Water Ski Douche

I think the last time I rode a damn slide like that, I didn’t cross my ankles. I’ll be doubly sure to do so next time.

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And of course, I’ll vow to post more often too.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I love how slow and calm this song starts off, and suddenly ramps up into a more violent tempo. I think the video is pretty damn neat too. Very trippy!

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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.
I should be out of class tomorrow around noon, and back in Topeka by two. I think I’m going to try to see Suckerpunch tomorrow if I can. Hopefully I can catch a few hours of sleep tomorrow if someone drives back to Topeka. If not, I guess I can see it Friday after a few hours of sleep

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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.

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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.

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