Saturday

I'm bored. And burnt. I'm at the tail end of my day of work on a Saturday. I had to be in to work yesterday at 6 am. Which meant waking up at 4 am. We had a concrete pour yesterday, which started at 6:30. Since both my superintendent and safety guy were gone yesterday, I got to be here till it was done. Normally we would trade off - one person in early, the other stays late. Lucky me we chose to do a ginormous pour on the day everyone took off. Fortunately it finished earlier than expected. We were thinking we'd be here till 10 or 11 last night. We rolled out at 7:15. But, we had to be back at 7:30 this morning to saw cut the concrete. Since I live over an hour away, my company was nice enough to foot the bill on a hotel here so I wasn't driving home to get a little sleep and then drive back. I must say, the sleep I got last night, then not having to drive that far to get here, couple with only having 5 people here, I have had quite the productive morning. Maybe working on Saturday's is a good idea.

I'll think about that one........ (you know I will in no way entertain this idea unless I have to :-)...)

Anyway, here's some photos from the pour:

When we started at 6:30 am

As we got going:

I just thought this was a cool picture, maybe I'm just weird in thinking this. Big concrete pours tend to get us construction nerds a little excited.
My electrician decided to turn the camera on me, since I take photos of pretty much everything he installs:

So, an update on L'il Blue.
She went in for surgery for hopefully the last time this past week. She now has a new transmission, new radiator, a new part on the timing belt assembly, a new fuel valve, and a new condensing drain line. My out of pocket expenses for all of this:

$97.75 for the drain line

$275 for rental cars

Not bad, eh? I would say the $2,500 I paid for the extended warranty was worth it. That's probably $6k or $7k worth of work right there. So now I have a truck that has 77k miles on it, and brand new innards. I'll take that. It should last a little while now.

I was hoping by the time I finished this, my subcontractor would be gone. No such luck. I think a phone call is in order... :-).

Fun weather and other musings...

Motivation is overrated. I have none today. I can't tell if it's the short week, or the crazy weather we are currently experiencing. At 8:00 this morning, this is what our job site looked like:
That's looking out at TEMF B, which is easily seen from our trailer. The one below is looking towards TEMF A, and a dirt pile that is a stone's throw from the trailer.

Through the day today we've had that, which dropped about an inch of snow. We've had some blue sky. We've had some rain. Now we have a little of all the above, with some wind mixed in for good measure. Gotta love the Pacific Northwest weather! Since it's doing this, and the temps have been steadily dropping all day, I'm planning to stay down here tonight. I really don't want to deal with icey roads at 5:30 in the morning. Let the fun winter months begin!!

For good measure, here's a picture I took a week ago (same view as pic #1 above):

That shadow across the sky is from Mount Rainier. This picture doesn't do justice to how beautiful this sunrise was. It was a brilliant red.

So I haven't updated in a while because nothing has really been happening. I thought I was getting prepared for winter, but that didn't happen. My travel bag in my truck has summer clothes in it. Guess I'm going shopping tonight since it's not supposed to get out of the 20's tomorrow.

Work is going well. We're finally moving on both sites, though you can't tell too much is happening. We just started putting up CMU walls on the one building. We're still doing underground stuff at the other. So we're still basically sitting around twittling our thumbs. I have had some things to bug people about, especially since interiors are more my specialty. So the nice Kelli will be coming out soon...... :-).

How about this spagetti mess. Can you see which conduit goes where?

There's two communications rooms and one electrical room in there.

L'il Blue has been getting her innards repaired over the last weeks. She was in to the doctor last week for the new radiator and timing belt fix. She was supposed to go in today for her new transmission, but that got put off till next week due to the weather. Soon enough she'll be all fixed up and almost new. I'm just glad I'm getting all this done with minimal moneys out of my wallet.

The refi on the house is in it's final stages, so I will soon be a single home-owner. That thought scares the living daylights out of me, but I'll manage. I guess it's a good thing in one sense - it means I am an adult and have big girl responsiblities. I don't know that I like this though.

Other than that, my co-worker and I are sitting here wishing the minutes away so we can leave. Not that I have anywhere exciting to go. But still, anything is better than work, right?

