MoveToMexico200x

I've lost track of the number of weeks that I have been coming to Los Angeles to work. No longer am I able to work at home on Mondays and thus I am typically out the door on Mondays at 4:50am and I get home again around 10:15pm on Friday evening. It has been something like 10 to 12 weeks straight now.

Over the Memorial Day weekend I got to sleep in my own bed for 4 nights straight which was a very nice treat.

On Tuesday's I go to meetings for half the day and get fed breakfast and sometimes lunch. Sometimes there is field work that needs to be done such as inspecting installation work and identifying major screwups in the project. The rest of the time I sit in the broken chair in the congested office and send emails in an effort to bully people into doing things that they would rather not do (and probably wouldn't unless someone were hassling them).

Every once in a while there is an interesting technical problem to address.

When I leave the office in the late afternoon or early evening, I usually drive the 2 miles to the hotel and park the car for the evening and then go walk around within a several block area of the Holiday Inn in San Pedro where I always stay.

I've not been willing to tackle the rush hour traffic in the LA area to go anywhere very interesting after work. After getting something to eat and walking around a bit, its back to the hotel to surf the net for awhile and maybe send a few annoying emails to my business associates and then its off to bed for the night.

I miss being able to see Stan, walk the Mdog (and give her biscuits) and being able to tinker with small projects like the touch screen interface audio/visual remote control software that I had been fooling around with before the constant travel began. Being able to mow the lawn or work on setting up an automated sprinkler/drip watering system would seem like good fun to me right now.

I received an email from one of my coworkers yesterday who advised that his position had been eliminated. Some guys have all the luck.

The photograph below is of the pedestrian bridge about a block from my hotel.



I will be heading for home tomorrow afternoon after going to the plan check meeting, writing the weekly status report and updating the neccessary spreadsheets. Over the weekend I will do my expense report and timecard, go to the gym, do the laundry, catch up on some sleep, take a spin on the motorbike and have a few much appreciated home cooked meals and maybe watch a movie on the big screen.

Come Monday morning I will be complying with the instructions on the pedestrian bridge. I'm not sure how much longer this will continue or how it will end.

Goodnight.

It's been a while since my last post. I live in LA now. Well, not really, but I spend more time in a hotel here than I do at home in Colorado. I typically get home late Friday night and since flights are frequently delayed, that often means 1:00am on Saturday morning. Typically, the following week I've been able to work at home on Monday and then set the alarm for 3:15am on Tuesday morning to be able to get the 7:00am Delta flight back to LAX. Sometimes I can get a later flight and this week I called in sick on Tuesday and pushed the travel to Wednesday morning.

The project that I am working on now involves installing security camera equipment on a bridge in the LA Harbor. My role now is more project management that actually doing installation work.



This morning I got up early and met the work crew at one end of the bridge where there is an elevator that goes up to a catwalk that goes underneath the bottom side of the bridge. A lengthy hike across the catwalk and a couple of ladder climbs gets you to the tower nearest the side you are approaching from.

I was advised not look down as you walk across the catwalks and stand on platforms since its a long way down and some of them are see though steel grating. A coworker told me that he has bad dreams about it. I made two trips up today. The second one was a lot easier (less scary) as I hauled tools and equipment across to the tower where we are working.

Fortunately I was wearing a hard hat when I whacked my head real good on one of the steel beams that you must duck to avoid. I didn't realize it until someone asked me later if I was OK that I was bleeding a little as result of having a small cut on the bridge of my nose.

The view is pretty spectacular but my photographs don't do justice to it.



The bridge creaks and moves and seems like a living organism when you're up there. One is also very aware of the traffic speeding by on the deck a few feet above your head.

One of the workers on the bridge had a close call today. He apparently wasn't looking down and a hatch to a descent ladder had been left open and not flagged. Without seeing it coming, he fell about 15 feet. Fortunately there was a platform on which he landed at the base of the ladder rather than going over the rail. After being down for several minutes he got up and made his way down on his own power. He looked pretty shook up but hopefully not seriously injured. I am guessing that he is pretty bruised up and sore tonight but it could easily had a lot worse outcome.

