Piss off

Still at sea for another week.  Working my fucking ass off on hour 14.  Wearing noise-cancellation headphones with hard fucking rock turned up WAY TOO LOUD.  Periodically singing out like a dying cow, or randomly yelling, "FUCK,FUCK,FUCK!" while pounding on the desk.  Throwing things and spilling coffee all over everything as I slop down the 20-25 mugs of mud I'm pounding every single day, now.  People avoid me and I am getting weird looks.  Fuck em.  My best buddy has just reminded me I have less than 150 hours to complete my work and chopper off this rusty old piece of shit. My goal is to sleep at least 20 of those.   I've got my flights and seats reserved, flying through O'Hare (ORD), which chaps my ass like no other airport in the civilized world. Except of course Charles De Fucking Gaul (CFDG), but France is populated by effeminate cowards and they can kiss my redneck Yankee ass.  OK, that's not strictly true, but I'm fucking angry and it's easy to hate the French, so sue me. 

Tonight, I was filling out a form online and could not remember the house number of my address.  I tried 3 or 4 numbers but nothing looked right. I know it used to be number 6 before the 911 bullshit, but other than that I was drawing a blank.  Had to call PW.  Felt like an ass.  Not 30 seconds after I hung up, I realized I didn't know which street I live on.  Had to call her back.  She took it well, but I'm wondering what the fuck is wrong with me.   Ah, who cares as long as I can still wipe my own ass, right?

Last night, in a sort of measure of defiance, I did not go to sleep after my 20 hour shift.  Yeah, kind of stupid, but I took a sauna and then watched "The Boat That Rocked".  Awesomeness, in its most pure and pleasurable form, is just dripping from this movie like honey from the hive of heaven.  Sound track like rocket fuel for the soul and by God, fuck the British government, those fucking tossers!  Watched the movie, watched all the credits, right to the bitter end and then watched all 50 minutes of deleted scenes and was not disappointed.  I LOVED the deleted scene of Rhys Ifans in the South American cantina, which damn near got me dancing in my cabin, alone.   Talking to some of the Brits who grew up in those times, listening to the North Sea pirate radio stations was an added extra treat this morning, almost making walking around with my eyes glued shut by some sort of crusty shit, bearable.   Anyway, I had to use a region-cracker, so I know I watched the European, full-monty version.  If the castrated, American cut falls short, don't blame me, blame the lame dicks in Hollywood, or take a hike with the fucking French.  Later.

The latest, greatest

Yeah, its been a while. To be honest, I've had too much on my mind to write and frankly, I wasn't in the best of moods, either.

I cannot say either condition has drastically improved, but nonetheless, here I am, typing a quick, Gmail update to the old blog.  Yep.

I'm at sea.  Busy does not do justice to my current workload.  Sick does not do justice to the state of my intestinal tract.  Trouble does not do justice to the state of my current project and my own personal position.  Dead in the water does does, however, do perfect justice to the state of my ship a little over an hour ago and fucked works nicely for one of my engines.  It may be that I'll be very soon, turning North and heading for an as yet, undecided port, for what could very well be several weeks.  It has not, by any stretch of the imagination, been a good day.  I think that sums up my health and work.  Personal life?  I'm at sea and don't get to have one.  That's about it folks.

back in the saddle

So, I'm hard at work, back in the GoM.  Been here since Thursday.  The weather has been mild, but the fog is really bad today.  The adjacent ships in the fleet have disappeared, even the one closest to us at 1200 meters off our starboard beam.  Still fog in the foc'sle beats a hurricane in the forecast any day.  Hey!  That sounds pretty good and I just made it up on the spot.

Last night I started my workouts, in earnest.  I do 7.7 miles in an hour on the elliptical machine, every single night.  During my last break I discovered that snowshoeing and the elliptical machine fell like the same thing-same movement and rhythm.  I can close my eyes and picture my 7.7 mile snowshoe while working out:)    I'm determined to loose at least 15 pounds this trip.  I am not coming home to PW still looking like Santa, in March:(

This morning, I woke to find a piece of paper from one of the girls who works for me, laying on my desk.  It was a calender of extremely old and fat Asian ladies in lingerie.  No amount of eye bleach will fix me and I will be plotting my revenge, slowly and carefully, over the coming weeks, but in the end I may just decide to kill her.

