Weather in the Mid-West is CRAZY

As I sit here at my computer, I am staring out my window at the cracks of lightning that are playing across the landscape. I honestly don’t understand mid-west weather – it can change in literally a minute.

When I left work at 3:15 today (I hit 40 hours at 3 and I can’t work overtime, or so I’ve heard. I had two working lunches this week, so I worked 9 hours two other days), it was pretty nice out. A bit muggy, but it was sunny and not too bad. I actually was about to head outside to the patio to read a book when the weather just got absolutely crazy! All of a sudden, it got incredibly windy and there was a giant dust storm rolling across the construction site in front of me. A few minutes later, it started misting all over, and then suddenly, it began to pour. That was when our power went out and the lightning started. It’s mostly been pretty far away (the techniques I learned when I was about 8 years old for figuring out how far away the lightning is still works haha) but there have been some really close ones that have taken me by surprise! It’s also incredibly windy, but I guess one benefit of being on the fifth floor is that there’s no chance any of the surrounding trees won’t fall on my room because they aren’t tall enough.

I almost went running too, right before this! It would have been really scary to have been stuck outside when this started. At least in California you generally get a warning from the sky if it’s going to rain or something like that. Geez, mid-west, way to be surprising.

So, like I said earlier, I got off work today at 3, which now is probably a really good (or maybe bad?) thing because I would have been stuck at work with nothing to do if the power is out there. I’m living about a mile and half from work, so there is a very good chance that the power is out there as well. Thank goodness I had my computer plugged in and fully charged right before the power went out! I would read, but it’s too dark to do so.

And in the 15 minutes since I started writing this, the rain stopped! WTF. There’s still thunder and lightning though, and from the looks of it all of the buildings in my view have their power knocked out too.

I received my full assignment today, and today was also the first day where I didn’t really sit at my computer all day. I had a meeting with my manager in the morning, which was about a hour and a half going over what I’m suppose to do during my three months here at AMD (Abbott Molecular Division, for all you non-cool people out there *coughSUSANcough*). Like I said yesterday, I’ll be doing a complete parts assessment of the manufacturing division. I will also be interfacing with other departments to get utilities drawings made up, architectural drawings of each of the rooms, and ISO (International Organization of Standards) documents in place. So what I will be doing will be slightly tedious, but is a great way for me to learn the company, and is a great way for me to find out about all the different products that Abbott makes. I will also be doing some time studies about packaging and all of that fun stuff.

It’s kind of funny, because almost everything I am doing is either manufacturing or industrial engineering based; yet my department at school doesn’t want us taking courses in either of those disciplines because they don’t think that they are relevant to what we will be doing in the future. Guess not….

After my meeting with my manager, I had a “Bring Your Lunch and Learn” Intern meeting. Three of us interns conference called into corporate about “Volunteerism at Abbott”. It was interesting because it talked about the types of volunteering that corporate wants employees to do (like, you shouldn’t do Christmas Caroling because that’s not non-denominational) and different things interns could get involved in. The problem is that I want to get involved, but all of the meetings for these volunteer events are at Park, and there’s no way for us to get up there, especially for only a half hour meeting when getting there takes 45 minutes. That’s one disadvantage of being at AMD – we’re so close that we’re considered part of Lake County in terms of Abbott, but we’re not at Park so we don’t get to participate in as many intern events. However, it’s cool because there’s only 7 of us interns at AMD so we all have gotten to know each other and hang out all the time – you can’t do that with the 140 interns at corporate.

Thirty minutes later and the electricity still isn’t on – if it doesn’t come back on soon, this is going to be a really long evening. At least our doors still work, so I might go and visit the other interns here at the hotel so that I have some company.

Tomorrow – IMSS! (International Museum of Surgical Science), Deep Dish Pizza! And all other fun things Chicago has to offer.

Lesley

** About an hour later, my power came back on, which allowed me to post this for all you people =)