Ouch!

So, today is not going to be fun filled for me. I have to have some oral surgery on my gums this afternoon, and I am so not looking forward to it! Apparently when I had my wisdom teeth removed, it made a mess. I am missing some bone and have a lot of scar tissue which creates pockets behind my teeth and leads to infections. Today they will be performing a distal wedge procedure, if that means anything to you. They will be cutting down to the bone, placing bone grafts and removing the scar tissue. I have to eat squishy food for two weeks. They keep promising me that it won't hurt, but I'm pretty sure they're lying.

Drill Baby, Drill!

I had some adventures this week. Remember back to the scary place I had to do some work in? Well, I have to do more. Friday, my buddy Bryan and I drilled 32 holes in concrete for PCB core samples. It was a blast. You can see part of the grid we set up in the picture below. Every 10 foot we drilled through a paper plate to a depth of 3 inches, and collected the dust for analysis.

Had to take the picture of Bryan working. I'm not so excited at the amount of dust flying through the air, especially since we're testing for PCBs in that dust!

On Wednesday I took a nice drive through Morgan County to do a station update. I passed Lock #8 on the Muskingum River on my drive to the station and decided to stop on my way back.

I was creeped out by the complete lack of safety devices to keep me from doing something stupid. For instance, there was nothing to keep me from walking across that rickety walkway over the gate but a very worn sign that said employees only. I even discovered that I could operate the gates on the lock!

Again with the lack of safety features. I'm standing on the edge of the lock looking down 26 feet. That's what the depth marker on the wall told me.

Tingly

I often forget how dangerous our jobs working for an electric utility can be, which is never a good thing. But I get frequent reminders which help keep me on my toes. Especially when I think about those whose jobs are way more dangerous than mine on a regular basis.

There is a small percentage of linemen who are rock gods. They are linemen who have been approved to "work bare hand". If you've ever seen a lineman working on a line, he most likely was seriously suited up in personal protective equipment (PPE), a hard hat, safety glasses, gloves, fire retardant shirt, and insulated gloves over all of that. The bare hand guys are doing exactly what their titles says they are doing, grabbing on to live lines with their bare hands. Usually transmission lines, which carry enough voltage to not only kill you, but also not leave much to identify you. These guys fascinate me. I asked one of them what it was like. His reply, "Like holding a lightening bolt". Then I asked him if he felt anything, "Yeah, it's like a million little bugs crawling on your skin. All tingly." I'm pretty sure these men are insane.

I've got a super safe job in comparison. But still, I do enter into stations with lots of powerful equipment. The most powerful stations, right outside of power plants actually make me feel weird when I'm near them. There are different levels of access inside stations. Those who are not trained and are being escorted in, must stay a certain distance away, or in fancy speak maintain the required approach destance, from the equipment, depending on its voltage. I'm considered trained and can enter stations all alone and walk up to a station class transformer, hug it and kiss it, if I wanted.

Most of the dangers I face in a station can be prevented as long as I'm alert. In fact, I can safely touch most of the equipment since the outside is not energized. That's not true of everything though, and in general I don't touch. I worry mostly about tripping and falling onto something that is energized. We are trained, although I don't know if it would happen if I needed it to, that if we are falling not to reach out to grab anything. The idea being if we hit something that is energized, we will get voltage but should fall off. If we reach out and grab it, our muscles will tighten and we won't be able to let go, most likely resulting in our death. I also have to worry about lines that are down, holes, lines that are in the ground, and wasps. They LOVE electrical equipment.

We do have a ground grid that runs the entire station, meant to ground any loose electricity. It also keeps the fence from becoming energized. The grid is made of copper and is a popular item to steal. I don't find that amusing since my life depends on it being there. We are trained to look to make sure the grounds are on the fence gate before we touch it, but still. I know one guy who was getting ready to open a gate, key in hand, when a noise caught his attention. It was the rain hitting the fence and vaporizing. Some stooge had stolen the grounds.

