I can’t believe it’s 2012 already. I was going to try to quit smoking this year, but I just bought 3 cartons while I was in Missouri. So maybe instead of quitting smoking, I’ll just try to eat at home more often.
And of course, I’ll vow to post more often too.
I feel lost. I have no clue what I want to do with my life, let alone with what I want to do tomorrow. Every night I come home, play some stupid game for hours, or watch a movie, and go to bed. Sometimes I don’t even want to get out of bed.
This morning I snoozed from 5am to 630 am, waking up every 6 minutes to reset my alarm. I worked in Osage County today, finishing up most of the mudjacking I’m doing out there for work. I got home about 6pm, and have resisted the urge to sleep until now.
Sometimes I wish I could have a set schedule, where I wake up and sleep at the same times each day. For my entire life, my sleep cycle has always been in limbo. I can remember staying up to midnight at 10 years old to watch Star Trek or the news or whatever, and waking up at 6am to go to school. Even from a young age, on weekends, I basically stay up until I’m totally exhausted and sleep until whenever I happen to wake up.
I haven’t slept again.
Every weekend I have problems going back to sleep on Sunday night. I sleep in on Saturday, and even later on Sunday, so going to bed 9 hours after I’ve woken up is hard. I’ve stayed up tonight, and am heading to work two hours early to get some stuff done. I’ve got a District-wide Mudjacking job going on right now, so I’m traveling pretty much over Northeastern Kansas doing that. I’m in Kansas City this week, on I-435 specifically. It’s amazing how much traffic there is in that town. The roads are also the worst I’ve ever seen. We did a bridge approach that was erected in 1985, and I couldn’t even separate what was actual concrete from patched concrete. I’ll be in KC for at least another week and a half, and then it’s off to Osage county to do some Rural patching.
I’m not looking forward to that. I usually buy my lunch every day, and I’ve had some bad experiences doing rural work, with finding places to eat. Even when I do find a place in a rural setting to enjoy a meal, I very rarely carry cash on me. I suppose I’ll have to remember to grab $40 to cover it.
Also, I might have sold my Monte Carlo to a contractor. I’ll find out later today, but I’m sure he’s happy with the price, and I’ll be happy to get rid of it. I should save some money having only one car on my insurance.
I’ve spent the last few days watching HBO’s Rome. I’m on Episode twelve right now, and will have time for 3 more before I go to sleep. Starting tomorrow, I’m working overnights to help with an partial depth patching job. I’ll be working 12-hour shifts on this new job, so I won’t really have much time for anything besides work and sleep. I’m thinking about canceling my WOW subscription, but most likely not. Warcraft just isn’t too engrossing anymore for me. I’m not having the fun that I used to either. The Old Republic, the Star Wars MMORPG, is out something this year, and I really want to play that.
I spent Friday in Wichita with Jessica. I had a blast hanging out and grabbing steak for dinner. I was supposed to spend the weekend there. But, her Niece was admitted to the ICU late Friday, so I had to come back. I’m having problems getting in touch with her, so I can only assume her niece is still in there. Maybe she’ll be at work tomorrow so we can text and email like we’ve been doing.
I’ve been sick for damn near the last week. I had a wisdom tooth pulled about a month ago, and Tuesday I started getting an infection in the same place. By Wednesday morning, I was all swollen up, couldn’t eat, and couldn’t sleep because I always sleep on my left side. So I spent Wednesday to Friday off work, on antibiotics and Loritab’s, sleeping 15 hours a day. At least by Saturday, I could eat real food, and indulged in a greasy unhealthy hamburger.
So fast forward to today, Monday. I go to work, and found out after being there an hour I have to do a thing called a pull-off test on Asphalt. This involves using epoxy to bind pipe caps to an asphalt core, so I can use a scale and a device to measure the force it takes to literally pull off the asphalt. When we were first shown this test at our district lab, of course they had a fume hood to mix their epoxy in, so the fumes weren’t overwhelming. But in the test today, I only had a small back room. I don’t know if it was from the vapors from the epoxy curing, or having to use a hotplate to heat up the epoxy to remove it from the pipe caps, but ever since then my nose has been draining. My sinus’s are all congested, and if I don’t have a roll of toilet paper near by, I’m screwed.