Lesson learned is that the don't look down advice must be reconsidered. For some reason I thought of my most favorite board game as a child:



My opportunities for work that I can do at home have dried up at least for the moment and so I guess I may need to be onsite here again on Monday morning this coming week.

Oh well. While this work is sometimes fun and interesting it can also be stressful and poses some risk for bodily injury. If I had a million dollars in the bank, I'm not sure I'd keep doing it.

Goodnight.

The Balmoral Castle

Ater a whole year in Fort Collins, a home purchase is finally now in the works.



The saying goes that "A man's home is his castle". Accoding to the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, this saying is as old as the basic concepts of English common law.

"You are the boss in your own house and nobody can tell you what to do there. No one can enter your home without your permission. The proverb has been traced back 'Stage of Popish Toys' (1581).

In 1644, English jurist Sir Edward Coke (1552-1634) was quoted as saying: 'For a man's house is his castle, et domus sua cuique tutissimum refugium' ('One's home is the safest refuge for all').

While a bit more modest than the Balmoral home shown above, the house that we are buying at 2830 Balmoral Drive in Fort Collins will nevertheless provide a refuge free of a landlord where we can once again settle in, make some improvements and call home.



If all goes well, the transaction will close and we will take posession on May 9th.

Additional details and photographs can be found on Stan's blog.

I am quite ready for this.

Wheatland Wyoming

Tomorrow morning we plan to submit an offer on 80 acres off of Sybille Creek Road in Wheatland Wyoming.



The property has views of the Laramie mountain range and lots of wildlife.



Towards the back of the property there is a hill to be climbed which provides a great view. Behind that is the water district irrigation ditch which provides agricultural use water for the property.

Shy Creek runs through the property. There is a good home build site above the creek.

Alice Hilda Hart, "Auntee Alice", 1908-2005

We lost Alice in this world at the age of 97 on Friday December 23rd, 2005. She was born in Ireland in 1908. Her mother was a school teacher and her father a mechanic. They imigrated to the United States when she was very young. After initially settling in Aurora Illinois where my father was born, the family moved to Detroit Michigan.

Alice married and with her husband had a house built in Detroit for about $5000 in the 1940's. I never met Alice's husband Harry who died young of a heart ailment. Alice took a job at General Motors where she worked for many years as a secretary with a design group at the GM Tech Center. She often recalled the special going away party that was thrown for her when she retired in the mid 1970's.

As a young child I remember the excitement of getting to stay at her house overnight, and the treats that she would frequently bring over. As a GM employee, she got a good discount on cars and every few years there was excitement when she arrived in the brand new Chevrolet Impala.

Alice played an especially important role in our family since my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer when I was 7 years old and after an extended hospital stay died in November of 1963, a few weeks ahead of the JFK assasination. She was kind of the combination of the cool aunt and substitute mom.

I was the middle of 3 boys. Each of us in seniority ranking got to go on a vacation with Alice to Florida. My turn was when I was 11 years old. I got to skip a week of Catholic school during the winter of 1966 and experience my first trip on a jet.

I remember getting paid good money to paint Alice's garage. When I was 18 and a bit troubled she gave me several hundred dollars to buy a car when I needed one with the condition that my father (her brother) not be told.

In the mid 1970's I moved to California and Alice to Florida. Alice travelled extensively in Asia in the late 1970's until about 1990 with my brother Bob as well as visting him in Australia. She often visited California for extended stays.

Around 1992 or 1993 Alice gave me a stack of savings bonds with my name on them that she had been buying via payroll deductions during her employment at GM from the early 1960's through 1973. These made buying the house in Hayward in 1994 possible.

