How I Spent My Summer Vacation, 2013 Edition

As I mentioned last week, I had a week's vacation coming from The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit.  I was actually able to get a week in the summer for the first time in a few years.  And boy did I need it after all of the stuff that's been going on lately.   If you read the blog last week you have a general idea of what happened, and that's all I should say about it.  "Don't discuss specifics of your job" rules aside, I really don't want to talk about it anymore anyway.  So just suffice it to say that I needed a break from the insanity. 

Moving on, I spent the first few rainy days loitering around the house, catching up on laundry and tv shows.  I bought Michele two seasons of Night Court with Harry Anderson and John Laroquette, and spent my first two days off watching it with her. So many gags on that show that wouldn't get past the censors now. That show isn't politically correct enough to be aired in the 21st century, but it was still funny as hell and I enjoyed watching it. Ah, the 80's... those were the days...

Finally, on Wednesday, the sun was out, and so was I.   I cut my grass, under glares of disapproval from my sharp-eyed neighbors, who I often hear under my window in the morning loudly discussing the fact that I don't cut my grass often enough. Of course, we can't all have a landscaper come out once a week to wake up the people who work nights and sleep in in the mornings. Some of us do our own yard work when weather and work schedules allow. 

Anyway, I lost my audience when I brought my Harbor Freight machete out of the garage to trim my bushes. My best buddy back in Jersey City had one, and we used to use it every chance we could. Now that I have a house of my own, I took the opportunity to buy one for myself. Anyway, after a little bit of cutting I looked up, and suddenly everybody was gone. It seems that the sight of a 6'1", 270 lb dude in camo shorts hacking at shrubbery with an oversized knife was enough to make them forgive me my sins and mind their own. Not to mention that swinging that thing is very cathartic, too. For only about 5 bucks, you should try it sometime. 

After the yard work was done, I got my cooler out, filled it with ice and drinkables, and did something I've only done a handful of times since we bought this house 6 years ago. I sat aimlessly, in the sun, and relaxed. It was just me, an iPad full of books, and some Smirnoff Ice. Did you know that they make a pineapple flavored one now? Me neither. But I do now, and it is great! When the sun went down, it was Star Trek, Dr. Who, and Farscape on tv. I even got to see the new Superman movie, Man of Steel. I don't want to go all movie critic, so I'll just say that it's nothing like the Salkind films, and leave it at that. 

The next few days were pretty much repeat as necessary. And oh yes, it was. I spent more time out in the sun over this past week than I have in years, and I have to say that from here on out I do NOT plan to wait until my vacation weeks to do it again. I know I said I'd given up on the book until after the summer was over, but I managed to clear my head enough to get back to it sooner. Or maybe I just needed the Smirnoff Ice... 

Whatever it was this week, it worked for me, and I feel better than I did when I left. Hell, I even managed to write a blog for the second week in a row. :) And I plan, weather permitting, to spend my last day off in the sun before I have to think about going back to that place. 

So now that I'm done rambling, what have we learned? I'm going to close this week with my list of: 

10 THINGS I LEARNED ON MY SUMMER VACATION

10. That I really needed to get away from The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit after the last few weeks of political correctness gone wrong. As much as I like my job, things were just getting ridiculous.  

9. That Smirnoff Ice comes in pineapple flavor. Muhaha... 

8. That television was a lot less politically correct in the 80's. And a lot more fun. 

7. That I had forgotten how much fun it is to do yard work with a machete. They can be just as effective at pruning trees and bushes as any other gardening tool if you handle it right. 

6. That watching a 6'1", 270 lb. dude hacking at bushes with a machete can make even the nosiest neighbor more forgiving of what your yard looks like. 

5. That if you haven't tried that Smrinoff Ice Pineapple yet, you really should. It is AWESOME! Just saying... :-) 

4. That I have really missed the sun. Sunshine is good for the soul. :-) 

3. Did I mention that Smirnoff Ice Pineapple was AWESOME? 

2. That I could have been doing all of these things all along, and didn't really need a week off to do them. But it's helped me catch up. :-) 

1. The same thing I learn every vacation, Pinky. That one week off is DEFINITELY not enough!

See you next time.

