I am headed home today from a long trip. We had long days every day on this cutover, but it was still a great time. I got to sit with the person running the cutover and he was answering some question and I was really getting into it. I got to see several people who I have worked with on different occasions – always good!
We were in Richmond Virginia and even if it was a bit cold it was so pretty here with the leaves changing colors. Ariel, the person who I was with, took me all over looking at stuff which was so great. We even had some time to catch a movie.
I really hope I will be able to spend more time in the field next year like we did this one. It was satisfying to be able to help people with real work rather than just making up fake stuff to show. I like to leave people feeling a little bit better about the tool and I think that I succeeded on this trip.
I can not wait to get back to Dad and the puppies. I hope they haven’t forgotten me 😉 I will be so happy to get back to work!
Here are some pics.
Chicken in front of the BBQ place we ate.LEGO ART just schooled the new truck on how to park :)Burger joint sign looks like the Las Vegas sign :)The Markel Building – this is an office building.This is an old Lucky Strike building where you can see the man crawling out of the roof.Same Lucky Strike building but these are apartments.Train station – I think it is going to be Amtrak.This is the original Seaboard train station.This is called a double stop :)Such pretty colors.This is the same train station just another view.I thought this was funny – ladies and gentleman’s club.Looking north at Lakeside. I spent most of my time here.
Looking south from Lakeside – I was in this trailer on the right all of the cutover.
Alright at first I was like, hey we haven’t had BLTs in forever, lets do that. Now after the third one in 4 days – I am BLTed out!!
Today was such a nice day weather wise I just can’t stand it. We even walked to the lunch place instead of just going downstairs.
I am catching up on some YouTube stuff. Oh and listening to the dogs bark…
Carlos and I built the new table yesterday but we could not finish 100%. Tomorrow a friend and I are going to see some tabletops to switch out the board with. I am very happy with it besides not having the top I really want
I had such a great idea for blogging and I honestly can not remember what I was thinking about Oh well, it happens to the best of us!
I have been taking some Claritin because my nose is snotty, but it dries my mouth out so bad that I am gonna have to stop. Now to find an alternative to that to help keep me clear
I REMEMBER I REMEMBER
Next week or rather next weekend I am flying to Richmond, VA! I am glad to get another little trip in and it should be very very nice out. And I don’t have to drive. I love when I don’t have to drive and get picked up and toted everywhere
OK, I feel like I am rambling now so I am gonna go to bed
I know, I am blogging 2 days in a row!!! Today is laundry day, but I am not going to do just laundry today I am going to get a table built for the business!! We need something other than the dining room table to work at so we can leave some stuff out. I am putting wheels on it so that I can just shove it in my room when we are not using it.
Last nights BLT was good, but not as awesome as it was the other day. I had 4 squares on there and I think I should have just stuck to the 2. Today I was supposed to make them for Samantha, but I don’t know for sure yet.
We are waiting on my sister to arrive before we go to the Home Depot – someone has to watch the puppies. And it just started raining hard. Might just be able to get the legs and not the top. BOOOOOO!!
The puppies were very helpful this morning in building the chairs – I am unsure if I could have finished it without them
Well, as usual I will get back to this if something good happens!!
Well, here we are again, so many days from the last blog. I am currently sitting at the table, waiting on my brothers to get here to help me figure out what the heck is wrong with my new printer! Something that should have been removed has been left on something and I feel like I have taken it apart – several times.
I took the drone downtown last night and it is pretty awesome! First time I flew it by myself from takeoff to landing. Very cool and can not wait to get some more time with it.
I have been making some good progress on the business side of things. Investing in it myself and trying to stay productive. The down side is basically working or thinking about work a lot now a days. But that is sorta normal for me I suppose, but the difference is for me and not for another person who doesn’t appreciate it as much
It is such a nice day today, the weather is nice and cool and the sun is bright! I am sure that it will heat up nicely later, but now is pretty great.
