Back to work

Those 4 days did, indeed, go by fast. It's 0523 and I'm getting ready for work again. I'll be playing with these high voltage lead cables for the next few days. There are 12 cables here. The bad cable is on the bottom row, third cable in. Sounds like fun, eh? Each of the big cylinders in the center is a splice. That's old-school high voltage splicing.

Christmas Day at my Sister's house

As you can see, Katie is pretty comfortable here. She wasn't much help with the gift-wrapping, though. She snores to boot.

My sister's tree was surrounded by gifts, and the entire family didn't even show up!

My cousin, Amie, (or is it Aimie?), her husband, Peter, and my Aunt Kathy. I haven't seen her in over 10 years. I'm glad she and her family came out for Christmas.

This is my brother Morgan. That's Big "M". Little "organ". *grin* he looks pretty intense. He must be trying too hard to be as cool as me.

My niece loved the leather "purse" I got her. It's called a "haversack", but to me, it's just a purse. Anyway, now she's got a place for her gift cards, so she doesn't lose them.

My other niece is wondering how to get those shiny new coins out of the wrapper, so she can buy some bubble-gum. I got her a US Mint set.

Mom just opened her gift. I got each of the women a different tea-candle-lit lantern modeled after a different type of English architecture. I really liked them, and they seemed to be well made.

We all chipped in to get Dad a snow-blower. Looks like a blizzard there, don't it?

My sister got me a Jelly Belly jellybean dispenser, and a couple pounds of jellybeans. I've got it right next to me, while I write this post. I'm gonna get fat on jellybeans, I can tell. Oh, and I'm eating cookies that my Mom made for me. I can feel the sugar high coming like a tidal wave....

4 days off! In a row, even! Woot!

The steel mill is shut down for 4 days for Christmas. The emergency cable blow-up can't proceed until we get the material we need, which won't arrive until next Wednesday, so I get 4 days off! I really needed some time off. This will be perfect. This morning, I thought about how these 4 days will feel. How fast they'll pass by. Early, it felt like I had all summer vacation, but I know it'll go fast, so I want to enjoy it as much as possible.
I got up early and did dishes, laundry, and cleaned up around the house a bit. Tina came over around 10, and we watched an episode of Firefly. Then we went to lunch at Applebee's. After lunch, I laid down on the couch for a minute, with Katie on my chest, and woke up 2 and a half hours later, late for Rick's family Christmas dinner. Al was running late too, so I didn't hold up dinner. Cheryl was just taking the beef out of the oven when I arrived.

The food was fantastic, and everyone had a great time. I really enjoy Rick's family. They are nice people who like to laugh, whether it be at each other, or themselves, or my bad jokes.
I had to get a picture of Auggie. He's grown quite a bit. He'll be taller than his mom in a few months.

Then there was the gift exchange:
Rick is opening his present, which is a gift card to the Ice House Tavern. We like to stop there once in a while. *wink*
I'm opening my gift from Rick...


...I suspect that my friend and I may be having fun at the Ice House sometime soon! I hope we don't end up in jail....

On the way home, I saw an accident happen. I was stopped at a red light, listening to a Christmas song on the radio. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but a car was coming from the right, going straight through the intersection. He was moving pretty fast, trying to get through what I suppose was a yellow light. The other car was making a left turn. I guess each driver expected the other person to stop on yellow, though when I looked at the lights, they were red. I don't know if anyone was hurt, but I heard sirens a few minutes later as I got out of my truck. It just drives me nuts that some idiot in a hurry can't slow down and obey traffic signals. Now he's going to be late anyway, and have all this trouble to boot, as well as causing trouble for the other driver.

I'm relaxing now, sipping some Talisker Scotch whiskey and eating cashew's before I call it a night.

Zoo 2

I took a few minutes at break time to see some of the animals. This 360 pound tiger was out early.

Not everything electricians do is exciting. Somedays, we just shovel gravel. I had to fill in that slot so when we put a cover on, the cover doesn't collapse under the weight of the dirt that will be on top.

Some days, we just do grounding. As important as grounding is, you'd think it would be a bit less boring. Backup hates grounding, but hey, I wasn't having much fun shoveling either. Seeing the tiger was pretty cool though! I just had to get a shot of him puffing on that butt.

Cleveland Zoo Revisited

I'm at Cleveland Zoo again. Last summer, I went out to assess the damage done to these high voltage boxes when the Fulton Avenue Bridge was demolished.

Here I'm cutting some tree roots that the back-hoe operator couldn't dig out. Big difference in the weather, eh? It was a cold, rainy, soggy, just terribly crappy day. Ah well..the customer is always right...the customer is always right...the customer is always right...
The pump ran non-stop, trying to keep the water out of the hole so we could carefully dig around the cables, and remove the troublesome roots.
After we spread 3 buckets full of gravel and laid the concrete pad down, it wasn't a bad spot to work.
My partner, Backup, helps guide the new fiberglass enclosure over to the concrete pad.
A big improvement!
Yesterday was a might chilly out, so today we built a tent to stay warm and keep the cables and equipment dry while we cleaned them and worked on grounding the system. I know, I shoulda had my hardhat on.
Backup is carefully cleaning each cable, and the male and female sections of the termination point before putting them back together. It was still cold, but we had a little heater, and the flimsy tent kept the heat inside. At least until the wind started blowing, and we had to take the tent down.