Mr. State

Scott made it to state in wrestling. The big event was at UVU.

One of the challenges with these tournaments is that the organizers need to make sure the third-best wrestler doesn't get knocked out of the running by the end of the second round through an unlucky draw. As a consequence, the lowest qualifying wrestlers compete against the highest in the first rounds. This made it tough for Scott. He wrestled tough and avoided getting pinned, but lost on points in the first round. In the second round, he went the time and lost by a single point -- so close! At one point I though he was going to pin the guy, but clock expired on him.

While there, we also toured the stain-glass wall in the UVU library. It is both beautiful and interesting. They had young-women working there that could tell us what each picture represents (and are many), and answer any questions we had.

I've been interested in getting a sports-car for quite a while. Saturday Kim and I drove down to St. George to look at an S2000. Turned out it had been heavily modded, and it overheated on the short drive we took it on. They were supposed to follow up after they diagnosed the problem, but they have not called back. It was fine. Kim and I had a nice day together, and I got a good ride in.

While I was riding, Kim found a statue of one of my ancestors: Sarah Leavitt. My chain back to her looks like this:

Me -> Dad -> Stephen G Abbott -> Stephen Perry Abbott -> Mary Leavitt Abbott -> Lemuel Leavitt -> Sarah Sturtevant (Leavitt)

Obviously, I'm not exactly her only descent living today.

Some of the stories about what she and her neighbors had to endure to settle Santa Clara, Bunkerville, etc. are terribly humbling. It left me thinking about what things we accept as tolerable, normal, practical, or even possible, simply because our comfort zone is formed as a pretty narrow band around our actual life path. Most of our expectations and judgments are made relative to our own first and maybe second-hand experiences rather than against some set of basic principles. In some ways this probably frees us from wasting too much effort on each decision, but in some ways, it probably holds us back significantly.