Happy New Year

Sunday 1/7/07
2000

It’s a week late, but Happy New Year! I haven’t written anything in awhile for a variety of reasons. Part of it is due to the fact (which I’ve already mentioned) that the newness has worn off and my off-duty time has settled into a routine which is starting to be fairly monotonous. The other reason is that I’ve been incredibly busy with work, and of course I can’t write much about that.

The only photographs I’ve been taking lately are of various aspects of our physical plant, for an SOP I am writing. I don’t want my successor to have to learn everything about this job the way I did – partly by verbal knowledge transfer and partly by trial and error. I intend to leave the best documentation that I can behind me when I move on. That in itself is taking a lot of time.

The first few weeks I was here, I was pretty much overwhelmed by the newness of everything, both on and off duty. I spent most of my days trying to cope with the flood of requirements at work and getting my arms around it. I was trying to establish some kind of a daily routine as well as identify and plan to tackle some of the long term issues we have.

Now that I’ve been doing that for awhile, a number of the things I’ve been working on have come to the point of action, and so the last couple weeks have been very busy. Today in particular was the culmination of several weeks of effort to accomplish some maintenance that needed to be done. It may sound kind of trivial, but because of the nature of the equipment and the number of people involved, it took a substantial coordination effort to get all the pieces lined up. I haven’t slept too well the past few nights as today approached, but this morning everything came together like clockwork, and it all went without a hitch. As someone once said in a movie: “I love it when a plan comes together!”

I also got a crush of packages from the USA this week. Amongst them were a bunch of magazines that had been delivered to my home before I got the address changed, as well as some other things I’d been waiting for. So this week will be a treat – catching up on my periodical reading which I’ve really missed, as well as watching some favorite movies that I didn’t have.

“Holiday Inn” is one of my favorite Christmas movies, but I only had it on VHS. I ordered it on DVD awhile ago, but it didn’t get here in time for Christmas. Since it has musical numbers for each of several holidays, it doesn’t matter. I classify it as a Christmas movie because it has Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” in it. Another movie I got is “Sergeant York”, which FINALLY came out on DVD in November. I’ve been waiting for years for it to come out, and have been waiting and waiting and waiting for it to be sent, and finally got it! “Lawrence of Arabia” and “The Wind and The Lion” are two other favorites that seemed appropriate, but which they don’t have here. So now they are part of my collection.

To top it off, I received the CD of my favorite rock’n’roll album of all time – “Ten Years After Recorded Live”. I had this already, but it got misplaced somehow and I didn’t get it ripped into iTunes before I left. It was the very first rock album I ever bought (along with “Black Sabbath”), and I actually own two vinyl copies, since the first one wore out from being played too much. (No scratches or anything, just honest wear – I literally wore it out!) So now I’m listening to some music I haven’t heard in some time. Ironically, the most famous song on the album is called “I’m Going Home”. Most people haven’t heard this version, though, since the only version that ever gets played is the Woodstock version, which is not as good in my opinion. The only other Alvin Lee song that ever gets played on the radio is “I’d Love To Change The World”, and I bought the album with that song too (“A Space In Time”). Forget Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Carlos Santana, and even Eddie Van Halen – for my money Alvin Lee was the best rock guitarist ever! So I’m awash in fresh electronic entertainments, but they all old friends.

I don’t really have much new to say, except that I’m doing fine and am happy here, with the exception of missing my family and friends. I expect that my blogging pattern will now revert to what it’s been for the past couple of years: 2-3 times per month at most, with occasional bursts of higher frequency when something noteworthy happens or I have deep, profound thoughts that I just can’t resist sharing with the world. ;-)

I hope everyone has a great start to a happy and productive 2007. Your Army is awake!

Mood: Happy
Music: Ten Years After – Recorded Live