After penning more than 350 columns for the Big Rapids Pioneer, Bob Eastley started hearing from friends that he should gather his best stories and put them into a book.

So he did.

“I’d been writing a humor column—”The Daily Gripe”—for our local paper since 2003,” says Eastley, who earned his BS (1974) and MS (1984) in Civil Engineering from Michigan Tech. “I published my 50 favorites into a book. It was easier to put together than I thought it would be.”

The book, also titled The Daily Gripe, is 111 pages and includes humorous short features on everything from graduation open houses, dorm food, and helicopter parents to holidays, and even Punxsutawney Phil, the season-predicting groundhog.

“I like to find the humor in things we encounter in our everyday lives,” he says.

When he’s not writing columns and books, Eastley is a long-time professor at Ferris State University.

“I teach construction management,” he says. “Things have changed quite a bit over the years—so much of the work is done by computer now. People still have to build things, but managing the process is different.”

Eastley has been at Ferris for 34 years. He also coaches high school tennis and loves fly-fishing, Nordic ski racing, running, biking, and doing almost anything outdoors. He has run and finished seven marathons.

He and wife Jan have two adult daughters, Amy and Sarah, who live in Kansas, and two grandchildren, Jackson and Alexandra. He and Jan have lived in Big Rapids, Michigan, for over 30 years.

Published by Green Ivy, The Daily Gripe is available on Amazon and in bookstores in Big Rapids and Grand Rapids, Michigan.