I’m really hoping it isn’t the epoxy that is fucking with my nose. The trailers we use for our Asphalt labs are small, and I can’t stand to be in them if it is indeed the epoxy screwing with me.
I’ve been watching a few of the episodes from Sons of Anarchy Season 3 lately. This song played during the last few minutes of the season’s end, and it’s been stuck in my head all day since I heard it again.
Sons of Anarchy truly does have some more kick ass music I’ve found from their show, another example of something amazing I heard from the show is Straylight Run’s Hands In The Sky.
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I’m stuck in Salina with insomnia. I’ve been here the last few days for a Drilled Shafts class, which I’m actually enjoying. The class is unusually interesting, funny, and informative. I think this is pretty much the best CIT class I’ve had thus far. I have a test tomorrow over the class, and it figures I can’t sleep tonight.
I went out earlier with my friend Chrystal to Martinelli’s. I think the last time I was there was with my dad about a year ago, so it was kind of nice to go back. I had the pre-requisite Shrimp and Pesto pasta, ordering way too much like usual. The food wasn’t amazing tonight, just good. But anything was better than the experience I had at the Tuscon’s Steakhouse right across the street last night. One of the guys we went to dinner with ended up having basically Steak Tartar. His steak was charred, but underneath that layer was raw meat. How is it possible to screw a steak up that bad?
I’m in the same hotel we always use—Country Inn & Suites. I’ve had nothing but problems with this place, and it keeps getting worse and worse. At least I used to be able to smoke inside here, which was a huge perk when I wasn’t smoking in the house. The first time I was out here, I got screwed out of a smoking room, given a room with a leaky roof, and then finally upgraded to a suite without a working drain. Things got a little better after that, but I’m annoyed yet again this time. There’s an annoying old wall paper border around the entire room, it smells of something I can’t place, and there’s coffee grounds in the water tank of the coffee pot. I wish we could get a new chain to stay at. Maybe I’ll invest some time in possibly seeing if I can switch things up.
Ahh, it’s been another three months since I’ve even thought about updating. But such is life.
My Dad and Brother will be in Kansas next week to spend the requisite three days per 6 months with me. Last time my dad was here, we ended up at the Pony Express museum and Bob Evans in St. Joe. I used to go to Bob Evans every Sunday when I lived in Columbus and play poker via my cell phone while my food was being made. Sadly, there isn’t a close Bob Evans to Topeka, so I don’t get there too often. So that was a little treat last time he came. I’m still clueless about what will happen this time. I’m not very good at planning tourism style events, and nothing really seems to pique my interest here anymore. I suggested we try Emporia this time, and maybe my dad will find something we can do together. I’m looking forward to it more than usual, because I really need a break from the daily grind.’
I’m still pretty disillusioned at work. Last week some directive came down banning Internet Access for the entire office. Apparently I don’t need Internet to do my job. I laughed at that one. Still, I’m not pissed about the Internet per se, I can always get Internet access through my phone, but its annoying I have to use personal equipment for a work purpose. The real reason I was so angry was because it’s just a cop out excuse to punish the entire office for the deeds of a select few people. Supposedly Viruses and Malware from our office are costing the state untold thousands of dollars. I don’t buy it a bit. Our office loves to micro-manage, and this is just an excuse to exert more control. Still, a lot of people are visibly upset over this, and hopefully someone higher up will realize how low our morale really is.
I have a project installing High Tensioned Cable Barrier fence along a tiny median coming up. The project has flip-flopped so many times, its hard to keep track what we’re actually doing. They’ve switched from one producer of the fence to another, only to flop back to the first when they realized they might not have time to get the second one in production on such a short job. I’d love to be able to examine shop drawings for the original system, but due to the Internet blackout at work, I can’t. I suppose I’ll just have to fly blind on this one, and just wait until the contractor sends us the actual drawings.
