A Slower Pace

Well, the Louisville Cardinals advanced last night against the #1 seed team, the University of Washington Huskies. Aside from a short time where they did not control the speed and transition of the dogs, the Cards played their own game and slowed the pace down selecting shots, hitting threes and almost perfecting their free throws (as my old coach John Nelson used to say, “Free throws win games!”). I am slowing getting drawn into the March madness and excited for the local teams. We’ll see how the UK Wildcats do tonight against Utah. They will definitely need to step their game up. My neighbors are coming over for the late 9:40pm tip off. It should make for a nice but late evening. And I have to get up early to go to our church’s work Saturday. Our family volunteered for the annual spring cleaning before Easter. Luckily it only goes til noon and then I can get the smoker going again for Saturday’s dinner.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Well, we had a nice pizza dinner and topped it off with ice cream sundaes. I popped “The Incredibles” DVD in and we were about 10 minutes into family movie night when I got a call from work. Seems there was a very late, very emergency order for product to go out to a patient. So I jumped in the truck and sped to work hoping that I could get everything situated and the product out the door to the patient and back again to salvage the remainder of the night. My wife doesn’t like it but she is very understanding. It’s not like we’re shipping computer parts, peanut butter or ball bearings — this is a patient’s quality of life here and I’m lucky to work for a company that drastically has a positive impact on people’s lives. Luckily it doesn’t happen often and I was able to make it home before the movie ended. We all enjoyed the grand finale superhero fight scene together.

Say a prayer with me for the patient that needs the product early next week. While it was a small inconvenience to my Friday evening, that is miniscule compared to what they are going through. Just one more reminder to count your blessings.

…..Dan at aslowerpace

Part of the charm of living out here in the country is the wildlife that occasionally pops up. From deer to raccoons to wild turkeys, it is always nice to see those animals we never saw in the California concrete jungle.

Well, this morning as I drove my two lane country road to work I came around a tight corner and surprised two deer. They were very startled and it took them a second to figure out which way to escape my human intrusion into their peaceful feeding. I was worried one of them would try to cross the road in front of me and possibly get hit. I was going slow enough to have stopped but I was relieved when they both vertically levitated to clear the 4 ft high fence and took off into the woods.

I am noticing that the sun is staying up later and later now. It is light for quite a while now after I get home from work. I can’t wait until the first week in April when the time changes and it will be light even later. I took advantage of the time after dinner with it still being light out (and a comfortable 57F degrees) to play tag with the kids while the dogs provided moving obstacles. We then swung a while on the rope swing down by the creek with the kids taking turns and actually sharing (surprise!). We then went on a little hike towards the back creek and just enjoyed the quiet. Birds were out singing and moving about. It really reminded me of some of the parks and open space back in CA — however, this was all ours right outside our house. I am really getting teased by the weather pretending to offer these spring days and then snatching them back with a reality cold front.

Hurry up spring. Get here already!

On another note, we celebrated our three month anniversary here in Kentucky.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

The UPS air sort hub in Louisville is an extraordinary marriage of technology, engineering and business processes. I was amazed, not only at how fast everything around me moved, but how little human effort it took to make that movement happen. In one sort, humans only touch the package twice while in Louisville, Kentucky — once to unpack it from the air cargo container and once to repack it into it’s outgoing air cargo container. The package spends the rest of it’s Kentucky residency on miles of conveyor that stretch as spaghetti throughout the facility. It would be as close to a chaos orchestra as I could think of.

There was one point, probably my second favorite part in the tour (read yesterday’s post for a clue as to what my favorite part was), where I was in the 4 million sq ft building about four stories up against this guard rail looking out onto all of the conveyors (not unlike a scene from Monsters Inc with all the doors). Looking down I could see no less than three different layers of conveyors. The top, closest layer ran towards me and then disappeared underneath my feet. Boxes were whizzing by at 10-20 mph. Another layer below that paralleled the top layer, rose up and then merged with it arranging boxes and joining them into the top layer flow like a professional New York City traffic cop. The layer below that one ran perpendicular to the other conveyors feeding them with newly arrived packages. What I thought was neat was, while studying this mezmorizing cubular flow, seeing one of my company’s boxes zip by. Then another. There’s yet another. It was very satisfying seeing our boxes hurry to their destination knowing that in just a few hours a pharmacist would open them and give the products to our patients who relied upon quality of life improving biologics. It made me proud of my role in that process.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I have been an aviation buff since before I could walk. It never did turn out as a career (I’ll keep my day job, thank you) but it is still one of my passions. So imagine the huge grin on my face as I shoved the throttles forward to release the power of the UPS DC-8’s four turbofan engines and began racing down runway 35L at the Louisville International Airport. It was exhilarating — what a rush! At 135 knots, I pulled back on the yoke and gently climbed as downtown Louisville disappeared beneath my windscreen. As I leveled off at 3000 feet I gazed out the side window as downtown slipped below me. Puffy clouds all around and a beautiful horizon before me.

