Decision-Making Time

I have really thought hard about this post. I have Spring Break this week and since none of my young and crazy classmates invited me to Panama City Beach for the week, I'm stuck at home. Well, I would probably be stuck at home even if they did invite me to PCB, but honestly, as a whole they seem less the PCB-type than the why-go-somewhere-when-you're-only-going-to-drink-beer-on-the-couch-type. That might be stereotyping, but I've never been known for my tact.

This Spring Break marks a great turning point for my schooling. We've been instructed to register for the next two classes in our diploma program: Steering & Suspensions and Automatic Transmissions. Now is the time for me to decide whether or not I'll continue with the program. So, after a lot of thought and if I'm completely honest with myself (and you), here a few things I've learned in the past 8 weeks:

1. I like the idea of getting my hands dirty, but haven't really had the chance to test this idea. We haven't done much car work. But let's face it: I've had many opportunities to go investigate my own tires after learning about them in class, but I never did. I'd rather stay inside reading or goofing off than look at my car.


2. I don't understand it as well as I thought I would. That's not to say that I thought it wouldn't be difficult--I did. I just thought it would all make more sense in my head than it does. What I'm finding is that my brain doesn't work very well in the mechanical field. To say that invisible magnetic fields create electricity sounds easy enough, but my brain hears it, acknowledges it as truth, and then promptly forgets it. There's no flow of thought or reasoning behind it (at least to my brain). I'm much more of a persuasive thinker and not a factual thinker, if that makes sense.


3. I enjoy my classmates. But I dislike them at times as well. Like when they start telling dirty jokes (and not dirty jokes that you might hear on The Tonight Show, but seriously dirty, nasty jokes), or like when Jiffy said a rhyme to help remember the colors on a fuse that talked about raping girls. Things that I really object to (and I don't object to much).


4. I really enjoy writing about them, though. In fact, the blog has been a really nice result from my schooling. I enjoy writing and talking with everyone about it.


5. I miss my family more than I thought I would, and Rain hasn't adjusted as well as I would have liked. I call her every night during my breaks, but I don't think it's enough for her. It's not that we did very much during the week before school started, but the simple fact that we're not able to do anything now upsets her.


6. I still have moments when I get discouraged with my day job, but I don't see myself pursuing auto tech as a profession once I get my diploma. But at the same time, that doesn't affect my decision on whether I will continue in the program; I think it's time well-spent in itself.


7. I desperately miss my free time. I haven't picked up knitting needles in weeks and I haven't checked out my forums on ravelry.com in even longer. I miss my Friday night knitting group!


8. Things may become even more chaotic in our household. Nanook is waiting to hear about her acceptance into a Physician Assistant program and once that starts, she'll no longer be at home during the day to take care of homework and dinner before ThatGuy gets home.

Having said all of that, I have a few weeks before I have to register for next semester. I'm still on the fence about it. I've enjoyed my time, but should I move on? Should I stick with the program for another semester? Should I register for a different diploma program and start all over? Should I bow out and accept that the knowledge I've gained as enough?
I'll let us both know when I figure it out.

The Package Shows Up and The Amateur's Dark Past

The missing package showed up Monday with no real answers to the conundrum of its recent whereabouts. See that mark by "Express Plus"? That was me. See that mark by "Standard"? I don't remember doing that. Now, I'm not denying the possibility of a psychotic lapse in judgment or momentary black-out, and I admit that I don't have the best of memories and I've found myself doing stupid stuff occasionally that I don't remember (especially since the appearance of Rain eight years ago), but I don't think I made that X next to "Standard" and I certainly wouldn't have done such a sloppy job of it. But who did? Maybe the person sending it to us. Maybe the store where he dropped it off for shipment. Maybe the UPS driver didn't see my X and thought it should go ground? The only thing I'm confident of is I'm going to hold tight to the lessons learned and let the rest fall behind. The deal closed on time. Signatures were sent and received. My boss did not kill me.

