Typical Day
Ray Richmond is struggling to get out of the house. His wife, Polly, is doing the same. It's 8:00AM, and they're trying desperately to clean the milk off their young son Randy—who decided to shower in it that morning at the breakfast table after knocking over Ray's coffee—and still get him outside in time for the bus.
Both Ray and Polly hold a day job, so school mornings are always bit of a struggle. This one, however, is turning into something special.
Polly's downstairs in the kitchen assembling lunch while Ray holds a writhing Randy above the bath water. Randy, for some arcane reason known only to five-year-olds, refuses to touch the water, and is prepared to scream and thrash until he's out of harm's way. Ray quickly reaches for one of Randy's action figures and plops it into the water.
"See?" Ray says. "Action Thomas doesn't mind getting wet."
"Yes he does," Randy says stubbornly.
"Alright," Ray says patiently. He quickly grabs two empty shampoo bottles and joins them together with a loose hair band. He sets it on the water and the makeshift raft floats. Ray places the action figure on top of it. This excites Randy to no end, who now will accept nothing less than being placed into the water he so loathed not fifteen seconds prior.
"Whew," Ray thinks as he splashes some water at his son. He doesn't need him clean, just not covered in milk and bits of cereal. The process takes about three minutes. Afterward, he towels the kid off, and then sends him downstairs with Action Thomas in tow.
Polly has succeeded at preparing lunch and she hands Randy his brown bag while shuffling him out front just in time for the bus. Ray gives his wife a quick high five and both of them rush to their respective cars to drive to their respective offices.
Ray hits traffic, and arrives just a few minutes late. No one notices. Well, no one important—just Brad.
"Hey, captain," Brad says. "How's the design on that plane coming along?"
"You mean 'ship,' Brad."
"Whoa, guess I better remove those wings from my design then!" Brad holds his stomach and forces a false laugh that sounds something like "yuk yuk yuk."
If he has to fake the laugh, Ray wonders, then doesn't he know it's not funny? Ray think about these kinds of things a lot. It bothers him at night.
But right now there's no point in arguing. No mote of morning logic is going to cure his co-worker's terrible sense of humor. Fortunately, Brad walks off laughing to himself before Ray is forced to find a non-awkward way of moving him along.
Ray throws his lunch bag into the drawer of his desk and wastes no time getting back to his design. For months, he's been working on a medium-sized cargo ship that he thought was ready a few weeks ago. At least until they took the prototype to sea.
The cargo Ray's client needed to transport was a unique case. Apparently, they sought to ship barrels of chemicals that slowly released lighter-than-air gasses over time into large rubber bladders. The space wasn't an issue, but the shift in weight apparently was.
After the chemical process had been in effect for a week, the bladders would start to fill, and the weight change was just enough to throw the ship off balance. There was only a tiny chance that such a change would have an effect on the overall balance, but a good shipwright would address the possibility—no matter how unlikely.
Ray watches the digitalization of the tip. If too many port cargo gases go off, then the ship can start to roll starboard; and vice versa. He spends the morning dragging barrels around, testing the affect of their weight shift in different areas. He hasn't found a good solution before lunch.
At 12:00PM Ray un-bags his sandwich and eats it as he continues to think about the problem. He's sure there's some sort of out-of-the-box solution that just hasn't hit him yet. He starts to have a thought, but it dies as soon as Brad walks back into Ray's office with a stack of poorly copied fliers under one arm.
"What are you doing this Friday?" Brad asks.
Ray quickly invents an answer, suspecting the worst. "Uh, uh," he starts, "I'm visiting my brother in Phoenix. Leaving early in the morning and getting back late Sunday night." Then he remembers: it's his anniversary on Saturday. He felt so pressured to invent something quickly that he forgot he actually did have plans.
"Bzzt, wrong answer," Brad replies. "You're coming to the Chuckle Farm. This flier gets you five dollars off the entry price. Can't pass on that, now can you?"
"Actually, yes. My brother is—"
"Your brother can come too."
"He lives in Phoenix."
"I'm not afraid of foreigners if you're not."
"That doesn't even make sens—"
"See you Friday for my set. It's going to be a riot." With that, Brad (finally) leaves.
Ray spends a minute confused, wondering how life placed him on equal footing with people like Brad. As he finishes his sandwich, he wonders how many people like Brad are actually ahead of him in their careers. The thought disturbs him on a deep level.
Ray spends the rest of the afternoon working on electrical components. He adds an elevator to the design, and begins to calculate the optimum positions for crane loading. He knows he'll need to adjust this later when he finally solves the variable weight problem, but he'd rather be making some kind of progress than just sitting in his office without a solution.
Polly calls at 3:00PM to check in. She's off early and able to pick up Randy from school. Apparently Randy decided once again to douse himself in milk during the school day. He keeps saying something about a shampoo boat, and she's hoping that Ray has some idea about what that means.
They jointly consider whether or not Randy is smart enough to have coated himself in milk again just to get more playtime with his boat in the bath. They hang up undecided, but in agreement that they certainly hope not.
As Ray drops the phone into its cradle he has an idea. The shampoo bottles, of course, he thinks. It's going to cost more to produce the craft, but it solves the problem. He opens his design software, and creates a double buoy lining the bottom of the ship, and then redistributes the barrels to the center and the offices to the sides. It's unconventional to say the least but it works when he runs the simulation. He smiles.
Ray spends the rest of the day spitting out spec sheets for the engineers to pore over later. They need to sign off on an incredible checklist of things before Ray's able to even think about prototyping this out. When he finishes, it's 4:30PM, and he decides to knock off a bit early and surprise Polly by making dinner for her and Randy: pork chops, green beans, and a nice glass of anything but milk.