Alice was almost always part of the Christmas experience both back in Detroit and during visits to Califonia each year that usually started before Thanksgiving and continued through to January. Part of the California holiday ritual was that Alice always went along to make the final decision on which Christmas tree we took home and then she managed the decoration process. The summer visit usually included baking my birthday cake.

Alice especially enjoyed time spent with LuckyDog and Mummadog during her California visits which continued until she was about 92 years old. It was about that time that her serious health problems began. I helped move her into the Merrill Gardens assisted living center about 3 years ago and visited there several times during the last few years. She was able to keep her own apartment right up to the end but often lamented about not being able to visit California or drive her car to the beach or the mall.

Alice was a special person in my life. Goodbye Alice.

Another day, another Waffle House.

It seems that at each hotel I stay at during my business travel, there is a Waffle House within very short proximity. At the La Quinta last night in Nashville, it was about 50 yards away from the door of my room. At the Comfort Inn tonight, I would need to walk a half a block to get there. The same was true a few weeks ago while I was in Florida. I've not much interest in eating at the WH, as the food there is terrible in my opinion based upon my one or two desperate quests to satisfy hunger without needing to face the traffic in a city far away from home. To be fair, I have heard that the Pecan Waffles are delicious but it hasn't been something that I've been craving.


Perhaps I could photograph and author a book, "Waffle Houses of America" as a side line to my business travel.

On Sunday 11/26 I flew into Nashville to get involved in my next job related project. Once again I found that the PowerPoint survey of the site that someone had done several weeks earlier did not provide the needed detail to plan the project. I will spend tonight in my hotel room in Birmingham Alabama trying to modify the implementation plans accordingly and to see if I can solve the puzzle of using as much of the equipment as possible that has already been purchased.

The drive from Nashville to Birmingham was pleasant, much nicer than the drive I had done a few weeks earlier as I drove about 500 miles between 3 different cities in Florida. The rolling hills of Tennessee and fall colors were nice. People in Tennessee seem more friendly than on the West coast.

Tommorrow I will go to the job site in Birmingham to begin an installation there even though I have not yet seen the facility. I can only hope that the needed parts have arrived and can be made to fit.

After two days in Birmingham, I continue South in my little Pontiac rental car to New Orleans where I will try to capture information that will be used to deliver a proposal on rebuilding some of the infrastructure at a railyard facility that was wrecked by the hurricane.

And then I get to go home late Thursday afternoon. But not for long. On Sunday I fly to Tampa to complete a project at that location now that some of the missing pieces of that puzzle have been located after a visit there a few weeks ago. From Tampa, I think its back to Birmingham Alabama depending on how things go during my next two days here. Or maybe Nashville or today someone said I should think about being in Maryland next week.

If you are ever driving North on Highway 65 from Tennessee, be sure to stop at the first rest stop after you cross into Alamaba and see the big rocket.



Gooodnight.

And then there was Fort Collins...



About the middle of last week, I found out that I was going to New York on a work related trip. So why not see if I can find a good flight deal that will allow me to check out Fort Collins enroute? It had come up in the last week as a candidate location for whatever lies ahead for Stan, MDog and self.

A late winter storm passing through the Denver area might have been one good reason. When I checked weather earlier in the week it had not been in the forecast.

Fort Collins made a very good impression on me. It is a big small town (or vice versa) and the home of University of Colorado. Houses in the historic district are very appealing.



The city streets have many large trees. I did notice lots of evidence of lighting strikes.



While there are brick houses here, they are less common than in Denver.



While I was somewhat concerned proceeding with the trip despite the snow, I am glad that I did. The city is quite pretty with a coating of the white.



And then it was time for the quick hop up to Wheatland.



I am now warm and cozy up at the ranch for an all too short visit with Mona and Clark. Dinner is in the works. It doesn't get much better than this.

Tommorrow I have to get up quite early and drive back to Denver in hopes that roads and flights are back in operation. On to New York. Of course if I find out that flights are still postponed that wouldn't be too bad either - sometimes you just have to let whatever happens happen.

More later...