Yesterday, I was in an old distribution station. The distribution stations don't have as much voltage in them, but it's still enough to kill you. I had walked up to one of the big station class transformers to get its serial number and noticed the ground was vibrating. Not unusual. Then I realized that it was more than that, my body was vibrating and my hands and feet were tingly....a bit like a million bugs crawling on them. I had a moment of panic when it dawned on me that I was receiving an unknown amount of voltage. I am pretty proud of myself for just standing there for a few long seconds. I obviously was not getting hurt at that moment, but if I did something stupid and touched something that made me a better ground than the grid, it was not going to be good. So, I assessed the situation, tingling away. Realized it was okay to back away and slowly did so. It took awhile for the unpleasant sensation in my hands and feet to go away, but I was fine.

Makes me pretty glad that I always take the time to hug and kiss everyone each morning before leaving for work.

The job that doesn't pay

At least not in money. In fact, I'm pretty sure that I'm in overdraft status now.

I received my first CASA case a little over a month ago. I haven't said much about it because 1. I'm not allowed to talk specifics about my cases 2. I wasn't really sure what had happened to me and wasn't ready to talk about it!

The beginning of a case is just a whirlwind of activity. I've been told it will slow down, but I'm not sure that I believe them. Most of the activity hit during the electric outage which was very poor timing. I was spending a ton of time at work, fitting in visits to the kids, reviewing records and going to court all at the same time and while trying to deal with my own family and lack of electricity. Not the most promising start.

There are three kids 7, 3, and 15 months and they are all wondering what the devil just happened to them. They were removed from their house at 1:30 in the morning, taken to a doctor, asked a blooming million questions all from people they don't know and eventually placed in a foster home with more people they don't know. The mere thought of going through that makes me stressed out and I'm a grown-up. Imagine what it did to them.

The first time I met the kids, the oldest one looked at me screamed and ran away, the middle one just smiled at me no matter what I did, and the little one who should be in the middle of stranger anxiety marched up to me immediately and demanded that I pick him up and hold him. No normal behaviors from any of them. Great...

Now they are all very,very fond of me. The oldest told me, "I didn't know you were so much fun" and he also thinks that I should be a ballerina for halloween (HA!). When it was time for me to leave they wanted to know if I was going to go see my other kids and were confused and then very pleased when I explained they are the only kids that I check on and make sure are safe. They all gave me big hugs, but then got sad when it was time for me to leave, which was pretty hard.

The kids are by far the easiest part of this to deal with. The caseworker doesn't really do anything unless I nag her half to death, after I finally track her down that is. It's no wonder that kids in the system don't do well. The kids couldn't go to the doctor, get medicines they were suppose to have on a regular basis, have food, diapers, or clothes until I drove her nuts and she finally did what I wanted in hopes that I would go away.

So, it's emotionally taxing but I'm still making three kids, whose lives have been pretty crappy to date, a little better off.

Fremont!

I had to drive to the Fremont area (close enough to Toledo to warrant a shout out to loyal reader, Chris' Mom!) today to conduct a vendor audit for a used oil transporter and transfer facility. This time I snagged a Toyota Prius from the rental company. I know that this is not exciting to some of you, especially those who own one (Katy), but considering I've spent 5 minutes in any kind of hybrid vehicle and have never driven one, it was pretty exciting for me!

It was exciting for about 10 minutes.....

First, this car is just one great big blind spot. Thankfully the mirrors are located in a way that you can see behind you because looking over your shoulder will get you nothing. The rear window has a solid piece of car going right across the middle which annoyed me to no end. The windshield is unobstructed, but it's weird how they've set up the control panel and it made me have a bit of a weird optical illusion thing going on, which I eventually adjusted to.

Second, they've tried to gizmo the vehicle to no end. There's a little computer thing that displays your gas usage, mileage and how much electricity you've generated. Kinda neat but distracting for awhile. It was also the thing that controlled the radio and temperature. When I wanted to change radio stations the blasted thing was not withing comfortable reaching length. Could be a short person problem, not necessarily the car's fault.