Never a dull day. 
Nothing has changed. I’m still having problems with sleeping too much, and every day it’s a constant fight to summon the will to get up and head to work. I suppose part of the problem at work, is just everything seems to piss me off anymore. The decisions that are made, don’t make any god damn sense any more. On top of this annoyance is the constant mumbling that our division doesn’t do as much work as the others, so we’ll be expected to pitch in this Winter with maintenance activities. Since Winter is usually the time we get all of our paperwork done, I’m really struggling to see the logic behind such a statement. Not only does it not make sense, it has begun to erode the morale of our office. Work used to be almost as calm a place as any I can think of. Sure, there’s stress and yelling, but we all got along, and tempers rarely flared. It isn’t like that anymore. People seem to be walking on eggshells and get irritated at a drop of a pin. It’s really a shame that we’ve become so jaded and bitter over things.
For my part, I’ve updated my resume, and posted it. I’ve had a few feelers from here and there, but nothing concrete. I haven’t really looked too hardcore into finding another place to work though. I guess part of me hopes everything will get better sooner or later, and things will go back to the way things were before. Part of me knows that’s blind optimism, but the other part of me just doesn’t want to go looking for another job quite yet. It’s very stressful for me to leave a job, and find a new one, so I want to put it off until things get beyond my breaking point.
At home, things are the same like I said before. I don’t really seem to be doing anything per se. Most nights I sit in front of my comptuer alternating between World of Warcraft, and aimlessly surfing obscure Wikipedia articles. I wouldn’t say I was living so much as existing at this point. I just can’t find anything exciting to do that fulfills me. Even this damn blog is nothing it used to be. I used to enjoy posting about my day, my feelings, my whatever. Now I don’t even give a shit enough to write most of it down, and hate writing all the bitching that has taken over this thing. Sometimes I wish I could be normal and happy, yet others I am content that my viewpoints and emotions are different from your average person. But then again, sometimes I just don’t give a damn about anything anymore.
It’s hard to believe it’s Christmas already. I spent the day doing the same thing I did last year. I slept in until about one pm, then promptly woke up and had breakfast/dinner at Dennys. There were five text messages from friends wishing me a happy Christmas, and I always think that’s odd. This holiday has no meaning to me what-so-ever. There is nothing special about it, and the added stress of everyone running around attempting to get their Christmas shopping done has always annoyed me. But then again, I don’t believe in a God, so I suppose most Atheists out there feel the same way.
I’ve spent the last few days playing World of Warcraft on the new computer I built. I’m digging this system, and have had more fun overclocking the damn thing than I did building it. I was originally going to add water cooling a few months down the line, but it turns out there isn’t a waterblock available for my GPU. Meh, go figure. I suppose I’ll have to invest some money in some new fans to get the CFM up to where I can overclock a little more extreme. That should entertain me for a few once I get all the stuff available. On a side note, it’s so nice to have a working desktop once again. My laptop used to get burning hot when I was playing it on my lap, and I won’t miss being burned by it.
I’m still feeling pretty down overall. I was sick a few weeks ago with Tonsillitis, and still seem to lack the motivation to actually go out and do things. Every workday I just look forward to 4:30 pm when I can leave and come home. When I get home, I stare at a screen for 8 hours, pretending everything is okay. I can’t sleep most nights, and when I do, I fall into a heavier sleep than normal. I was on Standby for work on Christmas Eve, but I got a call at 530 am or so telling me I didnt have to go in. I slept straight thru two alarms I forgot to turn off when I got the call. The things were beeping for HOURS, and I imagine the neighbors above me hate me right about now. Fuck em’.
Sometimes I wonder if I have something like Seasonal Affective Disorder. Maybe that would explain why every winter I get so damn shitty. But damnit, those lights to treat the thing are freaking expensive. I guess I’m stuck with my original plan of just persevering through all my down times..