I'm going to update this 4 hours after I wrote the preceding. I decided to stay in Lakewood tonight, rather than drive home. I tussled with the idea, since the roads looked fine and I really didn't want to pay for a hotel room. But I had this little voice in my head saying it was the right decision - I may be fine tonight, but tomorrow is going to be a doozy. So I stopped at Old Navy and bought a sweater, went to Target and got a brush/scraper for my truck, checked into the hotel, and went to eat. In the 45 minutes I was in the restaurant, the snow went nuts. I went in and it was spitting ice pellets. I came out and a blizzard had blown in, leaving over an inch of snow on the ground and the wind blowing like crazy. In most parts of the country, that's nothing. Here.... that's insanity! I had to put the truck in 4-wheel drive, which was amazingly better than any 2-wheel drive I've driven in snow. In the mile between hotel and restaurant, I saw 1 truck do a complete 360 in the middle of the street between me and another oncoming car because he thought it would be okay to dart into traffic. Then I saw another car try to get to fancy, went sliding, and missed a pole by inches. The news has been fascinating - all the main roadways, including I-5, have been shut down. So no one is going anywhere. Literally. I don't think I have ever seen anything like this. I am so glad that for once I listened to that voice in my head. Fort Lewis is one designation away from being closed tomorrow. That would be interesting, I may get a snow day. With the roads already iced over, more snow coming, and the winds picking up to 30-40 mph, I'm thinking the roads aren't going to get any better. Should be an interesting morning!

My new toy

So last weekend I had a momentary lapse of sanity. This now sits in my garage:

I decided Shanequa was not going to be a functional vehicle when it came to transporting things, namely house related items and my motorcycle. It's also supposed to be a doozy of a winter here, and she defintely is not a winter car. So I now own a 4x4 truck. It's pretty nice, a 2007 Nissan Frontier. It came with the topper on the back, which is nice for keeping things dry since it rains every now and then here. The hardest part of adjusting to it has been the gas mileage. It gets half of what I was getting with the car. Since I travel 120 miles a day to and from work, that adds up way too fast. The only reason I'm not totally freaking out about this is when I switch over to working for Clement Group in two weeks, I get a gas card for that travel.

The bad thing about this truck is apparently Nissan put together a whacked out set-up where the coolant somehow leaks into the auto transmission fluid. Not a good mixture. I, of course, didn't know this when I bought the truck. The only reason I discovered this is it makes a weird vibration noise at certain times. Upon researching this on-line, I discovered it's common in these trucks. Nissan knows about it, but apparently won't step up to take ownership and fix it. So I'm talking to the dealership to see if they will fix it. The lesson here, which I didn't realize - call me naive I guess - is that a dealer does not have to fix a used car before putting it on the lot. They should disclose anything, but it's not necessarily their responsiblity to do that. And their out is you sign an As-Is document when buying the car. Fortunately I bought the extended warranty, so hopefully that helps. So, wish me luck on this, we'll see how it goes.

Other than that, not much going on. Work is picking up, finally. It will be a challenging project just in the fact the Corps team we are working with has absolutely no experience in construction. We can't figure out how that is, but somehow they got the job. I have already had one blow out with their project manager, and I'm sure it won't be the last one. We also just got the approval for the second building to start, so it's going to get pretty busy shortly.

I started the process of changing my name back to just Dixon. What an effort. Too many trips to too many places to prove who I am. This week some time I get to sit at the social security office with the crazies to get that one done.

Today I decided to be adventurous and make cinnamon rolls from scratch. In my effort to keep things as healthy as possible, I used whole wheat flour. I also didn't put much sugar and cinnamon on them. So they came out looking good, but they tasted like wheat bread. Without the sweetness. So I whiffed on those. I will try again though, it's a new challenge.
Anyway, here's to another fun week. Hope everyone has a great one!!

Eat, Pray, Watch Basketball

Last weekend I decided to take a spur of the moment trip to Atlanta. Why Atlanta you ask? Well, so I could see this:
Seattle was playing Atlanta for the WNBA championship. I have been wanting to take a little vacation for a while, and this provided the opportunity and excuse to go somewhere far away. I know, I just had a month and a half off from work. My job isn't in the least bit stressful yet. Why would I need a vacation? Well, because of what lie ahead in the coming week. I needed a mental break to not think about the fact that on Wednesday the following week I would officially be single. I think I accomplished that task. This trip proved to be quite fun.