So, in the interest of moving on, I thought I would share a story that The Amateur (who's not really an amateur now since he got a job at a real shop) related to us the other night. He doesn't always have the best of luck (do you remember the story about his snapping off the door of a vehicle because he forgot to close the door before he backed it out of a garage?). It turns out that he has some history with the law. And with his luck being as it is, a good plan can turn south really quickly. For this story, his lawyer worked really hard to negotiate down his jail sentence to only a week. He knew beforehand which week he was going to the pokey so he simply took a week off work, told them he was going way out of town and wouldn't be available at all, and they all wished him a happy vacation.

Then the paper publishes the mug shots of the people going to jail and his job sees his happy mug staring at the camera (well, I'm sure he didn't actually smile for his mug shot but he did feel some measure of satisfaction in maneuvering to keep his jail time secret). Needless to say (given his luck), his job sees his mug and they fire him, which sucked. I feel bad for the guy. He did his time and still got fired.

This week we're continuing our discussion on starter motors and then have a mid-term exam Thursday night. Wish me luck! We're also getting a new roof on Thursday. Busy day!

Networking Night

Last night we had a "networking night" for the automotive classes. It was the first of its kind so there was bound to be a little incongruity as we didn't know what to expect from the speakers and the speakers didn't know what was expected of them and the organizers didn't seem to guide anyone into a particular direction. I thought the first speaker was appropriate. He was the general manager of Setco, which is a spindle company (for use on grinders and other shop equipment). He wants to set up a co-op program within his company and invited those mechanically-inclined in the room to apply. The most interesting part of his spiel was his list of requirements for applicants. First on the list was a mechanical ability, but the rest dealt with personality: works well with others, sense of humor, positive attitude. He said that they can train you how to do the job, but you would have work well with the other employees in order to have and keep the job. Which I think is entirely true.

The second speaker was more of an inspirational speaker without the inspiration. He went through his history and how he got to where he is and everything he's been through to get there. But it wasn't very inspiration or helpful. In fact, he was in the military at one point and worked on a tank/truck that The Mumbler also worked on in his stint in the military and The Mumbler really called the speaker out as an idiot when we got back into the classroom. Even Mr. Shado didn't have complimentary things to say about him. The man loved to hear himself talk. And talk he did. For entirely too long. At one point, the speaker was talking about Syria and a river in South America (I can't remember which one) and The Mumbler said afterwards, "I might not be a geographer. Or a topographer. Or even own a globe. But I know those two places are halfway around the world from each other." I thought the most revealing thing he said was that on Friday nights, he treats himself to five straight hours specifically to get lost on wikipedia, which allows me to deem him officially boring. Everyone knows you're supposed to get lost on wikipedia during working hours.

TGIF, everyone. My weekend is going to be spent interviewing roofing companies, helping Rain with her multiplication tables and division homework, reading my automotive textbook and doing chapter review questions, and sleeping. Hopefully a lot of sleeping.

This was one of the reasons I took up auto tech school in the beginning:

Have a good one.
P.S. The missing package is still missing.

Jiffy and the Po-Po, New Tools and Lost Kitties

Jiffy almost got arrested yesterday. He finally finished his leaf spring bow and arrow set and had gone out with his friends a few times to the high tension power lines area (for a long, open space) to do some test runs. (here's wiki on leaf springs) The first time went off without a hitch. The arrow traveled 300 yards and made some notes on what adjustments needed to be made to the arrow (steel tubing instead of rebar and adjustments to the counterweights). Yesterday when they went out, someone called the police saying that they were shooting off a cannon. So the police showed up, cuffed everyone and kept asking where their cannon was and wouldn't believe any of them when they denied having a cannon. Four hours later, the police finally believe them and they're uncuffed and dismissed just in time for Jiffy to get to class.

ThatGuy bought me some mechanic's tools! My friend Blondie at work thinks I need to paint it pink. In fact, she insists I do so and I probably will. The boys in my class would love it. Either that or they wouldn't care at all. It's impossible to tell with them. I tried to show Jiffy a picture that Rain drew and he did not oohh and aahh like the ladies at work. He did not show the proper respect for an 8-year-old's drawings. He actually showed more interest when I showed him a picture of my cat. I can't figure these boys out.

