"

Felicia had already left to play tennis so I couldn't jump my truck and even if I did, the battery was so dead it may not even run. I had to turn to my motorcycle to get me to work.

At work, I started thinking that the chance of two batteries dying prematurely like that means that something is wrong with the truck. There is a parasitic current draw when the truck is turned off. A co-worker did a quick google search and discovered the likely culprit was the AC clutch relay being stuck on. Here  is a picture of it's location.

Monday night, I removed the relay and charged the battery with a $40 charger from O'Reilly Auto Parts.

I put the relay back in Tuesday and took the truck in to the Honda dealer. The service adviser said they found nothing wrong with the electrical, but had a big list of other stuff needing repair. I asked him what on that list he would have corrected if it were his truck.  He said that the only thing he would do now is replace the brake pads and the cracked rubber motor mount (few rubber motor mounts last 10 years in AZ heat).

I then asked if my electrical problem could be an intermittent AC clutch relay problem.  He said he didn't think that was it because the truck was turned off so the AC would be off and there would be no drain on the battery (not what people were saying on the Ridgeline owners forum). I thought I would not argue and would just buy a new relay at the parts department and replace it myself.  He called back a few minutes later and said he had talked to a few technicians and decided that they would replace the relay ($15 part) just to be safe.  All has been working fine since then and Jiffy Lube called me up to tell me they would be refunding me the price of my new battery based on the warranty.

On July 4th Felicia wanted me to put up the flag. Well I soon learned that the roof repair from last yeare resulted in tile overhang that prevented insertion of the flag pole into the bracket. I removed the bracket to move it and found the trim under the bracket needed painting. I though I found the right paint in the garage but when I applied it, it was clearly darker. It was the paint from our living room. Since I had it out, I touched up the living room and went back in the garage where I found the right paint. When the paint dryed, I mounted the flag bracket.

The next day came the monsoons.

We went down to CDO High School for fireworks the night of the 4th. We found the back of the truck to be a nice perch to watch from.

...oh! I found my hat that I thought was stolen. It was between my desk chair and the shredder.

"In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure." Bill Cosby