The problem that preceded that was when I got to work and turned on the computer and then tried to connect to various systems so I could track what I was working on, I discovered that none of the emails were working and my computer was screaming and telling me I didn’t have any rights to connect to the databases I needed to. So, I did some googling and then downloaded some files only to have to go to the tech guys and have them remove the programs and reinstall them because the software updaters decided my machine didn’t actually have the software installed on them even though I’ve been using the software for a while. It was, to say the most, on the more annoying side.

Once the computer problems were taken care of my manager sat down next to me and I went through the various projects and solutions that had been decided upon and he was actually quite impressed as I filled him in on the various things and then told him I had to go and take Erin to work. It was an okay morning. Tomorrow morning will consist of me setting up an appointment with a lady who insists that her computer karma is so bad that anyone who works with her has their computer crash within two months. This does not make me very excited since she emailed me and wanted us to register a domain for her project. Truth told, she gets a specific look and a specific extension to the schools website.

With all of that said, we discovered that there are other medications that might help Erin only to further discover that the pills, for one month, would cost $244.00. This was not excitement. We get to discuss this tonight and decide if the expense is worth it on top of which I get to finish a bunch of paperwork and find pay stubs and such. All in all, should be interesting.

School finished last Thursday with finals. It starts up again on Tuesday September 2. This should be fun except I also get to go out and finalize some paperwork so I can make some changes to my fall schedule. Specifically, I need to switch on 400 level class with a 300 level American Literature class. Regardless, within four months I will be done at BYU and moved on to other things. Should prove to be exciting – all-in-all.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

First, you will probably note some downtime, visual changes of the website over the weekend. On top of which, you will probably note the URL changes when you try to surf to sw-c.com. sw-c.com may start redirecting to johnhattaway.com over the weekend. This is a thought out and intentional move. When it happens I will probably add a way to add it as a bookmark relatively easily.

Second, for those that have not taken note, we (Erin and I) have registered and started a website for baby hattaway called codename: CAMPER. This website requires that you have a username and password (that Erin or I need to authorize and we are being pretty liberal, right now, for those we know and love and who have been, in different ways, a part of our lives) and as such, you should go over and sign up soon. Granted, we will not actively update before codename: CAMPER is born, but that is the place where baby pictures, videos and information will be shared.

Also, for those who surf to other sites I host (e.g. Natural Sceptre, Lisa Ann Writes, In Order to Write, and Rancho Sierra Vista) there will be some downtime and some restore time after I make some backend, you don’t need to know about them, changes to the core hosting account.

You have now had fair warning.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

This is a quote from the Director of the China Internet project at the University of California who also happens to be a Chinese dissident. The context for the quote is how China chose to portray itself visibly through a child actor who lip-synched words to the Chinese National Anthem and as a result of China using computer modification (and in some cases pre-recorded fireworks explosions) during the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games. I read the article at Yahoo News.

Essentially, what was decided was that instead of a little girl who was a good singer (for those who watched the opening ceremonies, the Chinese National Anthem) and who also was esthetically pleasing, China chose to incorporate two little girls, one who was physically attractive and one who was musically talented. The physically attractive one was a good little actress while the musically talented one had a face that was too round and had uneven teeth. Two things I would’ve noticed and quickly. In the light of international scrutiny, you end up with the comment above.

What is ethics? And what constitutes ethical?

These are two questions that keep coming up in my mind as I walk around campus, go to church, drive my car, and in a thousand different ways from work to homework to merely how I choose to interact with people. A few months ago I met and interviewed a gentleman who is a psychiatrist and who has refused to advertise or allow his name be associated with overt attention to what he does. And yet, he is the person the National Institute for Health came to when they were putting together the ways in which mental health patients should be treated and has a good and strong grasp of his field. And yet, because he grew up in an era when doctors of any ilk (and lawyers) did not advertise, because it was unethical, he’s never been super successful and as a result, and even with his kids trying to promote his work, this particular psychiatrist will die never having been recognized for the work he has done.

Not necessarily a bad thing. It beats a lot of other things, like being stung one hundred fifty eight times by a swarm of killer bees. And yet, what makes one psychiatrist who committed himself to the Hippocratic oath, bound to not advertise and not publish and not share to the point that, even though he is literally the top of the field, he is also a relative unknown?

Doctors today, and lawyers, and other professions that traditionally do not advertise, advertise all the time from accident lawyers to patent lawyers to doctors who will perform optional surgeries and etc.

