01/28/07
Elder A,
What’s new? I went to Ma’s and Pa’s yesterday and read your letters to them and to Staci. I brought mine over too so they could read that, so it was good times. Dad bought us Pizza. It was just us and Staci and
I finally finished the new dresser just before I sat down to start this letter. It’s 3:30 PM on Saturday. Man, that thing was a project and a half. It would have taken me just as long to build a brand new one from actually lumber in a wood shop. It’s crazy how long that took. Anyway, now I have to move the other one out of Aynslee’s room and into ours for Suzanne. I’m just downstairs cooling off right now cuz I’m sweating like crazy after the build. I need to get Minka to a Vet and get her spayed. She’s in heat now and Brinlee is wondering what all the peculiar behavior is about. She sputters and mewwws and pokes her butt up in the air and Brinlee says that Minka is sad. So we need to get that worked out soon, but the soonest we can get her in for that is the 26th of Feb. She’ll be out of heat before then and it’s still going to cost us over 70 bucks. What’s that about?
Well, let’s see, what do I need to catch you up on? Did I ever get you up to speed on my court appearance? I don’t think I ever did, did I? Well, we showed up downtown at the court building, and we all met out in the hall way outside the court room. We had 10 witnesses for his Zero witnesses. He requested that we all remain sequestered meaning that we had to all wait in the hall way until it was our turn to testify and then we could stay in if we wanted to. Well, one by one, everyone went in and it finally got to my turn, the last person to be called in, so I didn’t get to see any of the action. I was sort of the nail in the coffin testimony. But I wanted to see all the good action in there. I guess he got pretty upset in there and was pretty rattled by our attorney. He accused us all of lying when our attorney asked him to explain how ten witnesses all contradict his testimony. That was his response. They are all lying! Ha ha. He was giving me the death stare while I was on the witness stand. His attorney was the stereotypical bumbling doofus that you see in the movies when you get the cheapest lawyer you can find. He was fumbling through his notes, he was super old and cranky, he kept looking at his watch. Then he’d ask the most irrelevant questions. For instance, I’d finish with a statement that I am the HR Generalist for FranklinCovey and I’d go over some of my responsibilities. Then he’d do his notes search and look at his watch, then scratch his gray tresses and then ask me, so what you are telling me, is you are the HR person that is in charge of the HR responsibilities there. Is that correct? I’d say yes, that is correct. Then he’d say, can you restate your name for the records, and I’d say Travis Alexander. Then he’d search his notes again and say in an all knowing voice with a slight chuckle. We have not further questions your honor. I wasn’t sure if he was going to ask me if it’s true that I like to eat Cold Cereal or if I sometimes watch TV. But that’s how it went with every witness. His case was so weak. But then I asked our attorney at the end of the case what he though our chances of winning were and he gave it a 60% chance. Crazy huh? It’s because in the State of Utah, if it is medically related, which in this case it is with him trying to get his worker’s comp, even though he has holes all throughout his story, the judge makes a tentative decision and sends it to a medical panel, which is a randomly selected doctor or group of doctors and they review the evidence and medical records of what the doctors from each side found. We have 4 or 5 doctors who have concluded this injury is caused by repetitive heavy lifting like weight lifting (he’s a body builder) so it was obvious that it’s a result of all his heavy lifting just like he told a few of our pressmen. Anyway, since he found a doctor that said it could be a result of a work injury like he’s trying to claim. So when there are contradictory doctors findings, it goes to a random panel and then it’s those doctors decision and the judge will usually rule that way since the judge is no medical professional. So we are just slightly better than a 50/50 here. That is stupid. The funny thing is he hasn’t been working for almost a full year now and this is going to take 6 months to a year for a decision. He is just holding out for a free payout, but he’s gotta be out of money soon. His girlfriend is supporting him and their daughter. He’s such a bum. Now to keep up the image, he has to stay home still and not work because he knows our attorney has put him under surveillance. Ha ha. What a chump. So now he’s going to sit there on his can for another year and then be turned down anyway and he’s already lost all of our other cases now, so he’s going to not work for two years all for nothing. That’s when he’s really going to go postal though. We will be in trouble then. He is so desperate right now.
