Work is alright for now. The travel is just not my gig. Some people love it. I’ll never understand Lee and Akira. They work 6 months in a foreign country, travel through home for one week and out they go to another site for 6 more months. And they LOVE it! I’d love to see all the countries, work in all these different cultures, but I just don’t want to be away from my family for that long. If I wanted to be gone that long, I wouldn’t have had a family. If you’re that miserable at home that 6 months away from your wife is a GOOD thing, then why the hell are you still together? I just don’t get it. Four days at a time, 16 days occasionally, that’s about it for me. Any more than that and I may as well sell my house (and everything in it) and live on the road.
But, for the time being, the travel isn’t so bad. Chris and I are working well together and all the INCO people are easy to get along with. The only trouble is there are too many monkeys afraid to touch the banana.
Imagine a room with 4 monkeys in it. Lower a banana into the center and all 4 monkeys will go for it. Spray them all with cold water and they’ll back off. Keep doing this until you can leave the banana in the room and no one reaches for it.
Now replace one of the monkeys. The new monkey will go for the banana. The other 3 will attack him, afraid to get sprayed with the water. Eventually the new monkey will not reach for the banana. Now replace the other monkeys one at a time. You will end up with a room full of monkeys afraid to reach for the banana but have never been sprayed with the cold water.
I’m working with these monkeys. Their favorite phrase is, “That’s the way we’ve always done it”. If you come up with something that makes more sense than what ‘the elders’ have passed on to us, you get a look like you were talking about Egyptian Algebra. Government contracts are the enemy of all things efficient and sensible.
Our schedule for the next few weeks takes us out to Carrollton, GA, down to Brooksville, FL, and then we’re out to Homestead AFB. Maybe Homestead will run over into late Friday and I can find a way to get some diving in. I’ll be 20 miles from Key Largo and I haven’t been under in so long, I miss it terribly. After that, we spend another week back in Jacksonville and then another week Naples. By then, Officer Mayo (Joe) will be back and I don’t know what will happen to me then. If the “INCO Deployment” position hasn’t materialized by then, I may go back to Melbourne for a while.
Russ called me today just to see what was happening and to see if I was coming back down there. He’s a cool guy and I liked hanging out with him. I’ll definitely do more of those Thursday blues jam nights. That was a LOT of fun! But if I do go back I won’t be there too long. Teresa and I will just start packing up boxes on the weekends I come home and get ready to move.
Tomorrow is Groundhog Day. Where we are moving to in PA is only 32 miles from Punxsutawney. The first year we are moved up there, I’m taking Teresa and Becca to see it. At least once.
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