The Half-Assed Frabjous Day

 It was a good moment, walking onto the HQ for the first time in 2 months yesterday. I have been waiting for the day. 

   Every 5 years, my company (and pretty much everyone else too) pulls all their tugs and barges out of the water for major maintenance. Yesterday morning while I was on my way here, the HQ was launched back in the water and moved to a berth at the shipyard, where work on her internals continues. 

     Yesterday was messy. As I wrote in my last post, I effed the dog and left some stuff at the office by mistske, which I realized an hour after my taxi left New York. We had to turn around, and got into the city during peak rush hour. Fun stuff. My driver, whom I know well, normally looks like a short, chubby and jolly Osama Bin Laden... I'm definitely on his 'bomb him twice' list this week. 

    I got to the shipyard after 2pm.  The yardbirds had already connected shore power, and there were electricians and mechanics up the wazoo in the gen house. The old and underpowered generators are in pieces... but sadly weren't upgraded it seems. 

    The house?   It was bad. Guys had been working on the alarms and upgrading the tank monitoring system in the office, so it was a mess, but also they were uding the head, the toilet, as an outhouse.   Without power and running water, a marine toilet is just a fancy hole to piss and crap in. Which they were doing.  So the entire house smells like a side street in Mumbai. 

    I spent 5 hours cleaning, and they gave me a yard worker to help, which was nice. Jesus, who's a little Mexican bro, and myself, dug in and got the quarters livable. He went home at 4, and by 8pm I had my bunk made and made a BLT for myself.  Most of my cleaning supplies everything not bolted down is gone, stolen by the yardbirds, which is called Cappebar, a nasty but historically traditional practice, but I found a bottle of bleach, a bottle of dish soap and also some sort of cleaning fluid and a box of rags, as well. I tried mixing the bleach and cleaner, as it wasn't a very good cleaner, outside of course in case it turned into foofoo gas, a variant of phosgene, which is good for killing Englishmen in trench warfare but not great at cleaning counters. 

       Today is more of the same. I'm focusing on the house, and unfucking it for my own sake. I've got to hike to town today to hit up the local grocery for more cleaning supplies. Tomorrow and this weekend I will be outside putting stencils on things and getting us compliant with Uncle Sugar's rulebook.   We should be back in service in about 10 days. In the meanwhile, I'm enjoying working alone when the yardbirds aren't here.

    I will say that this area, the Hudson Valley about 100 miles north of NY, is really, really pretty.