Well, I’m going to go take a shower and head to Johnny’s for a bit to take him his Christmas gift I never gave him and pick up my CD of 24 and Prison Break. My TraVo took a dump this week. I’m so bugged. I’ll tell you all about that when I get back and get back into this…
Ahhhhhhhight, I’m back. So yeah, I came in from work late Monday night (actually from Café Rio after work cuz I had dinner with Marnie, Clark, Brad and respective families. And I noticed that my TiVo light wasn’t on showing it was recording. That’s bad because I know 24 and the Apprentice are on at that time. So I turned on the TV and saw that the screen was stuck on a boot up screen. I unplugged it and gave it a few minutes, plugged it back in and it jammed up on that same page. I tried this a few more times throughout the night and even let it sit there all night and in the morning, it was still there. I called TiVo and had them jack into it from the network and they told me that my hard drive was fried. I can’t tell you how mad that makes me since I only got it in September. So they told me that they could take it back, but it would cost me 70 bucks to get a replacement. WHAT?? Screw that. So I actually dropped 130 and I’m getting 340 hours of recording capacity and still dual tuner action so I can record two channels at once. I originally had 80 hours, but now that I’m souping it up with a big 300 GIG bounder from SeaGate hard drives, (which are more quiet and reliable than this HP hard drive they put in, I’m going to be watching in style. Now I can record seasons at a time and watch them in the summer when TV gets lame. Ha ha. I love it. Anyway, the bummer deal is that I lost my
It’s probably better anyway now that I’m back in school. Did I tell you about that? I’m taking a PHR (Professional of Human Resources) certification course through USU which will get my certification by May if I can pass the exam. It’s way intense though, it will take 4 hours to pass the exam (if I pass). Only 64% of everyone who takes the exam passes it. I went into this class Thursday, which was my first day, pretty cocky. By the end of the 3 hours, I left very humbled. There are some very experienced and bright HR peeps in there who have been in the industry for 20 years, some of them. You have to have at least 2 years of exempt HR management experience to even take this course and take the exam. They gave us a practice test to give us some scope of what we know already. We had 10 minutes to take it. You could miss 5 or less and pass the practice test. I missed 6. I didn’t feel too bad because the smartest guy in the class missed 7. Yeah baby! That dude is one I was referring to as being in the industry for 20 years and he was answering questions that the instructor was throwing out earlier so everyone knew he was the braniac in there. So I feel alright about getting one better than him, but my ego took a hit that I didn’t pass the practice test. So I have a lot to learn from now till Mid April when the class is finished, then my testing window for the exam is the month of May. If I pass, I’ll be much more marketable and worth more money. So that will be good. Plus, if I pass work pays for it all. If I fail, I am stuck with the over $1,000.00 bill and I’m just left with 7 books to study when I need to know an answer to something. No pressure!!! Sheesh! I was having fun though. I was making jokes in class and was the most vocal person, so it was cool when we took time at the end of the 3 hours to organize study groups. The majority of the class gravitated to me, so it made it easy to form a group. Ours is the largest, which I’m finding is a good thing, since at least one of our group has quit the class the day after we had it. I’m sure we will see a few more have quit when we go back on Thursday. It was just really intense. Well, that one person who quit was going to be the host of our group at her work in their conference room. So now that she is gone, I stepped up to be the host of our group at my work. I have plenty of room in my old office across the hall from my new office. So I can accommodate our numbers there. So I guess I’ll play host to a weekly study group on Tuesdays and have class for 3 hours every Thursday. This is going to be pretty time consuming. I was a little tired to say the least on Thursday since that’s my early day at work. I was at work at 5:00 AM and by the time I got home for the day it was 10:15. That’s harsh! So I told my boss about it and he told me to temporarily suspend my early mornings for now. That will help tremendously. But my overly busy life just got WAY more busy. I don’t know how I can cram everything