The Lab

For those of you who don't know, I've spent the last five and a half years working for a defense contractor. The company is multi-national with over 100,000 employees. Our little piece of this pie was a lab located in Old Town. It was a small facility (yes, I do realize I'm using past tense, unfortunately, this was the past) with never more than 20 employees. It has been a wonderful place to work. 1. The work is incredibly interesting. I have to admit that not being a scientist or engineer, I didn't always understand the complexities of the work being done here. However, I did understand enough to know that really cool ideas were being tested here. Some worked better than others, but all of them had the potential to be outstanding. 2. THE PEOPLE ARE WONDERFUL. Never in my life have I gotten to work with such a good group of people. It takes a "special" type of person to do the kind of work we did here. Everyone is very social, fun, a little whacked in the head. Every day was filled with laughter and good-natured poking at each other. Soooo, I thought I'd share my top five memories of the lab. For those of you that work here, I would LOVE for you to share yours on here as well... :)
5. The second week after I started working there, I baked a cake for Mark's (the boss) birthday. I put the cake back in the kitchen so that we could sing and cut it at lunchtime. About 10 AM one of the guys came up to my office with the empty cake plate and said, "Thanks for the cake!" That's when I learned that all food not kept under lock and key was susceptible to immediate ingestion. These people can eat. Especially baked goods.
4. Being "Lab Mom" -- This obviously encompasses many little moments over the years. Mark christened me "Lab Mom" not long after I came here, and it stuck. Whether it was delivering hugs, slugs (sometimes necessary in good parenting), fussing about someone running with scissors, congratulations on a job well done, empathy when things weren't fantastic, hearing stories about wives, husbands, kids, parents, on and on -- that was my favorite part. I loved trying to "take care" of these people and having them take care of me too.
3. Big Rusty's Daughter's Wedding -- Wonderful night with a wonderful family, good food, great companionship, chance to dance with Dawn and Sarah. Too bad I had to leave early when 20 teenagers decided that my absence was a good time to overrun my home and refuse to leave!
2. BBQ/COPIER Destruction -- One of the Mikes (at any given time, at least 20% of our employees were named Mike) got married and he had lots of leftover meat from the reception. He pulled it all in, along with a charcoal grill, and we had a huge cookout in the parking lot. That part was fun, but the BEST part was that we got to destroy our old copier. I cannot tell you how many times that stupid freaking machine had me cursing a blue streak. It jammed approximately every 3.2 copies was constantly spitting out toner all over my clothes, especially if they were white or pastels. So, when the new one arrived, we all took turns beating the old one with a sledgehammer. What a feeling...
1. The World's Most Expensive Assembly Line -- The engineers here developed a type of bar armor called "L-Rod". It was initially used on Humvees, but is now used on many of the land vehicles found in the fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. It's an important technology because it saves the lives of many, without hurting anyone. It's a lightweight bar armor that sits on vehicles so that when those vehicles are attacked by IEDs, the armor takes the brunt of the damage, protecting the vehicle itself, and more importantly, the people inside. After our first set of kits were manufactured, there were some things that didn't quite measure up to specs. So, everyone here walked over to the warehouse we have a few minutes away and starting fixing things. We had scientists, directors, engineers, technicians, our blaster. They even hired a temp to come in and man the laboratory so that all of us could go work in the warehouse. It was a very long, hot week. Our fingers became sliced to ribbons. We ordered food in and took short breaks, usually standing up to eat. It was wonderful. We worked so well together and we all felt good about what we were doing, knowing that our finished product would end up on vehicles being driven by the men in women who were serving our country. It was an amazing feeling. One I'll never forget.
Tied for #1. -- May 4, 2009 -- I'm sure you think that's strange, but this was the day when we had to pull together more than any other, and I think we did an amazing job. And after being quite certain that at least three of us had to be dead (or certainly gravely injured), I just feel so blessed that everyone was okay.





















I love you guys.