Construction Update

Our Missing Road - In Front of House

A few months ago I posted a piece on the groundbreaking ceremony for the new transportation Hub in Worcester.  My boss and I took a trip down there yesterday and the progress is amazing.  They used a process where the concrete for the two towers of the building was formed off site and then trucked in and reassembled on site.  It was strange to see nothing there and then the next week these two large structures appeared.  I remember going to construction sites with my grandfather when I was five years old and being amazed.  There was just a twinge of that yesterday but it brought back some good memories.  My son works as a construction engineer and I also thought of him and wished he was there so he could explain some of the frenetic action going on.  He is in a much better place though as he reported that he and the Most Excellent Girlfriend had safely arrived in Barcelona and were boarding their cruise ship for their Mediterranean adventure.  He’s certainly earned the break.  My daughter reported in from Florida where she and her husband are frolicking on Caribbean beaches.  Wait a minute, Mediterranean and Caribbean, while I watching construction sites in Worcester, MA!  What’s wrong with this picture!  Absolutely nothing, I couldn’t be happier for both of them and their significant others.  I also received a frantic call at work from my wife who reported the street in front of our house was gone.  I asked for some additional clarification and she said a huge machine was eating the street and it was gone.  Buddy was protesting the excavation to no avail.  We’d heard rumors that the town was going to repair our street which closely resembled some of the worst 3^rd World streets I experienced in my military travels.  Apparently it was beyond repair so they are going to completely replace it – at least that’s the hope because when I got home I confirmed my wife’s report – the street was in fact – gone.  I don’t think I want to live on a dirt road but for today at least, I am.


The Construction Site Back in April

Same Place a Month Ago

Pre-Fabbed Towers Going Up Right Where Shovels Were

Putting Together the Pieces

Rest of the Site

Other Tower Up - As Seen Yesterday

Olympic Descent

Best Part of the Night - Monty Rules!

Well at least I’ll get some of my evenings back now that the Olympics have ended.  Kudos to the British for putting on a truly spectacular and for the most part completely incident free games.  It’s kind of sad that in today’s world we consider an event without some sort of incident or attack a success based simply on that criteria.  I’ve always liked watching the closing ceremony, at least until last night.  The ceremony, as shown by NBC, was like the worst part of some really bad acid trip and seemed to have very little to do with the games themselves.  One of the parts I’ve always liked about the closing ceremonies was seeing the athletes celebrating together but there was precious little of that.  Whoever thought up this thing should be drug tested immediately.  They started out with a bunch of cars coated in newspaper simulating a traffic jam, I think, with Winston Churchill spouting something out of the top of Big Ben.  This was followed by some really weird bicycle riders wearing some sort of orange insect like headgear.  Anne Lennox came in as some sort of zombie queen on a ship of the dead and there was a fat Batman and Robin.  Why?  There were a couple of nice moments like the tribute to John Lennon and Eric Idle stole the show with his rendition of Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.  These were however the only bright moments in a four hour torture session.  I don’t count the Spice Girls because, well, why should I.  I blame NBC for their coverage and their abysmal sound system.  Most of the singers were almost undecipherable due to background noise and the NBC announcers provided almost no commentary.  When they choose to show so many tight, close up shots the announcers need to provide some sort of setting and background – total fail.  As I was cruising the net this morning to find some photos there was a lot of the ceremony that NBC edited out, almost all of the parts with the athletes, apparently.   I wrote earlier in the Olympics how I thought NBC had progressed and gotten away from too many human interest stories at the expense of the athletic coverage.  The second week brought back all of their worst tendencies as we had a lot of the great track and field events distilled down to 3 minute highlight segments while we were bombarded with nonsensical commentary and endless interviews by the every smarmy Costas.  I’m something of an Anglophile (could be the really hot English girls I dated in Germany in the late 1970s but I digress) so I kept hoping the closing ceremonies would capture some of the British majesty but the combination of the dreadful NBC coverage and a truly daft ceremony plan doomed that hope.  Well I can now get back to The Wire and watching the Red Sox continue to implode.

Still Don't Get It

What the Hell Were They Thinking?

Huh?