I’ve got going on right now. I seriously only have about 5 hours to sleep every single night anymore because that’s the first thing I have to sacrifice to get my stuff done. However, let me point out that I have not missed a single week of letter writing and my shortest letter was two of these single spaced pages typed in 10 pt. font. I almost missed a week, but I salvaged that with a letter in the mail since my internet was screwy. I have gone to moms and dads to get a couple of emails off too when the internet was being fussy. Oh, the other thing about this class is that I can’t miss more than 2 classes or I automatically fail. Holy COW!!! I am already going to miss one for sure in March for my Wicklander Training in Vegas. Did I tell you about that? That is going to be SO COOL!! I can’t wait for that. If I haven’t told you about that, let me know and I’ll give you the details. But I think I mentioned that in the last letter or the one before that. Maybe I haven’t. So missing that week will be one week and that only gives me one more day to miss with a family or work emergency. That’s not a lot of wiggle room. Crazy how strict they are about all this. Speaking of sacrificing sleep, on Thursday, like I said, I was up at 4:00 AM to get ready that morning and head in. But I have an employee who I’m laying off soon who has been in my office fighting for his job like crazy lately. But he was giving me the same old sob story with accompanying violin sounds and I was getting so sleepy. I think you know this about me, but if I’m stuck with a jabber jaw that just rambles on and I can’t get a word in edge wise, I’ll fall asleep on your bones even if I’m not tired. Well, he was going on and on and on and I couldn’t get a word in. I felt my eyelids getting so heavy and I was rubbing my eyes, rubbing my face, doing everything I could to help myself stay awake, but nothing helped. I stone cold dozed on his action. I think I was asleep for at least 3 or 4 seconds before I realized I was out and woke up with a start and jerked up in my chair. I totally over compensated and it was obvious I dozed on him. I felt bad, because here he is bleeding his heart out to me about losing his livelihood and his family is going to be effected, etc. I honestly do care about that stuff, but man, it looked like I could have given a lesser crap because of me falling asleep. I think it must have insulted him, but he just kept going with it after pausing for a couple of seconds seeing me jerk back awake. Ha ha. What a dork I am. I did that once before with a security guard at Utah Power. I fell asleep on him too cuz he wouldn’t shut his pie hole. After like 20 minutes of talking at me, I dozed and he woke me up. He asked me if he was boring me and I told him “you just put me to sleep fool, what do you think?” I thought it was obvious, but he posed the obvious question, so I gave him the obvious and honest answer. He didn’t talk much to me the rest of the night. He was temporary, so what did I care.
Did you get your photo card back from Ma and Pa yet? When are you sending home the next one? This one will have tornado action on it right? That will be cool to see.
I had lunch with Geegng this week at David’s Kitchen right by her Ghetto Fabulous projects. It’s right across from the century theaters and even though it’s a hidden little hole in the wall dive, and doesn’t sound like a Chinese restaurant by the title “David’s Kitchen” it’s really good Chinese. It’s my best kept secret and now Shelli is going to blab it to all her friends. I’m a little bugged about it, but I’ll get over it. Maybe if I liked her friends more, I wouldn’t mind. It was good hanging with Shelbs for a little while anyway. She really liked it too. We ordered some seriously spicy and hot stuff. You and Staci wouldn’t have liked it. It was definitely too hot for either of your likings. But Shelli and I were going to town on the hot. In fact, the waitress when asking Shelli how hot she wanted her hot sauce for her pot stickers, Shelli told her to keep going and the lady stopped and asked her “are you sure”?? Shelli told her to bring it on and the lady thought there was no way she would be able to handle it. She didn’t mind me telling her to keep it coming on the hot, but she called Shelli’s bluff. She loved it though. It was perfect. Our lips were on fire, but we loved every burning second of it! I didn’t know Shelli had such a taste for the hot stuff. That was interesting. I am still on my spicy kick however and have been loading it on. I think I am getting more and more desensitized, so it takes more and more for me to get the hot thrill. Weird huh?
