Interesting, boring, stressful

I guess it's been a while again since i've posted. Dess has been doing a good job of keeping you up to date though. I guess part of me felt bad about being a bad husband and i didn't want to try to make excuses about Dess' birthday. So i just won't mention it.

So Dess has started a "myspace" page as well as our blog. You can click the link to the right if you want to check it out. Maybe you can even be her friend... She's a good friend. Although she's getting kinda addicted to it, so don't be too surprised if she has to give it up cold turkey in a few days or weeks. I love Dess and i have come to know her pretty well. There are times when she'll get convicted about something and just decide that she doesn't need it in her life anymore. If she spends too much time looking up friends, etc. on myspace i'm sure she would eventually have to give it up.

Life for me has been interesting, boring and stressful. The stress has to do with work. I've got one new girl working for me. She just got here on the weekend. Besides that i've got 2 newish guys (both less than 2 months) and Steve, a veteran of Friend Ships. I'm supposed to be getting another new crewmember at the beginning of October. For some reason new crew stress me out. I have to be more hands on with them to make sure they know what to do. They require "weekly" evaluations (which i tend to do every month or so). New crew are more prone to working hard and trying their best, but they also tend to screw up more because they don't know the 'rules'. Man i wish i could just be a supervisor of supervisors! It's a lot easier.

More stress is that we've known about a boxcar coming in from L.A. Usually when they come it's a mad scramble to empty them in 3 days so we don't have to pay extra money. Well today it arrived (and we were totally unprepared). We set up a ramp to get into it and just before i could cut the lock i was told not to open the boxcar without Jeremy. He's the guy that loaded the boxcar in L.A. This is a big relief because now we can focus our attention on making space for all the stuff in the boxcar and cleaning up the yard. Today ended up being a great day as my team of 3 (not including myself) was able to get things looking much better. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you put your mind to it.

The interesting part of my life happened on Thursday after work. Dess and i were about to leave the property when we saw two kids near the front gate. As we got closer we saw one of our crew, John, who told us that he'd found them on our property. We decided to chase them. Right away i saw that one of the boys was riding on a bike which had recently been stolen from our property. We tailed the kids for a while and then they split up. I got out of the car and made like i was going to chase one of the kids by foot. As i did this, a guy in a pickup truck was driving towards us and asked "What's wrong with you man?" I responded "Do you know that kid?" He said "Yeah". I told him "He just stole that bike off our property". The driver of the truck took off with a mean look on his face after the kid on the Friend Ships bike. Dess and i followed the younger kid around asking him questions. He was generally non-responsive and wouldn't give us straight answers. Dess explained what we at Friend Ships do and that stealing from us is taking away from people that need it. From there we went back to the ship. Well the next day i found out that the kids hadn't just been snooping around the property. I found that they had vandalized some of our buildings and cargo with spray paint. They had also broken into the helicopter hangar through a window and had rummaged through the place. They didn't damage the helicopter, but it was a freaky concept. We called in the cops. A report was filed and we learned that if they come back we can detain them until the cops arrive. That was reassuring because we didn't know what our legal right was. So security is getting beefed up. We've added more barbed wire and "No Trespassing" signs. We're getting video cameras to record some of the more precious areas. Our property is staying on "shut down" all day long, where all our gates are closed unless people are entering and exiting. Oh i forgot to mention that the kid that Dess and i followed said he was 8 years old!!! Isn't that crazy?

The boring part of my life is our day to day stuff. I don't get much satisfaction out of work right now (except it was good to see progress today). I also don't do much outside of work, so i think i'm in a bit of a rut. I don't really have any friends on or off the ship. I just feel pretty bored with myself. Dess does a good job of trying to have fun, etc. She plays games with me and makes plans for outings. It makes life more exciting.

I guess that's all i got for today. I hope you are well and that you are feeling like you are a part of our lives, even in our absense. We miss you.