xmas lunch

Today we had our annual xmas lunch. We order BBQ from a nearby place, and workers from maintenance and construction bring their own dishes. Last year we had 2.5 tables full of dessert, mostly brownies. This year people toned it down and we didn't have nearly as much as last year, which is good. Because of the snow, not all of maintenance was present. Half are on night shift, and the day shift people came in waves. This lunch is the one thing that construction and maintenance does together. I think I only know the name of one person in maintenance. They do tend to have a high turnover rate so I saw a lot of new people.

We had a raffle for presents. There were presents stacked and I chose one, which felt like an empty box, and it was mostly empty except for $15 in cash. I'll use it to pitch in for the group gift that we're getting for our boss. She was nice enough to get everyone in construction a tin of popcorn. My tin will be saved until our semi-annual lan party.

The big boss didn't make it to lunch, which I was hoping he would. Either last year or the year before he came and filled up, and was in such a good mood that he gave us the rest of the day off. It made sense too, everyone else was full and sluggish. No work would have been done, even if there had been work to do. The office was mostly empty anyways since people either didn't come in, had to plow snow, or just simply left early.

asphalt conference

Last week I went to a Asphalt Conference held at KU. It was rather boring. I feel asleep in almost every talk I sat through, and gained very little knowledge. After the introduction, the first talk was given by the Deputy Secretary of Transportation about future funding. It was somewhat depressing. This speech is usually given by the Secretary, but she had other obligations. He mentioned that it's basically the same speech as hers but at half the speed. That's the one thing I really like about the Secretary's speeches was how fast she talked. I didn't even stay for the whole conference. The point of these conferences is to get continuing education credits. They gave us our certificates at the beginning, so the only thing keeping you there was actual interest. I left about 2 hours before the end since I wasn't getting anything out of it, and went back to the hotel to nap, which is what I would have done at the conference anyways. The conference was Thursday afternoon, but there was a social hour at the hotel on Wednesday and Thursday nights so they paid for us to stay both nights. I skipped both nights to hang out with friends in Lawrence

Since it on a Thursday, I decided to take Friday off and spend the whole spend in KC. I basically just hung out with various friends and played Rock Band 2 that weekend. I felt like 2nd vacation.

Tomorrow I have to go to Nuke gauge safety training. We're require to go every two years. I never got a nuke badge from my first training which is used to measure how much radiation you've been exposed to on the job. We use a nuke gauge to determine the density of the dirt and pavements. The training is in Salina, but I'll have to be ready to leave here at 7am even though the class isn't until 9am. It's the 5 of us that was too busy working on the same project to go to an earlier class. I will probably sleep through this one and still ace the test. It's tempting to drive on my own so I won't have to spend 3 hours in a suburban with those guys, but we're supposed to be trying to conserve gas. Well I'm trying to, the project manager almost never shut his truck off.