And speaking of cats, SciFi took hold of my comments yesterday about welcoming kitties with open arms and threatened to drop off a basket of kitties at my house one night while I'm sleeping. You see, SciFi has a problem. "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" belongs on SciFi's front door instead of the Statue of Liberty. The neighborhood kitties have probably pissed a sign on her front stoop that announces that the hotel is open for business--SciFi just can't see it. Is it cold and rainy? SciFi will crack her garage door for you. Hungry? SciFi will not only feed you a can of kitty food, but will sprinkle little appetizer treats on it when it's especially cold or rainy and you need a little extra love. If you act real sick, she'll probably even take you to the vet and deny that you're her kitty, but if you look at her just right, before you know it, you have a new name and a new home. One set of my in-laws is like this, only with dogs. They're unable to walk away from a puppy in pain and since my father-in-law reads meters, he walks a lot of neighborhoods. Animals recognize a kindred spirit when they see him and he's unable to refuse.

But what would the world do without the SciFi's and In-Laws out there? My hope is that for every idiot ass who terrorizes or abandons or mistreats an animal, there's at least one SciFi or In-Lawa out there with hearts large enough to feed and pamper the rejected animals. Who knows what situations these little creatures escaped from? SciFi and In-Laws are far from those crazy hoarders who can't take of their animals; they keep them clean and healthy and fed and happy. So thank you, SciFi and In-Laws. You make the animal world a safer and happier place. Just don't bring any of them to my house in the middle of the night!

Finally, the missing package still hasn't shown up. I'm ignoring its entire existence and hope it has jumped off the roof of some tall building never to show its face again.

Stress at Work; Stress at School

Yesterday was one of those days that makes you want to dig your head down into the sand until the sun goes down and then drink a few beers to help give you the courage to get up in the morning and start all over again.

At my day job, we’ve been working really hard on getting a certain deal to close. Last Friday we sent out big packages by overnight delivery with documents for people to sign and then overnight back to us. To make everything simpler, we included a return UPS slip that I had already filled out with our information. All the people had to do was sign the pages and slip them back into the package and, zoom, off it would go only to show up first thing in the morning on our doorstep like a little lost kitten wanting to find a home. And we would smile and welcome it with open arms.

But when neither package had shown up by 9:30, I started to sweat. Neither package showing up implied that the return UPS slips were wrong. And that meant, worst case scenario, I could have delayed closing a day or more, every one of the 50 documents would have to be re-dated to a new March date, our clients would have to regroup and sign everything again, the other side would have to regroup (from different states, no less) and sign everything again. And not just everything – 4 copies of everything. All because I probably forgot to put a little tiny X somewhere in a little tiny box on a UPS slip.

What’s worse is that I forgot to save the tracking numbers for the return packages. And the recipients didn’t save them either. My boss (bless her little heart) could see that I was on the verge of hysteria so she did her best not to say “Why the hell didn’t you keep the tracking numbers?!? A lesson was learned here today!” but I could see it. Hell, I was saying it. 10:30 rolled around and one package showed up. I barely refrained myself from reaching out and embracing the guy from the mailroom and laying a good one right on his lips. He took half of my troubles away.

At noon, we decided to go to Plan B, which was to .pdf all the signature pages, email them to the lawyer on the other side and ask his clients to re-sign all the documents before the final call in the morning at 9:30. They would have to email back their signatures and put the originals in overnight mail to us. Simply accepting that the other package was not going to show up and moving on to Plan B helped calm me even more. But there was a rush to get it all emailed out so I could leave on time to get to my class. As of this writing, the second package still hasn’t come in and I’m still stressed on whether there will be a little box missing its X and all eyes will fall on me again.

