Grounded

06 Nov 2020

Alright, it’s been a minute (or several) since I last posted. I spent the last two and a half weeks traveling the continental US with my big brother in his “Micah’s yellow airplane” as Rex calls it. We began our voyage on 10/20 to visit our parents in Chicago and for the CCs commercial shoot.

Take Off!

I was a little apprehensive taking both little boys in a little airplane, but once we were in the air, things were pretty smooth, the anxiety kinda fled away, and the both boys proved to be excellent flyers! I was very impressed with both of them on how well they tolerated being in their car/airplane seats for so long.

On the way up, I did talk to Micah about proposing to my previous company, and to my delight, he thought it was a good idea. I didn’t even use the presentation that I’d made. A short while later in the week, i sent my old plant manager an email asking for a meeting. He agreed, and so I set it up for early December as he requested.

The CCs commercial shoot was a lot of fun. Very professional and organized and it provided me with a fun opportunity to be silly on camera as well as meet my fellow co-workers, so that was fun.

After Chicago, we flew to Austin, TX to stay with Bust-a-butt and his very pregnant wife for the night as a midway point to AZ. Due to weather, we ended up staying 3 nights.

That following Wednesday, we finally made it to AZ.

We had a great week hanging out with my brother, his two boys, and Tati. Tati was super great with the boys. They absolutely adored her and I think she adored them too. She was super helpful and allowed me all the time I needed to work one-on-one with Micah.

Together we played ‘ping-pong’ to refactor my ttt, for Micah to give me a few more todo’s with ttt, as he taught me about threads, and finally as for him to teach me to use sockets. All very fun, interesting, and useful. The time spent was definitely worthwhile.

It was also really great to spend some quality general one-on-one time with both Micah and also Tati. A week or so before I started this voyage, I’d mentioned to Keith that I actually cannot remember the previous time I spent one-on-one time with just Micah, so that was very cool. It was good to get to know him again.

We got back to Baton Rouge last night, and Micah left this morning but not until after he got a tour around Keith’s plant. He said that his tour really impressed upon him the scale of a chemical plant and maybe even a little understanding of the various needs manufacturing needs.

Very unfortunately, and I feel so bad for him right now, “Micah’s yellow airplane” had an alternator fail over TX, so he is now driving back to AZ. Argh—the last leg of his trip and he got grounded. Totally sucks!

Meanwhile, i refactored ttt a little more today and recorded two iterations of game-of-life. Monday, i will record another one and plan to write it straight through as today, i kept trying different things and longer routes to end with the same result…

Lastly, tonight Keith & I were talking, and I think i have an app idea for a CC’s give-away. Maybe… it doesn’t seem to difficult to me, but I will ask the team what they think.


Rex:
In the airplane, Micah or I would frequently give Rex a thumb’s up to check in on him. Rex would look at our thumb, then look at his own hand as he tried to figure out the maneuver, and finally return a 1 with his index finger and a nod.

Leo:
Leo is now a walking champ and fearless! I haven’t weighed him yet, but I’m also pretty sure that kid put on at least 2 lbs on this trip because he ate so well (not that he doesn’t eat well at other times—he’s just a really good eater and had a lot of variety).