I got up at 3:45 am on Thursday to get ready, then headed out to the airport. The plane left at 7:00, and landed in Atlanta at 3:00. I found the Marta train, which is their public transit train around town. It took me right to the hotel. I stayed at the Omni, which is attached to Phillips Arena, where the game was, as well as the CNN center. Let me make a word of advice here - when taking spur of the moment trips, plan to spend way more money than you should. The Omni was not cheap, but I figured one night would be okay. Plus, it kept me from having to walk around downtown Atlanta by myself after the game. My room looked out on Centennial Park, where all the Olympic festivities were held back in '96. Nice park.

Anyway, after checking in, I turned on my computer to see if any pre-game festivities were planned for the fans who had made the trip. There was a gathering going on at a restaurant right outside the arena. So I rested for an hour or so, then headed to meet up with everyone. There was about 50 people there, including a group that I sit near at Key Arena in Seattle. I sat down, had some dinner, and met some people. We then headed over to the game.

My seat was on the front row, behind the bench. Apparently I made it onto tv a few times. The Atlanta ticket people managed to keep all the Seattle fans together, which proved to be quite fun. There were several hundred of us that had made the trip. It was pretty cool to see. We actually were louder than the Atlanta fans at times. I ended up spending the game talking with the guy that sat next to me. He takes photos for various teams in Portland, and shoots the Storm games for kicks and giggles. Anyway, the game photos on here are his. I took pictures too. But let's just say there's a reason I shoot landscapes and not action. My pictures came out pretty blury, so I'll keep those to myself.
Sometimes I think LJ's stare could melt ice:

Anyway, Seattle ended up winning, which won them the championship. It was really fun to see everyone get all excited, and the crowd going crazy. After the game, we all headed over to the hotel the team was staying at. We headed up to the 43rd floor, which is a rotating bar. Here's the view:

I met up with the guy I sat next to at the game, and a lady and her daughter I met at dinner, who were also staying at the Omni. We decided at 2:00 am that it was time to head back to the hotel. Along the way, we were trying to decide if we should change our tickets to fly home the next morning, or stay and make a weekend of it. We had all bought tickets assuming it would be a 4 game series, meaning another game on Sunday. But tickets were going to be $600 to change, so we decided to stay and hang out together on Friday.

We met up at the hotel restaurant Friday morning and had breakfast. Then we headed out to the Coke museum. Let me just say, this picture and a bottle of Coke that got confiscated at the airport are the only things that were worth the $15 to get in. Waste 'o time and money. They show a cartoon video when you first go in. All three of us walked out and said it was quite disturbing, and full of sexual inuendo. The rest of the place was pretty lame. Don't do it.

Next, we went to the aquarium. That was a bit pricey, $29 to get in. But it was still fun. Aside from the obvious aquarium things, the lady I was with (Alice) volunteers at the Seattle aquarium. So she got to talking to one of the narrator chicks, and talked them into giving us a behind the scenes tour of the tank area. It was really cool. She was all excited to talk about the fish and what-not. I was like a kid in a candy store on the construction side of it. Very cool to look at. Anyway, this fish thing was weird, but too cool:

A cool picture in portal on the tank:

They have a tunnel through the tank:

After wards, we went back and did our own thing at the hotel for a few hours, then met up for dinner. Alice's friend had recommended a BBQ joint to try out. She said, take the Marta to this stop, then get off and the restaurant is on that street. She failed to mention it was over a mile away on that street. Here's Alice and Scott with their phones out trying to figure out where we were. I had mine in there too, then realized how funny we probably looked and stepped back to take the picture. Let's just say we were not the majority in the neighborhood we were in, if yu know what I mean.

We ended up deciding to just go to the Longhorn restaurant that was just up the street. Not BBQ, but a good steak. We headed back to the hotel, and went our separate ways. They were fun people, and it was cool to hang out with them. Alice lives in my vicinity, so we're planning on coordinating rides to games next year.

