Open Wide the Doors for Christ!

As the title indicates, Christmas break has now ended and I'm back in Indianapolis.  The new semester starts tomorrow!  I am excited for most of my classes, but I don't know if I am actually ready to do the work for them...  Anyway, I've been wanting to do a post about the 5 hour drive from Quincy to Indy for some time now, and I am also going to try to increase the number of posts that I'm writing, so here's my attempt at a somewhat funny, somewhat comprehensive, somewhat short look at the drive between Quincy and Indianapolis.

This morning I finished packing up all my clothes, books, partially-finished PNAC application, a tray of leftover Christmas cookies, and everything else that I would be bringing back to Brute.  I filled up with gas on my way to 11 AM Mass at St. Rose and after Mass was over (12:30ish) finished throwing everything in the car, changed into jeans, and met the family at Culvers, where they sometimes eat with other people from church on Sunday afternoons.  I ate my burger and ice-cream quickly because I was fast approaching my 2 PM deadline for leaving, said a quick good-by, and then hit the road.

The first hour was mostly spent staring at the road and listening to the radio.  By the end of that time period I was getting tired of the radio, and was also getting pretty sleepy because I had been squinting the entire time (it was sunny, the road was a bit wet, and I didn't have sunglasses), so I put in a Lighthouse Catholic CD - Power in Prayer (Sr. Mary Gabriel, SV).  It was a great talk on the importance and power of prayer.  Prayer, as she reminded, can't be just about asking for stuff from God, it very much has to be about opening ourselves up to Him.  We have to open our heart to His presence, we have to allow Christ to reign over us, and that only happens by being in communication with Him in prayer.  2 hours down, 3 to go!

After that CD, I listened to the radio some more.  I actually ran across a football game, which I guess I didn't know they broadcasted on the radio, but it surprisingly it kept me alert and awake for the 40 minutes or so that I listened to it.  Eventually it did get old (and I think I lost the station after a while), but it burned a lot of time!  

Having crossed the half-way point of my journey (somewhere in the middle of Illinois), I started listening to some podcasts by Fr. Michael Schmitz.  They were all absolutely fantastic!  One was on how we need to find the things in life that are taking us away from God, the near occasions of sin, and choose, right now, to get rid of that problem.  Another was on having the simple trust in God that Mary had.  Just saying "yes" even when we don't know how everything is going to work out.  Another was on how difficult it is to find out how much of something is enough.  How much is enough food, enough money, enough friends?  Fr. Schmitz noted that sometimes we need to cut back on things like these so that we can have more than enough of the joy and love that comes from Jesus Christ, the only things that are truly worth having "too-much" of.  Obviously, they were a lot more interesting and inspiring than my descriptions of them.  Suffice it to say that I haven't very often listened to homilies for over an hour, and I was really attentive to these (listen to some, there phenomenal).

By this time, believe it or not, I was only about 30 minutes from Indianapolis, so I pretty much just enjoyed the rest of the ride.  Some of the time I just let my mind think about the things I had heard - meditating on them I suppose - but I also listened to the radio a bit.  Finally, around 7:30, I pulled into the Bruté parking lot and my sojourn was over.  It was a better trip than usual.  The weather was perfect - no rain, no snow, no slippery roads.  I was pretty awake the entire time - which usually isn't the case (though the Mountain Dew Kick-Starter probably explains part of that).  

Some funny moments that didn't fit in up above:

Shortly after passing Springfield, I was listening to the talk on prayer and I was rather engrossed at the moment and managed to miss my exit.  Unfortunately, I have come to rely on the GPS for directions and since it was muted for whatever reason, I failed to realize that I had a turn.  It was only a 5 minute delay, but I was a bit bemused because I'd guess that not to many people miss their exit because they were listening to a talk on praying...

About half an hour later, I was driving along when a lady passed me in a minivan.  Well, I glanced over to see who was passing me and was surprised to see that both her (bare) feet were up on the dash, one leg on each side of the steering wheel.  I had seen passengers put their feet up on the dash to relax, but never the driver...  Good grief, what if she had to stop!  Yeah, that got my attention...

I didn't expect to have anyone surpass that, um, talent, but another guy came close.  As he passed me I again looked over - you never know, maybe the person is cheerful and will wave at you or something - and anyway, he had his head inclined all the way back, looking up at the ceiling of his car, and was in the process of putting the last touches on shaving his neck.  It was an electric razor - thank goodness - but still made me laugh.

Finally, at another point in my drive, I was shooting right along, listening to one of the podcasts, I think, and I had just passed a car and was moving back into the right lane when I saw that there was a car parked on the side of the highway with the occupants standing next to their vehicle getting ready to change the tire or something.  The guy in front of me changed lanes to the left, and I did the same, just to give them more room.  Suddenly, the guy in front of me swerved back to the right - I immediately stared forward to see what was up, and saw that there was something on the road.  I followed his example, going about halfway into the right land, and was surprised to see that a large shovel, along with fragments of something wooden, were strewn on the road.  They guy who I had just passed swerved around to the left - almost going off the road in the process - and the cars behind him followed suit.  I guess its something you see every so often, but it made me think about how badly that could have turned out if I had been less alert...  

And there's my story for the day!  Time to hit the sack and get some sleep before everything gets going tomorrow!

