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RING RING RING

Mike D: Hello this is Mike D.
President of my company: Hi Mike.
Mike D: Hi, what can I do for you?
President of my company: I’m frightened that you got a B in your ethics class
Mike D: ha ha ha
President of my company: what happened?
Mike D: I was horribly bored with the subject matter and stopped putting effort into the class.
President of my company: Ha!

I hate AutoCad.

Invariably, whenever I stuff my face full of food here at work… the phone rings.

Today he informed me:

“Belgium is delicious”

Be careful Belgium… I think it might be within Sander’s abilities to eat an entire nation.

One thing is absolutely true about flying. It gives you plenty of time to read. Today I hope to finish up the book “Tipping Point” which I started last week and make some progress with the Rock thriller Slash. I don’t have too much time before classes start hitting me with heavy homework again, so the more I can take advantage of the time now, the better.

As we look towards the weekend, I think things will get pretty fun. I have class on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday I’m meeting up with the rest of the DiDonato clan for a cooking class. Actually, Tom and Mykal are coming too and that should be way fun - I haven’t seen them in many moons.

The recipes to be made in the mass cooking extravaganza are:

* Tuna Salad with Green Beans and Tomatoes
* Minestra (Escarole and Meatball Soup)
* Zuppa di Cozze (Mussels in Spicy Tomato Sauce)
* Arancini (Rice Balls)
* Bistecca Pizzaiola or Braciole
* Veal Scaloppine Marsala
* Baked Chicken with Potato, Lemon and Oregano
* Linguini with White Clam Sauce
* Manicotti with Marinara Sauce
* Verdure alla Griglia (Grilled Veg)
* Struffoli (Honey Balls) * Biscotti Regina (Sesame Cookies)

Bang. Italian delicious. I will of course report back.

Hopefully I’ll be able to squeeze a band practice into the weekend too. We’ll see.

I’ve switched all my pens to blue ink. Sure, it might seem like a trivial change… but it’s made a great difference here in my working world of Mechanical Engineering.

You see, I work quite a bit with detailed drawings which are all printed on giant black and white plotters. When you’re making small revisions in a vast sea of black and white lines and text, the blue stands out a lot better than black. In fact, a good black pen will blend in perfectly with the ink drawings.

Some might make the argument for mechanical pencils, but, like rock and grain in a Catan without cities, those pencils are a hot commodity in our supply cabinets. Others use red or highlighters, but those colors aren’t as welcomed by the business community for official documents. Blue is the best of both worlds; it meets the standards of the corporate environment and provides a nice color differentiation on printed draft files.

Rock on blue ink.

Colleague: I haven’t received that package you guys sent
Mike D: Really? We sent on Thursday next day air.
Colleague: uh oh.
Mike D: Hold on a sec
I open up UPS.com and check the tracking number. It says “Delivered. Porch.”
Mike D: The package is on your porch.
Colleague: What?
Mike D: check your porch. The package is on your porch.
…
Colleague: Wow. Yes it is. Well done.

Mike D: I think I have to come into work this weekend.
Sander: Bummer.
Mike D: yeah, I suppose it could be worse though.
Sander: that’s true. your office could be full of snakes.

My uncle got me a sick ‘Paper Airplane a Day’ Calendar. the problem is… it’s February… and I have about 25 paper airplanes on my shelves (weekends are one plane, not two). I’m running out of space fast.

One more week of this and I will no longer have places to put airplanes. I was thinking about stringing them up, but then people couldn’t try them out. Maybe some shallow shelving?

I’m not sure.

Ideas?

The day has started.

And it is glorious.

There are a lot of people taking this coming Monday off from work.

List of important people out of the office:
President
Financial Controller
VP of Customer Service
Head of Operations
Head of Domestic Purchasing
Head of International Purchasing
Head of Engineering

what does this mean? Brace yourselves now… on Monday December 31st I, Mike D, will be in charge.

The employees are thoroughly confused as to why management would ever let this happen. This morning as people read the e-mail I heard comments coming from corners of the office:

“Mike DiDonato? what?”
“Mike DiDonato’s in charge??!”
“look out. Mike D’s in charge.”

I think they recognize that this may be the most rocking (or disastrous) day in our company’s history.