After a stressful day at work, class was also stressful. Mr. Shado walked in and said “So, does anyone have any questions on how a DC motor works?” What? Huh? DC Motor? Oh, yeah, I remembered, I forgot to read the chapters I was supposed to read. The ones on the cranking system. Great. After a lengthy and confusing discussion on motors, our homework was to write a short paragraph on how the DC motor works, so I thought I would do it here:

A motor is a way to convert electricity into mechanical power—how you get a battery to create physical motion. It all has to do with magnetic fields. You have a moveable armature that you surround with magnets. When you hook up current to the armature, it magnetizes the armature to where one side is attracted to the magnet on the other side of the motor so it moves towards it. By the time it gets to where it’s going, there’s a break in the current and the other side of the armature gets attraction that makes it also move and the inertia pushes the first part of the armature away from its magnet, which becomes attracted to the other side of the motor. And round and round it goes.

For someone who has never thought about the inner workings of mechanical things, this concept was hard for me to understand. But it eventually sunk in. During class I asked if we could make these simple DC motors at home and Mr. Shado commented that he made one when he was a kid out of a Cub Scout book and now I can too! Jiffy volunteered to go to Hobby Lobby to pick up a kid’s motor kit so this 35-year-old woman can understand how it works. Maybe we should just snag a 5-year-old Cub Scout to teach me. On the way out, Mr. Shado commented, “Holly? Do you get it? Are you beginning to understand? Because if you can understand it, I think the others in the class can too. You know, since you’re starting from zero and all.”

Didn’t that just make me feel like the smartest tool in the shed. I went home and enjoyed my two well-earned beers before bed. If that package ever comes in and has a missing X, I claim the rest of the 6-pack.

Tests, Nightmares and Waiting for Number Three

Last Thursday night I bugged off class in order to attend Rain's Black History Month musical at her elementary school, and I'm really glad I did because she played the pivotal role as a narrator and was at the front of the stage the entire night. She did wonderfully and made me proud. I told Mr. Shado the week before that I would need to be out, but he still assigned a test for the night anyway. I panicked for a moment until he told me he would email it to me and I could just turn it in the next week. We were busy all day Saturday so when I sat down on Sunday to study before the test, I kept studying. And studying and studying. I knew it was closed-book and I had to take the test that night, but I kept putting it off to look over a few more notes or quickly go over a certain chapter before I deemed myself ready to take the test. After about seven hours of this, I gave it up and took the test (in pen, to help keep me honest). It was a book-generated test which pulls out random information that no mechanic would really need to be able to pull out of her head on a moment's notice, like when you use a scan tool to check your vehicle's computer, which terminal in the data link connector leads to the automatic seat warmers in a 2010 Honda. There's no way I can remember that. Well, I guess I could remember that, but not that plus terminal numbers for every other computer module in that Honda plus Toyotas and Chryslers and General Motors vehicles. And I don't think Mr. Shado expects us to memorize all of that information--it was just on the test because it was book-generated and I hope Mr. Shado alters the results to account for that. Otherwise, I think I did ok (probably a B... I'll let you all know when I get the final grade).

Monday nights have become our lab nights and I have to start bringing some jeans and t-shirts to change into; I got grease all over a pretty black and white flowered top last night. (I don't have enough daytime work clothes as it is and now I go destroying the ones I do...) We were to perform vehicle inspections and Mr. Forrest offered to have a couple of our cars inspected as part of the lab. I really wish my car was clean enough to show to the rest of the students, but there's random flotsam and jetsam that ends up in cars when you drive as much as I do and carry around kids: coke bottles, granola bar wrappers, one of SugarFoot's shoes, several sweaters of Rain's, and books and papers scattered helter-skelter throughout the interior. I was too embarrassed to offer it up for inspection even though I really could have used one. Instead, we inspected Jiffy's car and found a few oil leaks and air pressure issues in his tires among other things, all of which he already knew about.

