Observations of the Observant

At work the electric truck design team in housed in the East Office Building. This grand ediffice is a prefab building. Everyone calls it the "trailer." I call it the "back forty." It isn't bad. It has a lunch room, a couple conference rooms and a sea of cubicles. The men's bath room has 4 urinals and 4 stalls. The 1st urinal is a kid height and the next three are higher. Not progressively higher just one heighth but higher than the first. They each have a little metal privacy partition mounted to the wall. So they offer decent privacy to the male taking care of business. These are manual flushers. In general the users of the bathroom use urinals 2 and 4.

A couple months back I observed this trend and decided that number 3 was being neglected and would never be worn out at the same rate as 2 and 4. So I started using number 3. Oh boy! That throws off the every-other-one double the privacy trend. So now to my amusement some co-users, after a moments hesitation will go to the low rider number 1. I have even noticed a couple people going to a stall. Now and then the really bold and secure person will go right to number 2 or 4...

Now this phenomenon is interesting because in lots of the country's airport rest rooms there are no dividers. In some really old places it is the stainless steel trough. So what do these people do in those cases? Is this the male ego in action?

Maybe it is the whole homophobia thing. When taking post Boy Scout young men camping 20 miles from civilization, they would actually change clothes in their sleeping bags! (We didn't have tents.) On this same trip we had a cool guy that wore his jeans way low. So out in the middle of a field with no one but the other guys, I pants him. There he stood in his boxers that eveyone saw half of all the time, becoming embarassed that we could see all of his boxers. What a crack up!

When I was a school age kid, there was no such thing as privacy in a locker room. My sons tell me that some boys wait in line for a stall to change in. Hummmm. This is interesting. I'm not sure where this is going. It is just an observation.

I think it is funny to use the 3rd urinal and quietly watch the norm get upset. DMP

Thank Heaven for Spring

I have been working on things in between spring showers and other life schedule altering events. I about have the deck on the flat bed of the Ford. I have to get creative with the fuel fillers then I can put on the last boards. We made the first try at passing DEQ to get our unlicensed daily driver legalized. We didn't pass the CO levels. I talked to a friend at work that wrenches on cars and he had picked up lots of tricks from the engine guys at work. We have to certify our lift trucks for Cali emissions so we have a couple experts to make that happen. For mine to pass, the trick is to have the idle turned up as far as possible without getting an engine code.

We got a couple loads of gravel the other day. One load was spread and one dumped. I have to get the starter in the track loader so I can smooth some areas out then I can spread the pile of rock. This will make it look like the shop is actually part of the plan.

I have put in the windows for the south wall of the shop and started putting up the metal.So now I have one and a half walls. I have started getting quotes on doors.

A couple weeks ago I help bury my friend. He died of lung cancer and had never smoked a day in his life. I had helped him with the dirt work when he built his house. He help on the shop a bit when I was doing the concrete prep. He was sick then, but insisted on helping. He was a very kind person. I had only known him for a couple years but we had a lot in common and just hit it off.

Last Sunday I flew to Greenville, NC for work. I only stayed for a couple days and headed back to get some work moving quickly.

Baseball has started for the youngest C. The oldest C is starting Hunter's Safety soon. He is twelve now and can start pursuing the game animals. He is a little apprehensive about it. Little bro wishes he could slay something right now. They are definitely different people.

So that is why there has been a gap in the blogging. Life has been getting in the way. DMP

The Realities of CTR

Did you ever notice that clean living doesn't allow one to reap all of the perks at work. Coffee and tea are provided by the company for everyone. Those that don't drink those beverages loose out on probably 200 dollars a year worht of benefit. The other thing we lose out on is the great breath that coffee drinker have.

Smokers are the ones that really get-my-goat. With all of the legislation in recent years they have to smoke outside and sometimes a certain distance from the buildings, once an hour or ever hour-and-a-half the smoker gets to take a 10 minute break. Smoke break that is. This doesn't factor in the legally mandated two 15 minute breaks or the 1/2 hour lunch. So where does that leave the rest of the workforce? A lot more productive! Why would someone knowingly hire a smoker? Oh, but you cannot disgriminate. No way. No how.

Due to the toll smoking takes on a human's health, this person probably is less productive when they are working. Go figure.

Okay, I got that out. I feel so much better. DMP