First, I am going to throw a pizza party. Also, I’m going to try and make everyone wicked awesome t-shirts. I was even thinking of breaking out the Christmas lights and making a giant christmas lights mural on the wall.

I need even more ideas, send ‘em in. This could be a day of reckoning folks.

Woooooo!

I call a customer back after our call is disconnected.

Mike D: Hi, this is Mike.
Important customer: Hi Mike. I’m sorry. This stupid cell phone disconnects my calls all the time
Mike D: Oh, no that was me.
Important customer: But you’re not on a cell, I called you at work.
Mike D: yeah… I turned around in my chair and it pulled the cord. The cord pulled the phone base which teetered on the edge of my desk… I grabbed for it but missed and hit the body instead of the edge thus pushing the phone base off the desk. It bounced across the room and the phone cable came undone. Sorry about that.
Important customer: wow.

And… I’m in Texas.

It’s warm here. Tomorrow is scheduled to be around 20 degrees Celsius (65 degrees F). I’ll be here for the next couple days returning Thursday afternoon in time for some late hours at the office, class on Friday, and the return to a semi-normal schedule… at least for a day or two. Then travel might rear its ugly head once again.

Alicia’s wedding on Saturday, alongside all this business travel, has rekindled my desire for a network of awesome people. In the ideal world I’d love to have a friend in every major US city/state that I could visit when business sends me off. If you’d like to add yourself to that list, fire me an e-mail at MikeDiDonato AT Gmail D0T com. Once the network is complete, I will post an exciting map of all the connections across the country.

Airports have a lonliness about them from mikedidonato on Vimeo.

It snowed in Ohio last night.
This, following the beautifully strange 60 degree Chicago weather. Odd.

Things are going pretty darn good. It’s 4:45am in Ohio and I woke up with particularly unkemp hair. I finished 95% of my paperlast night so my plane ride today can mostly be spend in relaxation.

Mostly, I just can’t wait to get back and play guitar. This Thanksgiving is going to be very rocking.

I’m in Chicago! I’m here on a sales trip and it’s pretty relaxing. It’s mostly been a mix of sales, homework, and adventure. The flight out on Saturday was fantastic. It just so happened that I shared a flight with Andreas the German Climber. We chatted and shared stories during the trip and the time flew (ba dum dum ching) by. That night I watched a great fireworks show from my hotel room.

Sunday night things were decidedly more lame as I stayed in to work on my paper.

Things picked up again last night when I threw academic responsibility to the wind and went out with the guys to Fogo de Chao, a well known Chicago Brazilian steakhouse. They give you a small token, one side of which is green, the other red.

When you want food, you switch it to green. And the food comes. Fast. An onslaught of meat like none I have ever seen. The first time I turned my token green and had to switch it back to red within 45 seconds for fear that my plate would be overrun by various cuts of tender salty meats.

It was a fun time.

Tonight will be another whole adventure. I’ll take pictures.

In the next month I will only be in the office for 7 days.

Next week I’m off to Chicago, which will immediately be followed by a trip to Ohio. Then we have Thanksgiving weekend followed by my sister’s wedding. The next Monday I head out to Texas to return on Thursday December 6th at which point I think the marathon of work will cease.

There might be an extra day slipped in here or there depending on if I can cut the business trips short. We shall see.

The next week is going to be the hardest. I am purposefully not going to bring my travel guitar. I have a ton of work that I need to get done for school and I don’t want any major distractions from my goal. Hopefully a week off will not destroy the sweet advances I have made in sweep picking and finger dexterity.

Last night Jesse stopped by and we had a quick fun jam session. At one point i let Jesse try the new guitar and I picked up my old guitar… oh man. How I ever played that thing… I have no idea.

Are any of you planning any fun trips?

I may have mentioned this before, but I have a strange desire to take up smoking… just to see if I have the will power to quit.

Recently while at work, this came up in conversation and one of my more astute coworkers compared it with Odysseus’s desire to hear the Sirens. Doing something just to be tempted. Perhaps it’s not as strange a thought as I suspect. Maybe this curiosity is inherent in our being human.

comments?

Today I took a vacation day from work so that I can finish up that paper.

whoop-de-freakin-doo.

On Tuesday our work meetings ended early. We stopped in at a small diner in Pittsburgh and chatted and purchased some beverages. As 6 o’clock approached we decided to go grab some dinner and then head to bed early.

