NCAA Quiz

QUESTION: Every year there are 4 number one seeds in the NCAA tournament. What 4 teams have been a number one seed the most times, since 1979?

ANSWER: I answered Duke, UNC, Kansas, and Michigan and got the first three correct. Can’t believe both of us missed the fourth right answer – Kentucky.

Lexus cars are on the top of my list. Always catches my eye on the road. Monday last night I looked at a few cars for sale on line. I love the sporty Honda hybrid 2-seater CRZ, but its not practical for the 1% of the times I carry more than one passenger. M will get his license soon, A is going off to school with a Jeep that sometimes blows smoke, and Will’s Jeep is in the shop. Not sure who I would hand my Civic down to, Will or Anna. Not that I could afford another payment. Just jabbering at this point.

Was busy working Tuesday afternoon and didn’t realize it was 620 until Ceil called. A and M were at their guitar lesson and so we didn’t eat until after eight. Two different kinds of burritos. Anna eats the leftovers of her favorite, so I brought the other kind for lunch.

We finally received the $80,000.00 order for old parts, so I had done a lot of work over the past three days to make sure it could bill out before month end. Took most all of yesterday. Salesman Steve had done a great job getting the customer to cut the PO, and then my work was cut out for me. With our customer using up so many parts every day I had plenty of regular work to do, and I also spent the better part of an hour fixing a Chattanooga mistake for a co-worker. Today it was confirmed that March was the best month our department has ever had. Today our reward is ice cream sandwiches (we did have a fantastic dinner recently at a really nice restaurant). Today I start working to make sure a 2 week machine shutdown doesn’t run me out of material.

It takes a village to handle the large customer I work on: SU, TB, SM, JH, JH, DB, DM, DP, and WM plus our many warehouse managers, employees, and shipping personnel. Plus all the people at over 15 fabricators and multiple raw material suppliers and in our Purchasing Department.  Upper management likes to refer to us as a team. Everyone’s day is filled with visits and meetings and calls and of course the actual work. What is so frustrating to me is that it seems like whenever a real emergency comes up that needs to be handled, so often the “team” is tied up with something else, leaving just me to pull off another miracle. I don’t mind that hardly anyone knows all the work and time that went into resolving the situation, but when something good happens (like when the $65,000.00 gets turned into an $80,000.00 order and gets quickly billed out on time despite numerous insurmountable obstacles) instead of acknowledgement of all the mountains that were moved the more frequent response is “good job team!”

At times like this (or when I’m the 6th most important family member, behind the dog) it’s hard to remember that if I keep a good attitude and don’t lose my cool that God is pleased. So often I fail. 

One good result from this huge order: for over a year a worker bee at our supplier’s supplier was having their pay docked because the material was sitting there unused. Nobody at our company or our customer knew about this. By shipping the material this poor person was able to get all that money back – it was like both a raise and a bonus for her. Nice to be able to help out every now and then.      

REID: Ralph Kramdon used to say that if Alice's mother would come spend the night, the cat would spend the night in the cot in the kitchen, and he would spend the night in the box outside in the hallway. 

ME: Hilarious – I’ll have to remember that!

Worked til 8:30 Wednesday night. Had to pick up M and take his friend home to Milton so we didn’t get home until 10:30. Worked on a project based on a certain assumption that changed with a 7:30 email. Changed everything around and submitted approved requisitions at 10 am this morning. At 10:30 everything changed again and people thought I was an idiot for my earlier work. Took another hour to make revisions and send another list. Will make for a crazy May. Meanwhile all my regular work and special projects and questions from faraway people with problems keep adding up.