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June 26, 2004

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I thought this circumstance had its little bit of irony and decided to share. This is an image of my mother standing beside her uncovered septic tank, which had clogged up, been leaking, and was causing her much grief.

As I was moving from Virginia to Arizona, I spent a few days in Texas for a meeting and to visit some friends and family. With Mother's Day being that particular weekend, I wanted to surprise mine by dropping in on her. Through phone calls I had coordinated with my sister, up in Oregon, to call mom and to insure that she was to understand that time was a factor and there was no way I could make any visit on my way through. She was also instructed to make sure that our mother was, in fact, going to be there.

So, on Sunday morning I headed from Dallas and down to my mother's house, a few hours south. I arrived and was greeted with such total surprise that I thought she was going to have a heart attack. But she didn't and she survived and we actually had a wonderful visit.

 Now mother's septic tank had been giving her problems for some time now, so my uncle Steve was there laboring over a hole he had started in the back yard. I reluctantly but immediately jumped in to the task and began to help dig. Before I knew it we had uncovered the septic tank, and the leak that quickly created a very unattractive sewage pond in the back yard. The stench was, of course, quite overwhelming. Scooping bucket after bucket of sewage water out of the hole we finally was able to get down to the damaged area of the tank so that it could be repaired. It was getting a little late in the day and we had no proper parts to finish the job so we did what we could for the time being and left it somewhat open. Now of course my uncle Steve had done most of the work and will continue to finish the unpleasant remainder of the task. So, even though I don't usually wear one, my hat is off to him. 

But now herein lies the irony of this whole story. As I was digging and scooping out the waste and  sewage, I couldn't help but laugh. I had decided to move out here to Arizona to help start a new company, with the task of processing sewage and waste into fuel. 

The whole thought of working with sewage is not the most glamorous thing to speculate. And I certainly thought I'd have just a little bit more time before I literally dipped my hands into it.