Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I Live in Iowa: Week 58

A busy week it was! I spent much of the week in Davenport, one of the Quad Cities, at a welding connections design seminar. It was very educational. For the last year I had been of the conclusion that the increased stress concentration factor combined with the heat affected zone surrounding a weld which decreases the material properties were the two factors which combined to fail structures at welds. Well, that is often the case, but not always. Welds can crack during manufacturing when the weld material is high in carbon or silicon. Welds can also  crack if the angle between the two plates is very small, because the sides of the weld on the steel will cool too quickly and the weld material will cool away from the middle. That kind of crack you might not even be able to see from the surface. There were a number of other things that we learned from weld sizing to bridge design and distortion accommodation.

In total it was another 53 hour week at work. Overtime is bittersweet. I get paid more and I get a lot done, but I spend a whole lot of time sitting in front of a light bulb. It's funny, in college I would be impressed with myself when I put in a four hour study or homework session at a desk. Then I would do something else for an hour or so. Now, I put in more than twice that every week day.

There was no coaching this week, except some schedule planning. My own running went well, 60 miles. I was aiming for 70-75, but I was a little more tired than I anticipated on Friday and Saturday. I was planning for a 50-75-100 mile three week mileage build up. Now it will probably be 50-60-100.

Ending the week my sister came down from Milwaukee and we drove up to our relatives in Minnesota. It was a nice weekend seeing the family. I didn't get to sleep until midnight Friday, despite pulling into town around 9:30. Everyone likes to talk, myself certainly included. Saturday I tried to go help out in the Greenhouse after breakfast, but after about two hours of that I was done. Saturday afternoon was a daze of war movies in my grandma's dimly lit basement. I rarely have five uninterrupted hours of laziness, it was glorious, and strangely agonizing as I felt useless. The night ended with steak and an action movie. Good stuff.

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