Saturday, I got up, had breakfast, then got a rental car and headed to Savannah. It is not wise to drive a mong stretch of really boring road when you are really tired. It was rough, but I did it. I got into Savannah about 3:00 in the afternoon, hunted down a hotel, and checked in. I stayed at the Mulberry Inn, which is down in the historic district. It was a very cool building, it's on the historical registry. After getting my bearings, I headed out to find Lady and Sons restaurant, the one Paula Dean owns. I was about 7 blocks away. Very cool building:

I was told to come back at 5:45 to get into line to get in at the bar because the reservations section of the restaurant was full for the evening. So I headed out and wandered around for an hour. There are lots of little parks in the area. I was surprised that there isn't much to this section of Savannah - old buildings and bars. I was there on a Saturday, so a lot of the buildings were closed. So I found a bench in a park and sat down for a little while. After a few minutes, a homeless man came over and asked if I had any food. I said no, and he asked if he could sit down anyway. We ended up talking for over a half an hour. Sounded like he just hit a rough patch of dumb luck, and was trying to figure his way out of it. I felt bad for him. Apparently in Georgia, panhandling is illegal. So he never asked for money. I should have looked for him after my dinner, but didn't think about it till I was most of the way back to my hotel. Here's some photos of the park I was in:

When I went back to the restaurant to wait in line, another couple got there too. We ended up sharing life stories while waiting in line. When we were finally brought in to the restaurant, they invited me to sit with them. So I had dinner that night with two retirees from New York. They were very friendly people, and made dinner fun. I finally got to have some fried green tomatoes, which I insisted on finding while out there. If you do not know, Fried Green Tomatoes is my favoritist movie ever. I have it memorized. After that appetizer, I had the shrimp and grits dinner. It was so freakin' good. And as my dinner counterparts noted, it probably had a stick of butter in it, that's why it was so good :-).

After dinner, I headed back to the hotel for the evening. I watched some football and went to bed. The next morning I got myself together, checked out of the hotel, and headed down to the boardwalk area to find some breakfast. I found a restaurant that was full, so I sat at the bar. I ended up next to a couple from South Carolina. We chatted through breakfast, nice people. Afterwards, I headed back towards the car.

One hobby I have is whatever town I go to for a vacation, I find the Harley store and buy a t-shirt. Some people collect spoons. I collect Harley t-shirts. Here's what I picked up. Pretty cool if you ask me:

I hopped in the car and headed back to Atlanta to catch my plane that night. I felt the tiredness from the trip this whole week. I didn't get much sleep while in Atlanta or Savannah. And to top it off, in keeping with tradition, I got sick from flying. I have a nasty cold going on now. Such is life. It was worth it. I went in to the court on Wednesday, and the divorce is final. And the trip helped take the stress out of that appointment, and made me feel at ease with everything. I would totally do it again.

Mindless thoughts of the day

I thought I'd check in since it's been a few weeks. The reason it's been a few weeks is nothing has really happened. Work is still boring as all get-out. Here's a picture of what our project looked like a month ago:

Here's what it looks like now:

Well, I guess something has happened. We now have a porta-pottie on site.

It's a little slow due to a number of factors. Hopefully they get resolved some day soon. I think we're all going a little batty here. We take turns with who gets to go home early. Like at lunch time. We spend more time shootin the bull than we do doing anything of importance. The other day I was getting ready for my first real prep meeting, on concrete, and my superintendent told me it was just for the footings, not everything. I wanted to cry. I said, "Don't take this away from me, I finally have something to do!" He was convinced, and I had a half-days worth of work to do. It was nice. I suppose the one nice thing about this is our 1 contractor on site decided to take tomorrow off, so I get a 4-day weekend. Can't complain.

The only exciting thing that has happened is we've found 3 of these so far:

Look just below the wood stake, to the left, sitting on top of the rocks. That's a WWI era UXO - unexploded ordinance, a.k.a. a bomb. They are live, but they don't have the fuse on them. So unless the are hit just right, or wrong, they won't explode. But the funny story here is after we found the first one, we had that sonic blast from the 2 jets that had to come up to chase down the plane that got too close to Obama's plane. We didn't know it was sonic blast. We thought the dirt guys hit a bomb. We freaked little, it was a loud blast and shook the ground. We got a good laugh out of our reaction. We were on a conference call and were running around the office yelling "Holy crap, they hit a UXO!" Glad it wasn't though, I'd rather not find out what that would be like.

