Windy City Whirlwind

Day two of my trip to Chicago... Boy did we do a lot! On Friday, I arrived and met up with my sister and my two cousins. We went and saw Second City, a Saturday Night Live "minor leagues" of sorts where many SNL alums came from. Yesterday, we saw a matinee of "Wicked" at the Ford Theatre downtown, and later that same night saw the Blue Man Group at the Briar Street Theatre. So three shows in the span of 24 hours! My sister, who used to watch the Wizard of Oz on constant loop growing up, loved the show but now says she's scarred for life because she won't be able to watch the Wizard of Oz the same way again.
(Pictured: My cousin Cynthia on the left, cousin Josh in the middle, and sister Linda on the right outside the theatre).

Today was the architecure boat tour of the city, where we got stories of all the buildings on the river. I learned that one guy named Mies liked to design black boxes for buildings (he's German... figures), until people starting thinking that big block boxes were pretty boring. Too bad, he probably made a good living copying and pasting blueprints for each of his buildings (at P&G we like to call it "search and reapply"). I found out that a one bedroom condo only costs $300,000 and a lake view costs $1 million. On the tour, I also saw the beginnings of the new Trump building, pictured here. Bill Rancic was nowhere to be seen. I remember seeing him on later Apprentice shows as a judge, and it makes me wonder, one minute he's a candidate trying to get hired, and like a year later he's good enough to be a judge? Gimme a break.

What else can happen...

I know how much you all enjoy my softball stories, but the last three games have been rather interesting...

Last Wednesday, our men's team played a doubleheader. The first game went 11 innings (regulation game is 7 innings) because neither team could score a run. During the second game, a lightning storm passed over us and we had about a 15 minute rain delay. Afterwards, the sun came back out. We ended up losing both games, got wet, and really sore.

Tonight, we had our 10:10 game that no one likes. Game started about 20 minutes late. We had what I call a "dixie cup umpire," i.e. you hafta pitch the ball into a dixie cup to get a strike (these guys are used to baseball, so they refuse to call anything that goes above a batter's shoulder). The game was close, we were up 9-8 in the 6th inning before we broke out for 5 runs. So bottom of the 6th, game at 14-8, they shut off all the lights. Field goes dark immediately. We wait for probably 10-15 minutes as they run in and tell the guy who operates the lights to turn the freakin' lights back on. Luckily, after that we get 2 quick outs, agree to let the team bat again, and get 3 outs there and we win 14-10.

And of course, one of the other crappy things about a 10:10 game, is you're still riled up at 12:47 AM.

Baseball and Dale Carnegie

So I went down to the ballpark today after work to catch my hometown Milwaukee Brewers play the Reds in what has been a bit of a tradition for me. Back when the Fountain Square lot was open, I would park there for $1. I would then walk to the game, and along the way try to get a cheap ticket off a scalper. I've decided I would not pay more than half of face value for a ticket. I also had on my side the fact that I only needed 1 ticket, so people who had single tickets would hopefully give me a good deal.

So tonight, I found some street parking for free on 8th and Broadway. On the way down, one person wouldn't give me anything for less than my walk away price (in fact tried to sell me a $40 ticket for $60, which is stupid bc unless it's sold out, I can get it for $40 at the ticket window. And I can guarantee that it won't be sold out). The second ticket person I ran into I was able to get a $30 seat for $15. I made some small talk with him, told him that I wish I had his job (mainly because I'd be working for myself and I'd get to be out there every day and could take whatever ticket I didn't sell and go watch the game) and asked him if he liked what he was doing. He basically said "well, I'm out here bc I need to." As I started walking away, he said "hold on" and gave me a pass to the club level for free. It was quite a nice gesture.

Although I never did make it to the club level (for reasons I'll expound on), I wonder what inspired him to do that. The fact I took an interest in him? Maybe it's stuff that Mr. Carnegie is teaching, Karen? I was sincerely interested... anything that has to do with being entreprenurial!