Alright, I don’t wanna go too crazy and blog a lot so I am gonna cut this short and will add another one if something cool happens
HA HA, did everyone see what I did there?! Today we were at Hamlet Yard and finished pretty quick so I got to see up close them “humping” the cars. I was talking to one of the people who control the locomotives remotely, he was so nice, and was able to give me some good info. It’s good info for me, but I promise you would not be entertained – ha!
I am now in Rocky Mount, North Carolina and sitting on my bed waiting to go to dinner. There is this little gas freak out going on here and there are several places that don’t have gas. This is just crazy, people are freaking out for no real reason and the gas stations are being greedy and raising the prices illegally – that burns me up! One station says that they will only be getting premium for the next 3 days – um, premium is the least used – so how is it you are getting two deliveries of that when you wouldn’t normally?? Maybe you are putting regular in the premium tank (probably already do that crap)…
OK, gotta move on from that cause it just fires me up!
I know that people probably don’t want to hear about this, but to me it is something that I would rather have had some idea about before I had to experience it.
I realized today that I need to turn off my mom’s cell phone. It doesn’t cost that much and it isn’t even turned on right now, but for some reason I don’t want to. It doesn’t even have her voice on the greeting. I just am not wanting someone else to have that number maybe.
I had a good conversation with my coworkers yesterday at dinner and I mentioned that I have my mother’s ring and it makes me think of her even though she didn’t have it very long. About 6 months in fact. And I also had this urge to buy something with her birthstone – she never wore her birth stones, but it is what it is. My coworker had told me that she has her grandmother’s rings, she pulled them out right there. It was very nice to see someone else had felt the exact same way for someone.
Just got back from dinner, going to play my little game and go to bed
A depot we were at in Dillon, SCThe theatre in Dillon.From the depot, maybe was a bank.A car going down the hump.
I am sitting in my hotel room after driving to Santee, South Carolina today and I am trying to get my motivation back to blog everyday. Things have been hard and I feel numb a lot of the time, but I can’t spend this entire year in a haze.
I don’t know when it is really going to hit me that my mother is gone. Everyone keeps telling me that everyone deals with this differently and whatever it is that I am doing isn’t “wrong”. I think that is good for me to hear, but I am still worried that it will all come crashing down and I won’t really be able to handle it. My doctor said it isn’t going to be as bad as I imagine. The fear of how hard it is going to be is worse then it is going to be.
When we got here, before we even checked in we had dinner at Cracker Barrel! We both had pancakes I rode up here with one of my coworkers if anyone is curious about the “we” – I am not that crazy
There is so much going on right now that I am feeling a bit overwhelmed, but my brothers are really stepping up. Anyway, enough about that.
I am almost done with my latest book, well it shows 44%, but they count all the reference pages as part of that percentage – which is DUMB Kindle – STOP! It is another book about a building, The Chelsea Hotel. Very interesting stuff happens in buildings that people live in…
Alright, I am going to try to get some sleep early tonight so I am gonna stop this now. Goodnight!
Oh my goodness, today Carlos worked on cleaning out the freezer. My mom had it so full, but most of it was expired. Last night he did the pantry, I think he finished with it, but I am not 100%. The boys have been very good about this, so amazingly helpful. I can’t seem to participate, I don’t know what it is. I just have no motivation to deal with it.
Tomorrow we are supposed to go to the bank and try to do some re-arranging with that stuff. Just so much to do.
I swept out my car today and it looks much better. Nickel had jumped in there after getting home in the rain so really it was muddy.
I was able to sleep a little better last night, but really slept best from like 08:00 to 10:00.
I was thinking about going to look for a truck yesterday, but I am going to try to stick with my original idea of paying stuff off first.
I just finished paying my rides for their mileage last month. Ugh, just kept putting it off for no reason really.
Well we are trying to get food done so I am going to close this out.
