Smelling onions and bacon

The mood at the exit conference was tense. For two days we had three state inspectors going through the upper levels of the building testing the fire alarm, nurse call, and medical gas alarm systems, checking ADA issues, inspecting wall penetrations above ceiling, spot checking the test and balance reports, etc. The full blown fine toothed comb approach to checking out a building for occupancy that only a group of state employees could provide. At the end of the second day we gathered up in our conference room with the architect and engineers and the Owner to hear the inspectors read through their comments from the inspection and deliver the verdict on whether or not the 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th floors of the building were approved for occupancy. It was clear during the inspections that the systems were working almost flawlessly, and at different times each of the inspectors commented on the fact that the quality of the work was so good that they weren't finding very much to complain about. I could tell from the looks on our superintendent's faces, however, that they knew from past experience that "almost flawlessly" could be grounds to deny occupancy, and we were all holding our breath as the mechanical / plumbing inspector started off reading his notes and comments.

The way the state hospital inspection system works here, by the way, is that one inspector is responsible for the HVAC, plumbing, and medical gas systems, one inspector handles the electrical and nurse call systems, and one inspector reviews the architectural components. Each inspector is a registered professional engineer or architect, and although they're all very professional each has their own unpredicatable little quirks. Our team and our subs had all worked night and day, seven days a week for the last several several weeks to get the systems completed and tested and the building itself spit-shined and polished for this inspection, so we were all a little on edge waiting for their decisions.

And...they signed off the 4th 5th, and 6th floors completely, and we got the mechanical / plumbing sign-off for the 3rd floor. The old almost flawlessly thing kind of hung us up on 3, but, you know, we'll celebrate the successes we did achieve and make belt and suspenders sure that the things that weren't just so on 3 are tightened up all the way before the team comes back.

Friday night after the inspection I took our folks out for a happy hour at the local watering hole to unwind, and it was really great seeing everyone let loose a little bit after busting their asses so hard to get things finished. We've still got a long way to go to get the rest of the building done, of course, but I can tell that now that everyone has gotten a glimpse of what the complete finished product will look like it will be easier for them to bear down and push through to the end.

I was absolutely exhausted when I got home, and collapsed into a deep sleep as soon as my head hit the bed. In the night I had a dream that I was a dolphin swimming effortlessly through crystal clear water, chasing little fish in and out of coral canyons and across sandy flats, and I remember thinking that although the fish were tasty and the swimming and chasing was being done in gorgeous surroundings it wasn't all that exciting. Breaking the surface of the water, though, and taking in the salty air and peeking at the clouds and the sky, now that....that was a thrill. Just a dream of course, but.....gotta wonder about the symbolism of being engaged in something that comes very natural but being so intently drawn to something so completely out of my element.

Meanwhile, back on earth.....got up Saturday morning to go to work and the car wouldn't start. Got the battery jumped and headed out but the brakes started squealing like a junior high school band at the first halftime of the season. Pulled over at a Napa store and sprayed some fix it all stuff on the pads which quieted the squealing. Stopped and got gas on the way to work, and when I checked the oil the dadgum dipstick tube came apart and I ended up pushing the dipstick, and my knuckles, halfway through the plastic shroud over the engine. I really love my Jetta, but it was clearly time to do something about it. I bailed out on work and poked around on the net for a while researching cars, and decided to bust a move on a new Jetta. Check it out:



It's got the TDI diesel engine, which allegedly gets more than 40 mpg on the highway (my small contribution to reducing our country's dependance on foreign oil, so you'll know), and VW's done some good stuff lately to reduce diesel emissions. Along with the new low-sulfur diesel fuel the overall emissions from this engine aren't much more than a regular gas engine, and it will put about 25% less greenhouse gas in the air than a comparable Jetta with a gas engine. Cool stuff. And it's got rich Corinthinian vinyl leather interior and a jammin' stereo with satellite radio, so, I mean, I just couldn't not make the deal, although it feels a little out of my element to be driving such a shiny clean new car. Hmmmmm......

So, I did get some work done Saturday, and got some good sleep that night. Early Sunday morning, around 4:00 a.m., the aroma of fresh brewed coffee and bacon and onions frying in a skillet wafting in through the open window in my bedroom woke me from an awesome dream where Halle Berry and I were playing backgammon in the rain on a trampoline on a soggy but freshly disked orange grove.....ahhhh, paradise! I guess one of my neighbors was having a stick to your ribs breakfast before heading out to go fishing, and a lucky coincidence of breeze and open windows brought the sumptuous bouquet of fried bean water and sizzling pig across my nose. There was no way I was gonna be able to get back to sleep and onto that trampoline at that point, so I got up and shuffled around the house for a while trying to get the old flywheel turning. I poked around on the computer for a few minutes, half-heartedly flipped through the new issue of the Sun for a little while, and stared at the laundry that I had pulled out of the dryer and piled up on my bed. After making my coffee I could still smell scent of someone's bacon and onions, and as I stood there in the kitchen gazing out the window at the dawn starting to break over the mangroves I thought "you know what, you ignorant shitforbrains, here you've been awakened from slumber by a signal from outside your comfortable little domain, and if you don't do something to act on the inspiration that's been provided to you you're gonna rot in your same old sorry assed rut forever."