Well, I am happy to say that yesterday was the last day of my summer job.  I worked at the same place as last year, as a "intern" (read: summer help) in the safety department at Titan Wheel.  Basically, I did a lot of filing, auditing, spreadsheeting, etc.  I guess I'll go into a little bit more detail just in case you want to know...

The biggest project I was working on this summer is called the LOTO program.  LOTO, which stands for Lock-Out, Tag-Out, involves using locks and tags on machines so that someone else can't turn the machine on when you are working on it.  Titan Wheel, which, guess what, makes wheels, has tons (literally) of enormous machinery to form, press, punch, paint, etc. different kinds of wheels.  Well, pretty much every machine, if it turned on while someone was working/changing it, would lead to serious injury (that's bad).  

OK, so the LOTO program trains certain people to use lock and tags on a machine to make sure that someone can't accidentally turn it on.  Each person, once trained, gets their own personal lock, and many departments around Titan have cabinets of company locks.  Basically, if a person's one lock isn't enough to lock out all the energy sources on a machine (hydraulic, electrical, pneumatic, gravity, etc.), they are issued the necessary number of locks from these cabinets.

Well, there are probably like 30-40 departments around Titan with these cabinets, most of which have 36 locks (so you're looking at a total of 1000+ locks), and I was put in charge of going around to each of these cabinets and auditing all the locks (as in, I have to put my hands on every lock).  Of course, some of the locks were in use when I came around the first time, and the second time, and the third time...  So, I didn't actually finish auditing (and fixing all problems) until yesterday.  

Of course there were other things that I did:   Like sign off on people's awareness test sheets.  Each employee, yearly, has to take these 24 tests to make sure they are aware of how to be safe.  I probably went through a few hundred of these bundles, and signed all 24 pages in each (So, I was getting close to 10,000 signatures...)  Or like typing up a spreadsheet containing sleeve/glove records.  That spreadsheet crossed the 4000 row mark (so I had to type data into about 40,000 cells).

Last summer, doing much of the same stuff, it was mostly drudgery...  This summer, because I was more familiar with the different areas (and how they worked), I kept more busy (less time waiting for something to do), and I wasn't in the (somewhat stressful) process of applying to seminary and moving out, work wasn't nearly as bad.  Also, this summer has absolutely flown by!   I went to Mass each day at 6:30 AM, worked till 4:00 PM, did Spanish (and wasted time on the computer) till 10:00 PM and repeated.  I know, it sounds really boring, but that doesn't account for weekends.  Just about every weekend I did something fun.  Vacation, launched (and lost) rockets, base-ball games, camping, boating, visiting family - you get the picture.  Just about every minute of my summer something was happening - there wasn't time to be bored.  

I certainly will be enjoying the next week of (more laid back) summer vacation, but what can I say, this summer has been amazing - even with having to work each day.  Of course, the problem with not having any time means I haven't been running much.  That could be a problem because I am the sports dude at Bruté this year and probably I'll need to be in decent shape...  Ah well, I guess I have a week.

This will be a short post because almost all my free time (after work) is taken up by Spanish... (which is actually turning out a little better than expected).  The last several days at work has been mostly comprised of singing off on what is called awareness training.  Basically, everybody has to come in once a year and take these computerized tests that tell them what is unsafe (and that they shouldn't do that).  Well, there are 24 different tests that everybody has to take and after they all get done I (or somebody in the safety department) has to go through the 24 printouts and make sure that they are in order, signed, dated, passed, etc.  I'll cut to the chase; each folder takes about 10 minutes to go through (I triple check my work because screwing up is not good), and it is beyond tedious.  The first few days I was seriously struggling to concentrate while doing this - just so boring.  Anyway, today, especially because it was a Monday, I didn't feel all that pumped up about a new work-week starting, with more folders to go through and everything that went with it.  And that is pretty much what I told God when I went to Mass.  You know, it's pretty easy to thank God when something is great, or pray for help when something is hard, but when something is just boring, it's hard to see where God comes into the picture.  I mean, you could offer it up, but what's the point?  

Of course, that is the wrong way to think about it, but that is kind of how I was approaching the week.  This, I knew wasn't going to get me anywhere.  Seriously, if I stayed all glum and pessimistic about working, doing Spanish, and basically anything else that I wasn't interested in, then approximately 90% of my life was going to be boring.  (OK, so I didn't exactly think about all that right at that moment - but it is true, I really look forward to the days where I do something fun, exciting, adventurous, etc. and I really don't look forward to the days where I have to do something, you know, that isn't cool).  Thus, I told God, fire me up, transform me, change me to who you want me to be, incinerate all the stuff that is clogging my life, especially my soul, and turn me into who you want me to be.  (I got some of this inspiration from this post of Corey's)

Now, as I am sure some of you have realized, if you ask God to transform you, He will.  Let's just say that I have a long way to go, but, getting back to where this post got started, work today, despite being 7 something hours of flipping, checking, and signing away on these papers (I went through 38 or so folders - which is just about 1000 signatures...) I wasn't ever bored out of my mind, I concentrated pretty well, I got a lot done (as you can see), and I, every so often, was reminded that I can do even the most boring things for God.  (Think St. Therese of Lisieux's Little Way, or Mother Theresa of Calcutta's Little things with great love).  

It is amazing what happens when you let God work in you.  (I am going to try surrendering the whole Spanish thing to Him.  It's amazing how I managed to forget to do that...)  This is just one of those things that I know I need to work on - surrendering everything  to God.  Ah well, I am definitely a work in progress - thankfully God is a much better worker than I am.