Shutdown By The Lou!!!!

Timing is everything right? Well I thought it kind of funny to come back in to work for a two unit shutdown. Here is a pic of the two Units as seen at night! The shutdowns went well, and considering I had not been at work for over a month, I did real well! I was surprised at how quick I was able to operate all this heavy equipment, I guess working out has indeed improved my upper body strength just enough, and somehow I really like the fact that I am not sore from all this. Normally just shutting down one of these Units can be very strenous, and somehow shutting down both an hour apart last night was a breeze. The only downer (although being busy the whole 12 hour shift made the night go quick) was that I had no time to wash my motorcycle. My poor bike is so dirty from sitting the whole vacation, it was so filthy that I had to dust off the seat!

Fixing My Finances!!!!!

I got rid of one of my credit cards today! It felt really good, I transferred a little of my balance over to one of my other cards for a low apr, and the remainder I will pay with a loan from my retirement account! It was really simple, I took care of everything right here on my laptop!!!!

Still On Vacation!!!!

I check my work e-mail every now and then, just to check up on things. I am still on vacation, and it has been great! I reformatted my Hard Drive cause I figured I should, my laptop had been running like crap. We had some more friends over for dinner last night and it went well. I did some guy stuff around the house today, geeked out on my computer! I think I could get used to this vacation thing!

More Vacation'y Type Stuff!

Today we went to Universal Studios...for free! A thanks goes out to my GF's Dad who gave us his free tickets, employee perc's for working for them!!! I had as much fun as one could expect, since I am not the biggest fan of this kind of theme park. I had two very knowledgeable tour guides though (my girlfriend and her friend who both used to work there), this made the day go by smoothly! I can actually say I had fun, and the only thing that sucked the entire day was when one of the those tour trams broke down right in front of us. Unfortunately it took what seemed like forever to get it going, plus making the situation worse it broke down uphill! Thus we came to a complete stop up this said hill, and apparently these tram things don't have much torque to handle a full load up a steep hill from a dead stop!!!! So going up this hill was an advanture in itself!!!!!

Secondhand Smoke Kills!!!!

I went to Raging Waters on Friday to catch some sun and just relax. It was really cool, the only downer was that we had to park in the overflow parking lot and get shuttled in! The rides were good and the lines were tolerable! Oh and did I mention that the overflow parking is on the mountain. So, while we were waiting for one of the rides we noticed what appeared to be a brush fire coming our way, I was thinking evacuation! But being that the waterpark is right next to a reservoir, this made it real easy for the the water dropping helicopters to do their thing. At the end of the day on our way back to the car we noticed that our car had come really close to being burnt to the ground, in fact it was so close that it was covered in ash, I am sure that some of ashes were hot ambers at one point, it even got inside the car since I leave the windows cracked open on sunny days. But anyways my whole point here is that the fire probably started by someone who flicked their lit cigarrete out of their car, this was way too close for my liking. I think the fire came within 100' of leaving us stranded with no car!!! Darn smokers!

Range Time!

So I finally got to break out my handguns after a year or so of them just collecting dust! I took my girlfriend, a friend, and her brother and sister to a local range! Unfortunately I am still not affiliated with any particular club so I had to pay, but I will take care of that soon! Nobody had ever handled a gun before, except for me of course, so I had to give everyone my version of Gun Safety-101 here at the house. It was also kind of helpful that the range rules for our local shooting range were online. At the end of the day I was really pleased and felt real proud that everyone did real well, I even had people come ask what we were shooting! Nobody got hurt (small cuts, or bruises, my main concern), everyone had fun, plus I think they learned a little bit too. I think they can now handle any semi-automatic pistol out there! Today's guns consisted of: (My Glock .45, my Kimber 1911 (my favorite), the range's 9mm Berreta, and some dude's rifle???)!!!! I had my girlfriend try a rifle from some guy that was impressed that I had the ladies shooting .45 caliber guns, I got him some ammo in appreciation of his lending his rifle!

Things I found really helpful were both this site that shows local gun ranges, and the range's website itself!

Bad Ted, Bad Ted!

Apparently I wasn't the only bad Ted, every operator tasked with doing some silly equipment reliability thing and everyone blew it off. I guess we are all tired of them always finding something more for operators to do. Too bad I am on vacation!

In Town!!!!

Sean was in town and it was pretty cool seeing how much happier he looks now that he is living a Navy-free life. I feel a little bad that I couldn't spend that much time with him and his girlfriend since I worked all weekend, and just a couple of days later I actually have some time off, in fact I am on vacation!!!! We actually had some family here for the weekend that I couldn't hang out with either cause of work, they went to Disneyland and I went to a shutdown!!! But that is how it works out being an operator and all, and so far I really like my job! lt was still awesome meeting up with Sean, even though if it was only for such a short time...and with Arizona not being so far away it won't be the last. By far the coolest part this past weekend was to see my girlfriend talking about photography with Sean, none of her friends are cool like that so she can't geek out with them...so I felt kind of proud to show off that I have way cooler friends than she does!

Not that any of her friends read my blog....but just in case they do, I think you guys are cool too, I was just kidding with that whole nonsense a couple sentences ago!!!!!!! In fact one of her friends is the one who seems to be motivating us to go to the gym! So yeah, there you have it, you guys are cool too!