Chapter 48

Dan Richards' turn:

I'm trying to keep a lid on this business. 3Sigma Engineering has taken off beyond our wildest imaginations. The Jason-Susan team has sold our services to a couple of small utility companies and my biggest, or maybe it's their biggest, issue is how to balance two college schedules with the client desires for work scheduling.

My sweet little wife and her dark-haired Cajun counterpart have gotten a name for themselves in the digital communications business that runs parallel with utility company moves towards automation. Of course, I wonder. Everything they do has to have that 'professional engineer' stamp on it, and that's Dan 2.0 or me since it's OUR wives.

The two of them came in late one afternoon. Of course, Nikki was driving.

"Well, how's your day?" I asked.

"Nothing too unusual," Nikki said.

"Yeah, that same interface thing we've hit before. Protocol to protocol conversion. Work around incomplete instruction sets."

I smiled. Yeah, it's my wife, and yes, it's something that Nikki's husband and I kicked off and let the two of them work out on their own. "So you already have the solution."

Two smiles. Two nods. By this time Nikki's Dan was at the door looking in. "Gentech's got prototypes of your protocol converter. Maybe we can get the client to buy off on a trial on this project."

We're building business. Another technician is on board now. They didn't move into the apartments. He and his wife and their youngster are buying a house bit out of town. She wanted a country place. He's got it. A lot of his work, though, is out of town and overnight. Burt Stanley would take off, leaving behind his wife and toddler, and half the time they'd end up visiting us or somebody else in the community while he was gone.

Adrienne and Bobby, the son: A two-year old human being was subject of intense curiosity to Terri and Rachel. Tina and Beck cautioned them about what was considered proper activities with Bobby, and Kara joined the Bobby Fan Club, too, even offering to babysit when Burt and Adrienne wanted a night out.

A client in Georgia wanted some new substations. We needed a civil engineer. Kurt Brandle was a professor at Auburn, and he knocked on our door a while back. We tossed him a set of drawings of a typical installation.

"This isn't difficult," he told us. "Pretty much cookie-cutter stuff. We start out with surveys and soil samples and weather data and we size foundations off that. The structure's pretty much overkill anyway."

I knew all this, so I nodded. "And then we give that to one of our interns," I nodded at MY intern, Nikki. Dan 2.0 has Cindy for his intern. Nepotism, you know, "and they take the material take-offs and work up the order."

"And I get a check," he laughed.

"And a copy of the drawings so we can 'cookie-cutter' the next one. We got three of these things right off the bat if we take this job. It's gonna be a few million apiece."

"And we get to play with state of the art equipment," Cindy chirped. "Plus ... from the ground up! I'm excited."

"You got to watch that one down there on that powerplant," Nikki said. "This is my first one."

"Look," I said, "We'll get EVERYBODY some time on this thing. I got us a superintendent picked out for the construction. I think we've got it figured out. If we pull this off..."

Alan was sitting across the conference table. He spoke. "We WILL pull this off!"

" ... we'll be set up for the long run," I continued.

That's what I'm looking at today. Business. I like our little office. 'Little' is now the operative term. We've got an architect and Kurt looking at adding a second floor. The architect says he can do it and make it look right.

"Or we can take that old store across the street, demolish it, and build new. And lease this place." That's Alan's take. He laughed. "Not MY idea, though. Tina and the bunch."

"Figures. Do you ever get the feeling that you've hopped on a train and you're just along for the ride?"

He laughed. "All the time. And I think YOU have it worse than me."

"Yeah, I guess," I said. "Thing is, I don't think she did it on purpose. There she was, hanging around that swimming pool every day, and we just started talking..."

"Yeah. And how could you not? I mean, Tina and I ... I really tried NOT to..."

"At least she was seventeen..."

"And in Tennessee that's not old enough."

"Yeah, but I know the story. You didn't know that. I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was committing a felony."

"And now look," he laughed. "We've unleashed the swarm upon the planet."

"And Tina says we need a new office building. I assume that you and she have run some numbers?"

