^{*Names altered to prevent unnecessary googling}

The first time I had to run the two-mile for R0TC, I almost passed out. I didn’t know for years that it was exercise-induced asthma that was my problem, so I tried to tough it out. A complete stranger on that first run finished his and turned around and came back to run with me, talking me in. That was R@y.

This man stood up at my wedding and was a friend of both me and my ex-husband, although it was my ex that carried on the friendship when we got divorced.

I was the god-mother to his oldest daughter, even though I thought that was a silly role for an atheist. They really wanted my ex to do it, so I did too.

I’ve been trying today to get in touch with the other two who stood up for us, those friends that I seemed to keep when the chips were down. I left messages for one with his father. I’ll have to dig a little deeper for the other one, but he wasn’t as close to R@y.

Man, this really strikes home. For as many military people as I know, I’ve been lucky to stay remote from this war. The man I’m seeing now has had a few close calls, and it’s my personal opinion that he’s pressed his luck a few too many times. I don’t want to see him going back there (it would be as a contractor, but just as dangerous) but I know it’s not my say.

I don’t know what else to say; I’m not going to turn this into a condemnation of the war, because everyone that I know who has been there really believes in it. Including R@y.

I found a fun new thingy today that totally feeds my nosy curiosity about where readers are from. Well, it could if y’all aren’t shy about pinpointing yourselves on a map.

Frappr is a Google Maps deal. To put yourself on it, you just put a name and a zip code in. I think you might have to leave a comment to get it to show up; I had to on the big map of one of my message boards, and I can’t figure out how to turn that off.

So I guess I’ve busted myself regarding location, but I don’t care all that much anyway.

Anybody care to join me?

So in the interest of pursuing one of my other hobbies, I blew off hunting on the last of my available weekends of deer season to go spend it with the new guy on his last weekend in California. I have my priorities, and the weather is too warm for the hunting to be very good anyway. In a perfect world, he would have been able to come up and go to the mountains with me, but without transportation on his end, that wasn’t going to happen.

So the mountain went to Mohammed, and we enjoyed each other for a last couple of days. He wanted to see San Francisco, so we took the BART (commuter train) over on Saturday and spent the whole day either being tourists or laughing at tourists, which is always fun. I had wanted to expose this East Coast boy to the wonder that is Dungeness crab, but they are out of season, and while you can still get them you have to fork over an arm and at least an ankle for them. Since I can get them for $3.99 a pound in the grocery store during season, I wasn’t willing to do that, especially for one that had been frozen. If we’re that close to the docks, I won’t eat them unless they’re fresh (but if I can ever drag him out here in the winter, I’m taking him to Half Moon Bay, where we will indeed buy them live off the docks, and cook them up right there.)

We did some of the usual touristy things, although all of the Alcatraz tours were booked up through Monday. We did take a tour of a submarine, which was very interesting. And cramped—wow, those submariners must have been small men. I fit OK, but he had to really squish to get through the hatches.

Then on to buying things for all of the kids back home (and hey! Cheap fleece, and mine need a couple of those anyway. Score!) and some clam chowder since that wasn’t horrendously overpriced.

You know, I really enjoy this guy’s company and I’m going to miss him when he’s gone later this week. I can’t blame him for going; I would have too, but I’m a little sad about it. He sure was a nice surprise to find on a job site. The timing works out OK for me though; had he stayed much longer, I would have become too attached to him and his leaving would have hurt. At this point, I’m just glad I got to know him. He’s been good for me.

I couldn’t see not going deer hunting at all this year, so on Sunday evening after I got home, I was a bad, bad girl. I dragged that trailer up to the mountains and blew off working on Monday. I’ve never ever called in sick for a mental health day, but I did yesterday and nobody missed me. Jeff pulled into camp about five minutes behind me, but it was too dark to hunt. We had dinner and then each hit our own sacks to get up way too early in the morning. Poor Jeff, I forgot what time the sun comes up this time of year, and we had to kill about an hour standing around looking at the moon.

But we did a little road hunting and met Dennis up at Five Corners. The three of us went almost all the way back into the park, but the Forest Service was burning up on the road with the good view. It ended up being a long day of seeing absolutely nothing, but I was still glad to be there.

Dennis and I did a little quail hunting in the middle of the day. Well, Dennis did some, and I was distracted by shiny objects at an old Indian grinding rock. He’s found a bunch of arrowheads around those rocks, so I went looking. I found lots of chips of flint and other sharp stones, but no actual arrowheads. It was fun anyway; I enjoy looking for tiny things that other people have missed. Meanwhile, Dennis had reached the end of the road he was walking and was waiting for me to come get him with the truck, but I was bent in half digging around a rock. He laughed when he saw me.

