Me in ME: 17 and 18

What a difference a day makes.

At this time yesterday, I was resting soundly in the thought that I only had one more day of work (maybe a day and a half), and then I'd be heading back to Waco on Saturday. Everything went smoothly at work yesterday, as they did this morning. The two mechanics doing all of the metal work were making some of the final connections when they found a problem. They gave me the call at 4:00 while I was picking up the guy from the airport who was supposed to test the new system. One of the cables was interfering with a piece of immovable equipment by about a half inch. You'd think that this would be easy to fix, except that there's no way to move the equipment and the cable is attached to a connect that goes through a hole in the skin, and unless you're Bugs Bunny, holes are impossible to move. But that's just what we need to do. We need to move a hole that is 1.5 inches in diameter backward by an inch. After about 4 hours of work this evening, I think I've sketched up a solution to illustrate what may work. I guess I'll find out in the morning.

I went through such a wave of emotions today. This morning I was happy and optimistic about being finished with my first field mod trip. During lunch I almost gave up on driving as I ran a red light that I didn't see and almost got hit by a rather large pickup truck being driven by a rather angry guy. Of course, my coworkers were there to tease and critique, especially after my fender bender on Monday. I was looking forward to picking up our tester from the airport so that I could get some solitude. On the way to Portland, I called our rental car company to find out what I had to do about the fender bender, and they suggested stopping by. It was while I was giving the agent there my information and getting calls from the tester wonder where I was that I got the call that ruined my week. The frustration of my design being off by an inch combined with more teasing when I got back to the base that finally broke me. I'm usually pretty good about letting adversity roll off my back, but this one stuck. Maybe this was a call for brokenness and humility from God. As I was approaching the breaking point (especially after going to Subway craving a meatball sub only to find out that they ran out of meatballs), I called my mom and talked it out. Now I'm at a point where it feel (and hope) that today's nightmare was only a dream, and I'll get to work tomorrow just to find out that everything's okay.

But I know in my head that it's not. So all I can do now is ask for God to give me patience over the next few days, and try to get a good night's sleep.