Also on the topic of work, the company that has contracted me to be their temp quality control manager is now going to hire me permanent. So that's one less headache for me. I now know I have a job past October. I'm still holding out hope the Corps comes around with something, but at least I know I have something permanent. And this despite throwing my boss under the buss last week on a conference call. Always know who's on the other end of a conference call. Just my advice for the day. :-)

As for other life stuff, I officially took the house off the market today. I am in the process of trying to refinance it in my name since no one has even called on it in the 5 months it's been listed. We'll see if the banks want to help me out a little. Keepin' the fingers crossed here.

And lastly, my pinched nerve issue. This whole thing has caused me to want to pinch a few people's necks, I hate dealing with doctor's. And insurance companies. Thank goodness I have some family and friends in the profession who have given me some good advice and can steer me in the right direction. At least I know they will be honest with me and not want to make me their practice dummy. It's not like it's anything important they're working on, you know....

So we've determined through various tests that my C6/C7 nerve is seriously messed up. So I need to have surgery on it. The debate has been whether they do a disk replacement, which is apparently still experimental in the US, or the typical disk fusion, which tends to be a lifelong pain. The doctor I have been going to wants to do the replacement, but through advice from my aunt, this is probably not the best idea at this point, mostly since it sounds like I will be a practice dummy. Also, insurance companies don't like to pay for this surgery. So now I sit at the mercy of an insurance company deciding what they'll pay for, a doctor who would rather do one surgery instead of another, and the advice from many to seek a second opinion. Stupid falling apart neck, what have I ever done to you!!!!!!

So tonight I will go to Seattle to watch what will hopefully be a good basketball game. Then I'm going to sleep in tomorrow and enjoy the long weekend and try to foget the craziness that is my life right now. Hope everyone has a fun Labor Day Weekend!!

Summer cleaning

We always knew KB was an EL Fudge cookie. Check out the style, startin' at a young age...

KB's in da house! ..... Wha's up?

In my efforts to assist Karl in packing his stuff, I discovered how much crap I have. In all the moving I did with my job before getting married, I just kept everything in Tupperware bins, and moved it from place to place. I have finally decided that those tax returns from 1993 aren't necessary anymore. And those papers I wrote in college, not applicable in any way to my current career. And those chair cushions that I have been packing along for years because I might need them at some point in time, but have never once used, can probably go.

So I have a pledge with myself to do at least one hour of cleaning of crap a weekend. Today I managed to find the bin with a long lost picture collection, mostly from our time living in Wilbraham, Massachusettes. It was from '86 - '88 I think, Mom can correct me if I'm off. I think I may be the only Dixon kid old enough to remember most of our time there, which was plenty fun. Anyway, here's our crib, plush with Dad's pimp-mobile, a Chevy Chevette:

Us chillin' in the pool with some friends. When I drove by the house a few years ago, the pool was gone. Sad loss there, pleny of memories. Like KB trying to swim before she knew how to, and Dad jumping in boots and all to save her. And me being the lucky winner of the kid who was oldest and wisest on how to clean the thing every day!!

I'm looking pretty fly in my short shorts. That's me, hands in pockets. My basketball career started young, I actually still remember one of the plays our coach taught us.

Check out the chair fabric. At least this fabric wasn't removable so Mom could make another dress for me.... :-). Just playin' Mom. I think this below picture is Jessica. Fortunately she decided clothes were a good thing to wear.

And here's Beth, chilling on the porch, with her rad boom box and shades.

I don't have any of Jeff from MA, but here's one from Kentucky when he and I went hiking one day. Notice the hair, he did have some at one point in time. So young. Now he's old. Hee hee!!

And if Kaari reads this post, this is for you. I read one of hers recently that had me giggling over her music discussion. Well, in my bin scrounging today, I found a shoe box full of cassette tapes. Here's a sampling of music I listened to in high school. Scary!!

