Chapter 22

I set the phone on the top of the toilet tank, and wet a washcloth with warm water. I took a few minutes to clean myself up and then got re-dressed.

It only took a few minutes to get to the office. I walked in the door and greeted Marian.

"Hi Marian, what's up for today?"

"Hi John, not a whole lot. I have a few messages for you, and Don over at the lab wanted me to let you know that he expects to have some preliminary designs and cost estimates for the production unit by late next week. The engineers are going to look over the buildings we have here to see what the best one to set up in will be. We will probably need to add some utilities, too but they will let us know."

That's good news. It looks like things are moving along nicely. I'll give Don a call in a minute. Anything else?"

"Hmm- let's see ... oh yeah, Joe Schmidt from Baleen Corporation out in California called yesterday. He said something about having talked to some folks at Purdue. He was going to be out today, but I left a message on your desk to call him Monday- it should pop up on your calendar, too. Also- all your reservations are made for Pitcon and Informex. You have a Ford Explorer rented for the whole time you're out there."

"Great! Thanks a lot Marian, I hope I can get over to Yosemite this time. Last time they had this in San Francisco, the snow was so deep you couldn't get into the park. I did get to go up the coast and see the redwoods though."

"I'd love to see all that sometime. I was only in San Francisco when Bob came home from 'Nam. We spent a week there. We always wanted to go back but we never made it." Marian said sadly.

"Well, I'll tell you what. If this enzyme project goes as well as I expect, I'll pay your air fare out there if you want to go there on your vacation."

Marian was surprised. "I don't know what to say, John. I really wasn't angling for anything. You don't have to do that!"

I laughed. " I know I don't have to, but I want to. You're a tremendous help to me Marian. If it wasn't for you keeping things straight for me, I'd have to be here a lot more, and I know I couldn't keep things organized as well as you do anyhow. That's just not what I'm good at."

Marian blushed a bit. "Why thank you John. I like keeping things organized, and I'm glad that you think I'm doing it right."

"Oh, you definitely are! Well, I'd better get in there and pretend to work a bit."

"All right. I'll let you be for a while. And John?"

"Yes?"

"Thank you."

"Oh, you're welcome Marian."

I went in my office and booted up the computer. I reviewed my calendar and read a bunch of email. Most of it was routine stuff, which I answered, but I had a note from Baleen that was interesting.

They'd talked with the Purdue aerogel team and gotten some very interesting ideas to collaborate on. Purdue was furnishing some specially made samples for them and Joe expected to have some results soon. He thanked me for putting me in touch with Purdue.

I pecked out a note to him that basically said I was happy to have helped, and to please keep us in mind if anything commercial came from it. After making sure the spelling and grammar were not too awful, I punched "SEND", and committed it to cyberspace.

There wasn't much else to do. I reviewed progress reports on several projects we had in the mill and sent a few notes back to the project leaders. Everything was pretty well in line with our PERT charts.

I returned the calls Marian had taken for me and took care of a couple of routine inquires. One was an inquiry about a process that was so simple I was almost ashamed to charge them the consulting fee. It was something I'd worked with right out of college, and they could have found the information in a ten-minute session with Chemical Abstracts.

I typed out a process summary, pulled up references from the abstracts and attached them to the report. I added a conclusion and recommendations and sent the report over to Marian to be formatted in a PDF file and sent to the customer along with an invoice for our minimum charge.

That done, I dialed Don's extension.

"Lab, this is Don."

"Hi Don, John here. Marian gave me your message. Is there anything you need from me?"

"Nope- not just now. DesignChem's engineering crew will be here Wednesday to look over the place and make a recommendation about where to set up the production units. Based on the blueprints I sent him, it looks like the Nitrating Line Building is the best bet, but they want to look it over. If not there, the next best looks to be the old machine shop."

"Actually, I think the old shop might be better. The Nitrating building is huge. I doubt if we'll need that much space anytime soon, and it will be a bear to heat."

"You may be right, Boss. I was thinking of that myself. I guess we won't really know until we get the unit design nailed down and decide what we think the market will need. The economic analysis /market study should be in before Christmas."

"Yeah- I agree, Don. The other thing that occurred to me is that we want to have enough product made to be able to send out samples after we make our announcement at Informex. I suppose we ought to wait until we see the results from Combinitech, though. We might come across something that has better properties than what we have now."

"Yep- I don't think it will take too long to make a few kilos for samples. Leslie and her techs have it pretty well nailed down."

"Well, as long as we have samples ready to ship by the third week of February."

"No problem there! I'll make sure it's in the PERT chart though."

"Great, Don. I guess that's all I had. How about you?"

"I can't think of anything either. Have a nice weekend Boss."

"You, too Don. Let the folks in the lab know I appreciate all the hard work."

"Will do... 'bye."

"'Bye."

I hung up and punched a few notes into the computer. As I did, I noticed that I was hungry. I glanced down at the bottom right corner of the monitor and did a double-take. It was almost 3:30! I'd been working almost 5 hours non-stop. I decided it was time for a break.

I put on my coat and headed out of the office. Marian looked up as I passed her desk.

"I wondered if you were going to come out of there anytime soon. I called in and asked you if you wanted me to pick up something for lunch, but you never so much as grunted, so I assumed you were in the "zone" and just went to lunch. I swear John, sometimes you just go off into your own space!"

I laughed a bit. "I know. I didn't even realize how long I'd been working until I happened to realize I was hungry. I think I'm going to hit the road for today. It will be pretty late by the time I get something to eat."

"I think you're right."

"You ought to go ahead and take off too, if you're all caught up."

"I have a few things left to do here, John. Did you talk to Don?"

"Yeah- I did. The notes are in the system. He's going to add some stuff to the PERT chart. Oh yeah, I did a report that you can invoice. It should be in your in box."

"I saw it. I'll get it out before I leave."

"OK and thanks Marian. Hey- before I forget, I have a few errands to run Monday morning, so it will probably be noon before I come in.:

"Got it! Now, get your butt out of here and get something to eat!"

"Yes Mom!" I teased.

"Don't you "Yes Mom" me, young man! You're not too big to turn across my knee!" Marian teased back.

"Ohhh baby! Be rough with me!" I said with as good a leer as I could manage.

"Git!" Marian was trying hard not to laugh.

"I'm gittin'. Have a nice weekend Marian."

"You too John."

"Will do!" I said as I walked out.

As I walked out to the truck, I considered where I would eat. I didn't want fast food, and I wasn't in the mood for the Center Diner. Powder City was not full of fine dining establishments. I finally decided on a Chinese buffet on the outskirts of town. They had a pretty good variety of food that was well prepared.

The food hit the spot, and I ate too much. I even had several items from the dessert bar including Green Tea ice cream, which I'd developed a bit of a taste for.

It was too late to head back to the office, so I got another glass of iced tea and took a few minutes to think about what I might to with the rest of the evening. It occurred to me that I hadn't seen Dave in a good while, so I decided to run by the store to say hi and pick up a couple of movies for the weekend.

As usual for a Friday evening, Dave's place was busy with people renting movies. I waved to Dave as I came in and went ahead and browsed around. It didn't take too long to pick out a few of my favorites. I picked up the boxes and stood in line at the counter to check out.