Today's music?



My Photographs

You like photos? I love taking them. Click here, if you wanna see some of my work


Is a photo missing on an older entry? Click here to find it at Photogra!



The Other Links

Back Issues

Now

About Me

Notes Are Good!


Andrew's Baby

Favorites and Rings are now here!


The life you save might be mine!



Monday, Oct. 21, 2002 - 8:17 p.m.

No photos today, so�hey, wait�come back! I complain about shoelaces! Really good stuff, I'm tellin' ya!

I am rapidly gobbling up all of my photo storage capabilities, free and paid for both.

I know I need to go back and reduce the size (or just delete) the photos from way back. I could always just load them up on one of the free web photo hosting sites that DOESN�T allow hot links, but that would require far more free time than I have right now.

Might be a job for the first time they send us home to �rest� before a snowstorm arrives, eh?


(Not to sound like that famous misogynist Andy Rooney, but�) I have a question for you:

Round shoelaces? WHY?

It�s bad enough that they get slapped on fashion footwear, but the last two pairs of steel-toed boots I have bought, plus my pair of exercise shoes all have come equipped with round shoelaces.

What do I have against them?

They never stay tied! Round laces just don�t hold a knot, which is annoying at the least, and downright dangerous when you are running on a treadmill.

Which is what happened to me twice this evening. I had to pull the emergency stop lest I would get tangled in the belt by my errant lace, which was flopping down near the front of said belt with every stride I took.

No more round laces for me.

Next pair of exercise shoes will have good-old flat laces��


Only an old person would waste time complaining about shoelaces, right?

Make that a really old person.


Lease felt good enough to go to work today. She should have stayed home.

I told her that, but she threw herself together and drug her sick body to work anyway.

I swear, she works for some odd people. Her coworkers have a sniffle, they call in sick and nothing is said.

Lease could have a gaping wound in her abdomen, and her boss would dump guilt on her until she gave up and came into work anyway.

It used to be that way at the state, too.

This was many years ago. The man who was our field tech back then was a real stickler for attendance. He didn�t hassle you if you took a day every once in a while, but if you took off more than 2 days, he wanted a doctors excuse.

Guys (not me, mind you) would take a day off to paint their house, work in the yard, or play a round of golf. If it was only a day, nothing happened.

But if you had a viral infection (highly contagious, naturally) and needed to rest for 3 days, he expected a little note from your M.D., promising him you were really sick.

A stupid system, if you ask me.

Then if you used more than a handful of days in a year, he would put you on something he called �monitor�. I don�t think it was ever an official state rule. I think he just made it up, and nobody could win a fight against him if they didn�t like it.

If you were on monitor, you had to have a doctor�s excuse if you missed even one day. He always had a man or two on it at any given time.

Two things caused the end of the monitor system:

MOM missed a bunch of time, and he didn�t put her on it.

One employee (who won his job in an affirmative action lawsuit) started missing work constantly (until he ran out of sick time, and then took time of without pay) until he did one of the only fire-able things you can do, and was let go.

After that, I think the tech just gave up. Ever since, your sick time is yours to use as needed.

One other unique thing about our sick time is that we can save up any that we don�t use. If you earn a day per month, and don�t take a sick day all year, you carry over 96 hours into the next year, year after year.

I have been there for going on 21 years, and I have almost 1000 hours unused.

Yes, that would be 125 days of sick time.

It would come in handy if I ever broke a bone or had (hopefully not, btw) a major illness.

But that means I have only saved about half of my sick time over that period.

I don�t know where I am going with this, so I will just���.


My former coworker Chet who was diagnosed with cancers (multiple) a few months back passed away Saturday night. He lived into his late 70�s, and managed 16 years of retirement after he left the state. He was a W.W. II veteran, and never raised his voice much above a whisper.

Since there are only about 7 guys left who worked with him, not many of the guys had memories to share today.

My favorite Chet story? Once, right after I started working for NDDOT, a woman stopped us on the Interstate (where we were patching) and asked him directions to a town several miles away. He couldn�t come up with an easy way to direct her, so he just told her:

�You can�t get there from here.�

I had to turn away so she didn�t see me laughing.

She was so stunned; she just rolled her window up and headed back down the road.

I hope she found someone who helped her get there from here�..

Antique - Futuristic


powered by SignMyGuestbook.com


Have You Read These?

A hot day for a wedding...9:26 p.m. - Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2009

So bad - but so funny, too.10:33 p.m. - Saturday, Jun. 13, 2009

Evil Black Walnut Tree from Hell!- times up!6:41 a.m. - Thursday, Apr. 23, 2009

My next door neighbor was on the Today Show?8:57 p.m. - Tuesday, Mar. 31, 2009

This qualifies as a "oh crap!" moment:9:55 p.m. - Monday, Mar. 30, 2009

Back to top