daverea.com

This morning, I’m deviating from my routine just a bit – and paying a visit to a local supplier instead of heading straight to the office. As a result, I’ve found myself with – holy wow! – a whopping 30 minutes of unexpected free time! What better time to update my dusty and all-but-forgotten weblog?

Yes, I know – it’s been a long time since I’ve posted. But I guess it’s not without good reason … we’ve been up to lots of good stuff! The office remodel is coming along great, and in about 10 days we’re hoping to have the new floor installed. After that, we lay in baseboard and install a new cabinet in the closet, and the room is finissimo! We’ve already finished the front foyer…

In between all this, Kelly has somehow managed to find the time to hunt down a new job! That’s right folks … now that she’s officially an NP, she even gets to use her skills! I couldn’t be more proud – she’s worked hard through years of grad school, and now she finally gets to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

Me, on the other hand? I guess I’ve been keeping pretty busy too – between 60-hour weeks, a trip to Detroit in February, lots of project work at home, and prep for an upcoming jaunt over to Germany, I’m managing to reach new heights of utter dependence on my PDA… [grin]

Of course, there’s lots to talk/complain/rant/whine about, and in the weeks since I last posted, I must have had a hundred experiences that made me think, “oh I should totally blog about this”. Unfortunately, most of them fade from memory (or, more accurately, are pushed out by a multitude of pending tasks) before they make it into WordPress. But the one I’ll leave you with today was too good to forget…

About 2 weeks ago, Ken (one of my fellow engineers at GM) and I were unpacking a large whiteboard to hang on the wall of the electronics lab that we co-manage and inhabit almost daily. After removing the board, I reached into the box to grab the plastic bag of hardware at the bottom. The box was about 4′ high, and caught the middle of my chest as I reached in – and as I reached for the hardware, I was surprised at just how strong this cardboard actually was! Reaching farther and farther, my feet started to lose traction on the dusty floor – and if you’d have walked into the lab that moment, you would have found me skidding frantically to keep from falling head-first into the box, shouting “insufficient traction! insufficient traction! get me outta here!” at Ken as he laughed uncontrollably – still holding the whiteboard and unable to come to my aid.

Eventually, he managed to put down the board, stroll over (after he stopped laughing) and pull me out of the whiteboard box by my collar. The moral of the story? Well, obviously, don’t cut a 4-foot-high box open at the rim then reach in for something at the bottom? But the deeper moral? I guess it comes down to this: Whatever hardship you must endure today, there’s a good chance it’s not as embarassing (or as funny, for that matter) as nearly falling face-first into a 5-inch-wide cardboard box.