A recent image with my granddaughter

We had planned to a little shopping today and see The Dark Knight before hooking up with our daughter and getting the grandkids.  They got in early…, so the movie was scrapped for this weekend.  Unfortunately, it’s too darn hot to really do anything outside on short notice.  Spent a bit of time in a mall and then horsing around with the kids in the hotel room and later in the pool… after the sun went down.  The pool is outside and the water was warm.   No need to ease in slowly.  The kids and I were in the pool well over an hour.  My fingers are still a little wrinkled.

Tomorrow we plan to take the kids to Disney’s WALL-E which is showing in a new IMAX near here and then will be going over to North Little Rock to take them on a tour of the USS Razorback, a WWII era diesel submarine that was bought from Turkey by North Little Rock after seeing over 20 years of US Navy service followed by another couple of decades in the Turkish Navy.  It’ll be my third trip through the old boat.  (I really should consider joining the Submarine Veterans organization.  Several other retirees that I breakfast with every other couple of weeks have spent a lot of time working on the sub.  One of them is the commander of the local SubVets post.)

UPDATE August 3rd 8:43 AM:  It’s supposed to get to 104 degrees F here today.  We’ll not be spending much time outside.

I’m not a small guy — and I guess I’m not as small as I used to be. Our oldest daughter took this picture of me going down into the after torpedo room on the USS Razorback, a submarine permanantly moored in the Arkansas River at North Little Rock. The Razorback is a WWII era diesel submarine, commissioned toward the end of the war. After its service in the U.S. Navy it was sold to Turkey for another couple of decades of service. After it was decommisioned by Turkey, it was sold to North Little Rock and is now part of a growing maritime museum. It’s named after a type of fish, not the mascot of the University of Arkansas. This was my second trip through this sub. The first was last year and was the first time I had been on a submarine since I stepped off my boat, the USS Casimir Pulaski, thirty years earlier.

This was a pretty full weekend and, with going back to work all of a sudden, I’m finding it a little difficult to squeeze things into the reduced amount of time that I now have. I’m only working 40 hours a week, with no overtime, but, with travel, that’s about 45 hours a week that I had for other stuff before last week. I’m getting up early to go to the fitness center, but the workouts are a little shorter.

However, it is just for a short term contract — 26 weeks — so it won’t be long till I’m free again, plus, we should have some of our recurring bills eliminated, so financially this should be a plus.

It’s bedtime, I’m tired, and I’m starting to babble on, so it’s time to close — I will endeaver to keep up with this blog. We’ll see.

I’ve not started back to work on the contract job yet. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ll probably be out there sometime next week — perhaps.

The real surprise is that it’s occurring at all.

Three years ago, I was in a situation where I really needed help to get everything done that needed to be done. One of the options that was attempted was to bring back another instructor who had retired a couple of years earlier. He would be a contract instructor, much like what I will be doing.

It never happened.

A couple of years later, I happened to run into the man they had wanted to come back as a contractor. He said he had been willing to do it, but after they had initially talked to him, he hadn’t heard anything from them. I subsequently found out that they had not been able to get approval for hiring a contractor.

My contract manager — the guy used to be my boss — called me today about documentation on some of my qualifications, so things are apparently still moving ahead. It appears part of the problem is that recent restructuring has reduced the number of people in the corporate office that looks at contracts from eight people down to one part-time employee who only works three afternoons a week. I’ve heard that other departments are having similar problems.

Maybe Monday. However, I’m planning on going to the bi-weekly retiree breakfast. (They’ll get a kick out of this run-around.)

I’ll have my cell phone with me.

……Previous posts on this (most recent on top):

• Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho, it’s….
• BIG BUMP in the road for my online plans…. perhaps.
• The BIG BUMP revealed