As always I own nothing, make no money from this and bow before the genius that is Chuck Lorre, Bill Prady, Steven Molaro, and all of the writers, actors and crew that bring the TBBT to life. The character, Grandma Sweetie, originated in 'The Alternate Beginning Juxtaposition' by becuzitswrong. I did not get a response on my email asking permission to use it, so I am acknowledging that I borrowed Grandma Sweetie. Special thanks to TerribleWaitress for lending Merle as the first name for Penny's mom.

Thank you for reading.

Moments

After the sutures had been removed, and it was agreed the surgical incision was healing nicely, I received the plaster cast I would be wearing for the next 6 to 8 weeks. It was cumbersome, heavy, and just plain annoying.

However, now that I had the cast I could use crutches to get around. As long as I elevated the leg when I was sitting I should have a fairly quick recovery. There was one drawback. I had broken my right ankle. This means if I wanted to sleep on my side I would be sleeping with my back to the door. I know it should not make any difference but I was having trouble sleeping that way and sleeping on my back just made me snore louder.

Why bring this up, because in order to get to sleep I would need to prop my foot up with a pillow and then take a pain pill to get me past the whole back to the door thing. This was the ambiance that marked the first night Penny and I slept in the same bed. I do mean slept. I was dozing and heard my door open. Sheldon had taken to checking me at night because when I stopped snoring he thought I had also stopped breathing. I ignored the sound in hopes he would just leave without disturbing me. Then I felt the sheet lift up and the mattress depress as Penny slid into my bed (I could smell her green apple scented shampoo). I was about to say something when I heard the soft mewling and knew Penny was having a bad night. She slid in tight behind me and saying nothing pressed herself to my back, as if I could block what had been chasing her. She had her hand on my hip and I thought of reaching for it but then I remembered what her doctor had said about being careful not to hold or block Penny so that she might feel trapped. Instead I placed my hand next to her hand so that they were just barely touching and let her get comfortable. The crying subsided and her breathing was becoming regular, till at last she fell asleep. I lay there trying not to disturb her and realized that while my intellect knew that we needed to progress slowly, her scent and the heat from her body had kicked my libido into overdrive. My body was very aware that she was near and so sleep eluded me. I was in the process of mentally conducting my third experiment when I finally drifted off to sleep.

When I woke the next morning Penny was gone, and except for the smell of green apples I might have believed it all a dream. This same event would reoccur almost every night. I noticed that the crying was becoming a rare occurrence. We would never talk about it and as far as I know, no one else knew about it. I was so proud of myself for showing such self constraint that I failed to notice that I no longer needed to take the pain pills at night and my own visit by the night mare** had stopped as well. Suddenly this was no longer me taking care of her, it was us creating a haven from our own personal demons. It was by no means a normal relationship. It was comfortable so we kept doing it. Welcome to Penny and Leonard dating, sort of.

Flotsam

I was stuck. I will not bore you with the details but one of the University's major donors had requested my groups assistance and the University had agreed.

We were to find a "fix" on what was basically a work flow problem. I tried to explain to them that I was a physicist but they had heard about the work we had done for Mrs. Latham's company and wanted us to review their workflow to better determine the choke points in one of the manufacturing plants. I had sent some interested undergrads out to study the plant. They had reviewed the company's internal reports about the issue and the plant engineers detailed workflow diagrams and found nothing obvious. They interviewed the people working the line and they were genuinely surprised that production had decreased after getting rid of the "ear sore" sorting machine they had been working with for years. Here is a loose chain of events. In 2005 the company had needed to increase production in a particular plant (I signed a non-disclosure act so I can only give you rough details). They did not need a large enough increase to necessitate building a new plant so it was decided to upgrade some of the equipment in the existing line to cover the needed gains. After a thorough review it was decided increased production rates were possible if they replaced the sorter they had been using for the last 30 years. The new sorter was capable of handling the increased volume and, if needed could be added to easily if another production increase was needed. In late 2006 the `new sorter went on-line and an additional conveyer line was added just to support the small orders, freeing up the main conveyor to handle their regular orders. The switch over had gone well. No workers were displaced and all of them had an easy time learning how to handle the new sorter. I read the detailed report and the sort process had indeed increased the number of items handled. Problem was the end results showed a noticeable decrease in cases shipped in a day. I had been supplied with dvd's of video's created before and after the change showing the entire production plan right down to the trucks pulling out of the loading area. I watched them repeatedly and could not find a reason. We viewed the studies done at multiple places on the conveyor line and found that there was not one particular place were the pace was being hindered. Instead it seemed to be tiny decreases across a number of different conveyors, side loaders, labeling, packaging, and even the shipping stage. It made no sense.