Right now I am sitting in a hotel room in Anderson Indiana. I have my Panda Express dinner to my right and I am done with work for the day. This week I have been in Indianapolis giving a training class. I wasn’t going to go, but I kept thinking to myself what am I going to do at home except be constantly reminded that my mom isn’t there.
Tuesday night when I got in it was really late so I went to the hotel restaurant and got a burger and fries. The hotel has wonderful steak fries and their burger isn’t bad. Wednesday was the first day of a two day review session for the more advanced users. We covered a good amount of material so I was on schedule and things were going pretty smooth. When it was done I went to the bar to see some of the guys and we decided to go out to eat at a place called the Library. I ate there in January with Brad and that is where I was playing in the snow
Today was a little less smooth, the program went down and some of the stuff I wanted to do just didn’t work perfect. Everyone was great though, no one was too bothered by it except me. After the class was over it was time to drive over to Anderson for tomorrow’s meetings. My flight is at 17:00 out of Indy so I have to finish up here a little early. That was like the best flight to get home before midnight.
I have been feeling OK, being at work is a good distraction. I have been reading a lot and that is also good, although I will find my self almost daydreaming while I read and have to go back a page or two to read again I am hoping to get into bed early tonight, I won’t go to sleep early, but might get a good bit of reading done.
It was raining the whole way here which bummed me out because there is an amazing building down town – or where ever I was Let me see if I can find out what it was. Yep, it was the Indiana War Memorial. I will attach a pic from the internet, I didn’t take it.
Next week I am going to Atlanta and I am debating on driving or flying. I kinda want to drive, but I don’t really know why except that I can leave when I am done and will probably get there faster and get home faster.
Alright, I am going to wrap it up so I can finish eating and get to reading
Today we started to clean some of the stuff around the house. My mother was a bit of a “stuff saver”, so there is a lot of things around. To be very honest, at this point I just need to move the things that make me think she will be home any second out of sight.
I do find myself just pacing around the house. Paul and dad went to the store and we had the TV off and it was so quiet in the house. It is NEVER quiet in the house, mom couldn’t stand it!
I moved Samantha’s car so that I could move my car and somehow I managed to lock her keys in her car and the spare are in the glove box… I have no idea how I did it, but it happened. Now we are waiting for someone to come get them out.
The dogs just ate so they are going a little crazy. We tired them out pretty good earlier. I try to take it easy for a while after they eat, but Nickel usually doesn’t let me.
Just had to pull some weeds to be able to move my car closer to the house. Them weeds are horrible! I think we are going to kill everything and use potted plants in there so that we can easily keep the weeds out. Like fill it with stone or something.
I have always said that I really messed up on our living room, in that I didn’t give it enough space or plan how it was going to be orientated. Needless to say that means there isn’t much room for a sofa and we definitely can’t fit a sofa and love-seat. The problem with this is that there are so many of us and we don’t have the space for people to sit. Maybe we can come up with something later. Really this is no big deal right now.
Why is it that late at night is when I start feeling the pain? Why is it when no one is around is when I want a hug and when people are around I don’t? This was not the way it was supposed to happen with mom. She was supposed to give us a warning that she was leaving. I can’t understand it all.
This situation with my mom still seems unreal. I feel like it must be a dream. It doesn’t feel right.
I had decided that I was not going to see her in the hospice room and talking to my friends they all seemed to understand, but then I just kept seeing her the way she was here at I didn’t think that I would have wanted that to be my last memory of her.
I went to see her tonight. Hospice is such a great organization and I am happy that they are there, but I am starting to think that it was a mistake. It is just so heartbreaking seeing someone you love so much just lay there waiting to pass. She didn’t look like herself, but I held her hand and said again that I loved her.
I am having a harder time with this than I thought. Seeing others in the family having a hard time is painful for me too.
I have been traveling so much lately and was supposed to be gone this week. I knew I shouldn’t go and I am just so so so thankful that my coworkers understood and I felt like I could stay. I can’t imagine how it would have been if I was away.
I just am unable to describe or comprehend how I feel. I just don’t know.