I’ve had to do quite a lot of construction type work around
our house in the last few years, repairing all of the damage done when we had
to have our foundation repaired, and then when we had to dismantle our upstairs
bathroom when a water leak had eaten
away the entire structure of the outside wall and floor. The thing is, most of
this rebuilding had been stalled, because I can’t afford to buy all of the
materials needed, and I had no place suitable to store materials if I bought them
a little bit at a time. My conclusion? I had to tear down our rotted out and
falling down shed, and build a new one that would actually protect our
construction materials from the elements. As always with this sort of thing, it
ballooned into a project that was much larger than I had anticipated, but
still, we went at it with gusto and ripped the old one down, and started
building its replacement. So there we are, my father-in-law and I, busting our
butts off in my back yard trying to build the shed, when my wife returns from
her workout. She takes one look at her father and starts shouting.
“Dad, your truck just pulled out!”
“Dad, your truck just pulled out!”
I think that we were kind of in shock, because it didn’t
click at first what she was trying to tell us, and so she repeated it. “Your
truck just took off down the road!”
It did eventually click though, and my father-in-law and I
ran like hell for my Mustang to give chase while my wife called “911”. My
father-in-law was as white as a ghost as he sat beside me, because this was
more than a truck to him – it was his livelihood. Since he was helping me to do construction,
he had brought his work truck, with all of his tools and materials. In addition
to taking his truck, the thief had also taken my father-in-laws very ability to
earn a living, and my father-in-law had realized this immediately.
There are maybe three routes directly out of town from my
house, and as Murphy would have it, we chose the wrong route. After a few
minutes of running stop signs and red lights hoping to either spot his truck or drawn the attention of a police
officer, we decided that we were doing ourselves absolutely no good what so
ever and so we returned to my house to wait for the police to arrive. As we pulled
into my driveway, my wife was walking toward the car, with her cell phone in
one hand, and giving us the thumbs up with the other, and the grin that she was
wearing from ear to ear made it pretty clear that she had good news for us. It
turns out that luck was on our side this day, because just as the 911 operator
was providing the description of the truck to the officers in town, it just
happened to be driving right past one of them. My wife could hear the radio
traffic through the 911 phone line.
“I think we see it, and we are pulling it over . . .” a slight delay, “Yeah, we got him.”
“I think we see it, and we are pulling it over . . .” a slight delay, “Yeah, we got him.”
Before it was all over, his truck wasn’t gone more than
maybe 30 minutes before it was parked right back where it belonged in front of
my house. The bad news? The kid that stole it was a junior in high school who
had just got out after six months in jail for his last stunt. He hasn’t even graduated from high school and his life
is all screwed up. . .
Well, as seems to be the case these days, I made a trip and
very little of any interest occurred. I had a fairly early flight, as is usual
these days, and so I had to be off to the airport WELL before most people are
outta bed. My neighbor however, is not
most people – he leaves for work at
about 430AM every morning, and so once I got myself together, I had to spend about
twenty minutes staring out the window and waiting for him to leave. At long
last, I watched the poor guy sleep walk out to his truck and drive off. Before
he had rounded the corner, I was reaching for my suitcase. The joke was on me
though, because the handle of my rather large and obviously overloaded suitcase
came off in my hand. I guess it just couldn’t take the strain anymore of
carrying enough clothes, shoes, makeup, jewelry, and coats for two people for a
week. And really, who can blame the poor thing, because sometimes it’s too much
for me too. Eventually I dragged/carried the damn thing to the itty bitty trunk
of my modern Mustang, and off we went.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that our flight attendant
was a woman that I recognized as she had been on several flights with me before.
She has long dark hair, and while not exactly pretty, she is distinctive and
kind of unique. I have no idea where she is actually from, but I always assumed
it was New York or New Jersey as she has a bit of that kind of accent, but what
really makes her voice unique is that she has kind of a lisp. I don’t even know
how to describe the way that she speaks other than maybe a passing resemblance
to the way that Sean Connery often includes an “H” sound when he is saying “S”.
Yeah I know – I just tried to describe a woman who talks
like Sean Connery, with a lisp and a New York accent – YOU should try this
sometime!
Anyway, let’s just say that she is distinctive, and so I
recognized her immediately. That didn’t win
me any points though, because when I thanked
her for the cup of coffee that she handed to me, she looked straight at me and
said “You’re welcome sir.” Welp, guess I
know where I stand with her now!
In order to keep liquids from condensing in the sample
lines, the plumbing leading up to and away from our instrument is heated to a
nice and balmy 191 degrees Celsius. It’s always a pretty good idea to keep this
ever present in your mind as you’re working, because let’s face it, my skin is
allergic to 191 degrees Celsius. I was reminded of this as I was working behind
the instrument and ever so briefly placed the side of my face right up against
said plumbing. The good news is that when I am properly motivated, my reflexes
are pretty good, and so I jerked my face away from the hot plumbing so quickly
that no serious harm was done. The bad news is that there was a metal brace not
far behind my head, and so while I had saved my face from a good burn, I gave
myself a pretty good lump on the back
of my head. Worse yet, with all the jerking around I was doing, my glasses flew
off of my face, and yes, they broke when they hit the ground. They were brand
new too – maybe a month old. The trip never really got any better or worse . .
.