Screwed

My emergency bridge repair project is schedule to start on June 1 at 6pm, which is the worst time for me. The project will be day and night for 10 straight days, so no weekends for me. The contractor couldn't start until they have all the materials and the piece isn't supposed to arrive until May 18th. And they didn't want to close the ramp on the Memorial Day weekend, so June 1 the earliest date. This really screws me, because I had a wedding rehearsal on the evening of the 1st, and a wedding on the 2nd, then a trip to Japan on the 4th. I'll take day off for the actual wedding, but I'll miss everything else. We're currently shorthanded, so I can't take more days off, plus I want to do this job, because it's my first. I am currently the only person scheduled to work on this project which is impossible, since I can't be out there for 24 hours a day. Though I will get to work at night like I wanted. Slowly I've been getting the paperwork for this job. We've already had to make a change to it, because there was some extra damage that wasn't accounted for in the original estimate.

Lately our office has been going crazy with doughnuts. For the past two weeks, some one has brought two dozen doughnuts. Last Friday, there were five dozen doughnuts from 3 different places. This was the only day I actually ate the doughnuts, because it was day the schedule for my project was decided and I was feeling down. I told myself no sweets at work unless they were homemade.

catching up

Last week, I finished the last of my training classes in Salina, Aggregate Field Testing. The class was taught by this old 70 year old civil engineer. I feel asleep during most of the lecture parts, which luckily there wasn’t much of. There were a lot of hands on tests that had to practice of the course of 4 days.

When I got back I had a shiny new laptop. It’s a widescreen one with a full number pad on the keyboard. This is definitely good enough to play FFXI, but I don’t have any reason to travel anymore. Maybe if I’m able to go to Japan, I’ll take it with me. 3 others in the office got new laptops too.

Yesterday, my boss put me in charge of doing a 402 (estimates) for a striping job. I went out with another ET and measured the lengths of the lines on a 6 mile stretch. Did the easy stuff in the morning and after lunch we decided to count the skip marks. That was a bad idea, because it was putting us to sleep. Eventually I had to count out loud to keep us both awake. At around 2:30pm, we had to quit because we got a flat tire. We were driving on the shoulders and medians so at some point we drove over a metal spike. Coincidently it was the same tire that I just replaced the day earlier. I was actually the first time I’ve ever changed a tire, and I got to do it twice in two days.

Today I didn’t do anything since the car needs a new tire, and I don’t know what other vehicle is equipped to use the DMI (Digital Measuring Instrument). Plus my boss lent out my truck to be used on another project. I’ll try to finish it up tomorrow. I felt a little bad, not doing anything today when I actually had an assignment to complete.

In my boredom I was looking at the State civil service job openings. I noticed that they opening another EA1 position in Wichita, and the EAIII position which they closed when our engineer arrived. Looks it’s time for a regime change in this office. I should probably move my desk to the other side so my boss will have a spot on this side.