Canine Granite State Meltdown

It rained yesterday almost the entire day and my wife and I were on the road for a lot of it.  We decided to head up to New Hampshire to visit our friend and take him out to dinner. Since we were spending the night we were also taking Buddy the Wonder Pooch, AKA Pendejo.  Even though it rained, sometimes heavily, throughout the day, my wife and I truly enjoyed the drive.  We first returned to my cousin’s house to retrieve the umbrellas we left there.  My cousin did look a little worse for the wear of the night before.  We wandered up to New Hampshire following some back roads, which even with the rain was enjoyable, great company made all the difference.  We drove by the facility I’m thinking about applying to but the weather was so bad we didn’t get out of the car.  Once we reached my friend’s house my wife snuck out to do some shopping while my friend and I watched the great, “bad cinema” movie Machete.  The rain was almost constant and I was concerned about leaving Buddy in his cage while we went out to dinner.  I thought I had come up with a great way of securing the cage so we headed out for Margarita’s thinking all was secure.  While we sat in the restaurant the weather changed every ten minutes ranging from sunshine to biblical level downpours accompanied by thunder and lightning.  This was not Buddy-friendly weather.  We headed back to my friend’s house and as we walked towards his door I said to him, “If Buddy escaped from that I will be really impressed”.  As we opened the door I was truly impressed as Buddy greeted us completely free of the cage.  Remembering how bad the weather had been and Buddy’s normal reactions my wife charged upstairs to the two bedrooms where she discovered Buddy had not only messed up both the guest room bed and our host’s bed but he had drooled all over both.  I could not have been more embarrassed but Buddy was not through.  He also managed to charge through the screen door of my friend’s front door.  The rest of the night he was almost manic as another friend joined us to watch a movie.  Buddy was a distracting pain in the ass all night.  When I tried putting him back in the cage he wouldn’t even wait until I was out of the room before he started gnawing on the door to escape again.  I was concerned he would injure himself trying to bend the steel bars so I let him out – extremely upset (me not him).  We were trying to have a phone conversation with our son as he was at the airport heading out a romantic Mediterranean getaway with the M.E.G. and Buddy interrupted by knocking over my beer.  As everyone went to bed I stayed up hoping the weather would change and I could convince Buddy to get back into his cage.  No such luck.  I ended up giving up and just blocking everything he shouldn’t sleep on that I could and he slept on the floor at the bottom of the stairs.  I couldn’t fall asleep because I was so upset with Buddy and worried too that he was loose to unleash more carnage if another thunder storm blew through.  I spent the sleepless hours trying to figure out how to lobotomize my psychotic canine partner.  My friend came up with a great line this morning when I said my normal “Buddy the Wonder Pooch!”.  He said, Buddy the pooch that makes you wonder.”    

Recruiting Trip

My Wife and I with the New Recruit

Yesterday was a quiet day at work but that changed immediately when I got home.  We were heading over to my cousin’s house for a going away party for his daughter who is entering the Army (Hoo Ahh!) in a couple of weeks.  There was a very large thunderstorm passing over so Buddy the Pendejo was in high alert mode.  My wife had heard there was a tornado warning somewhere in Massachusetts so she was concerned about driving.  Anytime she hears this type thing she starts to panic.  She claims it comes from our time living in Kansas where tornadoes were a very real problem.  Before we left Buddy had to be secured and he was dumb enough to demonstrate his escape technique before we left.  I found him half in and half out of the door.  We activated an old cage from the reserve.  It was last used a couple years ago when Buddy’s predecessor passed on.  It’s a lot more secure and Buddy was not pleased with his new home.  My wife continued to fret as we made our way through the deluge to the party.  She even called our son to get a weather report enroute.  The party was a lot of fun and I was even recruited to carve a turkey – one of my hidden talents.  We spent most of the evening out in the garage sitting around a table with my cousin and his collection of great friends.  My wife and I really enjoy these times because of these friends.  My cousin has lived all his life in the same town and this group of really nice people has coalesced around him and his wife and they make us feel welcome every time we join them.  I also spent a little time with the new recruit where I tried to give her an idea of what she would be facing but it’s a little tough since it’s been more than thirty years since I went through basic training and the Army is blessedly more professional now than it was in 1978.  Recruiters now apparently do a much better job than they did in my day because she was doing PT three times a week with other recruits in her home town.  She seemed ready to go and was actually impatient to get going – a good sign.  My wife drove home, of course, while I made several phone calls to a friend to leave messages, at least I think I did.  It was a very good time.

Buddy Unhappily Secured!

