I’ve been running for the last couple days–spent Thanksgiving in Hutchinson at Fjord and Grey’s parent’s place. Along with about 20 LeTourneau people. It was a great time. We sat around and talked, we ate good food, we stood around a bonfire while the first snow fell. We wired and sheetrocked a basement room. We played Polish Pingpong. We tried to put together a 2128 piece jigsaw puzzle. We played Settlers (I like Seafarers better than Cities and Knights). We played Munchkin (including a 3-hour game where everyone made it one point away from winning). We played a quick game of Axis & Allies—the dice bombed Germany pretty bad. Over and over. We went to church, and they sang “Dem Bones”. Then, as I was getting my car to start after everyone else had left, (sitting for days in the cold without running made it difficult) someone called, saying they were playing frisbee in Wichita, in half an hour. I got there after everyone had warmed up. Then I went to the Sunday evening service (instead of singing and praying together and reading from God’s Word, we hung Christmas ornamentation), and then I went to “a restaurant” with some friends. And it took forever, and the burgers were burned on the outside, and either raw or overcooked on the inside. I ordered a Philly Cheesesteak, which was quite delicious. So I was almost the only one to pay for my meal.
Getting home late (for the first time since Wednesday afternoon), and to bed even later, I was loath to get up in the morning, and as I was about to leave, I realized I had class—in 5 minutes. After class (which was hard to stay awake in) I worked a bit, and went home…only to soon leave for play practice and set setup. I got home, got to bed late, and got up, went to class. At lunch time, I was relaxing at my desk, chewing on a peanut butter sandwich, and someone asked me to come to a meeting. They were rehashing some plan on how they were going to set some system up. So, I ate while I listened to people make suggestions, some useful, some well meaning. Before grabbing some coffee and rushing back to class, I helped make some mark-ups to a document I’d made last week to capture the new decision. These markups made it similar to our original plan that had been modified by an email after I’d sent in an email asking for what seemed best at the time. By the time I got back from class, they had done some experimentation, to see if it was possible (brilliant!) and found that, no, they’d better stick with a variation of last week’s plan. I’ve had my fingers in all the plans, so it doesn’t matter which one wins out–I’ll still be the one who thought of it, or drew it up, or worked it out, or something. Oh, and it doesn’t matter who thought of it, as long as it works. Yeah, getting this planned right is important, but something, anything, is important too. Now. Last week. I don’t really care how it is, my requirements are simple and well known, just make it work.
With coffee, I could sit in class without my consciousness flickering in and out. I was doing stuff, and doing it fast! Almost as fast as the guy next to me who spent half the time reading webcomics! When I got home it was about time to go help build set for the play, which we did, quite successfully, and now I am home…with nothing to do for the rest of the week but dishes to wash…and clothes to sort out, and a bathtub with potting soil on the sides because the drain doesn’t hardly drain (it was like that before the potting soil!) and I don’t want to bring the plumbers in because they might get caught in the drifts of stuff in my apartment, oh, and my rent is going up, so I need to go buy a house but maybe I shouldn’t maybe I should just go rent a house, and get a roomate but no, there isn’t hardly anyone in Wichita that I would want to room with. So, instead, I made an egg quesadilla, and drank some milk, and now I need to go to bed. So I can get up and go to class, so I learn how to do some pretty cool things at work that may save our department from the approaching trainwreck. It’s pretty much like we bought some baby chickens, and the pens for them are on backorder. And we are sure that the heat lamps will get here any minute…
