It's nearly the end of January, and it's difficult to focus on anything in particular. Work has become meaningless; there are no concrete engineering goals, just drivel coming from the mouths of management as they attempt to inspire us with their visions of the future. Unfortunately for us, their visions (profits, bonuses, mergers) do not coincide with our visions (fantastically wonderful geeky hardware which solves all the world's problems). Thus we are at an impasse. Especially since here, at least, they are the only game in town. And who wants to go job-hunting in the middle of winter?
On the home front, there is snow, snow, and more snow. Well, what else could there be in Michigan at this time of year? The temperature has been well below freezing for weeks now; the humidity has been dropping below the comfort zone; the Lake continues to throw its excess moisture content on our heads, snarling traffic and causing us to spend far too many hours attempting to clear our driveways.
Speaking of driveway-clearing, we seem to have gotten the knack for it now after six years. We don't usually bother with the snow blower anymore, nor do we immediately run out and start clearing the moment the snow stops falling. In fact, usually we wait a few days after the snow has settled down to a reasonable level - after we've driven over it a few times and packed it down into nice, tight little ice crystals - to the point where the snow blower is useless anyway. Snow blowers, for those of you who are unfortunate enough not to own one, do not work on ice. For those kinds of surfaces, we have to resort to our handy-dandy little ice hoes, which are inserted underneath the ice and used to pry or chip the ice off the driveway. After which the chunks of brick-like ice can be picked up with a shovel and tossed out into the side yard to pile up into miniature Mt. Everests.
The boys and I have been out a few times to work on it, and we've settled into a bit of a routine. We don't clear it all at once; typically, we just work on it for half an hour or so, until there is a straight-line path for both cars from the garage to the street. Then we go inside for hot chocolate. The next day, we'll go out again, and work on the edges for half an hour, then go in for hot chocolate again. By the third day, there's a fresh batch of snow on the ground, so we're doing a mix of snow- and ice-clearing. But, again, only for half an hour or so. Then the siren call of the steaming cup of chocolate pulls us back inside again.
The main goal of the exercise is not to completely clear the driveway, but to expose enough of the driveway surface to allow heat absorption from the sun during the daylight hours, which prompts snow melt. It's preferable to let the sun do most of the work anyway, since it doesn't really do anything else all day except spray radiation all over the solar system.
Deb's birthday was a difficult one to put together. We got this sinking feeling when the date for Aunt Cheryl's funeral was announced, because it's always difficult to combine family 'events', especially where one is happy and the other is not quite so happy. (We're happy that Aunt Cheryl got to go home and be with God, but we're not quite so happy that it'll be awhile before we see her again. We're happy that it's Deb's birthday, but we're not quite so happy that we'll be spending it away from home.) But we are proud of Deb: she put on her brave face and didn't complain, even though this is a particularly meaningful birthday for her. She's now a teenager, and she's turning into quite a little woman (scaring her old man near to death!), and there are so many exciting things going on in her life right now. Where has the time gone?
So the day of the funeral, on the way home we stopped at Steak & Shake for a birthday dinner, complete with ice cream; then the day after we got back from the funeral, she opened her cards and presents; and the day after the day after we got back from the funeral, we had cake and ice cream and M&Ms (immediately prior to departing for youth group!); It wasn't the ideal situation for a "coming of age" kind of birthday, but she seemed to be OK with it. The only downside was that her friends were unavailable for a sleepover, which would've been nice.
We were never a "camping" family, so camping is not one of those things that comes instinctively, nor is it something I'm likely to initiate, especially when it involves gathering up a ton of equipment and fussing over menu planning and arranging for 'facilities'. But the youth minister had been planning for this winter campout for the kids, and he knew that I'd done winter camping with the Scouts, so when his camping facilitator had to drop out, he called on me to help out.
Organizing a winter campout for a bunch of teenagers is probably a lot easier than I'm envisioning, but I tend to oversweat the details when there's the possibility of humiliating failure (especially failure in front of a large number of teenagers who are supposed to be looking up to the adults for guidance and leadership and modeling). So my brain has been completely consumed by this activity, trying to figure out the logistics.
Putting together the tents and the sleeping bags and most of the other gear is simple. Creating a menu and ensuring adequate cooking supplies is not quite so simple, but very doable. Adding in the things needed for cold-weather camping is a little more difficult, but there are lots of Scout booklets available. Making sure that the girls have suitable rest room facilities is quite another story.
(When we announced the event, the first question from the young ladies was, Will there be real rest rooms? Please tell me that you are not suprised.)
The youth minister was really hoping that we would get some brave young women willing to go out into the woods in the middle of winter for this wonderful group-bonding event. I didn't want to disappoint. So I've been perusing the catalogs and on-line stores to see what kinds of 'facilities' are available. None of them are very impressive. Most of them are intended for summer use. And even though I've read many, many positive comments from brave older women who were enthusiastic about such products after being forced to go on camping for fishing or hunting trips with their husbands, I'm not wholly convinced that the response from the teenaged girl population will be identical.
Meanwhile my nimble little engineering brain keeps popping up to say, "You can design something better than that!" (It's the egotistical engineer inside of me.)
Can't wait to see how it all turns out.
1 comment:
Your first paragraph sounds frighteningly similar to something my dear hubby would say about work. Management never gets it, do they.
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