Where has the time gone?
Sheesh, I just realized that it has been two weeks since my last post! Where did the time go? Part of why I haven't posted has much to do with recent events and the fact that as much as I love my crackberry, it does not work out very well for making posts. Though I am fighting my perfectionist tendencies (compulsion?) I don't like making posts with my crackberry as my typos increase exponentially with typing on the small thumb-touch typing qwerty keyboard. I have done it in the past and still will make the odd posts and comments with it, but not when posts start becoming large, which this one will since I have two weeks of stuff to update.
One thing that I had forgotten to mention in my previous post about my birthday weekend was that while we were at my dad's house we noticed he had a place on his elbow which had swollen up to about the size of a tennis ball. When we asked him about it, he said it was an infection in the bursis of his elbow. The next day he had gone to the doctor to get it drained on an outpatient basis. However, after they had taken 20cc of pus from his bursis the doctor was concerned about it. Also after the draining, his whole arm then became swollen as apparently they had ruptured his bursis. So the next day they checked him into the hospital to do surgery on it and to put him on an intravenous anti-biotic. This turned out to be a three day stay in the hospital for my dad. He also gave me the day before they released him from the hospital asking if he could borrow $5500 to pay the ransom. (Actually, not all of it was for the hospital bill, part of it was to help out with the cost he incurred in August for repairs to his home air conditioning system.) I made a trip to the credit union and had a check cut for him and then delivered it to my stepmother (apparently, she managed to do the right thing with it despite her dementia and he is home now). There was a time when I was working with my dad before I joined my current employer when getting $5500 together between the two of us would have been a year long endeavor, so I was glad to be able to help him out.
Last week, besides the three places that the company wanted me to be (previous post...London, Rio and Houston) I got an email before I was scheduled to fly from Continental asking me if I wanted to check in early for my flight to Washington DC. Needless to say, I found that to be quite the surprise, but I think what happened was that my flight to Houston was the same number for carrying on to Washington DC if I had been booked there. Something strange about my sleep patterns during the course was that even though I was in the same time zone as home, I still ended up sleeping like I was jet lagged to Europe or something. There were several times when I was wanting to go to sleep early (I even fell asleep during the debate) and then woke up at 4:00 a.m. unable to go back to sleep.
The course had some interesting parts to it. One teamwork exercise entailed being part of a pit crew for a retired nascar type race car. That actually was kind of fun, but I doubt any of us are ready to earn a living working the pits at Talledega. Over all, I think the course may have been a good thing, though I am real glad to not have any more modules for that course to do! For the dinner the night before the last day of the course, we had been broken into groups and each group was to provide part of the evening's entertainment. My group came up with a fictional advertisement for the company that was kind of fun. Part of it was ludicrous claims about how environmental the company was, though there was some nuggets of truth in what we put together. Anyway, the ad we came up with was similar to the recent round of advertisements companies like shell and BP have been making recently about the oil companies becoming more environmentally aware. In our spoof ad, we talked about things like putting sails on seismic boats (actually under consideration), turning off the computers for 20 hours per day, working by candlelight, and using electrolysis of sea water to make hydrogen and oxygen to fuel the engines and compressors (another one of those things which may be given some consideration). The final claim was that the company's latest HSE&Q initiatives would so reduce the carbon footprint of the seismic survey to completely offset any reservoir discovery. (Of course that claim could be met if there was no discovery, but that is another story.) So for my summation of the ad was that we were rebranding the company as PGS=Pretty Green Seismic.
While I was in Houston, I had some serious technological issues with the hotel's wi-fi connection. There was only one night while I was there that I actually managed to see the wireless network server. That one night was the evening that we had the group dinner so it was quite late when I managed to get online. I caught up on a few emails and by the time I got around to thinking about posting to livejournal, I was just too tired. Therefore, it didn't happen and now you get a megapost instead of a couple of less large ones. I did manage to finally upload some of my pictures from the last break's 412 highway holiday. If any one is interested, they are public at http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldmanonthesea for that matter they are there even if noone is interested.
Over the weekend, I found out that my nephew's high school marching band was going to be in Broken Arrow competing in a contest and so I went to watch the competition with my younger brother and his family. Other bands which were competing included my brother's and my alma mater as well as my wife's alma mater. My nephew's band did not place in the preliminary competition, but made the finals. My alma mater didn't place or make the finals either one and my wife's alma mater just totally swept their class taking all of the preliminary awards. My daughter and her family came to watch the finals as did my dad and stepmother so it turned into quite the family get together. However, my daughter started developing a headache and so we did not stick around to find out how the various bands did, though I rather doubt that my nephew's band ended up getting any awards.
With my Nordic ancestory, I had long ago taken to referring to the notional holiday which passed yesterday as "Lost Italian Day." Though I must admit that Christopher Columbus *should* be considered the patron saint of all politicians. After all, when he left, he didn't know where he was going, when he got there, he didn't know where he was and when he returned home, he didn't know where he had been. He also did it all with borrowed money! As an aside to that, the money was also borrowed from a married woman, makes one pause to wonder does it not?
Anyway, in honor of "Lost Italian Day" I got my kayak out and spent the day fishing on a lake which I have not explored very much. (It is the same lake where I took my brister and nephew fishing as well as the one where I took my grandson fishing, but in both of those occasions we fished from a dock.) I didn't have much luck with the fishing (only bad) but had a good afternoon with the kayak on what became still and scenic waters.
The plan for today had been to take care of the scheduled oil change for my Endeavor, renewing the tags for the same and seeing about getting an absentee ballot for the upcoming election. Alas, best laid plans of mice and men and all of that. What happened instead was that as I was trying to get my day started, I got a telephone call from my boss at about 9:10 asking if I could join in the upcoming project teleconference at 10:00 that he had forgotten to invite me to. Since I am the onboard processing team leader, obviously, it was a good idea for me to attend, though I am beginning to think that my $75.00 per month telephone allowance is going to be way too small yet again! So I got some coffee and then prepared for the teleconference. The pleasant surprise was that the guys in the office seemed to actually value my input for a change. Though it was an hour and a half I could have used with other plans. I did get the oil changed, but the remaining honey do type projects have been pushed back until tomorrow.
I suppose I should end this mega post now. Especially since the bit about getting my absentee ballot is irritating me to even think about. I probably will make a soapbox post about that later, even though I have tried to avoid politics in my posts in the past. When I do cut loose about the American bastardization of democracy, it may turn into quite a rant so I will save it (re swallow my bile) for another time.