Work '09

2009-06-09T19:00:00.000-07:00

Why is it, more than once a week, the boat conspires to ruin a perfectly normal day because people can't communicate, can't plan, OR BOTH! A day that should have ended at 4 pm, went on till 7! And for no good reason! Stuff that should have been planned out MONTHS ago, is being planned on the fly and that plan changes throughout the day! I know most would disagree with me, but I miss the shipyard. Most days you could count on a consistent level of crap, but at least you could see most of it coming. No HUGE surprises.

Oh, by the way, BIGGEST lightning storm I've seen since my days in Orlando. It was crazy. Lightning all around us and I was pierside, supervising the guys plugging in a temporary diesel: sideways rain, crazy wind, and LIGHTNING everywhere! Huge strikes, full cloud to surface strikes, it was amazing, if not a little scary. Reminded me of plugging in a pier temporary diesel on the Newport News, in the rain, at two am... and pulling the cabling out of the bus work attached to the diesel! Ended up having to cut the cabling to get a clean section to insert it back into the clamp. That's right, two am, rain, hacksaw, large cables... awesome.

Picked up a portable hard drive today. Laptop is crammed full of movies, songs, books, etc and I only had like 5 gig of hard drive space left. Poor laptop. That was one of the coolest things I noticed about being back on a boat. Large number of laptops, guys sharing movies on thumb drives, messaging your friends and family when in port calls...

Summer '09

2009-06-07T18:40:00.000-07:00

Oh what a day. Leia had her "early" birthday party today. Luau themed... slip 'n slide, pina colada punch, water balloons, wet grass because it's been raining every day for the past two weeks here in Goose Creek... oh well.

Lilly's been sick the whole time I've been home. She is stuffed up, strep symptoms, fever that only goes away for four hours... overall crappy. Steph's been dealing with her diabetes. She's been to the hospital twice this weekend to get a insulin injection. She's been dealing with diabetes for over a year now, knowing that the pills and diet probably wouldn't be able to hack it forever, being that her heriditary traits tell us and the medical community that her pancreas will give up one day. Tomorrow, her trip to the endocrinologist will determine if it's given up. She's been hanging around 350 (should be like 120?ish?) and hasn't been eating much at all, worried that it will send her into ketosis...

I don't want to go back to work Tuesday morning. Fast boat life has changed since I left the 750 in '01. There are not enough leaders, and those who are don't have enough worker-bees, those senior second class PO's that I worked with back in 00-01 to get the work done without pulling me and Dave all over the boat, or requiring rework. It sucks. I'm not sure how we are gonna get through the next 12 months. I'm not sure I've got the top cover required for me to get my job done (E-7 to E-9's?)

Anyway, this is my first real attempt at blogging, maybe I can keep it up. I was never much of a diary writer, but I've been ranting in messages between my facebook friends and such... I figure I should try this for a while. Maybe I will get some responses about how to handle work and such...

My Life

Work '09

Summer '09