Whoa

Whoa. Man, the last few days have been cuh-razy.

On Monday, I spent about a half day at the FAA headquarters in OKC attending a project meeting to add a fire suppression system in two maintenance hangars and trying to get my contractor's badge renewed. The guy in charge of authorizing badges said to do one thing. The people at the security center said to do another. After a couple of hours, I still have no badge. Guvment bureuacracy. Gotta love it.

On Tuesday, I had to go to Wichita with a couple of civil engineers and an architect to look at a waste transfer station. Big, smelly building where the city trash trucks dump a load (hee, hee... he said "dump a load"... hee hee) and front-end loaders put the trash into bigger trucks. The bigger trucks haul the trash to the land fill. The City of Norman is building a new waste transfer station and I'm doing the structural design for it. Anyway, day long trip. The place really has it's own... aroma. Pee-ewe. Imagine the smelliest pair of old tennis shoes, the rankest poopy diaper, the most rancid dead fish or other animal, the most putrid veggies or fruits. Combine those smells. That's better than the Wichita waste transfer station. The architect and I were standing inside watching the loaders push the trash and place loads into the big trucks. He finally said, "It really smells bad in here" and walked outside. Kinda funny. Later, he and I walked across the floor to look at some of the concrete walls. The floor had a nasty, slippery paste of trash goo smeared everywhere. As I was walking, I was being careful not to fall down. I was thinking that if I fell, I'd need a keg of penicillin and tetnus shots to ward off whatever botulism and ebola that was coating the top of that goo. Nasty, nasty, nasty. I wondered about the guys that worked there all day, every day. When they go home, can they smell the wonderful meal their wives cooked for them? Would they notice the stench of their kid's poopy diaper?

Today, I went to Dallas. Wonderful 4 hour drive each way from OKC, plus the trip from Stillwater to OKC and back again. Ever wonder why you have to fart so bad whenever you are stuck in a Tahoe full of contractors? Or in a conference room full of contractors and engineers? The fart bubble was working hard to breach the sphincter seal but the seal held. Whenever I had a chance to exit the vehicle or go to the restroom... nothin'. Straining hard enough to pop a blood vessel, but nothin'. Go sit down again... PRESSURE!! dangit. Hoping like hell I don't sneeze or cough cuz I'm gonna risk vapor locking with something exiting both ends. Eleven hours of this before I finally got back to the office and, well, you know.

Debbie had a milestone event on Tuesday. She and Megan made a trip to Edmond for a visit to an oral surgeon. Megan is going to have her wisdom teeth removed in a few weeks. Debbie was able to navigate around the Edmond area without calling me for directions. It only took almost 22 years to figure it out. Any stories you wanna share about getting lost in OKC with your mother, Tara? hee hee.

Have a good evening.