First Work Blog

...and it's a long one. So. Friday I wanted to write about how great things were going. Monday through Wednesday was pretty tough--I was out of the office the whole time inspecting bridges in Washington. Lots of ladder-climbing and hammer-hammering, all by me.

But Thursday and Friday were great. I was in Annapolis, which is starred in the map below...

...and I was out with a couple of of our prime contractors on a 25-foot motor boat to inspect the underwater portions of a bridge with a scuba diver. The bridge was a new one, so there was not a lot of work involved for the diver. Me, all I had to do was sit in the boat and relax, take notes, and communicate with him every once in a while via a radio, saying stuff like, "roger" and "say again?" and "roger" again.

So I wanted to write about how great those two days were, about how I could smell the faintly salty air as the wind whipped past the boat. I wanted to write about the tickle I felt in the corner of my eye whenever I angled my head just so and the wind would beat against the bridge of my nose. I wanted to write about the crabcakes I had at a seaside restaurant where we parked the boat and just hopped onto a dock and our table.

But nooooo...today just wouldn't let that whimsy linger. I had to work today, a Sunday. Sure, I volunteered for it, but I was under the impression I was going to inspect Baltimore county bridges, but ended up doing Harford county bridges instead, which are farther away. Then while out there I realized I'd left my boots in the office, so I had to inspect wearing tennis shoes. Which wasn't so bad until I was walking on what I thought was solid ground but turned out to be just an overgrowth of freaking brambles supported by nothing. So I fell right through the brambles into a stream and got my pants all soaked and my shoes and socks all muddy that I contemplated throwing both in the garbage. I had a change of pants and socks in the car, but no shoes, so I had to wear fishing boots the rest of the day.

Then just as the guy I was with and I were about to start on the last bridge of the day, I realized I'd locked us out of the car.

When I was still an EE major, I took a digital logic class with a quirky professor who told us that Murphy's law had corollaries, one of which is that bad things will happen at the most inopportune times.

So naturally, since it was a working Sunday and I had just fallen into a fucking river and had my arms butchered by some fucking brambles, it had to be the one day that we only had one car key on us which I locked in the car while we were on the wrong side of it, the outside. Shit. Long story short, a locksmith is now a hundred and fifty bucks richer. Fortunately this one ordeal didn't set us back more than half an hour, if that.

During the drive home I was thinking to myself that the one thing that would really make my day complete was being pulled over for speeding. And you know what? I wasn't pulled over. Ha ha, had you going there a while.

Nevertheless, I got home at 6:30, and put in an extra 11 hours of work, and there was no permanent damage when I think about it. It feels like it's been a bad day, but there have been worse. And if it hadn't happened this way, you wouldn't be reading this. Now that I'm home, things look okay again. Although...I had wanted to leave work early tomorrow, but now I'm not sure since I just cost the company $150...

Eeyow. Hope you had a better Sunday, folks. Later...

Wide World of Sports Scandals

While getting my daily Wikipedia fix earlier, I noticed that it was a racing day. I learned that Colin McRae just died (I don't know anything about WRC, but I know that there's a video game named after McRae), and I read about the recent espionage scandal involving the Ferrari and McLaren F1 teams.

Long story short, a disgruntled Ferrari employee gave a McLaren guy some classified documents of the Ferrari design and, yadda yadda yadda, McLaren's been disqualified from this year's constructor championship, and has been fined an inconceivable $100 million. McLaren also has to show the design of next year's car to the F1 head honchos by December, or it'll be disqualified again next year.

Maybe it's just a series of coincidences, or maybe I'm just more aware of things now, but it seems that there are a lot more controversies in the world of sport these days then there were when I was a kid. So we have this F1 scandal, then there we had that NBA ref Donaghy betting on games. Then there was this really hyped up American football scandal involving this player, Michael Vick (who earlier this year was caught trying to sneak pot through an airport), running a dogfighting ring from home. Then there's all this crap about doping that's tainted everything from baseball to the Tour de France.

But you know what the weird thing is about all this? I love this shit, man. It makes things so interesting doesn't it? Wow, all that drama! I don't like sports as a spectator (although I do follow tennis from time to time) as much as I like playing sports, so I don't read the sports pages much. But when there's a scandal, man, I am following all the stories. It's great! Maybe it's schadenfreude--those guys make millions, and then oops! Ha ha! But sports scandals are great to watch, especially if no one gets hurt--physically, I mean.

