I think Lionel Ritchie said it best. Oh what a feeling! I just got off what should have been my last regular mid-watch in my old position at Lockheed. I start my new position tomorrow. That’s going to be a bit rough…going back to mostly day working after nearly eight months of working 12 hour mid-watches. Oh, the sacrifices we make… Oh, the footprints on the ceiling!
Kayaking Lake Prince, Suffolk, VA
Today I had my second paddle on Lake Prince and it was as enjoyable as the first. There are a few very nice houses on the lake but not so many as to make it feel too civilized. I saw two Piliated Woodpeckers, a number of Belted Kingfishers, Canadian Geese, Double-breasted Cormorants, 3 or 4 Bald Eagles, one of which sat in a tree and preened himself while I watched and ate my lunch, and numerous Mallard ducks.
The weather was crystal clear but at this time of the year it seems like the sun is always going down so, with the breeze, it was a bit nippy but still comfortable paddling. Lake Prince is definitely a spot I will return to. Unfortunately, I left my cameras at Kim’s, thinking they were still in the car, so I don’t have any new photos of the lake.
The Transition Is Complete
It is done. I have officially, according to my body, moved over to the dark side. Nearly seven months of working midwatches 1800 – 0600 have taken the toll. I now officially sleep during the day, even on my days off, and have to wear suntan lotion when I go out into the light so I don’t waste away like an errant Dracudude.
Ironically, today my promotion takes affect. The position is a day job M-F if you ignore the on call duty required occasionally. Sadly, I am still on the schedule for midwatches until we get some new bodies trained to flesh out the watch schedule. If all goes well, I will be off the watch and into my new position just in time to have to retrain my body to get used to working days instead of nights.
Stay Creepy My Friends
I love this spoof on who I assume is the Dos Equis guy in the commercial.
Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Warner Theater, Washington, DC
My brother-in-law Ed and I saw the Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Warner Theater in Washington, DC, a couple of weeks ago. It was a good 2.75 hours of tunes. Mike Madison and some guys with whom I gather he is trying to form a band opened up. Thanks to Mike they were good, but w/o him they were squat. Susan Tedeschi dominated the vocals when DT and they rest of the crew came out. ST sounds like Bonnie Raitt now more than ever. Mike Madison was relegated to the far right back of the stage behind the brass section, alto sax, trumpet, and trombone (dude also did a good voice solo not unlike Stevie Wonder), with another backup vocalist.
I am listing to Revelator, their newest album, right now and Susan is talking about not wanting to get out of bed. I would hate to be DT and have my soul mate possibly lay down the “I will be your lead singer or else” rap on me. But I surely would not sleep w/ Mike Madison.
It was a very interesting concert w/ two drummers, the brass, three singers, etc. The playlist was mostly based on Susan’s songs including a number of Motown covers that I recognized and knew, but now don’t remember. She did do a song that Joe Cocker does tho I am not sure it is an original Joe Cocker and I am sure I was one of very few people there that recognized it.
Speaking of Mike Madison, Ed and I ran into him on the back side of the Warner as we were going to the parking garage. Nice garage, you could get to the Warner from the same street coming out of the garage but had to go all the way back around the building to get back to your vehicle. So we are around the back side looking one of those tour bus things w/ a trailer on the back, probably band vehicles, when we come around the corner and I see this guy that had to have been Mike.
He was by himself walking toward the bus, no one else was out there, looking at his phone when I saw him and said, “Mike, are you Mike Madison?” He kind of looked at me like I was a nut for a minute. I pointed him out to Ed and by then he was walking away and I was looking for the words I couldn’t say like, “Dude you can sing.” I would have liked to shake his hand or get a picture but it all happened so fast.
Thanks to Ed for driving…especially on the way home in the rain.
Kayaking and Walking, Tidewater, VA, October 2011
I headed off to see my sister Kim and brother-in-law Don on Sunday, 2 October, after working the night shift the previous night and catching few hours of sleep. I got down there in the late afternoon in time for an early dinner before heading off to church. Upon our return to the house we just took it easy. Kim was exhausted because she got no sleep the night before.
On Monday morning, I headed off the MacKay Island National Wildlife Refuge on the border of VA and NC. I never noticed it was there before though I been through it once on a road trip with Kim and Don. It looked like there should be some good paddling, walking and wildlife watching opportunities. Unfortunately, I could not figure out where exactly I should be able to put my kayak in so I ended up taking the 5.5 mile walk around the inland ponds.
I did have some good bird sightings and saw either a nutria, muskrat, or beaver swimming about working on its abode. As for birds, I saw numerous Great Blue herons, American egrets, osprey, Belted kingfishers, Eastern meadowlarks (cool birds) and the occasional what I think were Gadwalls or American Widgeons, an American Bittern, etc. I also saw a couple of smashed snakes on the trail including one that was likely to be an adult water moccasin. All in all it was a nice day.