OK, the reason why I never made it to the club level was because the game SUCKED (at least for a Brewer fan). I left my beautiful seats in the 7th inning it was so bad (13-1). I then spent the next 20 minutes searching for my car, bc I had neglected to take note of where exactly I parked it... But that's for another blog. Need to get to bed as my triumphant return to Lima awaits me tomorrow.

Potpourri

- I went out and got myself a Scrubbing Bubbles automatic shower cleaner... after you take a shower, you press the button, and after a short delay it spits out a solution of what I assume is some surfactants that keeps your shower clean. So far it looks like it's working well. Even though the company that makes the product is a P&G competitor, I still think it's neat! Being the engineer, I was curious how it worked, so I peeked into the shower while it was working and got greeted with a squirt in the face.

- I love summer here because since we're on the far western side of the Eastern time zone, the sun sets at like 9 PM. Means you can start a round of golf at 6 PM and still get 9 holes in easy.

-Back to the regular job tomorrow... it'll be interesting to see how things have gone. It'll be weird because at 5 PM, I get to go home!

-I bought myself a new Casio Exlim Z-60 camera from Staples.com for $250. They gave me a free printer as part of a promotion, which I just Ebayed for $98. Not a bad deal, if I were smart I'd buy a few more and then sell both and make some cash...

Well, time to go take a shower and play with my new toy. Um, that didn't come out right.

Technical Engineering school is done!

Today was the last day of the 6.5 week training that brought us all those laughs... It was a lot of fun between all the long nights! All the "Deans" had a chance to give some parting remarks, and one of them gave an impassioned speech about not letting humor die off because of political correctness. It's great to see that humor is still alive! I definitely believe that without all the laughs, this training would have been UNBEARABLE. Sitting in a room listening to powerpoint lectures all day? And when not in that room, you're in a conference room with 6 people until 6,7, even 8 PM at night.

I learned some of the annoying things about engineers, at least the ones in the company that made up all the processes we're supposed to follow. They like coming up with excruciatingly long checklists, with many of the questions on the checklist very similar, if not the same, as other questions on the checklist. The main engineering process has like 250 items on it. The other thing our company likes to do is to introduce the "tool of the day" and then force feed it to the employees, i.e. you can't get sign off until you've documented that you used the tool. To me, it's like you're building a house. They give you training on this wonderful new tool called the screwdriver. But in order to get funding sign off, you hafta come up with a "screwdriver plan" i.e. how you plan on using the screwdriver in your project. I just want to scream "I WILL USE A SCREWDRIVER WHEN I NEED TO DRIVE A SCREW."

With that, I will turn off my alarm clock, and go to bed, and hopefully wake up at like 10 AM...

The laughs keep coming at engineering school...

When asked how long our reports should be, we were told:

Your report should be like a skirt. Short enough to hold attention, long enough to cover the essentials.

Karen: It's in all in the cards

OK, so third installment of the personal profiles...

Name: Karen Eutsler

How we met: At a friend's card party... but the real reason I have come to know her is she hooked up with my friend Jim (center in the picture) at that party. He apparently won her over with some card trick. So she's what I like to call a friend-in-law.

Commentary: Karen brings a different personality to my life. She's more of a go getter, fight for what you want type. Also deals with people and relationships well (she is in sales). Like her husband, I'm more analytical, logical type. I can definitely learn a lot from her. Karen also has the distinction of most unique wedding present ever given to a husband... A .50 caliber Desert Eagle handgun:

Favorite Moments: Let's see... got to shop the Mall of America with Karen at a wedding where Jim was a groomsman... Game nights at the Eutler's... Being in the same macroeconomics class with her at Xavier... More to come on the Alaskan cruise later this summer?

Relationship defining moments:
-At the Mall of America, she gave me a lesson on all the different types of bras there are out there. Pretty interesting, I wonder if they have any civil engineers on the design team? (Civil engineers design structures such as buildings and bridges and deal with things like weight load support to make sure structures don't fall down)
-All of her attempts to introduce me to all of her single friends. There were varying degrees of success. None have stuck... yet. :) But the effort is definitely much appreciated. (I think I've met every girl from her high school...).