Then the instructor hit the pause button and asked if I would like to try a landing from three miles out. “You betcha” I said, securely strapped to the captain’s chair by a five point harness inside one of several $13 million dollar flight simulators at the UPS main air hub in Louisville. This was the ultimate video game. So real, in fact, that the FAA considers any time a pilot spends here as actual flight time. My landing was a bit rough (my excuse was I was testing the realism of the hydraulic motion controls) but I kept it on the runway which is more than I can say about the rest of my work compadres who had joined me on the tour. It was my favorite part of the tour which is saying a lot because the whole time I spent there was extremely interesting. Even though it was from 10p to 2:30a, I was awake and alert soaking it all up.

Thank you to my UPS reps for giving me the opportunity to join you in sharing your facilities and operations. More on the tour in following posts including the most important thing I learned that evening.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

So we woke up this morning waterless, but with hope. The plumber was expected at 9:30a and water shortly after that. My son had a play date after school with the only other boy in his pre-school class. And I had an off site seminar.

The plumber was on time and extremely helpful. Turns out the water source pipe I thought I hit was some kind of drain pipe from the roof/attic. (The kicker — we actually could have had water all night long!) The translation from the plumber to my wife lost quite a bit when it got to me but bottom line was that if we didn’t drain it (which is what we, er, I did when I drilled into it) it would’ve eventually filled and the water would’ve gone to not so nice places. Supposedly it would have gotten taken care of and correctly routed when the basement gets finished but that has not happened yet. So in a way, this was a good thing we found out about it because it was something we needed to know about but didn’t. Silver lining in the cloud type thing. Now at least we can periodically drain it until we finished the basement off and properly route it to a regular drain.

My wife also had time to chat with the plumber who was from around here and knowledgable. More local info is always good. And the neighbor saw my son and his friend playing out in the front pasture so she brought over her son who my son loves. They all played together while my wife was able to spend her first conversation with the neighbor mom. We are slowly building our network back up. It is nowhere near where our CA support system is/was but it is a start and progress is being made.

And the weather today was absolutely gorgeous. The truck temp indicator read 72F on the way home from my seminar. I drove with the windows open all the way home. The downtown Louisville traffic with a few accidents was like a Sunday LA traffic drive — definitely nothing to complain about. From downtown in traffic to our quiet countryside home it only took 40 minutes. And that was driving at slow Kentucky speeds.

All of this will change tomorrow. We’re expecting colder temps and possible wet stuff. It’s supposed to snow this weekend. But at least I enjoyed it while the opportunity presented itself. I even got out on the patio and grilled some burgers and broke in my new smoker with some charcoal, water and hickory chips.

The TV didn’t come on tonight and instead I reviewed homework, chatted with the wife and played a few games with the kids.

The seminar I went to had a great positive impact and solidifies the direction we have been headed and brings it into tighter focus. I was doing quite a few of the things but more from a happenstance viewpoint and as individual habits. The seminar helped me add tools to the foundation we had already built and tied it all together for a greater purpose. For the first time here in Kentucky, I have a true peace and comfort with where we are, the direction we are headed and the pace we are taking. I would equate it to day 3 or 4 of a nice two week vacation. The planning and stress of all the changes and newness of the vacation are worn off and you can ease into the enjoyment and relaxation of the journey — enjoyment of the immediate present while optomistically looking forward to the future.

Now I know we still have quite a few challenges left. I haven’t talked about the disappointing school situation yet and there are a few other cards that have to still be played. And there will be valleys and challenges ahead. But all in all I have an extreme peace and inside satisfaction. I always hoped we would get to this point but at times I had extreme doubts. I am glad I hung in there. Nothing worth anything is easy.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

I was on my relaxing drive home this evening — the rain had given way to an almost cloudless sky with the Kentucky sun dipping into the tree line. Almost home, I noticed two ducks, one out front and one flying the part of the wingman. But they weren’t flapping their wings. Turns out they were slowly gliding down for a water approach onto a pasture pond. From my driving vantage point it looked like they were flying straight but in reality they were on final descent. Finally, I saw the lead bird bank right with his wingman following. It looked just like “Top Gun” as they rolled right, flared and hit the #3 wire — carrier speak for a perfect landing.