Finally, I would like to thank my daughter for telling my boss I never work, on Facebook.  I'm sure LL will appreciate that tidbit after we recently discussed how one should never add their boss.  I can understand how some animals eat their young.

My next album

I'm a bit bored, waiting on the woodstove to heat up after I let burn to low and saw that Jay did this. Though what the hell. The method:

1. Go to the "Random Article" link on Wikipedia. Write down the title of the article. This is the name of your band.

2. Go to “Random Quotations” and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture will be your album cover.


Hmmm, it all seems to work. I mean it looks like an album. One I would pass on, but an album, nonetheless. Yeah, I'm bored. Woodstove is hot, so I'm heading out to snowshoe for an hour or so.

State of the Union

Obama's speech is technically not a "State of the Union" address, just addressing a joint session of Congress. I just watched most of it in bits and bobs. As much as I could take in one sitting, anyway.

A few "fun" facts about State of the Union Addresses from Robert Schlesinger at USNEWS.COM:

"...Actually, the speech was not always called the "State of the Union" and, for that matter, was not always a speech. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution says that the president "shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

... Thomas Jefferson, the third president, started a long tradition of presidents sending their reports up in written form. The next president who gave the annual report (not yet the "State of the Union," mind you) in person as a speech was Woodrow Wilson in December 1913.

...Franklin Roosevelt started the modern tradition by delivering his first report to Congress, in 1934, as a speech. It was the first such address titled the "State of the Union." It wasn't until 1947, however, that the name came into general usage.

...Coolidge's 1923 address was the first broadcast over the radio; Harry Truman's 1947 State of the Union was the first broadcast on television; George W. Bush's 2002 speech was the first webcast from the House's website.

...The longest State of the Union (or whatever we call it) by words: Jimmy Carter's 1981 address—which was also the last such written message—was an astounding 33,667 words.

...The shortest such speech in terms of words was the first: Washington's 1790 report to Congress, which he delivered to a joint session in New York City, was a mere 1,089 words. The picture of brevity."

This year?

I should have burned a $20 on the porch, pointed my finger at picture of Bush, told myself everything is going to be alright because Obama is the second coming while shoving a baseball bat up my ass and beating off. At least I would've got the happy ending AND would've ended a half hour earlier.

Barrow

Just found out I've been to the site of the fastest gust of wind ever recorded.  Flown in and out of the island many times.  It's kind of an interesting place, actually.  At first blush, it doesn't look like much, but it has a history and some unique wildlife and now, some big plans in store for what WAS some sort of wildlife refuge.  And yeah, it's got these big, termite hills.  It's off the west coast of Australia and was my jumping-off point for a year, while shooting off WA.  I used to fly a Charter jet from Perth to the Island, where I'd hop a chopper to my ship.

Quote this

"Political Correctness is about turning a blind eye to painful reality because your comfortable feelings are more important to you than saving lives and providing quality of life to people who work their ass off to be productive and are a benefit to this great American Dream."  -Ted Nugent

Bread

So my wife comes home with two loaves of bread given to her by a friend.  One is holy and one is hemp. 

Ezekiel 4:9 bread has all the same ingredients described in the bible.  It says so and I believe it.

Healthy Hemp bread has a ton of seeds and it says it doesn't get you high.  No shit.

home for the post-holidays

Been home a week.  Still tired.  Still haven't quite cleared the last six weeks of snow from the drive, but damn close. 

Lost the Internet.  It took Charter 4 days, 6 trucks and 6 servicemen.  They left saying they changed the signal to this area and would change it back until they figured out what went wrong.  Finally, a day later, it came back.  I wonder how long it will last.

Just about the only other thing going on currently, is the thought that I might clean up my workshop tomorrow.  Yeah, polar opposite of life on the boat.