Andy's Blog

I find it really amazing that you can ship something "3-Day Select" and indeed i does arrive three days later. Furthermore that package would make six stops across the country; all in sensible locations. If you had to start UPS from the ground up, how would you do it so that you ended as organized or more so than UPS is today? It's impressive, the amount of logistics, technology, infrastructure, and people that they've put into service for the explicit purpose of delivering my package. Oh and, they manage to do all of that for profit on less than $150. I'm sure there is a lesson here somewhere... Probably one of the Built to Last lessons.

If you don't have school-aged children you may not understand this until then. I had lunch with Aiden at his school on Friday. There were three things that really stuck out at me. First, lunch is really cheap. I had nachos, grapes, a baked potato and chocolate milk for a whopping $2.25. I can't tell if that means that I should be worried about the quality of what I ate (tasted fine) or government spending to subsidize lunches. Second, milk cartons haven't changed. They're still as hard to open as they ever were. Finally, the lunch ladies are the same. What is it about blue-hairs that draws them to work a register for children, make sure everyone dumps their milk into the slop bucket, cleans up endless spills, and is there to assist in opening the particulary incorrigible milk carton?

Even still, there's little in this world that feels as good as eating with your son who beams over the fact that daddy came to have lunch with him. How long until he doesn't want to hold my hand anymore? Hopefully never.

Remember those books from the 80's with definitions for madeup words for every day things, like when vacuuming the act of picking something off the floor and dropping it back down so the cleaner can get it (don't remember the snigglet)?

I got thinking about them because I'm out in Seattle and I just had an identical experience to Ben's. Odd really. It needs a snigglet. Combining geekness and bodily function I suggest "dumplocked" as in "I had to let a load off my mind, but I got dumplocked"