Third, it drives weird. Fortunately, the car tells you when it is on because you wouldn't know it otherwise. It's all silent and absent of vibrations. This also happens at stop lights which I found to be really distressing. I found that if you turned the radio up loud enough, the car would vibrate and I wouldn't notice the lack of engine vibration :) The car feels really heavy. It actually handled pretty well, but I was always surprised when it did just because it felt like a tank.

The breaks are also strange. They feel all grindy and if that was going on in my car, I would think I needed new breaks. I'm assuming it has to do with the electricity generating mechanisms.

But by far the most annoying thing was the shifting between electric and gas. There was a noticeable hesitation at times when trying to accelerate and the car was trying to shift over to gas. This panicked me once when trying to punch it to beat a car at an intersection. It was also a bit distressing to take your foot off to coast a little when driving and then re-applying the gas. If it was a long enough time period it would switch over to electric and then back to gas and it would feel like the car was shifting. It gave me the impression that the transmission was going bad every time it happened, then I would remember what the deal was.

I also didn't enjoy the idea of driving around with NiMH batteries in the rear end. While Toyota says it's just about impossible to release the battery electrolites, I know that is inacurrate. While working for the EPA our emergency response guys where involved in two accidents where the batteries did leak everywhere and created quite a problem for the firemen, medics and the environmental folks. Toyota even has an Emergency Response guide discussing how to handle the situation.

I didn't really like this car, but apparently I averaged 51.9 mpg and went almost 400 miles on 6 gallons of gas. After I realized that, I liked it a bit better.

Princess

So, I'm going to venture into the realm of Beth's blog, but hey she hasn't posted in forever anyway......

Max is frequently some sort of animal. He has been a seahorse, baby chick, deer, dolphin, turtle, fish, horse, giraffe, and a bloomin' million others that I can't remember. Only once has he been an inanimate object, a hotdog and we had to give him hugs by pretending to wrap him up in a bun. Right now, he is a donkey. He just informed Beth that donkeys sleep in caves when she tucked him in for the night. It amuses me.

Today he has been referring to Mia as "Princess". Do you want to play, Princess? Do you want more to eat, Princess? Specifically, she's only our Princess and nobody else's. Beth put a little pink tiara on her that one of her cousins had given Mia and the image was complete. Mia is quite pleased with the situation, and even demanded the tiara back when I made the mistake of taking it off.

The other day Beth was calling Wilson "Chubby Bubby" in a very endearing sort of way. Max responded, "That's not funny, and I'm not laughing."

At least he has entertainment value.

Schwinn!

So, Beth's parents are in town all weekend. They came down yesterday to enjoy the Grandparents' Day festivities at Max's school and have an OSU game today. Since they are staying here in Columbus, they very kindly volunteered to watch the kids while we went to a movie. We chose to see Burn After Reading, a film brought to us by the Coen brothers.

I haven't laughed at a movie that hard in a very long time. It's described as a dark spy comedy, and dark it is. I would laugh and then think, "I shouldn't be laughing at that." But darn it's funny.
John Malkovich started off not really acting very well, but got into stride pretty quickly and gave an enjoyable performance as a CIA analyst turned aspiring writer. Brad Pitt, while starting to look kinda old, and who wouldn't with that many young kids at home, gave a fabulously campy performance as a gym personal trainer. I've been quoting bits from his role all last night and today! George Clooney, a sex craved federal employee, is a hoot in a strange, perverted sort of way. His role reminded me of the part he played in O Brother, Where Art Thou. That goofy, "My hair!" thing he had going shows through here, although like I said with a perverted twist. Tilda Swinton is a perfectly bitchy pediatrician who threatens to take out one of her young patients. Frances McDormand, who works in the gym with Brad, is just cooky and obsessed with re-inventing herself by plastic surgery. One of my favorite characters was just a bit character played by J.K. Simmons as the bumbling CIA superior just trying to make sense of all the craziness.