On a different note, my buddy and I went to a used book sale today. I had wanted to go on Saturday, but my so-called friends backed out on me and so I used that day to just loaf around the house. But, man, am I glad I went eventually. To be honest, their record selection was disappointing, but I got a whole lot of books. To many for a bag, so they gave me a box. And you know how much I spent? Eighteen bucks. Like I told the lady behind the counter, I felt like I was getting away with something. I bought this one book from 1922 in which the original owner had inserted a review of the book from a newspaper back then. I doubt I will read it, but the imagined history of that book compelled me to buy it. My friend also found this religion book from 1904 that I kind of wish I'd bought. They were also selling a book for $225 which belonged to one of Abe Lincoln's people. "How do you know?" we asked. "He wrote his name on it," they answered. I've always been fascinated by the history of inanimate objects. They don't know where they've been or where they're going, who's held them, yet here they are today. Here was a book that, over a century after having been in the hands of Lincoln's man, was being looked at by some kid from the Philippines, of all places, who happened to find his way to Rockville, Maryland on this particular day. Is it fate, or is it coincidence?

I didn't by the book, though. Two hundred bucks! Geez Louise!

Wacky Races

Did you guys ever watch that show? Remember Dick Dastardly's dog? Muttley? Lemme see if i can find a picture...here.

Anyway, remember how Muttley would grumble something like "rassafrassarassararararrrr?" What do you think he was saying. I think it's "cocksucker motherfucker." Say it fast: "cocksuckermotherfucker." Eh? Incidentally, I've just discovered that the spell checker on Firefox has no problem with either "cocksucker" or "motherfucker," and as well it shouldn't.

I'm still sick, in case you were wondering, but feeling better, although my head is throbbing once again. Good night!

Still Sick...

So this morning I went to work for an hour and a half to set things up for the site visit I'm going on tomorrow, then I went home to rest. The trip was supposed to be today, but I postponed it yesterday, thinking I should be fine by tomorrow. Man, why did I think I only needed another day to recover? Right now it feels like I could use the rest of the week. Whatever, I'm out of sick days anyway, although I still have vacation time. Yowsa. All day the pressure in my sinuses has been giving me a headache, so took a nap and I've just taken something to relieve the pressure as well as an analgesic, and that seems to be working. I'm also getting that hacking, asthmatic cough that feels like phlegm wants to come out but can't. I need to take an expectorant of some sort but I dunno what to take. I think I'll take some Robitussin later, if we have it in the medicine cabinet. If not, fuck it, I'm sleeping it off and hoping for the best tomorrow. At least I have to be on site at nine tomorrow morning, instead of the usual eight.

On the bright side, I've finally gotten my hands on the Botany Sessions, and I got a lot of reading done today. I think tonight I'll read by the record player and give Music from Big Pink a spin again, or maybe the Monkees. Or New Morning, or John Wesley Harding, or...I swear, if it weren't for music and books, days off aren't all that fun.

Little Red Haired Girls

Wow, September already. It doesn't feel that long since my last entry, but I guess it has been that long. Anyway, I think I'm going to make this blog more like a journal. We'll see how long I can keep this up.

So, today I'm sick. Actually, I got sick on Saturday afternoon. I'd just come home from watching Shoot 'Em Up (which is hilarious) when my immune system just decided to go bonkers on me. Nevertheless, I really wanted to eat crabcakes, so I went with my sister and her daughter to the mall to have some for dinner. On Sunday I tried my best to rest and did nothing else but vacuum and drive to the airport and back. Oh, I saw Executive Decision again after seeing it in the cinemas when it came out, what, over a decade ago? Man, it's been a while. It's a good movie. Remember that one?

Today at work, I found out that the new guy coming to head my department is gay. I was surprised not so much by the fact that he is gay but because my boss is a pretty staunch Catholic. In my mind I began to wonder whether my boss had wanted to back out but couldn't for fear of some sort of litigation, but I don't think he's an ass like that. I left work early because I still wasn't feeling all that well. I still don't.

So this book I'm reading now is called The Fourth Bear and it's by this Welsh guy, Jasper Fforde, who people who read know about, but I'd never heard of it before just happening on the book at a Borders last month. Anyway, there's this one scene I read tonight where Jack Spratt's kid tells Jack about how he tried to get a girl to notice him by reading Tristram Shandy, because she'd told him she liked Lawrence Sterne. Then the kid finds out that she actually had said "Lawrence's turn," referring to a boy she dated. This had happened before when the kid studied Keats only to find out that the girl actually loved "kids." It kind of reminded me of that time I read Pride and Prejudice in high school because a girl I liked was told me she was reading it, and then later on I found out that she hated Pride and Prejudice. Heh.

Then I went on Wikipedia and read up on Peanuts and Joe Shlabotnik and the Little Red Haired Girl and Charles Schulz and was reminded that Schulz had a real Little Red Haired Girl called Donna Johnson whom he proposed to but she turned him down and soon after married a fireman...