My Cousin and I

Gag Gift - Army Panties

My Wife at the Party Table

Hopeful Thursday

My Future Office?
Where I was Yesterday Afternoon

Yesterday I snuck out of work for a couple hours and traveled up to New Hampshire to check out the job opportunity I wrote about a couple days ago.  I met up with my cousin who runs the facility and she took me on a fascinating tour of the place.  I was incredibly drawn to the location and the prospect of working there.  There is a big family connection through the family of my father’s oldest sister but more so would be the chance to finally get back to New Hampshire.  I grew up in the shadow of Mount Monadnock which is in full glorious view from this place.  On a very clear day I can see the tip of Monadnock from my house seventy miles to the south and its almost mockingly calling me home.  I still haven’t decided whether to apply, I’m going to let it stew for a couple of days.  If it was just me I’d already be sleeping on their doorstep pleading for the job but it’s not only me.  I talked it over with my wife who had some serious reservations and not just because of the 33% pay cut I would have to take.  I’ve never worked for a non-profit organization (the Army doesn’t count) and there would be a lot of fund raising required which can get decidedly political.  My wife pointed out that I’ve never been good at politics.  In the Army I refused to play politics as I got higher in rank and this probably cost me professionally.  I refused to curry favor at social gatherings from higher ranking officers such as many of my contemporaries did.  My wife witnessed this so she has reservations about me taking a job where politics might play a big part.  I look at it differently, just because I didn’t choose to play politics doesn’t mean I can’t.  There’s a part of me that wants to take the job just to prove I could be successful at schmoozing (and of course proving my wife wrong).  The biggest draw of the job though is the location and the mission of the organization which I find compelling – something that’s hard to explain to my wife, but I am very drawn to this.  I'm getting way ahead of myself of course because I haven't even applied much less been selected for this position.  I’m sure the firmament of heaven is quaking just a little bit at the thought of me in charge of a location with a chapel though.  When I got home after work I finished watching the last episode of Season 4 of The Wire.  I’m watching this at the suggestion of my son as I’ve said before.  There is incredible acting but the message is so bleak and uncompromising that it really hasn’t connected with me yet, one season to go.  Last night I repaid my wife for seeing Total Recall the night before by seeing Hope Springs with her.  This was a chick flick to its very core – you could have cut middle age estrogen with a knife.  There were two other males in the audience of fifty and I sat down expecting to see the evil male pummeled on screen for two hours.  The funny thing was that I kind of sneaky liked the movie because of the absolutely incredible actors involved.  Most of the screen time was held by Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones and they were electric in a very understated way (is that even possible).  They play a middle aged couple trying to re-energize their marriage through intensive counseling with Carrell (who holds his own in this august company).  Both actors can display complex messages and feelings with a mere gesture and they were both fantastic in this movie.  The first three quarters of the movie were so funny, my wife was laughing out loud to an almost uncomfortable level.  Sadly the movie fails to bring it home in the last quarter and this rests squarely with the writers.  The characters reach a culminating scene with heartrending consequences that is never resolved or explained since the movie ends in a completely different direction.  This could have been something very special but this script failure really tarnishes the effort.  Despite this go see Hope Springs to witness two of our greatest actors at the top of their game.  I had a very funny moment this morning (not fully appreciated by my wife).  When I got up and walked out of the bedroom, Buddy AKA “Pendejo the Escape Artist” walked out of the guest room where he apparently had been snoozing after once again escaping over night from his cage.  He greeted me like, “Hey Dad, ready to start the day?” as if this was a normal thing.  I couldn’t stop laughing while my wife thought this was decidedly less hilarious.  There were no thunderstorms or fireworks last night so I think he’s just decided he likes sleeping in the guest room bed more than his cage.  If he does this again I think my wife will provide him with all the fireworks he could possibly imagine.

Go See It

You Haven't Built the Cage that Can Hold Me!

Wednesday Recalled

Go See this!

