Mountain Babe 4

WTF? You ask yourself. What on earth does she mean?

Last week, while on vacation, W received news on Monday from our VP-Operations, Dave, that we heard from one of our customers that two of the companies we manage are going to be under investigation by that agency's internal audit / general inspector. W, being the worry wort that he is, became a giant stressball and basically shut down emotionally and physically, napped the day away, and came up with a gameplan should this actually happen. He did not share this information with me until late Thursday night.

Friday, after our friends had left to return to Philly by way of Miami, we went to the resort's tiki bar and talked. W had calculated what we could take out of the companies right now if it was all to fold and we thought we would be okay - we could make investments and mostly live off the interest, only to supplement it with some low-stress jobs. This prompted a discussion on what each of us would do, what we would be interested in doing, what might be available, etc.

W thought he would go into consulting. I agree with him - I think he would fantastic in that role. He asked about me. What would I want to do? I do not know. I have thought that I would like to be a personal trainer or coach or that I might go back to school and get a nursing degree and become a nurse or start to write more. Blogging has shown me that I am not sure I really want to write. I have a tendency to blurb things here and not pay attention to grammar and logic, so if that is an indication of my writing ability, it is not quite up to snuff. I do not think I want to go back to school at this point in my life. That leaves a personal trainer / coach. Alternately, I could do something I used to do.

Then I thought of jobs I really enjoyed and things I enjoyed, people I enjoyed working with. As a plant engineer and superintendent, I worked with an engineering company that modelled processes and helped find efficiencies in the process. I loved that. It is probably the only engineering function that never bored me. Most engineering functions were exciting the first or second time I did them, but I never enjoyed them after that. I loved process modeling. I worked very closely with the consultant, Joe, from the engineering company. He is about my dad's age, already had a full head of grey hair, tall, outdoorsy, very good teacher. His enthusiasm towards his work made me want to spend my time with him and to eke out every possible bit of knowledge I could from him. He was more than willing to share. He did not hoard information to make himself more valuable.

Out of the blue, I looked up his email address from the engineering company's website and sent him an email yesterday. I was unsure if he would remember me as it had been close to five years since I had last spoken with him. Who am I kidding? I knew he would remember me. He is not the sort of person who would forget, you know? Well, I was right - he remembered me and was as excited to hear from me as I was to contact him.

I received an email last night from his partner-in-crime and the marketing director of the company informing me that I made Joe's day and that now that I was no longer working with them, he was going to let me in on a little secret.

"Just a little inside thing for you to know now that we don't do business directly with you anymore. Joe's nickname for you when you were in Four Corners and Wyoming was "Mountain Babe 4". I don't remember who the other three were but you had a special designation with him. He really liked(s) you. I thought you would enjoy this a little."

I have been walking around all day with a smile on my face. I always wonder what others think of me and rarely have a chance to discover. It's interesting to me how people you meet randomly and in various capacities have the ability to affect you and you can affect them.

I think I do know who one of the other three Mountain Babes are. My coworker / friend Kim was quite a hottie...