The point in all of this is not that people are people or countries are countries; but rather that there is some standard in the world that is meant to be universally understood that also states, when putting on a show, that all elements of that show are meant to be completely real and when you see a little girl singing, that little girl should actually be singing. Here’s a clue, when you are performing, in many cases (and this came out about ten years ago and was a big problem) you are merely lip-synching to the lyrics. The recording may be of you, and you are live on stage (if a performer), but because of other concerns being live does not mean singing live. There are laws in some states (United States) that protect the audience from this and force the performer to actually sing, but does that make lip-synching an immoral act? I don’t think so.

In the case of the Opening Ceremonies, China had specific imagery and specific messages they wanted to portray. Part of that is in the appearance of the children that will participate, part of that is with the women who are brought together to help portray the look and feel of the Olympics, other parts are in the pyrotechnic displays that were put together to help illustrate the history of China and its influence on the world (e.g. paper, fireworks (gunpowder) and more). The outcome was a visually stunning display with a very entertaining opening ceremony. In short, China did a very good job at what they were setting out to do.

However, does creating an image to portray the best of a nation a bad thing? I don’t personally think so, nor do I believe that China has broken some universal ethics rule. In fact, I think China did exactly what they thought was necessary and proper to put on the best showing possible. And yes that is what the opening ceremonies are, a really big show. They wanted to look good. They wanted a specific image. And they wanted it to come off without looking bad.

All of that is exactly what happened. I applaud the Chinese government and all of the workers. I don’t care that some of the elements were manipulated. I don’t care if one little girl or another was chosen to sing and dance. And I particularly don’t care that someone who is upset (or lots of someone’s) with the Chinese government refuses to see the positive aspects of the show.

Consider, if you were to pay $100.00 for a ticket to a Broadway show and then expect that show to be completely, 100% authentic, original, and with no special effects, you would come away thinking you’d been ripped off at the end of the night because all you got was a bunch of actors dancing and singing without microphone and without fanfare. Audiences expect performances that are well-rehearsed, have fanfare, that you can hear, and that look and feel nice and pretty. They don’t care about the little girl who was not as attractive, nor do they care about computer-generated images.

The outcome is that China did exactly what it set out to do and applying the vague notion of ethics to the production of something that is meant to entertain is inappropriate and underhanded. In short, it is actually unethical.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

There are some caveats with the website. First, we are requiring that people have a username and password to get to any of the content. If you were to go to http://www.codenamecamper.com/ it would take you directly to the ABOUT page. Without the login you will get no further.

Once codename: CAMPER comes along we intend to post pictures, information, and videos of our little boy.

What all of this means is that if you know Erin or I and you want to have any information about codename: CAMPER then follow the link, sign up, and we will authorize you. If we are not sure who you are we may email to find out more info, but for those whom we know and love and keep in touch with (or are just related to) then it should be pretty easy to gain access.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

This is our second visit to labor and delivery. The first visit was just after the point where codename: CAMPER had gotten to the point that if he had to come early, even though he would’ve spent time in NICU, he (most likely) would’ve survived. Our nurse, that day, attached Erin to some monitors and did some checking (they have to check to see if the cervix is at all dilated) and then determined that the extreme-dehydration Erin was experience had not induced pre-term labor. Thank goodness.

However, yesterday it was fluid leaking that caused us to run into the hospital and this time have a couple of nurses monitor and check to make sure that codename: CAMPER was okay, not ready to come (at 33 weeks) as well as mom (a.k.a. Erin) was also doing okay. Even though it seemed silly to head back in and sit in a delivery room (very nice, by the way), it was reassuring to know that Erin is fine, codename: CAMPER is fine and we are still on path to have the baby next month when he is supposed to come.

One aspect of what happened yesterday, answering something like four million questions, was how in all that is real a doctor was going to be able to deliver a baby on that bed. Let me tell you, the bed converts into a delivery area that, really, has to be from the mind of some sadist who thought to himself (or herself in this equal opportunity offender world we live in), “How can I make this process as embarrassing and uncomfortable as possible?”

As a sad side-effect, when I saw what was happening I hid behind a book rather than next to Erin’s side. Hopefully that won’t happen again. Even though my psyche does not include a desire to see the delivery process happening and I have no desire to cut the umbilical cord and I don’t want to see crowning nor do I care a lot about any goo or goop, I do want to be there with Erin while all of this is going on. Sure, some people want the full experience (if only once, or if you’re my dad, with as many children as humanly possible), but I am happy to be with Erin, to hold her hand, and to encourage her to keep going. Crazy, I know.