The only things of note I saw on the whole day were a nice lion print that Dennis pointed out to me and a fox and a bobcat that I jumped in the road on my way out, but a poor day of hunting is still better than a good day of working.

Karma bit me in the ass on the way home though. I stopped at the water tower to change the chlorine, and noticed that my leak-proof diesel can was leaning over. I tipped it back upright and snugged down my bungee cords and went home. By the time I got home though, the can had fallen all the way over and I’d lost a couple of gallons of diesel all over the back of the truck. And the first clue I had of that was when the dog jumped out and splashed. So yeah, I had to give the dog a bath at nine o’clock at night after a long weekend, and we both still reek. Poor dog!

I went out yesterday evening to work on two fairly big units, which involved shutting a hospital down. I don’t like to inconvenience clients anyway but a hospital (well, it’s only a medical center these days) even less so, so I went after business hours, which didn’t give me a lot of daylight for working.

Now this particular client is part of the big site that I went to school to get the Specialist’s license to support, but who then screwed me over by not opening that part of the job for bids. That license came in handy this time though. These things hadn’t been touched in ten years that I know of, and not only were they not functioning, but they were both illegal installations. I may not have known that without that class. And since I’m the operator for that water district, I really need to know if things are correct or not.

I started taking one apart to fix it, but quickly determined that it was beyond hope. Even if I could get the smaller parts working, the large parts (and a 6-inch unit is heavy) would be broken too. Fixing one part of one of these units is generally almost as expensive as replacing the whole thing, and when you factor in the age and that I’ve never even heard of this manufacturer to get replacement parts, well then you might as well just call it a day. Besides having an illegal bypass that needed to be addressed.

I took a look at the other one, and it looked like it was in better shape, but then my lightbulb went on that this was the wrong kind of unit for the application. Not just wrong either, but also illegal. So I didn’t touch that one either to save the client the bill. All in all, I was out there for the better part of an hour and got completely filthy digging out a water valve with my hands, and don’t have one thing to bill for. I had my arm stuffed down in a valve box all the way to my armpit scooping out mud to get to the valve stem, while the hospital maintenance supervisor looked on and said he wouldn’t have touched that stuff with his bare hands. I told him at least it wasn’t date night, as I came up with another handful.

I was a little concerned when I called the client this morning. For some reason, I report to one guy for the operator stuff and another for the backflow stuff, and that guy is a little touchy to work with sometimes. I didn’t think he’d be thrilled that I’d refused to work on his units. I thought he would have wanted me to test them anyway and call them good. Which I can’t do, not ethically. Sure, he could call in someone else and would eventually find one who would do it, but my business is based on being right, not on being easy. And especially for my own water system, although I wouldn’t touch something like that for one of my cities either.

But he was OK with it. He said he’d get it taken care of, and I’ll go over with him what exactly he needs to do to get them in compliance. He’s going to save the two units for parts for me. It’s just another step in building my reputation. It seems like most of those steps are unbillable lately.

I really hope that this is the start of the rehabilitation of the whole place, even if that means a shit load of hard, ugly work for me. None of these units are newer than ten years old, and most of them have been painted over, frozen, and generally neglected during that time. There are going to be a lot of repairs needed to get the place going right, but this is the big job that could keep me on my feet when my day job goes away, so I will do anything honest to land it. Even if that does get me deep into the dirt now and then. What’s a little hard work?

How is it Wednesday already when the days have just been dragging on?

I’m still talking to new guy, and he’s still invited to go hunting with me this weekend if he can make it down here. I’d really like him to, but since the weather isn’t the greatest for hunting, I’d probably do more camping than hunting anyway. Which would be OK, especially with the company. And if he can’t come but still wants to see me, I would consider blowing it off again. It hasn’t been a good season, weather-wise, anyway this year, and there’s always bear season later on. But I sure would like to take him up in the mountains and spend some time with him and maybe also show him some of the real state, not that trafficy nonsense he’s stuck with at the job site.

This is the last time we’ll be able to see each other, as he’s leaving for the East Coast on the 28th. Not only does he live back there, but he’s looking at a year-long job so the chances of him bouncing back to my state for work are slim. And I could see us keeping in touch while he’s gone, but that’s about it.

I believe that I have the truck sold too, even if it is for less than I wanted out of it. That dent really took the value out of it. So I’m going from a dead-broke week to not so broke—the job that owed me money had lost my invoice and are now getting on it, and the withholding company that stiffed me $600 is also getting it straightened out. Good thing, because John’s shoes are disgraceful and I didn’t have the cash to buy him new ones, not when I was worried about eating for the rest of the month. Good thing my freezer is well-stocked.

So, still chugging along, just like I always do.