"I think we can make it work, you know," he said. "What I'm thinking is that we build two stories. The bottom floor gives us the room for the next stage, gets us out of this squeeze. We lease the lab in this building and the greenhouse. We move those functions to the new building."

"Ground floor," I said.

"Yep. And if we grow any more, we can build out the top floor for more room. If we don't, we might consider building it out and trying to lease it out."

I get a headache. Two years ago I was just a plain ol' itinerant project engineer, bopping around the country, building things. Somebody else got to worry about the 'growing the business' and paying the bills and such. Now I found myself sharing that with my incredibly competent friends while the unlikeliest of wives was a year from an engineering degree at the age of sixteen that I hadn't gotten until I was twenty-two, and she's blocking out a master's thesis and refereeing fights between the engineering department, the physics department and the math department, and the only reason that the fine arts bunch isn't in there is that they won't fit into the boxing ring.

"I suppose we need to start blocking it out, then," I acquiesced.

"Worse than that. Let me show you the girls' rough floor plan." He was laughing. I was shaking my head and the guy was laughing.

"We really do need it," he said. "I didn't expect us to GROW like this."

So there it is. I was beginning to think that I was the only one that had those thoughts.

"Yeah, me neither. And I get phone calls: 'Hey, can you come up here and talk to us? And bring Cindy.' And I'm wondering how they know about Cindy?"

"One of those trade shows, no doubt," Alan said. "Remember the story about Nikki and Johanna? That's how we sold that converter design to Gentech."

"I know. I guess Cindy's done the same sort of thing. Matter of fact, that one that you and I went to in Atlanta, she and Tina took off..."

"Oh, yeah, the 'You brought your daughter to a trade expo?' question." He was smiling.

"At least they had the sense to carry business cards," I stated.

"Yeah, business cards," he laughed. "One of the better ideas: give a fifteen year old and a sixteen year old girl business cards with 'Engineering Intern' on them."

"And then they waltz up to the Gentech booth and there's the guy Nikki blind-sided in Houston."

Cindy at the trade expo:

"Hi," Nikki squeaked when we turned the corner to one booth. "I think I remember you from Houston, don't I?"

"I remember you," he affirmed. "Different redhead, though, wasn't it? The other one was taller, redder..."

"And seven years older," I said. "I'm Cindy Richards. Here's my card."

"Wa-wa-wait – you said you're seven years younger?"

"She's fifteen, I'm sixteen. Johanna, my friend in Houston, was twenty-one," Nikki explained.

"This says 'Engineering Intern'. Seriously?"

"That converter that we sent in to Gentech for evaluation? This is my co-designer."

I think his knees started to buckle.

"Mister Lubovsky," Nikki soothed, "it's okay. We surprise a lot of people."

I just smiled.

About that time, our two Dans caught up with us.

My Dan read the expression on Mister Lubovsky's face. "Are you two out terrorizing the general population again?" He extended his hand. "Dan Richards. Husband of Cindy Richards. 3Sigma Engineering."

He eyed my Dan and Nikki's Dan, recognizing the latter. "Seriously? And yes, I've been hearing about 3Sigma. You guys turn up all over the southeast."

"Gosh, I hope so," Nikki's Dan said. "We're working our butts off."

"So what's the deal with these two?" he asked, motioning toward me and my sister.

Nikki's Dan fielded that one. "Graduating next spring from Auburn. Electrical engineers."

"That just ain't right," Mister Lubovsky replied. "Seriously?"

I nodded. I know that when I do that to Dan, he melts. (Well, under the right circumstances, MOST of him melts. There's this one part, though... ) "I'm ... actually, Nikki and I are both outside the normal four-year progression."

Nikki giggled. I think she likes messing with people and Mister Lubovsky seems like a decent sort, and easy mark. "Ask 'er what she's working on for a master's thesis."

He looked at us and then his eyes flitted between our husbands. "Now I know you're jerking my leg."

"One might rightfully think so," my Dan said. "But if you want references, we can start at the Dean of Engineering and work our way down."

"Graduate engineer at sixteen. What do you do with that?"

Cindy giggled. "I dunno. You hiring?"