Moms can be SO embarrassing. Kari Egbert, Sidney’s Clerk of Council, is no exception. Still, her son, Choice One field surveyor Kole Egbert, stepped up and donned what appears to be an authentic smile to appease his mom at this year’s Sidney Choice One Charity Cup, held last week.

Throughout the “Wild West” themed night, there were tennis balls and horseshoes thrown, tasty BBQ consumed, and lots of smiles and laughter. Unfortunately for Kari, neither the official Team Sidney nor unofficial Team Egbert won the Charity Cup tournament. That honor went to the Village of Yellow Springs, pictured below. The biggest win of the night, however, was the $7,510.00 generously donated by our clients and friends to benefit the Miami Valley Down Syndrome Association and Ronald McDonald House Charities of Dayton. Thanks to everyone who came out and supported these two amazing organizations—we are blown away by your generosity and enthusiasm!

We hope everyone who attended the event enjoyed it as much as Kari did… or at least as much as Kole pretended to when detained for a photo with his mom. To see all the rootin’-tootin’ Wild West fun, including more of “Team Egbert,” check out the highlight video. Thanks again to all who attended!

Congrats to Yellow Springs’s Ben Sparks, Courtney Sparks,
Lane Dykman, Bethany Dykman, and Choice One’s Jake Bertke.

What engineer Abby Gaydosh was suspicious of doesn’t matter to this Mindset—around Choice One, it could be anything. Just a single paper out of place on your desk might mean there’s an airhorn under your chair ready to blast when you sit.

It can be rather difficult to tell what is and is not a prank around here—we do lots of ridiculous things to confuse reality. To help Abby, here are some things at Choice One that are NOT jokes, no matter how crazy they might sound:

• Genuine, passionate enthusiasm for the minutiae of traffic signal timings, detention basins, and sanitary effluent.
• Several of us have legit modeling careers.
• Eating 176.75 Skyline cheese coneys in one hour. On purpose.
• Strange obsession with wearing green

It’s not that we can’t be trusted. It’s just that Abby’s newer, and she just hasn’t experienced all of our repetitive jokes/pranks that we keep finding funny. Perhaps we should make watching the Choice One Scare-tober video a standard onboarding assignment (you can see Abby at 14 seconds). At least then newer employees, including Abby, will know it’s important to always peek around corners and check under ordinary looking desks to verify the presence of a prank.

Max is one of our project surveyors, and in true surveyor fashion, three monitors doesn’t feel like enough to view multiple views of research, mapping, and software all at once. So, without having a fourth monitor handy to achieve his desired mega-view, Max got innovative and “went vertical.”

One might wonder, “What do project surveyors do and how could they use four monitors?” Great question.

1. The first monitor is, of course, for watching the weather. These guys would HATE to send the field surveyors out in bad weather…
2. The second is for Zoom chatting about where they’re all going to lunch together (based on the quality of the cheese, of course).
3. The third monitor is for shading their eyes from the bright lights.
4. And finally, the elusive fourth monitor would just be to have one more monitor than anyone else in the office.

All joking aside, our surveyors do a heck of a job developing field survey calculations, easements, right-of-way plans, boundaries, property lines, research, survey crew coordination, topographic surveys, legal descriptions, plats, annexations, subdivision layouts, land title surveys, and the list goes on. Wait… maybe they DO need four monitors?

P.S. Any of this (including having three OR four monitors) sound interesting? Visit our Join the Team page—we’re looking for surveyors!

Despite all the green around here, not all of us have green thumbs. While many of us garden and farm outside the office, the peace lily inside the Sidney office had seen better days. Until recently.

Indeed, we have a history of neglecting plants here at Choice One. This latest victim would wilt from lack of water, then be overwatered, then dry up again. Thankfully, Jacqui Lohman guilted… er, encouraged… Megan Bornhorst to nurse the plant back to life. The nursing process may have required some “thoughtful pruning” (which graphic designer Sammy Kuck observed as “hacking”), splitting, and repotting, but we’ve often enjoyed the “benefits” of a sudden, unexpected shock around here from time to time, and we hope this plant experiences similar increased vitality in its suddenly surprising cared for state.

Thanks to Jacqui’s efforts and Megan’s guilt, the plant has been revived. Soon one half of the newly thriving plant will head to Loveland, so all the peace (and plant life-sustaining responsibility) may be shared. Will we be able to keep TWO plants alive? We’ll assume that to be another thrilling surprise!

If it isn’t engineer Michael Goettemoeller letting us know how cold it is in the office, it’s definitely landscape architect Jacqueline Huelskamp. Luckily, engineer Andy Shuman noticed Jacqueline’s chilliness and just happened to have a handy, wearable sleeping bag in his car to lend to Jacqueline.

We’re happy to let each other borrow all kinds of things around here. Besides the everyday, normal things like pens, manhole hooks, and sleeping bags, we lend out our brains, brawn, and expertise to each other on a regular basis. For instance, we often borrow each other’s  “logic” to decide between Chipotle and Hothead, offer up big muscles (or, more realistically, combine many people) to move a desk, or volunteer several of our oldest… er, “most experienced” surveyors for a project.

It’s really no surprise that Andy had a wearable sleeping bag in his vehicle—Choice Oners are known for having random things in their cars. And while Andy offered his sleeping bag out of generosity, Jacqueline, we’re certain he wouldn’t mind if you started keeping random extra snacks in your car to share when you notice he’s hungry.

Wes Goubeaux is typically a quiet, focused person, so any sudden actions seem a deviation from his calm, tranquil demeanor. So when Wes snapped to attention as Kyle walked by, Kyle knew something was up. Upon coming back, Kyle was pummeled with several stress balls from various assailants, including Wes (proving Kyle’s quoted theory).

Wes is one of our licensed Professional Surveyors, and that means he is always busy with property lines, easements, and legal descriptions*. Indeed, the National Society of Professional Surveyors states that a P.S. “provides for a purchaser’s peaceful occupation of the land.” So it only follows that when Wes is not “peaceful,” something is about to go down.

Apparently, the group effort to ambush Kyle centered on his statement desiring colder weather and more snow, but really, there are at least 2,190 good reasons to throw things at Kyle. Wes was really doing us all a favor. Thanks Wes—despite previous suggestions that you are a Worthless Dumb Guy, we know you’re the peaceful protector of all of us who also have to endure Kyle’s crazy talk… er, the cold.

*Sound like an interesting career? We’re hiring additional surveyors!