On the way home, I stopped in at the Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant near Kim’s for a beer. There I had a tasty Loose Cannon Ale and a Reissdorf Kolsch. I also tasted the Aventinus Weiss which was very good. Hopefully they will still have it on tap the next time I stop in. For dinner we went to Cogan’s Pizza, which except for one sub par experience, I have always enjoyed.
Tuesday was a slow day for me. The mid-watches still take their toll. I was finally able to get going in the afternoon and headed off to one of my favorite kayaking spots down Suffolk way, Burnt Mills Reservoir. It was a beautiful paddle but I think I have explored almost the whole reservoir by now. I always like to see what is around the next bend and there are very few more to go around.
Finally, on my way home and back to work on Wednesday night, I put the kayak in at Deep Bottom Park on the James River SE of Richmond. That is another one of my favorites. The river flows straight through the area but also has a huge offshoot loop where the landing is. I went around the loop all the way for the first time and stopped into this huge lagoon to look for birds. Usually I see tons of Great Egrets there but that day I was limited to Great Blues.
I had a passenger the whole time I was on the river. What I gather was grasshopper landed on the prow of my kayak when I put in and stayed there for the whole trip until I landed. First time in a long time I have paddled with a companion…
One Year at My New Job
Last night marked one complete year at my job w/ Lockheed Martin Automated Flight Service Station. I have been working the service desk and network operation/security center…on 12-hour night watches for most of the last six months. I started as a contractor and got signed on full time w/ LM in late April. The schedule and hard work have payed off. I have been in line for a promotion to a systems administrator type position for a few months now.
I look forward to the change and opportunity to get back more heavily into Windows and Linux systems administration since that is more my background than help desk and NOC support. I also will be glad to get back on to a day schedule that will be mostly Mon-Fri with flex time and telecommuting. The down side is that I will have on call duty but that isn’t anything I haven’t dealt with in previous IT jobs.
My superiors seem to have a lot of faith in me and my coworkers respect me. I hope to be able to return those feelings by helping our group to grow with increased training, organization, and communication. Wish me luck!
Life Is a Fist Up the Ass
My new apartment management company (at least the 3d since I have been here for six years) decided they needed to issue new parking passes. This was because, in this advanced computerized day and age, the new company couldn’t import the previous company’s records into their database. And in this advanced age they only issue the permits that you have to hang from your mirror. This is an impediment to my site picture as far as I am concerned. It is even worse on my motorcycle because I really have no secure place to hang it and riding with it hanging from my rear view mirror is just not an option.
Anyhow, to get the permit, I had to provide a copy of my vehicle registration. Well I re-register as required every two years but I don’t know what the hell I do with the registration cards. Oddly, I found the one for my car in my glove compartment but the one for my motorcycle was nowhere to be found. So I thought, “Cool, I have one of the registration cards.”
Well, I left that one in my car and down the line cleaned out my car and added whatever paper products to my recycling and took that to the recycling center. Next thing you know I couldn’t find my car registration. Crunch time…I had to get the stickers by 9/1. So, on the last day of the month, bad time to be at the DMV, I drop in at 1400 or so. Thankfully the line was moving well. I got a bit freaked out when the woman who was setting us up w/ paperwork and such gave me some forms that asked for information I did not have with me. All I wanted to get was reprints of my vehicle registration cards…. So I filled out as much of the paperwork as I could and waited for my number.
When my number came up, I went up to the counter and was pleasantly surprised to find that my request, after I explained what it was, was easily and quickly fulfilled. I paid 2$ each for the reprints and marched right out of that place.
It was not much later that afternoon when I got myself ensconced in a chair in the rental office to get my vehicle parking permits. I handed my paperwork over to the clerk who was inputting my vehicle information when she stopped to ask me if I could have the same license plate for both my car and motorcycle. I said, “No, of course not” and looked at the printouts of the registration only to find that the DMV clerk printed out two copies of my car registration and none of my motorcycle registration. The rental management company, thankfully, and aware of the folly of trying to hang vehicle parking permits from motorcycles, has said that they will not be towing motorcycles.
So where is the fist up the ass? I don’t know but I hope it isn’t near me. I just want to say that the whole process felt like getting one. And then this evening when emptying my grocery bag, the environmentally considerate one, I found my car registration car. Fistulator, eh?
Three Days in Tidewater
I went down to see my sister and my brother-in-law in Suffolk, VA, on my three day break this week. What with my work schedule recently, I haven’t done much on my days off but try to catch up on my sleep so the trip was a nice change. I drove down on Sunday after a few hours of sleep in the morning. That afternoon and evening was just hanging out, lazing in the pool, and chatting. I was good to see Kim and Don who I hadn’t seen since late February or early March. Kim’s friends the Kent’s came over for dinner which was based on some awesome ribs that Kim did in the oven. We even got to break in Don’s new Cornhole boards.