"Fair"-est of them all...

It's been a long time now that I've been neglecting this blog.  It hasn't been intentional, but life has a habit of getting in the way. 

A lot has happened over the last few months, most of it good, but it's kept me busy nontheless.  I finished The Argenis Solution and saw its release.  I saw The Treos Dilemma take the science fiction category at the San Francisco Book Festival (really proud of that, by the way!), and started on a fifth book.  As usually happens in the summer, I've fallen down a bit on my writing, so I've all but put it off until September.

But that wasn't all that I wanted to write about today.  I needed to vent a little, and I've decided to do it here, in my space, where I can.

In my heart of hearts, I'm a writer.  But even writers have to eat when the books aren't selling, so I also have a "real job", which I affectionately refer to as "The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit".  I work for the railroad.  Which one really doesn't matter to my story.  I've worked at this job for the entirety of my adult life.  I started out as a cleaner, worked my way up to mechanic, and for the last couple of years, I have been the foreman of my very own crew.  Over the last 22 years, I have met some terrific people at this job, and each person that I interact with has taught me something, whether it involves the job or not.  I believe that a part of my job as a foreman is to teach others what I've learned about the railroad over the years, so I try.  But even in teaching, I sometimes learn things.

Having said that, what I need to vent about is something that is really disturbing me about this job lately – “fair play”.  Now let me explain what I mean, and why I put that in quotes.  When I started, the junior man in a crew got some really lousy assignments.  But over time, he worked his way up in seniority and made it to the better ones.  And if you messed up a job and delayed a train, that task was your job until you learned how to do it right.  I went through these rituals, and so did everyone else that started at the same time as I did, and for years and years before.  There were two reasons for this.  The first was that yes, the younger guys got more work than the senior guys, but the senior guys were 20 years older than us!  Sometimes more.  They had put in their time, learned their craft, and earned a bit of a break from time to time.  The second reason is tied in a little with the first: repetition.  The best way for most people to learn their job is to do it.  So if you're just starting out and you need to learn how to do your job, doing it is the only way to learn to do it right.  With someone to help you if needed, of course.  But still, you can't learn the plays if you don't put in the reps, as they say in sports.  For a hundred years on the railroad, this is how things were done.

But now, in 2013, we live in an age of “fair play”, where the work has to be given out evenly, whether an employee's skill level can keep up with it or not.  And we have to ask our older employees to give up the breaks they've been working 20 and 30 years to earn in order not to offend someone that was just hired onto the job last week.  Because if we offend that person, they can now go to management and tell them that their foreman has a personal grudge against them for whatever reason and is "picking on me." In an emergency, when a train has to go out on schedule, you can't just grab the nearest person and run out to the equipment like before, because even though we are paid to work for 8 hours, it isn't “fair play" to call someone to do a task when they have already done one a few minutes ago.  And no one bothers with the fact that a foreman shouldn't really be doing mechanical work, even though there are still some of us who do what has to be done anyway to get the train out.  But if that requires me to crawl under a train and get my hands dirty, then so be it.  But by their thinking, I shouldn't really have to do my own job if I run out to the yard to rescue a crippled train (“fair play” is “fair play”, right?).  You would think that the example set by working foreman would make it clear how ridiculous the arguments are, but "Why do I have one more car than he does?", or "why do I have to do this job?  What's (insert co-worker's name here) doing right now?" are the only questions that some people ever seem to ask.

Now, the answer you used to get from a foreman in a case like this used to be "because I told you to."  The nicer, less hardline version that I have used in the past is, "because that's what I need you to do tonight."  9 times out of 10 when you use the second one, it shows the employee some respect as a person, and in return he respects you enough to do what you told him to do, whether he likes it or not.  The really hard-assed version was "do what I told you, or sign out and go home."  I’ve never used that one myself, but every time I’ve seen it used, it was effective.  The worker always hated the foreman after that, but didn't want to give up the money, so he did his job. 

