Car industry. He works for a parts manufacturer.

Ooookayyyyyy. That was a bit shorter than I expected.

:lol:

They're in the Witness Protection Program.

shhhhhhh

;)

Sorry, it's really not all that exciting. Here, if you're an immigrant, you're either U of M or you're car industry.

Beest's company was bought by an American company. They also bought a German company, then they decided the two needed "consolidating" so the put the German company in charge of that operation. So the Germans closed the British operations down and fired everyone. Then the American company said "wait, we needed that section!" So those lucky dozen people or so and their machinery and their families got shipped over here. Everyone else lost their jobs.

Oh and then the American company went into chapter 11 because it bought too many companies with too many problems -most notably the British company....... and it stayed there until very recently.

Please can we get a payrise now?

Witless protection more like.....

I'm in the Whitbread protection program. I'm not doing a bangup job of it either. They keep vanishing.

Wigless Protection Agency

Well she wouldn't have to bother with a swim cap......

MISCAs today.

OMFG she dropped another two seconds on her breaststroke and is now within one second of a Division 1 High School State cut! She has 4 meets left in which to drop that second..... no pressure, though..... :lol:

ETA: 103 swimmers, seeded 71st, finished 25th, highest placed freshman......


her IM was also good -tad slower than thurs (and her seed time) but not much, and finished 10ish places above her seed position...... plus coach had told her not to kill herself on it so she's be good for the breast.

This is crazy. Fun but crazy. I had no idea quite how much the ante was going to be upped when she moved to high school swimming. or just how good she was..... No-one drops 8 seconds in a 100 of their best stroke in 6 weeks. That's 10% in breaststroke.

The totally nuts thing is she was still the third placed swimmer from her school -and another two faster than her didn't swim because they already had state cuts and needed cuts in other events.....

Soooo.... at the MISCAS, most of the super-fast girls were wearing tech suits rather than their team suits. The $300 variety. So I gulped and thought, well she's just a freshman, I guess I'll start watching the sales and special offers ready for next year or the year after....

...nuh-huh. SG came home today saying that volunteer coach (head-coach's hubby, former U of M (Phelps) coach, who gave her the game plan for the IM last Thursday that dropped her the 5 seconds- (=God)) .....says that all swimmers who could make it to finals at the division championships in two weeks should have one. And he currently has connections with Speedo (and that is the only suit to have) and he can get them approx 50% off if we have enough orders...... If we can't buy one right now, they may be able to find loaners ...but they only get the 50% discount if enough people want them. ...and that discount is way better than I could ever find in a sale.....

So suddenly next year or so becomes next week? eek!

I have to say I was totally in the No camp until the MISCAs. I thought they were a con -especially at this level. I mean how much time can they really cut? But then I saw wet swimmers coming up to the bleachers to talk to their parents, and those suits were amazing! They were repelling water to the point where it was balling and looked like it was trying to jump off the suit -not even just perching in a hemispheric blob on the outside.


but... we only paid $120 for the team suit, two silicone team caps -with individualized name and team t-shirt and shorts. and that felt like a lot at the time......

I thought the tech suits were banned.

I still think they should be.

lots of them are. So they all want the maximun that isn't banned..... These are like fastback swimsuit tops, knee-lenght jammer-style bottoms.

Damn, that's a lot. Can you earmark some scrip money for the cause?

No, this is a different school. And the thing about scrip is that it can't benefit ndividuals directly. They'd have to be aiming to get suits for the whole team.

and yes, I know this isn'r how many schools run it. mostly they are in violation of federal law. but mostly they are private cathloic schools and a blind eye is turned.

So shoot me for making an observation. occasionally the feds make an example. We weren't one, but we were close enough to have to change fundraising in a way detrimental to income, and yet the private catholic schools carried on regrdless. Bitter? maybe a little...

Yeah, I've never been involved closely enough to know the details of our fundraising. My daughter is in the school band, and they do band trips to competitions where they need to pay for the bus and hotels. But there is fundraising done so that everyone, regardless of income, can go. I don't know how they determine which students get a free ride, and which pay out of pocket, but we have always just paid out of pocket. (Maybe they look at the list of who gets the free school lunches.)

It seems a little strange that you have to buy the team suit, but then are encouraged to swim in a different one. Maybe they should tell parents about that up front, so you can decide where to focus your spending and get one or the other and not both.