If you're into dark, high level, comedies and not easily offended by sex stuff, go see this movie!

Should I go there?

Well, I'll try and be brief compared to the last post talking politics. I did watch a bunch of the vice presidential debates and was disappointed that it wasn't more entertaining. I was glad to see that Palin was able to hold her own when speaking. Before a bunch of you jump on me, understand I was not commenting on or supporting her views, just how she handled herself. I disagree with her on many things, but as a woman I do want to see her do well. I'm tired of all women at this level being torn apart for stupid things like what clothes they are wearing and how emotional they are, which is why I'm glad that Hillary is refusing to attack Palin. I do think that the dems could learn a thing or two from how Palin talks, plainly and like everyone else. There might not be much substance to what she's saying, but people I've talked to really like her and I'm guessing it has to do with the "Joe Smoe" thing she has going. It's okay to talk like a highly educated person, but when you're trying to get a country full of not highly educated people to like you, maybe you shouldn't talk like a lawyer all the time.

Overall, I didn't learn much from or even have a reaction to just about anything either of them said. I will say that I got pretty teed off when Biden announced that there should be a plan for restructuring the interest rates and even the principle owed on mortgages for folks going bankrupt. Interest rates make sense even if I don't necessarily like it. Nobody is going to benefit if we have more houses going into foreclosure. But negotiating the principle just doesn't seem right. Beth and I work hard and can't do everything that we want to do because we have an obligation to pay for our mortgage, utilities, food, etc. and nobody is going to reduce the amount we owe on our house because we've done the responsible thing. Angry making.

I have sucsessfully avoided all of the presidential debates. I almost saw the one last night, but Beth saw what was coming on and yelled, "Oh, Crap" and changed the station lightening fast. It amused me to no end.

One more interesting tid bit. At work we have an internal website that has a poll question every week for us to vote on. Here's this week's question: Given that the vice president is a heartbeat away from becoming president, which presidential running mate do you prefer. And the results: Sarah Palin 54.89%, Joe Biden 28.34%, No Preference 2.80% and Neither 13.98%

Keep in mind that the results aren't statistically valid, anybody can vote although we are restricted to only one vote by our log in ID, and what type of folks are voting isn't necessarily representative. My first reaction was, well it's that whole not highly educated workforce thing showing through. But that doesn't really work out. Our linemen, meter readers, technicians all the folks who mostly have a high school education do not have their own computer assigned to them or have really easy access to one. I would imagine that it is mostly our engineers and folks like me, the ones with a computer and at least a college education, that are voting in these things. I wonder how much higher the Palin numbers would be if all our grunt folks could vote. Something to think about.

In case you're wondering, I voted neither......

Work stuff version 2

More SPCC updates, but no alarms or damaged vehicles to report. Today I was running around Perry county. It is very pretty in that area, especially with the leaves changing colors. But it is very rural and I have no idea how I found the stations that I was trying to find. Many of the roads aren't labeled and are just tricky to navigate in general.

At one point I found myself on a gravel road and startled an Amish boy and girl who were out playing with a knotted rope. I don't think they were used to seeing too many vehicles. Then I confused them even more by waiving at them, they had no idea how to respond to that.

Then I found an old wooden, covered, one lane bridge that I had to cross. I was very annoyed that I forgot the camera today because it was pretty cute.

I got to drive around in the Wayne National Forest which was very pretty. Discovered that most of Perry county does not have cell phone coverage, which presented a problem for me when I needed to enter the stations.

Stopped in Shawnee Ohio, which had a sign up that it was on the national historic places registry. The little town was all done up like the wild west, but it was a dead ghost town as far as I could tell.

I also discovered that the New Straitsville Moonshine Festival will be occuring in the next couple of weeks. You know, if you're looking for something to do that is....

It was a fun day.