I think the point to this is to say, yes we had a scare last night. Yes, Erin is okay. Yes, the baby is okay. And yes, we are still on for delivery codename: CAMPER next month. And yes, his due date is next month.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

For some religious sect to want to separate away from the idea of mega-church and more more in the direction of an actual religious sect that exists outside of a single pastor or a couple of pastors (and interestingly enough, when you have more than one it is often husband and wife teams), the person with the idea or inspiration would have to teach other people how to teach congregations his or her or their message. In this case, what you get is a church (and not a mega-church) that has multiple congregations all teaching, more or less, the same message. Instead, what happens is that you have one giant congregation with a single individual (often) teaching a single message to a single group that will ultimately disband at the death or too blatant disgrace of the pastor.

According to Rebecca mega-churches have three requirements to be declared a mega-church. She lists two and forgets the third. One of the requirements is, obviously, size. The second is that the building is clearly visible from an interstate highway. I did some quick searches and found trends among mega-churches but no official requirements to be declared a mega-church. And I learned that most of these congregations require a 100 dollar-per-year dues paid by all members, making this more of a popularity club than a religion.

Really quickly, 1000 times 100 equals 100,000, meaning that 100,000 people, just in dues and not in collection plate donations, are going to pay the mega-church one-hundred thousand dollars per year.

The point though is that if you are serious about your message and you have the congregation and money isn’t the primary concern, then teaching other pastors your message and establishing other congregations leads to a more realistic approach to religion than having multi-thousand member congregations.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Imagine being the pastor for something like 10,000 members. One aspect of this is quite literally that you would have to have an arena to house that number of people in. And in some cases (I recall a news article about one mega-pastor in Houston buying an arena) they house their congregations out of arenas.

What is the purpose?

I don’t really know. I can suppose that the notion of popularity is one aspect of becoming a mega-pastor. Tell the people what they want to hear and in a way they will respond to and they will come flocking. Be good looking on top of that and you are a rock star. My question, though, deals more with the idea of what religion is meant to accomplish than whether or not a mega-church or mega-congregation or mega-pastor is a good idea.

Consider how a religious movement starts. Martin Luther, as a catholic monk, reviewed the policies of the Catholic Church at the time he was alive, read the bible, and then wrote up 92 thesis (and posted them on the door of a church, because that is how public debate was started) that suggested the Catholic Church needed to fix aspects of its religious practices in order to be closer to the church at the time of Christ – or the Church Christ established. As a result, the Catholic Church took the 92 thesis poorly, wanted to have the man killed, he escaped, changed his name, and translated the bible into German all before the Lutheran and Protestant reformation, the former of the two having been growing for a period of years to centuries, finally took off allowing for offshoot religions to begin.

A religion literally starts with an advocate for the religious beliefs and a group of followers.

When I was in high school, a group of friends and I started the Cult of the Golden Hubble. The Golden Hubble was a friend whose picture I had taken and developed (in black and white) and we all started the process of using him as (jokingly) a deity to monitor and observe and emulate. Truth told, it was a joke and no one actually worshipped or emulated the individual, but that doesn’t change the nature of what was happening. The Monty Python movie The Life of Brian takes the story of Christ, removes deity, adds in a dude named Brian, and makes him a religious icon. It’s satire on modern religion, but rather accurate satire.

In the case of the Golden Hubble, we had someone to deify, we had at least one advocate (me, there were others, actually), and we had a group of followers. The outcome was a satirical group that was making a statement on religion without ever realizing a statement was being made and more than fifteen years later, that statement is being assessed by one of the participants in the movement.

The point, though, is that popular preachers have motivations. One such motivation, when a preacher is building a congregation with the express intent to simply build a large congregation, is money, and then motivations can (and should) be called in to question. Back in the 80’s and 90’s as the televangelists of the day started to become more and more popular, the people who were worshiping God by tuning into their television programs were also more curious about the lives of the individuals who were telling them how to worship. As a result of that, scandal often follows the public individual and man sexual and financial scandals followed most of the televangelists.

Personally, I don’t see a lot of reason for any single preacher to need or want a congregation that requires a stadium. There is no way that preacher can interact with a sufficient number of individuals to make the group, as a whole, feel as though they have an intimate relationship with him. Granted, I am applying a level of intimacy to an individual in part because that is what religion (to me) is about: knowing who my leaders are and having the opportunity to speak with, question, and getting to know them. If that doesn’t exist, then what I am doing is merely standing on the sidelines and watching the action. As for congregations that fill a stadium, the outcome is not personal fulfillment, but something closer to an individual who attends church simply to give their money away and to say they attend church.