Yesterday I spent part of the morning refereeing the interchange between my wife and the plumber who was replacing our kitchen faucet.  My wife has a tendency to be extremely tough on service people and a small town plumber was not the type to back down, so that was fun.  Our kitchen faucet had been leaking for a least a couple of years and a few months ago we discovered that it had virtually ruined the floor of the cabinet underneath the sink.  The plumber came in and tried to fix the faucet but recommended we replace it because it was not one he recommended.  Since my wife had specifically chosen this faucet she felt disrespected and asked him to repair it.  Two hours after he left it started leaking again and my wife demanded that I call him.  I did and he explained the issues and recommended we replace the faucet and also offered to repair the cabinet floor for a reasonable price – again a small town plumber – not one of the franchise types.  Yesterday he showed up right on time and quickly accomplished the work and my wife was a little miffed because, well I don’t know why.  We have a new faucet that doesn’t leak and the floor was repaired.  My quest to understand the woman I am married to continues.  I finished the big project my boss gave me last week.  He was surprised (he had given me a couple weeks to get it done) when I showed him a draft asking for his comments and said this is ready to show to the board at Thursday’s meeting.  Not what I was hoping for in the way of comments because it doesn’t allow me to fine tune it but he’s the boss.  Victimized by my own success I guess.  Last night for date night and we went to see the remake of Total Recall.  I did not have high expectations for this because I loved the original Verhoeven version, even though it included the acting chops of the Governator.  I’m also not a huge fan of Colin Farrell (I mean have you seen Alexander) but it did include Jessica Biel and Kate Beckinsale so there was no way I was missing this movie.  I was totally blown away by the film.  Instead of rehashing the same story of the earlier film they went in a new direction with incredibly realistic special effects that were over the top.  The story was completely new with the same character names and there were several odes to the old movie, some more obvious than others, which I always like.  I can’t wait for the blu ray to come out and then watch both films to catch even more.  I love it when a movie surprises me and Total Recall did.  All three leads were at the top of their game, especially Beckinsale who proves she doesn’t need to wear spandex to be dangerous.  I even liked Farrell who took his character in a completely new direction from Arnold which I liked.  This was a good flick which I wholeheartedly recommend.  I also finished my latest Raymond Feist book, At the Gates of Darkness, which is setting the stage to end the Midkemia phase of Feist’s literary efforts.  Feist is a very good writer who’s efforts I have truly enjoyed but it’s obvious this set of characters are winding down.  I give him credit for setting a stage for loyal readers to say goodbye to this milieu but you can see that it’s time.  His problem is finding a situation desperate enough for the hero to go out on.  In the series before this one the hero literally pulled the moon out of the sky to destroy a world lost to evil.  A hard act to follow, should be fun. 

The New and Apparently Controversial Faucet

Self-Disappointment and Remembering the Best Weekend Ever

Three Years Ago Today - Toughest Walk Ever
Best Weekend Ever

Yesterday I was contacted out of the blue by an old Army buddy who was visiting New England for a conference.  He was my executive officer when I was a company commander back in the early 1980’s and we were always close friends even though we have seen each other only twice since then (its an Army thing).  He is now a Colonel and recently submitted his retirement papers so we’ve had a couple of telephone conversations where I’ve offered some counsel on his impending departure from the military.  We always have a great time whenever we’re together, usually involving serious consumption of beer.  He asked if I could make it up to his location last night after work since he was only going to be in the area one night.  I eventually talked myself into it on the way home.  He was up in New Hampshire and about a two hour drive away so it was going to be a long pull for a school night.  My wife was willing to make the drive home after the trip but she asked me if I was really serious about driving four hours total for about an hour with my friend and then getting up early today.  I hold my weekly staff meeting first thing on Wednesday morning so a morning fog in the cerebellum was not an option.  I eventually agreed with her reasoning but I felt disappointed in myself that I didn’t make the trip.  I know I would have without even thinking about it a couple of decades ago.  Maybe that’s one of the penalties of maturing – you start thinking about consequences and responsibilities (the old mantra – getting old sucks).  While I’m alert this morning I’m still disappointed in myself. Luckily there’s something to cheer me up.  Today is my daughter’s 3^rd wedding anniversary or as that event is remembered around the house – the best weekend ever.  My daughter was the most beautiful bride ever and walking her down the aisle was one of those seminal moments in my life that I will always treasure.  I had such a good time that weekend surrounded by family and friends.  Everybody just enjoyed basking in the glow that emanated from two very special people – my daughter and son in law.  Every time I think back to that weekend I smile, so thanks guys for lifting my spirits on a day I really needed it.

My Friend (L) and I Back in Our Younger, More Mobile Days

Two Very Special People Starting Out on the
Greatest Adventure - 3 Years Ago Today

A Truly Fun Bunch

Only Quiet Moment of the Best Weekend