Far too many people I run into mistakenly believe that I sit around the house all day, writing. Nothing could be further from the truth. First of all, I don’t write every day. That would be crazy. Writing every day would make me, like, a writer. I learned very early on that I wasn’t going to become a Serious Writer. I don’t drink; I don’t use drugs; I’m not a necrophiliac. There was no way I was going to be screwed up enough to be a great writer.
I actually do write most weekdays, but I have lots of free time. I work out every day (it’s not easy maintaining this physique) and then I take on other projects. Over the years, I’ve run a Cub Scout troop, volunteered at the Boys & Girls Club, spoken to high-school and college classes about being a writer, done a lot of coaching, and tutored dozens, if not hundreds, of kids. People know that all they need do is ask and, if I can’t come up with a good excuse not to do it off the top of my head, I’m there for them.
And thus it came to pass that I found myself at the Sporting Chance gym near River & La Cholla. As some of you may know, my daughter, Darlene, is an Ivy League-educated civil engineer. Her Master’s thesis was entitled “Understanding Mobility Performance: A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Cornell University in Partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science.” It’s hard to believe, but the thesis itself is even sexier than the title.
It’s really funny. When I introduce her to someone as my daughter, the other person says, “Pleased to meet you.” But if I say, “This is my daughter, Darlene. She’s a civil engineer who specializes in computerized traffic flow patterns,” they respond, “What the hell is wrong with Ina and Thornydale?”
She works for an engineering firm called Psomas. (She and her work homies play on an indoor soccer team called The Silent P’s.) There’s another engineering firm—Kimley-Horn—in the same building and they’re natural rivals. There has been a little bit of friction lately. Do you know what happens when two engineering firms are mad at each other? They hold a meeting.
Adam Gomez is an engineer at Kimley-Horn whom Darlene knows from basketball. To settle things once and for all, Adam challenged Psomas to a basketball game. The conciliatory theme of the friendly contest would be “Let’s Build Some Truss.”
(I guarantee that at least four engineers got hernias laughing at that.)
I also referee basketball sometimes (another way to pick up some easy money, as long as you’re able to deal with the petty whining of guys who used to be good in basketball back in the day—but aren’t now—and those who were never good in basketball and definitely aren’t now). I was asked to referee the game, which was held at the Sporting Chance building.
When I walked in, the two teams were warming up. It’s stereotypical and unfair to assume that engineers are not athletic (although one guy on Darlene’s team did lose his glasses during pre-game lay-ups). Darlene’s boss, Alejandro, is a super-good soccer player. If he lived in South America, the fact that he’s a bad-ass engineer and a super-good soccer player would probably enable him to be elected President of Peru and Ecuador. But, here in America, being a bad-ass engineer and a super-good soccer player just means that you’re a bad-ass engineer.
Darlene’s big boss, Matt Clark, played college basketball at Bucknell. You might have seen him strutting around McKale a couple years ago when Bucknell came to Tucson and kicked the crap out of the Wildcats in the first round of the NIT. (It actually was only a couple years ago, but it feels like it was on the other side of Kevin O’Neill.)
The game started slowly, with Kimley-Horn holding a 2-0 lead after four minutes. Darlene hit a three to give Psomas a brief lead, but then Adam (who leads one of the toughest men’s leagues in town in scoring) answered back and Kimley slowly took control of the game. The lead was 10 at the half and Kimley cruised to the win. During the game, one guy dove on a loose ball and his momentum carried him several feet. I was going to invoke the Slide Rule, but…nah!
Darlene has always been this all-around spectacular person. High-school Valedictorian and five-sport athlete. She played college basketball and volleyball and is in her high school’s Athletic Hall of Fame. She’s not defined by what she does, but civil engineering does play a big part in her life. (To mess with her, my software engineer son, Alexander, calls her Tacoma Narrows. Look it up.)
Her iPod workout playlist includes “Life Is A Highway,” “Expressway to Your Heart,” and “Ease on Down the Road” from “The Wiz.” (I’ve always tried to get her to listen to the blues, but she resisted until I told her the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul to the Devil at the crossroads.) Someday I’ll introduce her to the old Steve Winwood band, Traffic.