So, I snapped out of that little stupor and, grabbing my destiny by it's neck, slapped a half pound of bacon into my old cast iron skillet with a cut up red onion and some garlic and proceeded to have myself a religious breakfasting experience on a folding chair out in the back yard with the birds and lizards. Halelujah, Amen.

Inspiration is out there, brothers and sisters, and even if your response to it isn't epic and life changing, let me tell you it's good for the soul to do something every day to get yourself out of yourself, if you know what I mean.

Take care of yourself so you can take care of others, OK? Till next time, know that I love you and think about each of you more fondly than you'll ever understand.

Follow your own path....

It was one of those days when traffic on the Turnpike was moving really well, which was good because I had less than two hours to cover the 180 miles left between me and my meeting in Clermont. I had left the house a little later than I had planned, so I was really hustling to avoid being late, especially since I had forgotten to get gas last night and had to swoop into the Circle K and fill up. When I went in to pay - the dadgum pay at the pump thing wasn't working, again - I let myself get drawn into a conversation between the cashier and a state trooper about whether or not widening the Stretch and replacing the drawbridge at Jewfish Creek with a fixed span was going to make a difference in the number of wrecks there - the trooper, who's worked this area for a long time, said she didn't think there was anything that would stop the speed freaks and shitheads that blaze down from Miami from finding ways of ending up upside-down in the mangroves or running head-on into Winnebagos full of innocent tourists from Ohio.

So, I was running late, and happy that traffic was light and what cars were on the road were really moving out. I had just topped an overpass when the left rear tire blew out, and that comment by the trooper about knucklheads and upside down vehicles replayed itself vividly in my head as the Jetta did the 90 mile an hour drift towards the median. Luckily I was going fast enough that my forward momentum carried me past the concrete barrier on the overpass, and the grass in the median was wet and fairly smooth. It's amazing just how big a difference anti-lock brakes make for stopping a sliding car on wet sand, you know?

Anyway, I didn't hit anything, and I was able to get the car out of the median and stopped on the left hand break-down lane with a minimum of excitement. Of course, the spare was flat so I had to call AAA to come out with an air tank and fill it up. As I was waiting, a trooper pulled up to check and see if everything was OK, and he, of course, made a comment about how lucky I was, judging from the skid marks in the grass, to not have ended up upside down in the mangroves or head-on with a Winnebago. I thanked him for his endorsement of my exceptional driving ability.

I got to Clermont eventually, and did the walk-through of the site. The hospital there is wanting to add a new bed tower and outpatient imaging center, and our company is one of the construction firms that's been invited to present a vision of how the proejct could be done and how much it might cost. My task was to survey the site with one of our superintendents and put together a logistics plan and schedule based on the hospital's "program", a one-paragraph narrative we've gotten from the hospital describing what services they wanted included in the new addition. We spent an hour or so walking the building, and developed a fairly detailed schedule and logistics and phasing plan based on nothing more than some notes indicating the number of patient rooms to be included and the different flavors of radiology equipemnt to be included. We made our best guess about where the tower should go based on the locations of the various departments in the existing hospital, and came up with a plan for routing the power, chilled water, etc. from the existing CEP into the addition without disrupting occupied spaces too much. Cool stuff, but I wish there was more time to do a really thoughtful evaluation before having to finalize our view of how this project needs to get put together.

And that's how it goes, I guess, making decisions on the fly without knowing all the facts or having enough time to really consider all of the options or be able to contemplate the impacts of the occasional unexpected blowout. What really puzzles me is how or why sometimes things turn out really well and sometimes things turn out really whacked. A wise man I know pretty well once said that everything is highly unlikely, but is it really just an endless chain of random chance events that has gotten the world to be exactly the way that it is today? That's a question that's occupied far greater minds than mine, of course, and I would guess that there are as many opinions on it as there are people on the planet today.

Regardless of how and why things happen, whether guided by destiny, god, physics, chance, or some combination of those, we all end up following a unique path, don't we? Right now I can't honestly say whether or not I really like, or understand, where my path has taken me. And don't get me wrong - there's a lot of good stuff in my life right now. Having been handed $85 million bucks with instructions to go live on an island and build something really cool has been OK. I've got an amazing family, with nieces and nephews that I adore. Y habia esta chica hermosa! So it's not like it's been all gloom and doom, you know, but more and more lately I've been contemplating how or why I've ended up here and where I'm headed next. If it's all up to random chance I guess there's no sense sweating it too much, but if personal choice and preference can at least in some small way affect where we end up, I better get my shit together and figure out where I want to be next. I should probably figure out what's in my "program" first, and then put together a schedule and logistics plan....