This actually leads to the notion that if popularity is an aspect of mega-churches and mega-pastors, then the other side of the coin is that one of the reasons a pastor would be interested in creating a church so that he or she could collect a much larger income than a smaller more intimate congregation would afford. Small congregations have a tendency to lead to small income and a small house and a small following. If popularity is sufficient then at what level of popularity does that sufficiency reach its climax? Is it when a stadium is filled or is it when a single weekly take on donations to the church and, by extension, to the pastor of the church, exceeds a million dollars.

The issue, though, is not so much that pastors are popular or that they preach in large stadiums or buildings or that the people who follow them don’t seem to care whether or not they can actually get to know the pastor, but that the individual is popular enough to need a stadium and that donations to the church are enough to pay for the stadium and give the pastor an income that exceeds what members of his or her congregation makes. In short, mega-churches are not about religion or worship but about entertaining people sufficiently so that they pay the pastor to do what he does and the people can feel better about attending church once a week.

As a result, I find mega-churches to be somewhat on the disingenuous side of the religious equation. The individual who is starting the sect (essentially what a mega-church is) and who is telling people how to worship God (the purpose of a Christian religion) who is doing what he or she is doing to be popular and to make money then the mega-church and the mega-pastor is a farce or the pastor is trying to start a new religious movement and his actions (and subsequent scandals) will pan out in his favor rather than against him.

However, I predict that this current crop of mega-churches and pastors is going to end up a lot like the televangelists of the 80’s and 90’s and will lose their following. People will look at books on how to live their lives with the pictures and names of these mega-pastors and will make a rude noise. And ultimately, the religion and the desire for people to attend church and be better will ultimately win out over the popularity of an individual who is really just into the action for money and not to help his congregation grow closer to god.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

On the other side, I’m also not updating In Order to Write. You’d think with the increase in writing fiction I would have more about writing fiction to share and granted my mind has been thinking along those lines, the outcomes are not produced and I may come back and work through those ideas. Though, given a history of publication I may redirect those to a publishing market as well.

Simply, you cannot expect to be the only voice in a particular field, nor will your voice exist as anything other than another voice with another point-of-view on how to write something.

On another front, I discovered at work that I am the preferred point-of-contact between the departments and the web team. One of the reasons for this is that I have the ability to communicate in a way that people understand and can translate between techs and department people and find out what is really meant. This was illustrated this week when I was sent to a meeting with the PR office and discussed a process whereby changes needed to be tracked between content owners, the web team, and the PR office – and from this we can also add the designated Editor (currently an older-than-dirt woman who exists outside of all departments and reports only to the dean and who, if she dies tonight, will no longer have a job that will, in turn, be given to some twenty-something either in school or barely out of school).

During that meeting we discussed a couple of things. First, that we were developing a specialized CMS (content management system) for the school I work for. Second, that we were developing an Editor-Specific page to track changes. And third, that the noted process needed to follow a specific course which could, or could not, include the web team, though, in all of this, our role has turned in to more of a development cycle than anything else.

With all of that said, because I understand (to some strange extent) how processes are meant to work, and I can interpret what people say into what they are most likely meaning and because I can then take that information and share it with the people that need/have to do the work, the outcome is a better singular understanding of what is meant to be happening than the individual groups may possess. One of those pieces of understanding is that the older-than-dirt editor is not even applicable to the conversation even though the more this is NOT ACTUALLY pointed out to her, but that her position is placed where it should be in an organizational chart without actually having her report to the department she is meant to be reporting to, she gets mad and (yesterday) started yelling at everyone that they think she is stupid and (apparently) by not accepting her edits of content they are actually saying she is stupid.

All I could say to my coworker was that had this been a non LDS university where both the university and the individual college had faculty senates that the conversation would’ve been a lot worse with more yelling and even more hurt feelings. The outcome was that my coworker returned this morning and was trying to adhere what the EDITOR wanted and what the DEAN said needed to happen outside of what the workflow actually represented. Throughout the day I kept asking, “Want to talk about it? Work through your process with me?” and after a couple of hours of this, he finally sat down and talked through what he was doing. What this eventually boiled down to was there were two objects he needed to program and when I drew out a series of work flows and showed him what he was thinking and what I thought he should be thinking; suddenly, things started making sense for him and he was able to move forward.

