Musings from the Grange
by Lilly Wit

My husband of 26 years spent the better part of an hour the other day complaining about life. Apparently, the company that makes the dress shoes he’s worn for the past 20 years has changed something in the manufacturing of its sole.

“This pair didn’t last anywhere near as long as the other pairs I’ve had. Why would they change it?” he complained. “It was perfect the way it was. Now I’m going to have to find a whole new shoe.”

You have to understand the enormity of this disaster for my husband. He buys nothing until he’s done hundreds of hours of research including reading, hands on examination and testing, and design and implementation of his own public opinion polls.

As comedian Billy Crystal once said, “Change is such hard work.”

For a year, we’ve been discussing some changes at Innovation Park. One is the addition of a new building at the West end of the Park that will be completed in August of this year. Also, we are planning to update some exterior signage and consider some additional beautification projects. We want things to be even more efficient, safer, and welcoming.

The problem is, change takes time, money, and people need time to execute the projects. So, please excuse our mess and remember, “A temporary inconvenience yields a permanent improvement”.

As an experiment, for Christmas last year I gave my husband, who’s worn the same brand and style of underwear since he was 8-years-old, a different brand, thinking he’d like the newer fabric. I should have known better.

He spent several weeks just looking at the unopened package with a confused expression on his face. Finally, he asked my son if he’d like to have them. Then he bombarded him with questions about fit, feel, movement, creep, heat, and about a thousand other things that are important (and which I clearly didn’t research enough) when choosing underwear. In the end, he decided to stick with his regular brand.

I guess, even after 26 years of working on it, some things will never change.