The meeting in Kernersville on Thursday went pretty well, I’d say. It’s an interesting situation – a small adhesives plant that was bought out by a larger company but is still pretty much being run by the guy who built it. He’s ready to retire, though, and they’re looking for someone to replace him. The technology is not the attraction on this job – it’s cutting-edge circa 1945, and they’ll readily admit that. The challenge, though, is all the other facets of the job – managing 8 hourly workers, plant scheduling, equipment maintenance, traveling with salesmen, tinkering with formulations for the dozens of plants they supply, making trial runs, etc. All in all, it’s not a bad position and I could certainly do a lot worse. The location still sucks, of course, it’s not a deal-killer. The next step is for them to look at the candidates that they’ve met with and decide who to bring in for the “real” interview – interviewing with multiple people, plant tour, the whole formal thing. Hopefully I’ll hear more on that next week.

The rest of the trip up was pretty uneventful, with the exception of a warning stop from the nice gentleman from the Ohio State Police. Nothing really serious – he pulled me over, then just sped on. Either he found a better target, or just wanted to scare the bejesus out of me. Well, he certainly succeeded in the latter!

Aerofox and loriana were kind enough to put me up Thursday night on short notice (thanks foxies!). Their home is just fabulous, and I hope they’ll be able to host lots of friends there in the future. I also saw The Barn, and all I can say is: Now I understand 🙂

Friday was supposed to be a nice short drive over to Chicago. It started out inauspiciously enough with pounding rain throughout the area when I left at 8:30 AM. I decided to take back roads over towards Fort Wayne, IN from the foxes’ place, and found the pleasant little resort town of Celina, Ohio in the middle of the Ohio farmland. One of the nice little finds you get when taking back roads, there was a surprising number of B&B’s, hotels, and condos worthy of the North Carolina coast around the nearby lake. It also provided a nice place to stop for a latte, which always makes me a fan!

The rain let up as I headed into Indiana and began the long slog across Indiana on US 30. I had the bright idea to turn north on IN 49 at Valparaiso to cut up to I-94. As I drove up I saw that Indiana Dunes was just an additional three miles further, so I took 30 minutes to drive around there, admire the juxtaposition of the calm lake, pleasant beaches, and hellish smokestacks of Michigan City. I was also amused by the signs that indicated that there were rip currents, the bacterial levels were too high for swimming, and looking at the water might cause blindness. (OK, I made that last one up…)

As I was heading back towards I-94 I flipped over to the Chicago traffic station on Sirius and heard “Big problems in northwest Indiana”. That was enough to get me to switch over to WBBM for the scoop: A massive truck crash with hazardous materials (specifically ethylene oxide, yay) had shut down all lanes of traffic in both directions on I-80/I-90 just west of I-65. The Skyway, US 6, and US 30 were a complete mess, and traffic on I-80 was backed up for 25 miles.

Well, hell.

I spent the next three hours detouring around, investigating the surface streets of northwest Indiana (lock your doors, kids!), and generally fighting my way through the mess. I arrived to pick up datahawk from work at about 4 PM. Gah. We wandered down to the Woodfield area and met up with linnaeus at the Olive Garden across from the Woodfield Hyatt. Drinks and appetizers were consumed (yum!), then we killed some time at a nearby Borders, then it was off to pick up Takaza at O’Hare. We then grabbed a late dinner before heading down to feren‘s place.

Saturday, we spent the majority of the day with feren and rcking moving equipment from the Duckon storage locker to the Midwest FurFest storage locker. I’m glad we got it done, but it was hot, sweaty work (the air-conditioned, indoor storage locker that MFF has is pretty damn sweet, though!). Linnaeus and Datahawk came over after later in the evening and much ass-whupping (mostly mine ass being whupped) took place on Bloody Roar Extreme. Damn, my thumb still hurts.

Today, we’re off to the MFF staff meeting in a few hours. Should be pretty productive, I hope. Dinner with friends, and some useful discussion, yay.

And tomorrow it’s up at 4 AM to take takaza to the airport. If there is ever any question how much I love my husband, well, there you have it 🙂

Off to shower and start the day!