I Live in Iowa: Week 183

This week was a bit of a blur. Work wise, I'm not working 40 hours a week. Ha. Monday and Wednesday were both days I left my apartment around 6 AM and returned around 6 PM, granted a lot of that was just time in a car driving, but it's still a long time. I have no idea how some people commute those kind of hours every day. I mean, I could still run, and relax for a couple hours, it's just not ideal. It's strange because in college, I feel like I studied or went to class all day. Yes I went to two hours of cross country or track practice every day, and all day Saturday, and I was involved in a few clubs that required several hours per week, but there were many days when I woke up at 7 and got strait into homework, and aside from two hours of practice and an hour of club activities and an hour "wasted" learning on the Internet, I didn't stop doing homework until 11 PM. That was really more the routine. Regardless, I'm really just trying to talk myself up, I'm lazy.

The rest of the week I was in Dubuque, working to fix problems, document problems, read up on my new jobs. About that, my new job is as a drivetrain engineer. I haven't decided on my actual title yet. My last two jobs, I have taken some time to figure out exactly which words I want to use in my email address and business card to best describe what I do. What does a drivetrain engineer work on? Axles, transmissions, driveshafts, differentials, and the associated plumbing, valves, brackets, and electronics to make it all work durably and efficiently. Considering my master's thesis was on heat treating a single transmission gear, my new job is a pretty broad position.

I ran this week! A whole seven miles! After taking most of the week off I did three on Friday and four on Saturday. I ended up taking about 16.5 days off completely. No running at all, and just one bicycle ride, one day of skiing, and one indoor rock climbing session.

On Tuesday I bought a car on Ebay. I'll publish that post tomorrow.

Friday, getting around to the social side of life, we did something unusual. Our product development team at work went out for lunch and then stayed out to play bean bags and socialize for the afternoon. It's been a pretty high stress time around the office, and the next three months are only going to get worse, so it was nice to get out and blow off a little steam tossing bean bags back and forth and laugh watching people dunk on an 8 foot basketball rim.  Later Friday night I finally got out to Jubeck brewery. I don't drink beer, and they don't actually have anything else, but I enjoy the small independent atmosphere of breweries. It's the definition of hole in the wall, a classy upscale hole in the wall, but seriously open only 14 hours a week on Thursday and Friday nights. It's Dubuque's only microbrewery, so it was packed with 50+ people when I was in there at 7 PM Friday. They could easily expand, maybe offer some local wines, be open on Saturday.