The Grind

 Well, I'm in it now. I've been at work for a week and I've got 3 weeks to go. When I get home, the holidays will be starting up, and while I'm not going to be home for Christmas this year, I'll be home for Thanksgiving and New Years, which is pretty good.  So to add to the Honey-Do list for next time I'm home, which is already jam-packed, I need to add losing about 6hrs to ha g the Christmas lights, which I intend to do, as I have not done so in the past 3 years, and frankly I could use the pleasant effect it has, and maybe the neighbors can too.  So that'll be a good project to do a few days before I go back to work. 

       We've been working steady since I got here, right up until yesterday. We've got a little break now, and while I can't go ashore at the lay berth where we're sitting now, we're doing an early crew change today, and Big E is going home, while B is coming in. Big E had surgery 7 months ago and is finally almost recovered, but has been working shorter tours to build up his endurance, but this is the last shortened tour. On his return in 3 weeks, he'll be back to full time. In the meanwhile, B was working overtime elsewhere and I heard they had a major breakdown while he was there, and an awful time, so he'll be relieved, grumpy and hopefully ready to rest when he gets here in a few hours. 

        Dirk the Dutchman, the mayor (and senior captain at this point) of New York Harbor, will be swapping bodies on his prison ship launch (a water taxi) all day today, and in just a few hours that'll happen. I took the launch just last week when I started my tour at HAWSEPIPER'S Afloat Global HQ/ Penal colony, and as always it was great to catch up with Dirk, who at 82 is still spry as hell and while 'retired' keeps his hand as owner of his launch company. 

    As I have been working on boats since age 8, I understand that on a boat something is always broken and in need of repair. That's the nature of boats after all. This past week the head (bathroom) has been playing merry hell, and while the primary culprit was a burned out macerator pump (boat toilets grind down poop and TP to a slurry before pumping it to a holding tank for treatment), the reason the poop pump got smoked was the control/flush switch was damaged. A new switch wasn't available locally in NYC, and is being shipped, so Jimmy, one of our shoreside staff, an electrician, Jimmy-rigged the switch to sort of work in the meanwhile, if pressed REALLY hard... which worked until yesterday, when the whole switch and its' box just fell into the bulkhead (wall) and disappeared after a piece of wall it was screwed to just said Fuck Off and tore out. 

 So yesterday before my morning bidness, I got to rip out a 20-year old, mildewy, crumbling and piss-spray saturated hardboard wall to retreive the control box. Which smelled magical. Fermented ammonia, stagnant water and mildew.

 A blessing in disguise, really, as, unpleasant as it was, nobody had to crap in a bucket, including me, and our port engineer has a replacement panel and some insulation on order. A new panel should improve the smell, as we already removed the insulatuon, sprayed the space between the old bulkhead and the exteral steel house with dilute bleach and then an enzyme deodorizer we keep on hand for when old guys and hoodboogers with bad aim piss on the deck and bulkheads around the toilet. 

 So I was able to have the Morning Seat in peace, if delayed, and thus yesterday was saved.  At 51 it's really hard to have a nice day if it starts with crapping in a bucket, so even with a hole in the head, we're good.

   We also got stores (supplies) yesterday, which included new office chairs. Fancy gaming chairs, even. I assembled one yesterday and we like it, so I'll build the rest today. If God is kind our schedule will hold and I'll be free today to cook a real lunch, help out B and Big E with shifting their dunnage, and get caught up on paperwork, etc. 

 

Still not dead, but closer than

It's a small thing, but I can't remember being this comfortable on a plane before.

 It's the tween season here in FL, where I'll be for the next 5-10 mins until my plane takes off. The snow Jews aren't here yet, and the business Jews and I are not filling up the plane.

 There's some advantage for parts of the year to live in a Jewish-heavy community in FL... The Snow Jews make up an enormously rude, selfish and inconsiderate bloc, and they'll be a plague all winter, but still better than the flying housing projects that hoodboogers infest in discount airlines... but for early AM flights from June-October, me n' the business Jews practice politeness. Not a speakerphone or an arguement with the flight attendants in sight.

     I'm really pleased by how much more comfortable the seating is on my plane with all the weight loss I've managed this year. My ass fits great in the seat now, but sadly my shoulders fit better too. Age and a calorie-limited diet appropriate to someone with a marginally functional thyroid and the resultant metabolic slowdown from that has cost me some strength and muscle mass. From my reading, I am going to have to get into an exercise routine to get some of that back. I've been improving my joint flexibility while waiting for some chronic pain to scale back (tennis elbow, of all things, recently. Not that I play tennis). But it got me into daily stretching and flexibility exercises while waiting and I think I can start picking up weights now, at least lightly, try to get my shit moving.  

