I Live in Iowa: Week 18

This week was busy. It was not the most organized week because I am rusty at time management. Thus blog posts were few this week. Anyway, on to the action!

I worked 42 hours. As a contract employee or engineering services I am hired to work a minimum of 40 hours per week while the engineers working directly for the company are hired to  work 45 hours per week. So basically we all arrive at my honeycomb at the same time (about 7AM), but I am typically the first to leave. Sometimes I am the last to leave but more often than not I am first. As far as interested things this week at work, I had a project that I started on and spent about two days on and finished. Basically the geometry was a robust enough design to withstand the accepted loading conditions. That is kind of a rare occurrence. There are almost always changes we FEA people recommend. Secondly, I will be getting a new project which happens to involve a fiberglass part. Perhaps this will mean modeling composites, which I have never done and I would like to do.

I started my coaching job at the University of Dubuque. This is exciting because there are so many things that I have learned over the years and I am excited to pass as much of that on as I can. Already I have started to share my experiences. This team is full of potential. I won't say much more because I do not want to make any sudden and not thought out statements. Suffice to say, I'm excited.

I ran 102 miles this week. It is my first 100+ week post-marathon. The week was a bit of a flop though because I only did a short hills workout and two long runs. I did no quality work in the 5k-half marathon pace range that I need to be doing 2 workouts a week for at this point. The reason is that I slept in for a 5AM workout once and two nights I was refused to run on a track because a turf sport was having practice.

What else did I do? I went out to eat twice. I worked my way through Entourage season 3. I slept  over eight hours a few nights. Oh yeah, I went on a 33 mile bike ride, one that went well. There were attacks on the hills (which I like) but nothing overly aggressive so that everyone could catch up at the tops of the hills. Also, the stock market is bouncing around with 400+ point swings becoming common. All I think I know is that the price of oil looks to be going down a lot at the pump in the near future and another recession is probably not going to happen, Italy has some issues, Germany is set to take over Europe (this time for real), and there are jobs out there. At least there are jobs in Dubuque, Iowa. Construction equipment is flying off the assembly lines, engineers are in demand, and there are "help wanted" posters at a number of businesses around town. They may be minimum wage jobs, but $7.25/hour is better than nothing.

I hope you had a good week as well. If not, this is a new week. This is the first week of the rest of your life.