Small steps

 Damn, I think I'm OK now.  It took 4 days for me to get over whatever mental and physical baggage I brought with me after the last trip. 

 I've been sleeping 9 hours a night and sleeping really well. That's not like me at all. But I think it's helping. 

   I gained about 20lbs in the 10 weeks I was gone. I credit that from increased stress, decreased sleep, decreased free time, poor weather, and the chase for dopamine where I can find it, which until this past week was only to be found in food. I couldn't even sit down after my watch and read a book without getting a call from a cargo surveyor or the office, and with the quality of sleep being so poor and short at work, that doesn't change that I rarely sleep deeply at work. Part of my mind is always aware of the load on the generators (the noise changes and the ventilation changes pitch just slightly too), the throttle settings on the cargo pumps, and the load on the hydraulics.  I'm aware of those things for about 80% of my sleep cycle- not aware enough to be awake, but I can tell you how many times I hear the air compressor kicking on, which causes the turbo on the generator to become audible, and it's about 80% of the number of times it happens. So yeah, 6 hours of that isn't refreshing after a couple of weeks, but it's enough to keep you going. This is the real impact of the problems we've been having lately- hearing the cargo pumps wind up because they've lost suction, or can't get suction at all, and hearing the cargo pumps bog down at high throttle when E or B is trying to blow a snot rocket plug out of the underdeck pipelines or the cargo hoses at 120psi... It's not possible to sleep lightly through that, because it means we have problems that will be my problem when it's my turn to get up. 

   Well, enough whining, I'm not at work. It was chilly here for South FL today. 60 degrees, lol.  And the house in Brazil has the first signs of renovations starting to show up- the well was dug to 200 feet and capped with the pump and plumbing set, the window frames are square, the stone wall around the perimeter is starting to go  up (at 10 feet it should allow me to sun my giant white ass at leisure should I want to. I mean my mother-in-law will be there but she's blind, so Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife can go full National G if she wants to), and the architect has the plumbing and electrical mapped out for the builder. 

    Have you ever seen those 3rd world header tanks on the roof  that people use to store and up the water pressure in their house?  

    These things are everywhere in Brazil- in some areas running water is switched on and off across neighborhoods,  or flow only at a few gallons per hour, and people are expected to use their header tank contents to keep the taps running in their house. The neighborhood where we're building is in the "Old City" of the city where we are, and got 24/7 running water a few years ago. Even so, between the well and the city water, we're in good shape for the arid area where we are- think Oklahoma with big rolling hills and ridges.  

    Personally I hate the look of these ghetto tanks and they're resorts for vermin, so I had the builder pour a 5,000 gal concrete header tank in the roof of the house. Don Paolo wants to be the posessor of a freshly washed ass on the reg, after all. 

 We had 2 of these that looked like dogshit, real jury-rigged looking,