She also likes going to the movies. Her favorite actor: Jeff Bridges.
This article appears in Nov 13-19, 2014.
Steve Winwood band Traffic? Are you sure he left? Or is that some kind of a metaphor for traffic engineering?
The lady gets the blues.
Once there was a dork named Danehy
Who could not stop bragging about himself & his family
He droned on and on about how great they all were
Until he drove all TW readers to insanity …
Signed
Danehick Sux
Thanks DS. I missed that the first time through. he is the only contributor that hasn’t insulted me.
Has he? Oh I forget.
Hell of a poem!
This is just Tom’s way of dealing with the fact that his beloved Democratic party just got their asses handed to them on a silver platter. Writing a happy puff piece about his family helps him keep his mind off of reality.
Silver platter? That’s the Keystone Pipeline and the flow of sweet crude.
Sweet!
Lest we forget that fracking has brought oil supplies in the US up and prices down almost one dollar per gallon.
Now that’s freedom and liberating.
It’s my understanding that Saudi Arabia is lowering the price of oil in an effort to get the price of a barrel of oil below the cost of producing a barrel of American shale oil. That temporary price cut would put a squeeze on the shale oil people and allow the Saudis to regain market share. Like many Americans (since the 1970s), I’ve wanted the U.S. to increase production AND raise fuel-efficiency standards so that we could tell OPEC to perform an anatomically impossible act upon itself. And yes, my beloved Democratic Party did get its collective ass handed to it. As Taylor Swift says, “Haters gonna’ hate, hate, hate…”
In addition to the above, five main reasons why gas prices are down:
#1: People are driving less – less demand, prices fall, so you can probably expect a bump as we head into the holidays.
#2: Cheaper gas blends are refined in winter – equates to lower gas prices at the pump.
#3: The price of oil has been falling – once again, equates to lower gas prices at the pump, see comment just above.
#4: No major disasters – weak hurricane season did not play havoc with US oil production in the Gulf of Mexico.
#5: Consumer confidence – weaken consumer confidence has helped push gas prices to their lowest level since February. The slide in consumer confidence may not impact gasoline demand as much as the other factors but it should still result in noticeably lower gas prices.
Gawd, I wish things were as simple as FOX news makes them out to be … fracking moron
But I thought global warming was going to increase hurricanes…snow today in our sister city with record low temps we have not seen since 1890s which was BEFORE the automobile.
“Oil sank into a bear market last month as leading OPEC members resisted calls to cut production and instead reduced export prices to the U.S., where output has climbed to the highest level in more than three decades.”-Bloomberg News
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/10/28/consumer-confidence-october/18032035/
How do you make things so complicated?
Plus…I’ve got gas!
The government’s Energy Information Administration has just updated its forecast and now predicts that gasoline prices will remain under $3 a gallon next year, a reduction from last month’s forecast of 44 cents a gallon. This translates into something like $60 billion more in the pockets of consumers, which is good news for the US economy (and the Chinese companies that sell goods here).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaellynch/2014/11/13/eia-drops-gas-price-forecast-for-2015-how-credible/
That is great news for Americans. And the election was only a week ago! What were we waiting for?
Nancy Pelosi is caught lying again, today. This is how they lost support of the American people.
http://reason.com/blog/2014/11/13/nancy-pelosi-says-she-doesnt-know-who-jo
Indulge yourself the education of watching both videos. It will shock you.
This is fraud against the US taxpayers.
Any injuries in this basketball game were caused by Obama
Last week’s debacle, which will ultimately harm mostly the people who elected all those clowns, was the result of three things: Citizens United and the sanctioning of unlimited dark money; blatant exercise of the mental disease known as Obama Derangement Syndrome; and the sad spectacle of too many Democrats refusing to vote because their candidates disrespected their own president. If Dems would just vote, they would generally win. If EVERYONE who could vote exercised their rights, we would be free of most of the troglodytes infecting our congress.
If 4 million Republicans didn’t stay home 2 years because Romney wasn’t conservative enough,Obummer would be back in Chicago stirring up shit.
i didn’t get a hernia, but i did laugh at your truss pun Danehy. Now go forth and pun no more.
Was there a point to this?