Last Wednesday I stayed up late writing into the wee hours of the morning. The schedule had me staying in Dothan through the end of the week. I was set to finish my work on Thursday but the maintenance window wasn’t set up until Friday night at midnight going into Saturday morning. That sucks. I won’t have anything to do all day Friday but hang out at the hotel and write, maybe finish Warcraft III. ( I got through the whole damn thing in a week but I can’t complete tha last level!!!) So I go in on Thursday after very little sleep and they tell me that the maintenance window got pushed up to tonight! Cool, I can go home as soon as that’s done. By Thursday afternoon my ass is dragging. I’ve got a bunch of the circuits tested. Were 25 minutes in to a 30 minute test and the damn power goes out. The generator keeps the equipment running but my test set goes dead. SO I wait around all Thursday for power to restore. At 5pm it hasn’t yet. I return to the hotel and work on all of my paperwork that has to be done. I finish up all of the paperwork as well as my expense reports for the last three weeks just in time to go back in for the maintenance.
The building has power at least. The NOCC crew is working on some telco issues and we don’t actually finish the 15 minutes worth of work until 3:30am. On no sleep I attempt to drive back to Jacksonville. It takes me 7 hours to make the 5 hour drive but I get there in time to load up in the truck and (Teresa drives) we go down to my parents house for the weekend. We had a good time visiting and talking (and playing a bit of poker) and we head out Sunday around 5pm. We end up at home just in time for me to check my e-mail, get an hour or two’s worth of sleep and drive to Ft. Walton Beach for work at 8am. I am tired!
I’m working with a new TOR this week. He has quite the reputation for being a pain in the butt if you screw up. The type of guy that will watch you put in the wrong screws, let you complete everything else and then tell you to start over. So I knew he wanted to meet at Eglin AFB at 9am, I didn’t know if he meant EST or CST so I got there an hour early. He called me to let me know he was running late and wouldn’t be there until close to 10, CST. So I’m sitting on my butt for almost three hours! Oh well, I’d rather wait on him than have him waiting on me.
While I was waiting, I saw a guy working on the road signs on the base. He was taking down a post that had a “Stop” and “No Left Turn” signs on it. He was having all kinds of trouble. Wiggling the sign post, digging, he just couldn’t get the post out of the ground. He had to take both of the signs off of the post. When I looked up again, he was installing a new post. It was the same type as before. After replacing the post with an identical post, he put up two new signs on the new post. “Yield” and “No Left Turns”. Why didn’t he just take down the “Stop” and put the “Yield” in its place!?
The TOR is finally here. He drove past the gate the first time. He told me he assumed I got in the base. The whole idea of meeting up at the visitor’s gate was that I can’t access the base without him signing me on! Oh well, I have another technician driving in from Nashville, he’s running late too and should be here by 10:30.
So while we’re waiting for this guy to show up, I’m sitting in the truck getting a head start on some paperwork. Of course I’m listening to my music while I’m doing it. Becca’s voice comes on the iPod and I immediately snap to attention. For Father’s Day last year she recorded a karaoke version of “Daddy’s Hands” for me. She hates to hear it (as we ALL hate to hear recorded versions of our voices). You can tell she was nervous recording it. You can hear her voice trembling while she was singing but I LOVE hearing her singing. So now I’m sitting in the truck with tears rolling down my cheeks when the other tech finally shows up. I must have looked stupid but I don’t care. I cry almost every time I hear her sing that song.
My original line here was that I hope this week doesn’t turn out like this morning but I’m here and actually posting this on Tuesday night; the week got worse! Oh man I am just amazed at my ability to hold back the rage building in me this week. I just want to explode!
BTW; Ft. Walton Beach is a misnomer. Ft. Walton Bay I’ll buy, but there’s no real beach here. Not where I’ve been looking. This place sucks. Spring Break is in season and I’m stuck in between Panama City and Pensacola. Alright, maybe I’ll post more on this later but this is really Monday morning’s post so I’ll leave it at that. Good night.
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