Now whichever you agree with or don't agree with, the thing all of these approaches have in common is that none of them seem to be acceptable anymore.  Now, when someone doesn't like their assignment because, "you gave me one more car/train than him," the assignment has to be reworked so that everyone has an “even workload”.  When you have a guy who is a dynamo and can run circles around the rest of your men, you have to hold him back and not ask him to do more because, you don’t want to be accused of “favoring” anyone. When you want to give a guy a little less than you did the night before because last night he did over and above, you can’t, because someone will always blaze a trail to your boss’s office to ask why he’s being picked on.  Before, you could tell a crew of car cleaners what equipment they had to work and they could agree amongst themselves how to divide up the work, but now it seems that the foreman must micromanage his men and assign them individual cars every night.  This way, no one gets that one extra car and feels “picked on”.

I could insert a joke here about handing out participation trophies too, but I think I've typed enough words for now.  If I have to write a joke too, it wouldn’t be “fair play”. 

I'm sure you can come up with a punchline of your own.

 

Until next time...

Thanksgiving

     Hi again!
     The biggest news since last time is that Hurricane Sandy came through here, and with all the post-Sandy stuff going on at The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit, I've been pretty busy the last few weeks.
     There wasn't a lot of damage at all at Casa de Lavell from Hurricane Sandy, which is something I'm VERY thankful for this Thanksgiving.  We lost power for three days, and a couple of bits of flashing fell off the roof.  But that's the extent of the damage we took.  Again, VERY grateful.  There are people out there that lost their power for a lot longer than we did, lost their homes, and some even lost loved ones.  Did I mention that I am VERY grateful that our damage wasn't that bad???         I am also thankful that my Mom is still with us, after everything she's been through, and still goes through. Stroke, cancer, blood thinners, and all.  She's a survivor, and I'm lucky to have someone like that in my life.  Then, there's my wife Michele.  Through all of our ups, downs, dramas, etc., she has stayed in my life when a lot of other people I know and thought were friends headed for the exits.  As she put it earlier today, she's my partner in love, in life, and "a little bit of treason." (Quiet Man reference, for those that didn't get it. Don't call out the black helicopters, lol).  Through her, I also met her parents, who are mad, brilliant, and wonderful.
     My Dad has been, and continues to be, a positive influence on my life, whether he realizes it or not.  And I'll always love him, no matter how long it is between the visits.  And there's also my friend Lou, who for about 30 years now has been a brother to me.  (Not LIKE, Goat Cheese.  You're family.)
     I'm thankful as hell for The Job Which Supports My Writing Habit.  I gripe as much (and sometimes MORE than) the next guy about my job.  But somehow, at the end of the month, I sit here with my bills and my checkbook, and everything works out somehow.  I've also made some really good friends at the MMC and at Morrisville Yard who I may not have met otherwise.  So again, I know how lucky I am.
     Now in the aftermath of Sandy, there are some really great efforts going on to help the people who were impacted by the storm.  NJ's First Lady, Mary Pat Christie and others have set up a website to take donations for victims of Hurricane Sandy (www.SandyNJReliefFund.org)
     If you feel more comfortable donating to an established charity (and there are a lot of people who feel this way), there's always the American Red Cross (www.redcross.org, or call 732-493-9100 ext. 1245).  They are taking financial donations, and also running blood drives, as blood supplies are dwindling in a lot of areas in NJ since the storm hit.  Another group taking blood donations is the Community Blood Council of NJ (www.givebloodNJ.org, or call 609-883-9750).
      There are dozens of benefit concerts planned across the state, and there are people all over the internet selling various merchandise with the proceeds going to Sandy Recovery.  I have to admit I bought a couple of tshirts when I found out that they were donating their profits.  The two I bought were on shop.ergoclothing.com, and www.sandyaidrelief.bigcartel.com.  The second one is a group that are based in NJ, and I already got the shirts.  I bought a few as gifts, sort of donating in my friends' names too.  It's a great shirt, and I hope that the money they make on it goes to help someone who really needs it.
     Anyway, there's not much else going on right now, except that after a short storm break I'm back to the book.  I'm still hoping to be done by the end of the year, but I'll keep everyone posted.  In the meantime...

     HAPPY THANKSGIVING TO ALL!!!

     Bill