(written on the 18th from notes taken previously)
Spent most of the morning to early afternoon helping my brother help his neighbor with a plumbing project. Perhaps I brought my luck with me, because the project went sideways multiple times.
There was all kinds of trouble brazing copper pipes together, until Richard decided to use his own torch and found that the torch the neighbor had been trying to use wasn’t getting hot enough. With Richard’s storage, the brazing was simple, easy, and quick.
There were also issues with the copper piping getting stuck inside the other copper piping, unable to properly remove it. Normally, it should just slide in and out easily.
Crazy.
After helping the neighbor with his plumbing, I noticed that he had a flat tire on his truck, and I had my tire plugging kit, so I offered to help him plug the tire. Gratefully, it went smoothly.
From there, I headed over to talk to somebody who is having a really hard time. We talked for a couple of hours, or so.
Life is hard.
Then I drove up to Midway to where my brother and new sister-in-law were having their family post-wedding get together.
At first, I didn’t know if I was in the right place. It was a beautiful mansion house up in the mountains, but there weren’t any cars parked there except an old truck which didn’t belong to any of my family members, so I was a little confused.
Eventually, I decided to just go ahead and go up to the house to see, and I didn’t see anyone I recognized so I came back down, but then I looked on the map and I was at the right place, so I walked back up and finally saw the back of my mom’s head through the sliding door, so I was at the right place. 😅
Turns out that the house has a massive garage, and everyone was parked inside. 🙃
Anyway, hung out with new in-law family, my mom, Jared, etc. Got a tour of the huge house, ate dinner, and then hung out by the fireplace outside with those who stayed for the night. Jared and I gathered wood to build up the fire a little bit, and we played games a bit outside in front of the fire.
Then hung out inside by the fire with the same people, playing two truths and a lie.
Little old me got a bit too adventurous in my two truths and my lie for the age group of the kids. 😅
I thought it would be fun to share some things that were more adventurous, but then I realized, a little too late, that the stories came out of my mouth so quickly and a bit uncensored, that I was sharing stories of being quite a bad example. 😬
I tried to walk back one of the stories a little bit by telling an addendum to it of how dangerous the Activity was, one of my friends almost getting cut in half (while train jumping as a teenager).
And there was another story about hitchhiking with police officers. I didn’t think before I started explaining the story when people asked about it, so I just started talking about what I was doing the way I’ve told the story in the past, which I think was always with adults, but I realized the moment the word hitchhike was out of my mouth that it wasn’t good because I was hitchhiking illegally.
I sort of rushed through it because I was recognizing the bad example that I felt like I was showing in the stories. Had I told the full story, it wouldn’t have been such a bad example, but I didn’t think about the entire story until well after I was done, and so I was just trying to be done and stop being a bad example. 😕
Nobody said anything, but I felt pretty crappy for being a bad example.
Took some pictures for Jared, so he would have some of the get-together. He had handed me his phone, but I wasn’t very comfortable using his because I wasn’t familiar with it, so I just used mine.
From Midway, I looked for places to stop and stay the night along Provo Canyon on the drive down, but eventually just decided to drive all the way back to the Maverick in Pleasant Grove.
Gratitude:
- I’m grateful I was able to help the neighbor with the plumbing and the tire.
- I’m grateful Richard was able to figure out the plumbing issue, so it wasn’t a wasted several hours of battling without making progress
- I’m grateful that I was able to drive safely all the way up to Midway with the exhaust issues. I forgot to mention that I removed the connection between the catalytic converter and the rest of the exhaust, so I wouldn’t blow the DPFE hose back off on the drive up the canyon, which I most certainly would have done had I not taken everything back apart that I had worked so hard to put together.
- I’m grateful that I was able to spend and enjoyable time with Jared’s new in-laws and my mom. As I mentioned before, I’m not much of a meeting new people person. Sometimes I come across that way because I’m able to mask my discomfort and be quite outgoing on the outside, but inside I’m uncomfortable. But it was good to be there and talk with people and get to know them, and I enjoy spending time with children. I love kids. Babies and toddlers scare me, but once they can walk and talk and understand and communicate, then I love spending time with kids.
Success:
- I guess I can say that I overcame my discomfort and went to the family party.
Improvement:
- Multiple times had the feeling to go ahead and sleep in my van at the mansion house instead of heading back down the canyon, but I figured I would test that feeling and go and leave anyway to see if anything bad happened. 😅
Loves.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 