time moves slowly

Still in Connecticut, still working at a snails pace. Or more appropriately, a unionized pace. Here for at least another 2 weeks. No work today, though I'm onsite. Some high rad water needs to be pumped out of a nearby excavation and we're on hold since 7AM waiting for unionized laborers to do the work. 2:15PM and here we sit. Our test is a minimum 3 hour test, and we can't work past 4:30PM, never mind the mid-afternoon break, so no chance of even starting work now. Sweet!

The photo is from a couple weeks ago. They've been using an engineered (well-graded) fill onsite that has a high clay content. Unfortunately, it doesn't drain very well and our drill site was the low spot onsite. The day we were to get the drill rig onsite, a 4WD fork lift on steroids got stuck right next to our proposed drill site (note that the fork lift is carrying nearly a semi-trailer sized cargo box that probably weighs 80,000lbs). And they were wanting us to drive the drill rig through that pond!! There hasn't been too much rain lately, but over the past few days we've pumped many many thousands of gallons as part of the testing were doing, so the puddle/lake is staying about the same. The neat thing about this site is the size of everything. The rebar in the foreground is 2" diameter (compared to 0.5" rebar you see on all other constuctions sites). This rebar is from the reactor dome that was demolished a handful of months back.

This past weekend Mel & I did a road trip to the New Hampshire / Massachusetts coast (Salisbury and Hampton) and then spent Sunday afternoon in Boston. Though drizzly all weeked, was still very nice. The way it's looking now, I'll have Friday off and Mel & I (and maybe a few of her friends) are going to New York to catch a Broadway show - any suggestions?

I've been getting the trickle of emails from Burning Man folk. Makes me sad that I didn't go, but so is life. And I've been getting good money here and having great weekends, so no complaints. Toni & Ari (to whom I gave the Chariot) sent me a picture of my... ummm... their Chariot. They said they had a great time and loved the chariot, so this is very good. They put up some nice curtains and hung Thai lamps on the LEDs, and it all looks quite good. I barely got the thing built last year and decorations were at a minimum. I was really looking forward to doing the decorations and not focussing on the basics this year, but it's also really neat to see what other people's ideas/implementations were.