Little Rain had a nightmare last night. I assume all 8-year-olds have nightmares on occasion, but she has about one a month that really distress her. She usually doesn't want to talk about them--just wants to be cuddled and reassured for several minutes and then have someone change the subject so she can move on with her day, which happens rather quickly in our chaotic household. But last night's dream was about my 88-year-old grandmother who was performing a magic trick and laid down on her bed and lit herself on fire. She was unhurt, but then started biting Rain with really sharp teeth. Dreammoods.com says "To dream that you are being bitten represents your vulnerability regarding some unresolved issues or emotions. You may be pestered by a problem or obstacle. The dream may also be a metaphor indicating that you have bitten off more than you chew. Perhaps you have too much to handle." If this is true and my 8-year-old daughter has bitten off more than she can chew, she may be headed for stomach ulcers as we get closer to her tumultuous teenage years. She's always been a little perfectionist (a strong Virgo) and rather high-strung at times.

Back at the homestead, we've had a run of bad luck lately. First, we discovered a water heater leak that had been leaking for some time and damaged the subfloor below it. Then our oven went out. Now, we're impatiently and anxiously waiting for number three. I had to jump off ThatGuy's car the other morning and thought perhaps that would be our third and final problem, but it's been acting fine since then--just a scare. Cross your fingers that it's easily (and cheaply) fixable.

With our three adults, two kids, two dogs and one cat household, we've decided to keep this Halloween decoration up all year on our front door:

Jiffy's Still Alive and Household Experts

I walked into class a few days ago to find All-American and Jiffy sitting at the computer looking at pictures and what I saw was quite disturbing. It was a picture of a teenage boy on a motorcycle riding down a residential street, one hand on the handlebar and the other holding a gas-powered chainsaw. And the chainsaw was running. Seriously. The more I get to know Jiffy, the more I'm surprised he's still alive. It wasn't him in the picture, but I get the feeling he's usually right in the thick of things. Another example is that he's currently in the process of making a bow out of a leaf spring from a truck (long flat slightly curved metal that's used in suspension assemblies) with an arrow made out of steel rebar. He's having to create a pneumatic arm that can actually cock the arrow in the bow because regular humans aren't strong enough. When I asked him what he intends to shoot with it, he shrugged his shoulders, which I took to mean "I'm sure I'll come up with something." But what I've come to realize, and this is the part of the beauty of Jiffy, is that it's not about the end product so much as it is about the journey. Simply figuring out how to make the bow and successfully putting it together is an accomplishment; it doesn't matter what he ends up doing with it. It also doesn't matter how many times he gets it wrong before he figures it out. Because he will figure it out. Eventually.

At 15 years his senior, I'm just now starting to learn how to do this. In the past, I've always done things because the journey was only significant in that it helped me get to the goal, which was clear and purposeful. I really thought that there's no reason to start a journey until you have a clear idea of what your goal is. It wasn't until I signed up for this auto mechanics course that I realized I have no idea what the destination looks like and the journey is changing every day. It's kinda fun.

In class, we've transitioned from learning the basics of electronics into how electricity works in a vehicle, starting with batteries. And batteries are kind of boring.

Yesterday, Nanook was teaching Rain how to cut a mango and Rain started talking about our household experts. It was quite enlightening to see how Rain views our roles in the household. We each had two areas of expertise: SugarFoot's was in not eating dinner very well and being a 3 year old; Nanook's was in cooking and growing things; ThatGuy's was in doing nothing and computers; and my expertise was in reading and coffee. Interestingly, Rain's expertise was in cutting things and drawing (Alternatively, I would deem Rain's expertise is watching TV and complaining about SugarFoot touching her stuff). I noticed that no one's expertise was in cleaning (my mom would be quite disturbed and very disappointed). So what does this say about our household? Well, obviously, she thinks we should be doing more stuff. At least, ThatGuy and I should. In my defense, I just can't bring myself to sit with her and actually watch what she prefers to watch on TV so I pick up my nook and read in the living room while she watches TV. When ThatGuy's on the computer or in his office, she doesn't see what he does so she deems it nothing when really, he's doing something worthwhile. I'm sure of it, although I also don't know what he's doing...

The Mumbler came in with this t-shirt on last night. Again, his 17-year-old stepdaughter picked it out, which I think is awesome.
Have a nice day.