I would not normally even record these everyday events except for this, how the problem was identified. Penny had been driving Sheldon and I to and from the University most mornings so it was not unusual for me to wake in the morning to the sounds of Penny and Sheldon talking in the kitchen. This particular morning I also heard the sounds from the old production line video and it appeared Penny and Sheldon were talking about it. This was odd as neither had expressed any interest in my "little hobby" (Sheldon's description of any of my boring projects). By the time I got dressed and hobbled out to the kitchen the talking had stopped and they were looking at me with that cat caught the canary look. Penny was almost dancing with uncontrolled excitement when Sheldon, looking condescending as ever, announced that he and Penny had solved the mystery and wanted to know what it was worth for them share to their find. Penny seemed perturbed by this and in typical Sheldon fashion was quashed by a "people do not appreciate something unless they pay for it" speech. Anyway he signaled Penny to go ahead and she led me over to the big screen video monitor.

Sheldon's laptop was connected to it and the videos of the old and new production lines were running side by side. The videos had been slightly edited so that they were in synch. The audio for the new line had been removed and the audio for the old line had been heavily filtered. Smiling from ear to ear Penny proceeded to advance the video pointing out items she had noticed. Then I caught what she and Sheldon had discovered. The old line sorter was loud but rhythmic. As a matter of fact Penny had noticed that some of the movements by line workers were almost in synch with the sounds the old sorter made. While trying to figure out how that would affect production she had noticed something off the side of the screen. When the sorter made a particularly harsh sound, one of the workers further down the line depressed a brake that slightly slowed the line. When this happened one of the other workers whose job was to watch for jams on the conveyors seemed to automatically turn toward a particular line and pull one of the items from it. This gap would cause the stacking machine to pause while the gap passed, before it pulled the required number of items together so that they could be boxed. Once the boxed item was pushed onto the conveyor belt there would be a small space on the line that worker controlling the stacker would adjust for so that the palate of boxes was paused to remove the gap, thus preventing the palates from mis-aligning when they were transferred to the container, which would have to manually be adjusted by the dock workers. Why this had been missed was obvious. Most people would have watched this without audio and so missed the clues. The workers on the line would not realize it because it was an almost pavlovian response to the sounds the old sorter made. The new sorter was very quiet. I watched a sped up video of the line after the sorter was replaced and saw what was happening. Without the rhythmic sounds of the old sorter, peoples reaction seemed to be slightly less efficient. Without the screech from the old sorter the workers were not signaled that there was a problem with the space between the products, so no one would slow the line down, then remove one object, forcing the line to pause while the stacker corrected the line , which centered the product so that the stacker would pick up right number of items, the boxing machine would not slightly misalign the box on the conveyor when it added the missing product to the case, which means the palates would be centered , which meant the workers on the dock did not have to manually move the palate to make sure it fit in the container, so that there was then no delay in loading the container to the next truck, and getting them out of the way for the next truck, which kept them from having a parking lot of bored truckers waiting to load or offload. It was like a huge game of dominoes (which is why it probably appealed to Sheldon when Penny presented her find to him for confirmation). To top it off there were already settings on the current machinery that could be adjusted to prevent these issues but they were not used because they seemed to slow down the line when the old sorter was still in place. I had asked Penny what had made her think of comparing the two videos and her reply was pretty straight forward. In every job she had ever had when someone left, small jobs that no one really thought of suddenly stopped getting done because no one thought to do them. Basically she had started looking for someone who had left the production line and worked her way from there. As for the sounds from the old sorter she had remembered something her grandmother Sweetie had told her about repairing fishing nets when she was Penny's age and that everyone sang sea shanty's. The song helped synchronize groups of people doing a repetitive job that required teamwork. I had a quick image of the workers in that plant singing "Blow the man down" while dressed as pirates, but I digress.

I called the plant's engineer and let him know what we had found and I could mentally hear him giving himself a head-slap when he heard the solution. Net result, company "X" was pleased because they had their solution quickly and it was going to cost next to nothing to implement it. They gave my team a bonus and made a decent donation to the Physics department. The University was pleased because a major donor was pleased. Dr. Gablehauser was pleased because he could purchase a Helium-Neon Laser as well as upgrade the lab's TOF Mass Spectrometer. Sheldon was pleased because Leonard had promised to read the roommate agreement. Penny was extremely pleased because Leonard had given her half of his bonus and that meant she could throw her annual halloween party (and still have money leftover for a new pair of riding boots). I was just glad to be able to return to my own experiments and now I had a chance to try out the Han Solo costume I had acquired. Life was good.

** while I have read Piers Anthony's Night Mare, I did not borrow this from him. The Night Mare visited me long before 1981. I do admit that I much prefer Anthony's version to the one I grew up with.