Category Archives: Paul

Today was not a day of heat, spiders, dirt, mortar, or total exhaustion for me on The Build. With literally every single person in our company working up in Palmdale on this event all week long, we finally got to the point where there was stuff that had to be done back at the office.

Forms to be filled out and sent ASAP to this government agency. Pictures and documents to be sent to that government agency. Payroll!! Deposits to be made to the bank. Insurance documents for the construction to get submitted. And so on.

Being the Director of Finance, that meant me. I had actually planned on going up for the 4PM-11PM shift after about six hours in the office, but it turned out to not be necessary and I was waved off and told to stay back at the fort.

Instead, I took some time to take care of the blisters on my feet.

So tonight, let’s look at what the 100% fashion-clueless CFO wears on the job site while trying to not actually have a heart attack and completely screw up the construction schedule.

There are strict rules about wearing hard hats on site, with really good reasons. I like my melon intact and uncracked, so I wore one every day, no exceptions.

Except…

The back of my neck and ears and face got sunburned far more than I liked on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, no matter how much sunscreen I put on and kept putting on. Hard hats might keep your cabeza in one piece, but they do a lousy job of providing shade.

I have a very nice “adventure hat” that I love for hiking and kayaking and being out in the sun, but it’s not hard. I finally noticed a couple of the seasoned professionals on site wearing floppy, wide-brimmed hats under their hard hats, so what the heck, I thought I would give it a try.

And it worked great! I was worried about the hard hat falling off, but I used the adjustable headband to open up wide, go over the top of the adventure had, and then get snugged down. It felt comfortable, it wasn’t off balance or threatening to fall off, it did a great job of shading my ears, face, and neck, and I still had the necessary protection.

I just had no idea that it made me look so freakin’ stupid!

I would also note that not a single one of my co-workers said a thing about how it looked. So either I’m being too judgmental after the fact, or they just thought that we needed the comic relief in what has been a high stress situation.

I’m good either way.

Today I’ve shifted over to the night shift. The good news is that it meant I at least finally got eight hours of sleep. (It had been a while…) The bad news is that I’ll be here until well after midnight tonight.

So let’s have a desert sunset picture, to go along with all of the desert sunrise pictures from the last few days.

Posting from the H4F/EMHE site, building block wall in 40 knot winds gusting to 55 in the middle of the night (but at least it’s 80° and not 112°!!)…

Let’s start with the tiny little nugget of good to be found today:

It was quite lovely to see dawn approaching with a 3/4 moon up there. Not lovely enough to justify getting out of bed at 03:00, but that goes without saying.

It was already in the mid 80’s at that time of the morning, which was a foreshadowing of this:

(Image from WeatherUnderground)

One thing here is a lie – there is now way that was a 0|2 wind situation. Try 25 gusting to 40+.

So, after way, WAY more than eight hours of that for the second day in a row (five more to go!) my 60 minute ride home turned into a 95 minute ride home due to:

(Image from Google Maps)

The southern (left) side of that red section was where two of the three lanes were blocked with several dozen fire trucks fighting a brush fire.

Let’s do it again tomorrow!