The consensus among all this is that had I been in the meeting where this was discussed, and because the person who was there to illustrate what I was telling people didn’t have the same ability to share what needed to be shared, part of the outcome may have been more hurt feelings and a much longer (than necessary) meeting. Whether or not that is true, I don’t really know. What I do know is that information was not transmitted and when the flow was shown and person specific requests made, the outcome was that the workflow equals what I said it needed to with some elements existing so that the EDITOR would feel as though people were taking her seriously and didn’t think she was completely stupid.

All-in-all, I think our original plan, which essentially was a spam bomb of pages to edit, would’ve been more effective and far more useful, but then I am not the one who makes those decisions. I am the one who translates what is happening with people into what needs to be happening and taking the actual message and helping them to develop what they really want rather than what they think they are telling us they want.

Granted, the majority of that only leads me to wonder if I have what it takes to find investment capital, hire some programmers, and develop a cross internet-desktop application and then market it. Which is appealing on some level and scares me on other levels. I sometimes think about asking some of the more successful (in business) friends (as determined by substantial monetary accumulation) to find out a) what they think; and b) the direction I might decide to go in.

What does all of this mean? Well, probably very little. It doesn’t, immediately, affect Erin or I or codename: CAMPER. I still plan to write. I still plan to grad school. And I believe Erin plans to do the same thing. On the whole, moving is not going to change and if I were to somehow find investment capital and decide (against what I think of as better judgment) to move forward with this whole application development thing, then that (I would hope) would be something Erin and I and different advisors and such would talk about.

One aspect to this is a business plan that I’ve thought about working through and starting to write out. I may decide to move in that direction and we may decide to move in that direction; but on top of that I have some theories I am working through and fiction. The principle theory deals with age and I do, occasionally, share aspects of that with people; and I believe it does need to be written down….

I guess one of the aspects that affects me is that I am this no one sitting on the floor of a basement apartment that we can (some months) barely afford. How can this individual (whose head I am in) have theories and a unique software platform and the ability to write fiction and then (hopefully) publishing that fiction. There is also the possibility that I will maintain course and focus on fiction and publishing and little else and none of the above (except areas of fiction) will really matter.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

The problem with that idea is that I returned to Utah and started asking girls out. They all rejected me. To put that in some measure of perspective, I went on one date in New Hampshire and then had all the girls I asked out reject me. To put that into perspective, I dated way too much in Layton and even had a couple of girls that, in my opinion (and evidence suggests this might be correct) were interested in more than just friendship with me but, for reasons that I don’t need to go into, felt that I shouldn’t get too serious about any of them. Which led to the decision on Range Road Six in Pembroke, NH where I was speaking to my mother and where, unofficially, a year and a half later Erin and I decided to get married and then undecided to get married a little over a week later in Utah, and I said, “What would it hurt if I reapplied, one more time, to BYU?”

Those twelve words were fateful as I focused all my attention on work and moving back to Utah with the outcome that my degree take presence. Once back in Utah I had to kill about five months working before starting BYU which also equated to finding a place to live and finding work. In January of 2006 I started school and decided to take a class called Wilderness Writing taught by a man who would suggest, later in the semester, that I speak with a philosophy professor who was teaching the Poetics of Writing Fiction (or Moral Storytelling, which was really the focus, even though he was rather insistent that his poetics would make anyone into a fiction writer) and as a result of that, and a summer working and school, I started the philosophy professors class where a group of about twelve students gathered in a conference room in the basement of the Humanities building and where this girl from Massachusetts introduced herself and I took note and thought, “I need to get to know her.”

The problem, for me, was that I was tired of being rejected and put off actually meeting the girl for a few weeks as we worked through the ideas of moral story telling and outlining and plot statements (which according to far more reputable people should be less than 25 words; but as a result of the requirements of the class ended up being more than 80 words on average). Anyway, we talked about Christian movies and major studios who were now supporting the movement toward Faith centered movies; and as a result of all of that, I asked if Erin was planning on seeing the movie we were discussing and if she was planning on seeing whether or not she cared if I went with her. As an aside, worst movie ever.

Point being, and even though it was, perchance, the worst method of asking someone out in the entire history of all mankind, Erin agreed to go with me and then proceeded to ask her mother and roommates and any other female whether or not this was a date and when everyone said, “Yes,” she still wondered until I paid for everything and then made her drive my car home from the movie and our subsequent trip to Borders where we had hot chocolate and talked about life and plans and other things.