I stumbled across this little clip a few minutes ago, and it occurred to me that it illustrates the idea that there are many ways to get something done, and that we're all going to find our own way and our own style to to do what we do. This is a reminder to take some joy in the getting it done, too.


Amazing - video powered by Metacafe

Good morning

There's a hole in my head that the coffee goes into, but I'm not sure it's draining to the right spot because there just ain't no waking up this morning. Maybe a colada from the cuban cafe will do the trick.......I'll go check that out in a minute, but first I want to share this:



Oh yeah, I added a few new links over there in my favorites list.....

Peace out till later on, friends.

Up for air...

Dadgum, has it really been almost two months since I posted last? What a freakin' slacker.....

I have been busy, though. Thanksgiving with the clan in Elkin was a lot of fun. Here's a link to some photos from the gathering (plus two bonus shots!).

I've been spending lots of time at the jobsite, too, of course. Things are coming along pretty well there, but there's still a lot of work to do before we'll have the entire building ready to turn over to the hospital folks. Here's a link to some recent shots from the building.

Oh yeah, and it looks like the thing with Susie isn't really working out the way I hoped it would. Guess that's the way it goes, huh?

Well, at least I've broken the ice here by getting something posted, and now I've gotta scoot.

Eat a peach for peace.....

Sunshine, flowers, & smiles.....

I wandered the neighborhood this morning with my camera and a cup of coffee, nursing a bit of a headache from yesterday's Iron Bowl celebration and looking for something to catch my eye so that I'd have a good excuse for not heading to work first thing. I felt obligated to take pictures of something, and after taking a couple of dozen half-assed shots I decided to call it quits.

Of course as soon as I did I came across this....

There's a morning glory vine that wraps itself around the fence at the front of the house, competing with a purple bougainvillea to overtake the fence and phone pole. There aren't many blooms now, and this one was hiding under a canopy of foliage and just catching the faintest glow from the sun. The framing's off a bit, of course, and the focus isn't quite right, but overall it's not too bad.

Not perfect, but pretty good. Lots of good and important things in life turn out like that, don't they?

The sun hid behind a blanket of clouds today until around noon, a chilly north wind pushing whitecaps across the sound. When the sun came out it was like god had turned on a switch, and the sky turned that south Florida gas-flame blue. Someone must have given him flowers, and he was suddenly happy and smiling.

I had forgotten what an effect the arrival of unexpected flowers could have on someone, and how the return of a beautiful woman's smile could shift my world on it's axis.

Look closely, and you'll see everything.

Trust

Hello? Yeah, it's me, Shitforbrains. What's up? Not much, just hanging. Missed you yesterday. Yeah, I got tied up in a meeting. Oh. Sorry I didn't get to see you. I thought you were avoiding me. What? Yeah.....look, I gotta go....I'll call you later.


Dammit.


Why is this all so hard?

Library porn

Honest, it's not what you think! Check it out.

Weather report

It's raining idiots.

And in other news....

Hey friends. Tomorrow begins another week of fun and excitement at work. Another peer review - three days of intense scrutiny of everything we're doing and how we're doing it - starting Monday afternoon. A state inspection Monday. A come to Jesus Monday with one of the major subs that's being a major dumbass. And the bosses are all here Tuesday for an executive summit to go over ISSUES. At least what issues there are perceived to be at the executive level. Owner, Architect, Contractor meeting Wednesday. PM, sub, and staff meetings Thursday, and the bi-weekly schedule update and review meeting is Friday. Oh, and we've got a job to run. Nice!

I spent a lot of my weekend at the jobsite doing paperwork and missed getting to Selma for Zeke's birthday and the "Living the Dream 2006" nonviolence orientation and march across the Edmund Pettus bridge. I have got to work on rearranging my priorities.

I went out with Susie Friday night, which was really cool.

I spent Saturday night on the boat, and dreamed about bigdogs, blue skies, and brown eyes.

Looking up at the stars through the companionway hatch Saturday night I wondered when I forgot the sweet pain of waiting for a phone call.

I made cuban coffee, cafecito, Sunday morning, and for the first time in my kitchen it came out really close to the real thing. I sipped it in the backyard in the company of a family of what I think were indigo buntings.

A few minutes after midnight on Friday I sat on the front steps, picking out a tune on the guitar and thinking about how lucky I am to be here.

Ella es tan hermosa

Ella quita la respiración cada vez yo la veo. Su risa vuelve mi alma a mi cuerpo, y su toque manda el corazón a las estrellas.