Metallurgy

 
We learn many strange little things in a lifetime. One thing I learned when I was in the bolt business was about the manner a piece of steel could be made brittle through repeated bending, or flexing. The easiest example of this is to take a coat hanger and bend it back an forth. The first thing the wire will do is get hot. Then at some point, the wire will break. What has happened is that through the bending, the steel has actually gotten harder, to the point it will no longer bend, at which point it breaks.  This is called work hardening, or strain hardening. Sometimes it is called embrittlement. Many of us have taken advantage of this to break off a piece of wire .

When my grandmother worked at the County Engineer's office, she used to tell me about an extreme example of this effect. It is called metal crystallization and happens when a piece of steel is stressed thousands of times over a long period of time. The molecules in the steel actually line up and if you have a piece of crystallized steel fail, inside it will look more line a rock than it does steel. Grandma used to tell us that almost all of the old "pony truss" bridges in the state were like this and if you took a sledge hammer and hit the rivet in the corner of the bridge where all of the parts came together, it was possible the bridge would fail.

Be clear, I am in no way suggesting attempting such an act.

So, what does this have to do with the world we are living in? I think for many of us, we have been repeatedly stressed by the world we are in. Whether it be COVID-19, or getting our children educated, figuring out work, personal health, and probably fifteen other things I am not thinking of, the world has been bending us back and forth, repeatedly. Based on everything going on, we have been work hardened. And for some of us, we are approaching the point where we could actually break. Some already have broken.

In talking with a group of my colleagues last week, there was discussion around "decision fatigue." I was amazed to find  a definition for this around COVID-19. From Medicalexpress.com,  "The concept of exhaustion and stress after making choices is known as decision fatigue. After months of assessing the risk and benefit of daily choices during the corona-virus crisis, people are tired." I was surprised to find a definition, but it seems pretty accurate. For those I work with, everyone is tired of all of the non-normal decisions needed in 2020. As we all know, there has been little normal about this year.

I also took a little time last week to ask questions of friends who operate call centers. I wanted to know about the length of calls they are experiencing this year. Interestingly enough, both friends say their average call time is up this year over last. I would suspect there are a hundred different ways to explain this, but I am going with the explanation that people need more interpersonal interaction this year as what they normally experience is gone, to some degree or another. Who would have ever thought people would replace the conversations they have with others at work or in the grocery store, with time on a call with a telemarketer. 

What do you think we should do with all of this? It seems to me it is time to take a little better care of ourselves. This could take many different forms. Maybe for some of you it is a long bath. Maybe it is going for a long walk, or a bike ride, or talking to your family members over the phone, Skype, or Face-time. Maybe it is disconnecting from all of the information feeds of the day. Whatever it is, we need to find a way to take one or two of the "bends" life has given us out of our worlds. It is time to make sure we are not stressed and flexed so much we become strain hardened.

In situations like this, I  head toward food. It is the great equalizer of the world for me. I am generally a "meat and potatoes" Iowa boy, but with today's topic it really seems like there is one go-to item.  Yup, you got it. Peanut brittle. Maybe peanut brittle could be the item that helps set some of this aside. Below is a recipe from Sara's side of the family. I know it is typically a Christmas treat, but maybe September needs a little this year.

Thank you all for following my musings. I hope I continue to bring a smile, or something to think about.  Have an awesome weekend.

An Extra Step

I'm not sure how everyone else feels, but I find myself exhausted. Given everything going on with 2020, there are plenty of reasons for this and you probably have one you are partial to. I've thought a lot about this. Everything takes at least one or more extra steps this year. I believe this is related to the pandemic.

Take something as relatively simple as going to the grocery store. In times past (last year) if you needed something you swung in when you were in the area, picked it up and came home. Pretty simple.

Not anymore.

Other things we consider these days: 

• Do I really need this?
• Should I do this as an online order or go in person?
• Will they have the product in stock?
• When should I go to have the least contact with others?
• Will other patrons be wearing masks?
• Where can I shop that they really care about my safety?

These are the thoughts just about shopping for groceries.

Admittedly, some of these were in the back of our minds historically, but have really come to the forefront. Now think about going out to dinner. We probably averaged a couple of times a week prior to March 2020. It was often a last minute decision when nobody wanted to cook. Sometimes we chose to go to to a "drive-through" and bring food home, which we still do, but often we chose to eat at a restaurant. Since March, that option has been a "hard no". The places we frequented for years in the Des Moines area haven't seen us for seven or eight months. And, as I said at the beginning of this, it has added extra steps to everything around this.

With all of this there are trade-offs, just like what happens with almost everything in life. 

Let's take cooking. I'm not sure about you, but when the pandemic started, I thought of myself two ways where cooking was concerned. First, I thought I was okay at it. I could find my way around the kitchen and it had been a few years since I absolutely destroyed anything while cooking. The second thing I thought about my ability to cook regarded what I was willing to try. I had a certain number of things I would cook and could accomplish regularly. That was the sum total of my cooking repertoire. 

Enter 2020 and the pandemic. I would have gotten WAY sick of the things I regularly cooked. You can only have breakfast for dinner so many times. But 2020 forced us to do things differently. We cook more at home, or eat peanut butter sandwiches. One thing I am truly thankful for in all of this is the companies who came to market with recipes and meal ingredients shipped directly to our homes - companies like Home Chef and Blue Apron. We just celebrated four years with Home Chef on August 28th. We skipped a few weeks, but in round numbers, they've shipped over twelve hundred dinner servings into our home. This explains why every time I go to look for a box to use for anything, there are a few Home Chef boxes around the house and at the Toybox. It's helped me to learn to be a better cook and has caused me to stretch my palate as to flavors and items I like. Without question, I will never like the taste of truffles or truffle oil. It tastes like dirt to me. Anyway, with the extra steps required around meals and cooking, I am thankful someone stepped in to help me.

The final thing I need to talk about in the light of adding extra steps has been around the supply chain this year. I have friends in virtually every part of the business world. Anyone who has a physical product needing to be sourced, at one time or another there's been a disruption. One friend waited months for dishwashers and other appliances he used to be able to get in three days. My work has a vendor who has historically been able to provide full loads of product in 3-5 days. Now, their loads dribble in a little at a time over multiple weeks. 

Each of us has to think about the way things work. At the beginning of the pandemic, when toilet paper was almost impossible to get, one thing I thought about was the reality of household and institutional toilet paper being produced in a specific ratio to each other. Suddenly, the institutional side wasn't being hit as hard as residential. I did a little research, and found that I could purchase large institutional rolls with no problem. If we are ever able to visit each other's homes again, don't be surprised by the toilet paper in our bathroom. 

I would also bet that when bacon was hard to find, you'd have gone to a meat distributor, and had no trouble buying a thirty pound purveyor's box of bacon. It would have just taken an extra step or two. 

2020 has been about taking the extra steps, and it has made us all weary, in one way or another.

I hope you find a way to relax and unwind over this long weekend at the end of our summer. Relax and take care of yourself and those close to you. It is the right thing to do.  Take care.