      I arrived home 2 weeks ago with an ambitious agenda for catching up on maintenance and projects at home.  Despite combining both the longest voyage away AND the shortest turnaround interval after an extended trip I've done, I was feeling very well- patient, mentally focused, etc. Surprisingly so.

  ...But at home I couldn't get motivated. I felt distracted and my usual pleasure in puttering around outside failed to materialize. Oh, I had a wonderful time with my family, mind, at least my nuclear family- I wanted to hang out with my brother more, but even there I pretty much found myself making excuses and just keeping my wife and kid within handhold distance. 

 Sure, I kept my shit together in those 4 months. Turns out I wasn't entirely unaffected by it, and after a couple of half-assed projects I dragged my ass through, Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife set me aside and told me to quit pushing myself and feeling guilty, as I was not making the most of my time off to decompress... and after that I just focused more on trying to enjoy the days... and I semi-succeeded. I never got entirely over not doing much in terms of productivity, but I'm trying to cut myself some slack. 

 And it's a moot point now, as I'm 35,000 ft in the air and headed back north to work. No overtime, though. I'm going home as soon as my time is done. I do have a lot of shit to do. 

      

I'm not dead yet!

 But I am at home. So, turns out that despite being in a good headspace for the 4 months I was at work, being home showed me that I was beat up, metaphorically.

 Better now.  Enjoying my last few days here.  

The longest taxi ride ever

 I'm at the airport. And I am alive. I don't know if it was worth living through what just happened. 

 Taxi from Bayonne New Jersey (The Paris of New Jersey, lol.) to JFK airport, Queens. Across New York. During rush hour.

 It took a while, obviously. But that wasn't the issue.  My driver was an old middle eastern man. And he... his breakfast was not digesting well, shall we say. 

        Yeah, the old guy had the hot death farts. I don't know what he ate but it went down fighting.

  And it was pouring rain so I couldn't open the window much and got immediately soaked for doing so. 

        And he kept doing it!  Like every 6-7 minutes, like a fucking metronome.   I swear, the temperature shot up 10 degrees in the car every time he ripped ass too. I'd feel the desert heat of araby, and then... I don't want to live on this planet anymore. God is not here. 

 For two hours. Two. Hours. TWO HOURS! 

 I got... marinated. God help me. It's in my clothes, probably. 

 Anyhow, I am at the airport and have a glass of whisky.  Washing the taste out of my mouth. Out of my soul. 

 

Last watch

 Halfway through my last watch. Home tomorrow.  Channel Fever finally hit me full on. I'm ready to GTFO. 

Night watch

 Well, I'm on nights now. Thus far it hasn't worked to my advantage-  virtually all of our active moves have followed me, seemingly regardless of which watch I'm standing. 

.   Since we have 2 HMFIC's on here at all times (myself and B, or myself and Big E, and B and Big E when I am at home), we din't have a master/mate hierarchy. Instead, we stand 12 hour watches, Day (0600-1800) and Night (1800 to 0600). Guys just coming aboard or getting ready to go home stand nights), and the day guy gets to be Head MF'er In Charge.  In this way, someone ALWAYS knows what's going on, and oncoming/outgoing guys have time to get caught up on what's going on. Daytime is when the people who wear ties to work generally are scheming and plotting and calling and bothering and business is done. Nights are usually just for things that people who do not wear ties to work get done. We're a 24/7 operation but the ties and suits are not.  Generally at night we have cargo or not but regardless the phone doesn't ring and emails ding near as much. It's a great time to get shit done like maintenance, paperwork, etc. 

    And that's the rub; just dumb luck that what free time there is, by chance, isn't falling on the night watch.   I mean it's fine, I'm not being pressed or overburdened but my own little honey-do list of things I want to get done is not as free as I'd maybe wish in terms of time to devote to the task. 

         Edit: ask and ye shall receive.  Prior to my posting this, the people who wear ties to work (long may they live; long may they continue to shit light on the heads of the damned) corrected an earlier error made on my schedule: turns out I will have half a watch off, which is good, as I need to put together a parts list and service a generator, and will even have time for a proper dinner.