Oh yeah…..and this evening while trying to run some RG-6 cable for an attic antenna, I drilled into a water pipe. I ran the stud finder in the area with no results but it didn’t pick up the PVC pipe. The shower I got right then and there will be my last until tomorrow morning when the repair plumber gets here. The house water is turned off and we’re all gonna have to make do tomorrow morning as we adjust our routine. Pretty funny when you think of it. Kinda like a sitcom.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

It was 90 days ago that we left California for our house hunting trip. It seems so far ago, so much in the past. We were still California residents, didn’t own real jackets, hadn’t gone through or expected the roller coaster of emotions, etc. While we still have a ways to go, we have covered a lot of ground in about 3 months. It’ll be interesting to see what the next 3 bring.

All I can say is — time moves quick. Like this quote from Ferris Bueller — “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Why don’t we all make that our goal this weekend. Drop me a note and let me know how you did.

…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net

Today was another rare spring day in winter. It actually got up to 57F! We started off the day at an indoor yard sale at the local community center. It was a picture ripped from the country 50’s. And old basketball gym circa 1954 with various locals hawking their wares on folding tables. It was almost a thrift store on steriods. Like a lot of people’s grandmas all died and left them stuff. From a crocheted picture of Jesus to a salt shaker in the shape of Kentucky to a set of John Wayne plates to an old fan that you could stick your whole hand through before they made them safe. It was a eclectic country mix. I’m sure there were a few gems that could end up on one of those antique appraisal TV shows where you bought it for $1 and it is worth hundreds. And then when we left, we spent some time with my son on the outdated playground. You know, the one that has all the good play things from days of old. Like real see-saws. And a skeleton merry go round where if you fell off in the middle it would hit you in the head. And they had really cool back-hoe sand toys that you sit on and control the scooper to dig a hole. It was kinda like looking back on toys of your childhood where they aren’t as whiz-bang as todays electronic toys but they have lots of character.

Spent the rest of the day doing a few chores around the house — cleaning out the garage, cleaning out the basement, and assembling the new smoker I got. I also spent a 1/2 hour chatting with my back neighbor who offered help carrying something heavy into the house when he saw us drive on the grass to the front door.

Dinner was some nice country eats at the Cracker Barrel. I had comfort food — chicken ‘n’ dumplins’. I had never had them before coming to Kentucky but them’s good eats! And the Kentucky sunset escorted us home. I made a statement to my wife that I think I’ve seen and enjoyed more sunsets in the short time here than we saw in California all last year. Don’t know if it is because you can see more of the horizon here or if we are truly slowing down and enjoying the little things in life or what. But they sure are purty.

Tomorrow is Super Bowl. We plan on hitting the late service and then have a new member party at the pastor’s house. It wil give us a chance to meet new people. We’ll make it back in time for the game but I am not that enthused about rooting for either team. As a Dallas Cowboy fan, I have grown up hating the Eagles (right behind the Redskins) however, I am tired of the Patriots. I guess if someone has to win, I’ll go for the green birds but to me it really doesn’t matter. Good thing NASCAR starts in a few weeks.

…..Dan at aslowerpace

Today was an all around gorgeous day. Sunny, no clouds and we broke into the 50’s. Birds were out doing their thing, you didn’t need a coat, and people were generally upbeat. I cannot remember a day when I truly looked around in amazement at the beauty of the weather and surroundings.

When I returned from work and drove down the driveway, my son and two dogs were playing around the pasture and running to great me. It was a great way to be greeted home and to kick off the weekend. We then took the dogs on a small walk around the property. Nothing strenuous — just a stroll around soaking up the afternoon.

Back in California, I looked down on days like this as too cold. It’s amazing what a streak of cold weather will do to your weather standards. Maybe we’ve acclimated to this Kentucky weather. All I know is that winter is still here and I am expecting more freezing days ahead. But today, we thoroughly enjoyed the day as a family. I received a nice welcome home, was able to pick up my kids from school and grilled dinner outside while enjoying a cold one.

Luckily, this weather should hold through the weekend so more enjoyment and relaxation is ahead.

…..Dan at aslowerpace