I finally made it out of the online phone directory for my address. Can you believe how long that took? I should be off the Google directory by Tuesday. But finally I’m out of the system and off grid. Going off grid completely is so hard. You can’t do it easily or quickly. I should finally be out of the next phone books too. That was forever coming. Of course, the next phone books don’t come out till August. So I’ll be in there until then. You wouldn’t believe the fight I had on the phones this week between Comcast and the White Pages and Phone Directories company. It was so ridiculous. It’s too long of a story though, it would take 3 more pages here to tell you about it. So maybe in another letter when I have less to discuss. I need to get to your letters now and reply to those. I really need to study for my class though. I have to study at least an hour a day and I missed yesterday. So I’m already at 2 hours tonight to get caught up. So maybe I’ll pick this letter back up tomorrow.
Ahhhhhhhight, I’m back again, it’s 10:40 PM on Sunday night. Beth and Mom were over a while ago to see little Ayns-biscuit. That was a nice visit. I’m excited now that it’s a week away from the Superbowl. Oh, I guess I was going to respond to your letters when I left off, so let me get to that. I was just studying my brains out with this PHR stuff and I’m on information overload BIG-TIME right now. I’m not anywhere close to being where I should be in the material before my study group meets on Tuesday. I’m going to look like such a slag.
That’s too bad that Elder Herbs has been sick. Hopefully he’s better now and you are back at it 100% or more. It sounds like you made the best of your down time which is good. Nothing like a sick companion to temp you to fall into idleness and laziness. That’s what happened to my trainer. I ruined him. When I went down with my surgery for two weeks, he was a waste of space out there the rest of his mission. He played video games and read comic books while I read and memorized enough to qualify in our Mastery program and totally solidified my foundling testimony that I had just gained while in the MTC. Best blessing I could have had on my mission was that surgery. I look at that big scar above my hog as a reminder of the blessings I received at that time of my life. It’s awesome. It’s my favorite scar I have and has the best war stories associated with it. Too bad I can’t show it off to average folk when I discuss it. Anyway, as long as you use that time wisely, it can be a nice chance to get caught up on other things that the work can keep you from (at least the amount of reading, studying, and letter writing that you would like to do). So I’m glad you used that time wisely and did all those things. Speaking of letter writing, I got the Chode’s address for you…
Elder
Porirua 5240
Let me know if that doesn’t work or even if it does so I can report back to his dad. What is his Dad’s name again? Do you know? I always just call him Brother Johnson, but he calls me Travis and I only call him that because I don’t know his first name. Can you help me out there? Don’t pass that along. I’m kind of embarrassed that I don’t know it.
So what’s the latest on Baptist Basher Boy? Was it a set up or have you had some productive conversations with him? Update me on that situation. What’s the latest on Trey? Still procrastinating? Oh, I forgot to ask if it takes an 84 cent stamp to go to NZ. I guess it’s better to be safe than sorry, so go for it and ask
So we were sitting down at Ma’s and Pa’s reading your letters the other night and Staci asked what was up with the David and Goliath conversation. But she pronounced Goliath like GO-lee-uth with the annunciation on the GO. I ripped a gut and asked her if that was like arm-a-ga-DONE? Ha ha. She got mad and mom rushed to her defense and knocked me for the second time that night saying I was claiming I was perfect. I don’t know where that kept coming from, but anyway, it was funny all Travis bashing aside. Dad thought it was funny at least. So I explained to her my Gospel Jeopardy game I sent you and the family wants to play. So I’ll dig out my old ones too and we’ll play one of these nights we all get together. That will be fun. Maybe I should wait till you are back and we’ll all play together, unless of course I send out my other ones to you before, then it would hardly be fair. So what would you rather do?