Erin, prior to coming to BYU, had spent eighteen months in England serving as a missionary in the London England South mission and had been home for about four months. Which is something that I most likely ignored (as anyone who really knows me knows that I am somewhat critical of age and length since returned missionaries have been home and I can go on). Before her mission, Erin went to the University of Scranton in Scranton, PA and had lost her scholarship causing her to need to look for another school, BYU, and then to attend.

Where I knew what the class was meant to be, Erin took the class because it was an elective credit and stayed in because she needed the elective credit. When the professors (there were two, one philosophy and the other psychology or therapy) started teaching it was rather surprising that the number of people in the class remained relatively static and among those was Erin who had a story idea that consisted of something very near and dear to her heart. Whereas I was simply interested in telling lies and writing fiction, which, ostensibly means fiction is a bunch of lies. True story. Find the contradiction in that statement.

Before, I think, either of us knew what was happening, we were almost always together and found ourselves constantly looking for reasons to be together. On top of which, Erin would think, “John hasn’t heard from me in forever,” which meant about twelve hours and would call me. The outcome of which was that I had this girl almost constantly on my mind and we found ourselves finding reasons and excuses to spend more and more time together. All of this brought us to the holiday season where we spent Thanksgiving, the night before, and the days after, together. And then, when it was Christmas time, I made arrangements to fly to Massachusetts (thanks Rebecca) to spend New Years (and my birthday) with Erin and her family. During that trip, we finally talked about getting married and decided that was the direction we wanted to go; and I spoke to Erin’s dad and asked, more or less, for Erin’s hand in marriage. That night Jim (Erin’s dad) told Lisa (Erin’s mom) that I’d asked. This had Lisa in Erin’s room early the next morning telling Erin what I’d done the day before – which, coincidentally enough, I’d told Erin late the night before that I’d done it so there was no surprises.

Jump forward for the both of us two weeks and one Erin freak-out later, and Erin, after we’d driven to Park City and back to Provo (I’d intended to get milk shakes at the Dairy Keene in Heber City and when Erin started talking and I realized it was important and that you don’t stop driving when important things are being discussed), Erin re-proposed to me and we immediately called my mother, who was on the first third of my parents mission and who’d stayed awake thinking there was a phone call coming, to tell her that we were now officially engaged. My dad thought we should get married in February (and this was mid-January), we said no and proceeded to talk about the dates.

Time elapses and the outcome was that we decided that August was the month and the third was the day and because, in February, I called the temple and scheduled the sealing room for the third at ten a.m. All of this then caused the hard part, not breaking the rules so we could be married in the temple and learning more about each other and finding Erin an apartment that was not where she was living and then I had to move books and bookshelves and DVD’s and furniture (to include the bed) and other things so that, when we did get married we had a place that was ours.

All of this led to August 2nd and Erin and her family driving down to Manti independently of me. I drove with my mom and rented a room all by myself (after inviting Jordan to stay with me if he ended up driving down) and then spent Tuesday night with my mom and Erin and her family where we went out to eat, had father’s blessings and then to Wal-Mart and back to where my parents were staying and finally Erin back to the Rose Cottage and me back to my motel room.

The next morning, after I woke up, Jordan (who showed up sometime after one a.m.) said, “Dude, I’ll go with you if you want to run away.”

I said, “No thanks,” and showered and shaved, repacked my things in Erin’s car, and then drove to the temple.

All in all, by ten thirty on August 3rd, Erin and I were married and pretty quickly were shuffled outside to take a million-and-one snapshots of the newly married couple, family, friends, and all sorts of other things. And then there was the luncheon, reception, driving, Cheetos, and eventually our first night together as a married couple where we got to bed after midnight (lots of driving) and had to get up before five the next morning to be at the airport and on a plane so we could honeymoon in Maine.

Ultimately, Erin and I have been married for a year and even though it has not always been smooth sailing, and yes we have had some problems that needed sorting out, we have kept the lines-o-communication open and have worked things through. Now, Erin is pregnant, we are expecting codenamed: CAMPER in a little under two months, and we are excited for the next year and more.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly

Anyway, Erin remained sad long enough that I continued to look for pool opportunities, specifically motels at this point, when suddenly and unexpectedly I noticed that Springville had a pool and the cost was less than the more local pools and instead of being closed, the pool is open until 9 p.m. and so I turned to Erin and asked if she wanted to drive down to Springville to swim or was she too sad.

The outcome: we went to Springville and swam for anout forty-five minutes and when we got out I felt 100-plus pounds heavier than before I got in. And all because Erin got sad.

John Hattaway | smokingpen | Alicia Grey | Clockwork Princess | Cassandra West

Real Heroes Fly