Saturday, March 31, 2007

Chemical Doldrums


This is one loooong day. Last night I had to take a couple of muscle relaxers to deal with my back. It hates to travel and often lets me know just after crew-x. I was a bit loopy near the end of the shift but not as sleepy as I sometimes get on those little, white pills of joy and warm, fuzzy feelings. I tried to watch a movie after folding a bit of crew-x laundry but the movie stunk like dead monkey ass, so I finished a book written about one, three-month cruise on a Trident submarine. It too wasn’t very interesting, but I finished it and went to bed at a reasonable hour.

This morning, I found myself in stupor and eight hours later, I am still walking around like I haven’t slept in 5 days. I am tired, slow and stupid (no comments from the peanut gallery, please). Not a good state of mind when my computer system totally locked up on me ten minutes into the shift. Trying to get the architecture of a complex computer system straight in your head on something like a Quaalude buzz is a study in futility. I could get a picture in my mind after about 5 minutes of concentrating, but there were just no available brain cells left to do anything with it. I could not troubleshoot at all.

So, after a smoke, I resorted to banging on the various servers, routers and nodes. Nothing happened. I then jiggled about 342 connections. Same. Finally, I gave up and made the famous, “Houston, we have a problem” call. Six hours later, we get the dodgy system running again, but have no clue as to what was wrong with it. I hate shit like that.

Dinner was good and my new cooks are pretty fucking awesome. Last night was prime rib with béarnaise, gorgonzola and au ju sauces-take your freaking pick, boys. Tonight was dolphin fish with mango-pineapple-papaya salsa, or turkey with all the trimmings, followed by a whimsical rice crispy treat. These guys are alright.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah the cooks are pretty damn good this hitch. However, to put into perspective, in 10 years at sea I have had 4 good cooks for a total of 5 months onboard. The remaining nine years and 7 months I have eaten warm dogshit.

-you forgot the papaya. The salsa just doesn't work without it;)

-Being back is well, it suks. However, in a few days, I'll get used to it.

Anonymous said...

Here's to awesome cooks! And prime rib! YUM!

Macoosh said...

at least this is one of the times the food is good.

...how the hell did i miss so many posts?!