Now on to your justification about Nephi. You make a compelling argument that the judges have accepted and you have been reinstated your 7 points. So well done justifying that. I took that question from some place and the answer was acceptable by what I could tell. I didn’t research it, I just blindly accepted it and wrote it into the game. So you have proven your mastery of the scriptures and I should send a correction to wherever I got that from. Well done! I told Dad that you sent a great justification and I could not negate that argument and he beamed and went on about how smart you were and that he would have never come up with that. So it was a proud moment for both of us to brag you up a bit on that. When I read that you had to send White Boy home I was shocked. I knew I was right about being the Opus Dei of LDS missions. Man! Nothing like a few screw up Elders who I’m sure abused their privilege of having MP3 players and listening to inappropriate music, but to punish the obedient missionaries for it is what gripes me. I’d find out who the disobedient fools are and give them a little “Thanks A Lot beating”! It would be cool and I think something that the Pres. Ought to look into if he had all of the music that he finds allowable, you know the 100 songs that aren’t outlawed by the mission rules, and put them on a computer with one iPod cradle so that all missionaries with iPods could sync to that and have only what is allowed. But that will never happen I’m sure. Oh well. I guess the only next step is to remove all radios from the mission cars if that hasn’t already been done. I don’t think it can by policy of the church fleet, but I bet that has been discussed out there. Nothing like removing free agency to help people stay obedient. That sounds like a perfect plan. Oh wait… I think we’ve been presented that option before. Hmmmm!
K, this is me stepping off of my soap box now and giving you a pat on the back for following orders and being 100% obedient. Good on-ya mate. You will be blessed and I’ll remain bugged for no apparent reason except I’m a jerk who “thinks he’s perfect” according to mom and Staci. I AM actually a jerk, but I never claim to be anywhere near perfect, so that hurts when I get that slapped in my face!
Where did you get the stamps you have been sticking on your envelopes? I saw the Green Arrow on my last one before Plastic Man here and thought that was cool since he’s been all over Smallville this season. You will like that action. But I figured you probably didn’t know about that, so it must have been a coincidence and then I see Plastic Man, so you must have just got a book of super hero stamps. They are cool anyway. Your envelopes on the other hand are not. They have the same glue used in those glue traps for mice. Seriously! I sometimes get your letter stuck on it as I’m pulling it out and it rips the letter apart. It sticks to the paper so hard that when I pull the paper away, it tears holes in the paper and leaves it behind in the glue. If I try to get that off the envelope, my fingers stick to it, then my legs, then my head until finally, I’m stuck in a position resembling Michael J. Fox sleeping in Back to the Future and calling for someone to come rescue me. This last one I opened, no one was around and I nearly had to chew my own leg off to get out and go for help. I honestly don’t know where those envelopes come from, but they should send some boxes of those to
Time for your Quote of the week. I bet you are wondering if I can pull a reasonable quote out of my hat every single week for another year and a half, aren’t you? Be not dismayed, Doubt not, fear not! I will come through, just as I won’t ever miss a week writing.
“When I was a missionary in
-Gordon B.
What a stallion. What an attitude to wake up with every day and recognize how blessed he and his companion were to be in the service of the Lord every day for two short years.
I hope you continue to think that every single morning and recognize how rewarding it is every single day no matter how blessed you were that day, or how persecuted you were that day. It’s all rewarding and educational no matter what you encounter, every single day to some degree.
I love you Mike. Keep making us proud and putting in your best effort. I can’t wait to hear from you again. The last letter and e-mail were just what the doctor ordered. Mom and Dad and Staci and Shelli for that matter all feel the same way. We love to get together as a family and pour over your letters and talk about you. So keep them coming and keep encouraging those back home as the Spirit dictates.
Talk to you again next week.
Love,
Trav
posted by Travis at 10:34 AM
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