Instantly, I remembered my folks talking about a Church in Pittsburgh that was transformed into a Brewery. They had suggested I check it out if we had time… and it appeared that yes, we had time.

I called up Ernie and got him to check the internet for me to see if we could find directions. Sure enough, the church was reasonably close. Just outside downtown Pittsburgh. We jumped in the car and off we went.

The Church Brew Works is a pretty big place. It’s not done quite as nicely as it could be, but it wins serious points on uniqueness. Walking through the huge wooden doors forces one to feel a bit… well? wrong. The holy water basins are still there as well as the organ and all the stained glass. Where one would normally find the alter, there stands the huge equipment for beer brewing. Down below, where one would expect to find pews, are tables and chairs set for dining.

The food was German in nature. We had some pierogies and traditional hummus to start and followed it with some steak. The food was great. The others got some beer, of which there was a wide variety available, and I had myself a water.

It was a good time and I’d recommend it as a stopping point if you find yourself in Pittsburgh. Though I don’t think it’s a place I’d regularly visit.

Check out the website, along with a picture or two… here.

Today I’m in D.C. I flew down last night with two others: our head of production (Jeff) and a visiting colleague from Texas named Yoni. I’ve never been to D.C. before so I was thrilled as the plane swooped in over the Lincoln memorial. What a sight! And shortly after landing (and taking a shower, which was probably preferred 10 to 1 over any amount of sightseeing (it had been four days)), we went out to grab some dinner.

Yoni has a fascinating history. He’s lived all over the place including Isreal and France. He speaks five languages and has a doctorate in metallurgy. He became a US citizen in 1989 and *loves* the United States.

It was mildly ironic then that he was the one who gave Jeff and I a tour of D.C. His knowledge of U.S. history is extremely deep. Not only was he telling us about the museums, the buildings, and the restaurants, he was supplementing the facts with stories of John Hancock’s jealousy and George Washington’s teeth. It was a huge relief to be spending some time here instead of with the tortures of broken water mains.

Speaking of water mains, the homefront remains much the same. Today I’ll find out how soon the repair guys will be able to come to fix the problem. Hopefully I’ll be able to post some D.C. pictures tomorrow.

Today went pretty well. Sadly though, not quite as well as hoped. While the new equipment we were installing worked great, a previous problem that we thought had disappeared came back with a vengeance. My co-worker Darko and I will be staying in Texas for an extra day in hopes that we’ll be able to close that problem tomorrow.

The food scenario today was ROUGH. The company we’re visiting didn’t happen to get the mill up and running until about 11:30… so we missed lunch. Uuuuugh. Hunger is a tough foe and… when it teams up with exhaustion… the combo is devastating. My eyelids edged shut again and again all the while my stomach spinning and lurching from the single twix bar that I tried to use to appease its growl.

The weather here is hot. Not overbearingly hot… just mid nineties. BUT! BUT! some new rules are in effect at this company… and we all have to wear long sleeves to protect ourselves from cuts and burning. This isn’t too annoying for all those dudes who brought long sleeved shirts to Texas, but I did not - mainly because it’s Texas. and I didn’t plan for cool weather. So I have to wear an overcoat.

You can probably begin to appreciate the situation: me, standing in the Texan sun, my exhausted mind desperately trying to figure out why I’m wearing an overcoat and not eating delicious BBQ.

Hopefully we’ll finish up tomorrow.

It’s like this every time I travel for work. Hands so dirty that I decimate a toothbrush in my efforts to rid my hands of the grime. Usually I remember to wash at the factory… which is far better because you can use their handy dandy soaps. This time though, I forgot.

Dirty Dirty Hands from mikedidonato on Vimeo.

We’ll continue this ritual tomorrow night.

Today is judgment day here in Texas. I’m hoping the day will go smoothly and that I’ll be able to return to the quiet life of CT in a very short time.

Texas is pretty warm, but not overwhelming. Yesterday it was in the 90’s and today is suppose to be about the same.

The food has been decent. Last night I went to a small little Cajun restaurant and I’m hoping to be able to escape the mayhem for a short time today to hit up some of the amazing BBQ that’s in town.

That’s about the extent of my personal plans for the day/week. A little BBQ and an early departure would be heaven.