Happy Birthday to Me

Yesterday was my last official day at Bowmar, where I've worked full time for about a year and with which I've worked (first on the Main Street Venture Fund acquisition of the operation, then as a board member) for most of four years.  It is a small (43 employee) manufacturing company in Fort Wayne.  We make electronic and electro-mechanical components for the aerospace and defense industry - basically stuff that goes in cockpits.  The company has been around for over 60 years and has the interesting history of having developed the first handheld calculator.  That didn't work out so well, but the company is stable now and the purpose of the last year was to get it ready for growth into new products rather than building only legacy parts for old programs.

Wow - that was more than I'd planned to write about Bowmar.  But I feel very close to the company so perhaps it's not surprising:  when Main Street's investors bought the company in 2010, the alternative was its publicly traded parent closing the facility for "strategic" reasons.  (The parent company was in the midst of selling itself in order for its venture capital shareholders to access a lot of money - and as we all know if you're in between a VC and money, you're in a precarious position.  Hence their willingness to close a profitable operation.)  Anyway, I feel like Bowmar is one thing that I can point to and say "hey, if I hadn't worked really hard on this aquisition, that place would quite possibly have closed down."  So it's important to me.  And like anywhere that you work during a period when your personal life is extremely stressed, I feel a closeness to the people there that is probably asymmetrical but is still real.

Coincidentally, my last day as Interim President was the day before my birthday and I saved many of the balloons from the going-away carry-in* for tonight's festivities at the Green Frog Inn.  The Green Frog is one of those "everybody knows your name" bars that comes with the added advantage of serving very good food.  A place that I will miss, for sure.

Today I discovered that I can get 8 storage bins in my car, and I (re)discovered at the same time that geometry is not instinctual for me.  (I was determined to answer this question mathematically rather than just taking some empty bins out to the car - and all the balloons in the back of my car made a physical assessment somewhat problematic anyway.)  I had been putting off the logistics of clothes, etc., for the trip until things were done at Bowmar.  Now I'm done, and since it's not raining today, it seemed like a good piece of research to get out of the way.

Today is also 31 days before the election, and it seems safe to say that no one will be unhappy once that event has come and gone.  (Except possibly television stations in swing states, who make enough money during Presidential elections to cover skinny margins during normal years.)  My political leanings are well understood (at least among the wingnut faction of what in Fort Wayne passes as a blogosphere) and the purpose of this blog isn't to discuss politics.  Let me just say this:  I am weary of a political party whose primary mission seems to be taking this country back to the Middle Ages - literally. And while this election is unlikely to immediately solve that problem, at least I won't have to hear so much about it for a while after November 6.

One interesting thing about losing an election, working at a factory in Waynedale, and living in a house without a television, is how quickly one disconnects from a lot of issues and concerns that seemed very important just a year ago.  Driving across America, I'm not sure whether I'll become even more disconnected or whether I'll become an NPR junkie who starts to sweat if she misses All Things Considered.  At this point I'd say it's even money.  Time will tell. 

Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Elisabeth Shue, who was also born 49 years ago today.  Adventures in Babysitting is probably the best teen movie ever made and I've been a fan ever since, even before I knew of our significant connection.



*Non-Hoosier readers:  "carry-in" is what most other Americans call a "potluck."  See also "euchre" and "can't give up the fight against DST" for other examples of Hoosier Exceptionalism.