On Monday, my intent was to go down to Virginia Beach (VB) in the morning, have some lunch, and head back to Suffolk to kayak. I hoped to stop in at the Beach Brewing Company to check out their establishment and taste their beer but since they were only open on the weekends that did not pan out. I did get out on the beach for a couple of hours where I read the paper and enjoyed the scenery. Since I haven’t had good experiences lounging and swimming at the beach with much of a drive in front of me I didn’t make it into the water. They don’t have much in the way of changing facilities at VB and I didn’t relish the thought of making the drive back to Suffolk with a bathing suit full of sand.
I did have a tasty Starr Hill Brewery Northern Lights IPA and chicken Caesar salad for lunch at the 11th Street Taphouse Bar and Grill. They had quite the beer selection that made me want to grab a nearby hotel room and just hang out for the rest of the day and night. As it was, I head back west only to encounter traffic slow downs and blockages due to bridge openings and car fires. I was able to get off the highway onto a road I recognized and planned to get on eventually so that worked out okay.
By the time I got back to back to Suffolk, I decided not to kayak and headed toward a local place called Cogan’s Pizza where they have a pretty good beer selection. I missed my turn and ended up at Buffalo Wild Wings which wasn’t a bad thing. There I tasted the Beach Brewery Pale Ale but was not impressed. I did enjoy immensely the O’Connor Brewing Company Great Dismal Black IPA. Black IPA’s are quite the rage in the craft brew community this year. I have had at least four different ones this year and enjoyed them all.
Monday night was relaxing. We did leftover ribs and such and watched a movie that I didn’t make it all the way through. I was still running on a sleep deficit and despite that fact that I should be awake nights because that is the shift I work, I still had to crash. As it was, I woke up early and tossed and turned before finally giving up and getting up.
I did my two crossword puzzles for the day and read a bit of the paper before heading out to kayak on Bennett’s Creek which is just a short drive from Kim’s, and if you read anything I write, you will recall is one of my favorite places to paddle. I put in at the local park and either paddle upstream until I run out of creek or paddle down to the James River and back. The journey was a good as ever with numerous sitings of wildlife including Great Blue Herons, Great Egrets, Green Herons, Belted Kingfishers, Red-winged Blackbirds, Ospreys, and one Muskrat.
Since it was Don’s day off, we got together with Kim for lunch where I finally did make it to Cogan’s Pizza and we enjoyed a tasty Supreme pizza and I had a Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, always a favorite. We had a bad experience there earlier in the year when the service was iffy and the pizza cook seemed to be having a bad day but they were back in good form on Tuesday. Later in the day we caught up with friend’s of Kim and Don, one of whom is a preacher, at the movies to catch “Horrible Bosses.” That was an incredibly raunchy, but very funny, movie, albeit interesting to watch sitting next to a preacher.
We had a quick dinner when we got home which was about 1830. I was tired and called it a night early. I wanted to get up early in the morning to get on the road home w/ a stop en route to paddle.
I stopped at one of my new favorite spots on the James River, Deep Bottom Park, in Henrico County off Route 5. Unfortunately the tide was out and I couldn’t get all the way into this large pond off of the river that I wanted to go into. I have seen hundreds of herons and egrets in there and wanted to see if I could get some pictures.
The birds there are very skittish so I hoped to just float around and minimize the disturbance. That was pretty much a no go since there were huge mud flats exposed due to the low tide. I ended up paddling back past the launch and up a creek I had seen previously but not yet explored. It wasn’t a bad paddle overall but it was hot and my boat was leaking so I wrapped it up sooner than I intended.
Thankfully, I had an easy trip home and got a few things done before I had to go to work. I had a productive and relaxing three days and it was great to see Kim and Don.
Local Craft Brew News
While having a beer at Vintage 51, found that they are now pouring CAT 50 IPA which is brewed at their sister restaurant, Vintage 50. Apparently they had to jump through some hoops with Virginia ABC laws and distributors. It is just ridiculous how hard the ABC makes it for a company to actually sell the beer they brew. They are selling growlers of the CAT 50 for $10 which is very reasonable and a far cry from the $24 or more they have to charge for growlers of their other beers.
Also, while reading the mid-Atlantic Beer News, I saw that Lost Rhino Brewing Company is up and brewing and they are brewing “New River Pale Ale” which was an old favorite from Old Dominion Brewing Company. I was told by the bartender at Vintage 51 that they had a keg they were waiting to tap. I’ll have to pop back out their to check it out! Anyhow, Lost Rhino is purported to be selling kegs and growlers at their location in Ashburn and plans are in the works for a brew pup similar to that of Dominion.