Though this does really make me want to go out and buy a tape player to listen to them. Can you even buy tape players anymore? If not, I'll have to check iTunes to see I if I can find them. I need to have some Marky Mark to thump to in my ride. :-)

Goings on

When I was in 8th or 9th grade at Beaumont Jr High, I was on the basketball team. We loved to play this game called knockout. For those not familiar, this game entails everyone lining up behind the free-throw line, the first two people have a ball. The first person in line shoots, if they make it they go to the end of the line. If they miss, the person behind them shoots and attempts to make the shot before the first person makes their follow-up shot. And so it goes through the line like this until the last person standing knocks out the second to last person. Sounds simple, just make your free throw. But when you've got numerous teammates standing behind you, taunting you, and you know the person behind you can knock you from this game, you're a little freaked out, and tend to rush things. I will never forget the first time I played this game. I was so stressed about missing my shot, because I am uber competitive and didn't want to be the loser who can't knock out the rest of my team. Of course, my stress caused me to miss my shot, and I was knocked out on my first shot. I remember standing to the side watching the rest of the team go through the line, and thinking if I had just taken a minute to breathe, get my shot off correctly, I would eventually win.

This lesson still sticks with me, as it did yesterday when I took the test to be an ICC Commercial Building Inspector. It's a timed test, 80 multiple choice questions in 3-1/2 hours. Sounds easy enough, especially since it's open book. But I used the ENTIRE 3-1/2 hours, not a second less. And I passed.

The picture is indicative of how I felt afterwards - drained. One of the hardest parts was convincing myself that was plenty of time, not to rush and answer just because I didn't feel like I was going to make it in time. Especially at the 2-1/2 hour mark when my brain went foggy and my eyes were screaming at me for a break. I pushed through, and actually finished answering all the questions at the 3 hour mark. I spent the last half hour going through the questions I had marked as ones to go back and double check. When the clock ran out and the computer closed me out of the program, I felt good. They don't tell you your score if you pass, so I don't know how well I actually did. But I felt wonderful that I passed. So now I can officially look at a building and tell someone if it's built correctly or not. Kind of scary.

This is a good thing for me in two ways. One, the job I took a few weeks ago was conditional on me passing this test. While my company didn't seem to care if I did this or not, because this is a temp job, our Corps team bugged me about it several times a week. So now I can make them go away. Second, there is a position open with the Corps that I think this may help get me a leg up on the competition for. So we'll see.

Speaking of my current job, I took a temp job with the company I was laid off from in May. They have me contracted to a general contractor as a quality control manager on a project at Fort Lewis. The company is based in Alabama, so you know I had to decorate my desk with my UK stuff :-). Anyway, it's their first foray at Ft. Lewis, and this base apparently operates differently than others they've worked at. So I am having to hold their hands a little to get through things. This company also does not have any kind of quality control or safety program, which amazes me that they are getting theses contracts with this. So between me and the safety guy that was also just hired, we are establishing the programs out here. The job for me is only suppposed to last till October, when their permanent guy is supposed to come out. From what I've heard about what he's currently doing, it will be later than that. In the meantime, I'm still keeping my ears and eyes open for other opportunities. Permanent ones.

Other than job stuff, it's been quiet around here. Karl left on July 4th, and headed back to Maine. I took the rest of the holiday weekend to clean up a little, go for a ride on the motorcycle, and relax. That's a weird thing to wrap ones mind around fully. It's been interesting, I'm definitely glad the job came up when it did. I think I would have gone a little loopy if I had to sit at home and dwell on things. We still have not had a single call on the house, I'm convinced there's a reason for that. When things settle down, the interest will come. In the meantime, I go for at least one ride a weekend, even if it's just a short one, and hang out.

The last crazy thing that has happened, that I noted in my last post, is I have finally found out what is wrong with my arm. I have a pinched nerve in my neck. So off to an orthopedic doctor to get that addressed. The pain has pretty much subsided, but I still don't have feeling in my right thumb or index finger, and my right arm is a little weaker than usual. Makes for a fun time when typing or trying to pick things up. The best thing to come out of this was getting out of an exercise in my CPR/first aid class last week. We were practicing the heimlich, and had to act like we actually fainted for our partner to practice letting the person down without dropping them. The guy I was working with was huge. The teacher offered to let me switch, but I said no thanks, mentioned my arm, and he let me off the hook. The lesson there, if you pass out around me, plan on hitting the ground hard :-).