If it weren't for Karen, I:
-Wouldn't be blogging on this site
-Would eat 25% less home cooked meals
-Would have had 50% less dates (blind or other)

More fun from technical engineering school

In our training, we have these electronic bulletin boards where we can post stuff, like what's going on after training, etc. Of course, with my group of misfits, a little too much fun can ensue. The one joker of our group shot himself in the foot with this one. For some background, his name is Bob, and he had the people in the class over to his place last Saturday. Bob lives with his fiance, and they are getting married in the fall.

Dale's posting: You guys are all welcome to my bachelor pad (as opposed to Bob's "I've been whipped pad") on Thursday for some burgers and brats.

Bob's posting in an attempt to retort: I call it the "At least I've got a woman pad."

Many of the international members of our training weren't familiar with the term "pad" meaning "place of living," and combining that with the lack of punctuation made it a pretty funny episode. Later, Bob changed it to "At least I've got a woman, pad" but the damage had already been done:

"What's a woman pad?"
"Does it have anything to do with our Fem Care products?"
"Where would you wear a woman pad Bob?"

Poker learnings, continued...

A while back I had posted all the stuff you can learn from playing poker... Well, a friend's friend's blog reminded me of another one:

Sometimes, you increase your chances of winning by betting. A related thing is, you can win even if you don't have any cards.

In poker, there are definitely times when you don't dealt jack squat. Do you sit and pout as you lose money? Well, the good ones can win money anyway. How? Bluffing. You bluff by:

1. Making it look like you have good cards by betting in the right situations
2. Betting big enough so it's not feasible for your opponents to call

I.E. let's say there's someone I'm interested in. But let's say that she's out of my league (I know what you're thinking, that's impossible, but just for the sake of this arguement pretend with me). Well, if I make a good enough move (place a big enough bet) it might work just because I made the move (i.e. fold even though I'm beat).

This sounds good in theory, if only I could apply it...

By the way, Karen's profile will be posted soon. I have half of it saved in a draft right now.

A Musical Weekend

So this weekend was the final orchestra concert for the Cincinnati Community Orchestra for the season... The concert rocked for so many reasons. The pieces we played were awesome, but it there were two happenings that reminded me of why I still play the violin 24 years later. First, Tom Sturgis and his fiance Meghan attended... It was great hearing their impressions, as this was the first symphony they've gone to.

The second part of it was our concertmaster was retiring and leaving to move to Texas. Of course, she was great, always started every rehearsal off with a joke (her latest one was top 10 reasons why golf is better than sex), but the best part was after the concert. We all went to the conductor's house for an after-party, and I got a chance to talk to her along with my stand partner, who happened to be one of her students growing up. I asked her if the music program was doing OK in the schools, because I feel strongly about how being a part of an orchestra directly linked to developing my skills as a Chemical Engineer. It's taught me about leadership and teamwork, i.e. learning to take control if you have the melody, and learning to be a beautiful harmony when you don't. It's taught me how to think with both sides of my brain (the left logical side and the right "feeling" side), i.e. seeing if something feels right along with being logically right. She said seeing people who have other jobs still want to play, along with how music has helped them be a better engineer or other profession, is one of the most fulfilling things of being a music teacher.

One of the things on my to do list was to write up how playing in an orchestra has developed all those "interview" skills (i.e. teamwork, leadership) that companies are looking for, and send it out to school music programs to be put on file so if they ever are in jeopardy of being cut, they can pull it out and ask what other class can teach all of those things that can make someone successful.

A monumental milestone

OK, maybe not that monumental, but tomorrow marks three weeks since the Lasik... Which means no more sleeping with goggles on and waking up with lines on your face! So tomorrow I literally will be able to wake up and see my alarm clock.

In other news... yet another rainout this week in my Tuesday softball league. We tongue in cheek call it a "sun-out" since it was bright and sunny the whole day. Apparently the fields were wet from previous rainfall.

Finance 901 is done as of tonight! Finished up the final exam in a record 45 minutes. Only 4 more classes (and probably 1 year) to go!