I Live in Iowa: Week 162

Another long week. Sunday started in the Wisconsin Dells the day after my cousin was married. (She's married!! I have a male cousin-in-law!!) A drive back to Dubuque, then a run and to bed at 7 PM.

I woke up 11 hours later and started the work week. It was a factory shut down week (although a fair amount of production seemed to be running…) so overall it was somewhat quiet around the office. The geometric dimension and tolerance class was the majority of my week. It brought up a number of questions as I started to review my own previous work, and doubt myself. I will tell you what, quality =  function of (engineering time); or q = f(t). The more time we have to work on projects, and the more people look at them, the more errors we will find. I respect car companies so much more being in the size of group that I am. It must take hundreds of engineers per vehicle. Maybe five engineers just for the doors, maybe ten.

We had a quick grill at a coworker's house Thursday and that was really nice to socialize outside of the office. It was a nice set up, some food, wine, shorts and t-shirts, a few laughs and a nice view. Life is good.

Friday I drove up to the land of 10,000 lakes to see my grandparents. Saturday I ran a local five mile race, and I won it by about 90 seconds with a 28:45 or so. It's always nice to win a race despite not being in shape yet. Then I spent more time with my family up there and a couple friends. It is so nice to spend time in a familiar place with familiar people. Hopefully I can make it back up there again in 2014 to see everyone again. That being said, now that I just drove back to Dubuque. I'm tired. Traveling is exhausting. I'm going to stay in town for a few weeks.

Kansas, Massachusetts, Colorado, Lousiana, Wisconsin, not to mention Nepal, and that's just since May. Maybe I should say, I live in Iowa, but not on the weekends. You know what friends and family, if you want to see me in the near future, you will have to come here. I've traveled to see you, and relationships are a two way street.