Being Held Hostage Is Not Fun.....

Today I walked out of the work unit(essentially a large closet on the back of a flatbed, filled with computers) only to be pushed back in and held hostage for the next 6 hours. If I were working closer to Mexico, I would actually be worried that it was humans doing this to me. But no, they were......


Thousands of bees

There were so many bees that they kept finding ways to get into the unit. We must have killed 50. This is no exageration. It got so bad that I had to duct tape a seal around the door frame to keep them out, and even so some still got through. I never realized how small our unit is until 2 grown men try to swat bees while trying not to hit each other and not get stung. From the outside perspective it was probably funny. Was wasnt funny was not being able to get out, stretch the legs, get a drink, use the restroom, etc. until the swarm moved away. Stuff like this always hasppens to me when I go on jobs with Barrett "Stanky Leg" Nicholson as the other engineer. Read how he got that knickname from one of my earlier posts about finding a "dead body" on the side of the road.

In fact, the first job I ever went with him is quite a story in itself that happened before I started blogging.

We were going to do a job in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. We had alot of luggage so we check most of to meet us in Williamsport.
Our flights are from Lafayette-Dallas-Philadelphia-WIlliamsport. We get all the way to Philly and on the way the job cancels. We get the message when we land. It is like 8:30 pm so we decide that we will see if we can catch our luggage and stay in Philly for the night instead of going to Williamsport.

We were switching airlines for this last flight and apparently this was the last flight for American Airlines cause when we got off there was no AA employees anywhere. We keep searching for someone for us to talk to. We finally leave security thinking the ticket agents might be able to help us. There is noone at the ticket gate. SO we then go try to find our next airlines gate, which is no small feat when you have to walk it. We finally find United Airlines and go in and talk to someone only to be told that this was "United-National" and our flight was "United-Regional" so we needed to go to another agent. When only had an hour between our flights and this is cutting a large section into it.

We make it to the right counter and they points us to the Luggage desk. We walk over there. We now have 30 minutes before our flight. I explained our situation to this lady and added "If you cant pull our luggage we will go to Williamsport but we need to know now. What should we do." I have never seen anyone so awful at her job. She tries to get on the radio, says she cant reach anybody, plays on the computer, takes a phone call and then just stares at us. I ask again, "Should we just go get on the flight?". She says "Hold on" and goes in the back and doesnt return. So I am pissed now. We may not only not get our luggage but we may now miss our flight.

We decide that lets just go to Williamsport. We have like 10 minutes cause this lady screwed around. We have to go back through security and while I'm going through I hear the final boarding call. Ileave all my luggage with Barrett still going through security, and takes off with no socks on towards the gate. I look at my ticket and it says gate 27. I look up and I am at gate 3. Uh oh. Bercause of my peak physical condition i made it all the way to about gate 18 before I hit the wall.

I finally make it to the gate, yelling for them to wait, as they close the doors. Im sweating my balls off. I explain to them what happened. They pull the plane back to get our luggage. It turns out the baggage lady never made the call, her radio was off. So they grab our luggage off and as we are leaving they say "All 3 bags will be waiting for you." The only problem is we had 4 bags. They call the plane BACK to get our 4th one off. At this point Barrett shows up with ALL our carry on bags running down and huffing and puffing. He looked like a patrooper.



So guess where we have to go to get our luggage.....yep, right back to old Radio Lady. When we get there she has our bags and she has the audacity to say "I really saved you guys, huh? Where would you guys have been without me?".

Barretts face did this:



I swear to God he had to stop me from reaching across and:


We got out of there as quick as possible to drink the biggest beer in Philly. Apparently things like this just happen when we are on jobs together: Luggage, Bodies, and now Bees.

Mexican Jerry Springer is the Funniest

Im currently working 4 am-6 pm shifts outside Gainesville, TX. Its not bad work...once we got our tools set up we really dont do much but watch computer screens for 12 hours. I've played alot of XBox and watched the following films:

Get Him to the Greek-Way better than I thought it would be

Grown Ups

Inception

Jonah Hex

Machete- I was simply stunned how awsomely bad this movie was


Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

Robin Hood

The Social Network

Valkyrie

All 4 Indiana Jones'

The first 3 Harry Potters

Garden State

The Sorcerers Apprentice

And the whole first season of "Its always Sunny"

Tough job I know......I am running out of movies. One of the highlights is when I actually get to the hotel and flipping through and catching Mexican Channels. So far I have come up with a list that seems to be in every Show:
1) Big ass fake titties-seriously, every woman in every show has these
2) Rediculous rules for game shows


Just what the hell is going on here

Some times I just sit back and really wish I knew Spanish well enough to know what the hell is going on. I ran across this one time on a Lacrosse trip. We were sitting in the hotel room wondering what the hell was going on so I call up a player down the hall who is originally from Venezuela. I said "hey hurry down to our room we need you real quick". We hear the door bust open down the hall, heavy footsteps coming down the hall, and an out of breath Alex Perez standing in our door. We say, "Please tell us what is going on", not knowing that we woke him up from a nap and he thought there was an emergency. Needless to say he wasnt happy and I still dont know what is going on.

Pay Attention Class.....We have alot to cover

I know I have been absent from my blog for the past two weeks but I went on vacation from work for the Thanksgiving holidays. I would have posted at my parents house but that internet has what I like to call "a case of the SLOWS". I mean, this thing make dial-up look quicksilver.

So I leave work for vacation and head to Tuscaloosa for the Georgia State game. The next morning Hunter and I are going to the ATM for cash at about 10. We pull up to a T-Crossing trying to make a right. Hunters stops for this motorcycle and this lady makes a left onto our street and never sees him. He is going about 40 and never touches the brakes. He hits her passenger front wheel and cuts a clean 270 over the hood and lands flat on his back in front of our truck. It kinda looked like this but much, much less funny.



The helmet saved this dudes life no question. He was in a lot of pain so we kept him down until the cops showed up. We learned later that he was ok but this seriously ran in my mind in slow motion for the next couple days. It was surreal and scary.

So Darby and I end up at the Ga. State game in my parents seats. These seats are awesome. 3rd row endzone. We end up drinking a little and start just making random comments on the game and we have the crowd around us craking up. The biggest thing was us cheering for #13 Rob Ezell, the 5th year 5'9" white walk-on reciever to get some playing time. You may remember him from this:



So anyway we are yelling for 13 to get into the game and he finally does in the closing minutes...our section goes wild. He even took snaps on the last series at QB. As they are running for the tunnel (right under us) we had the whole section going "EZELL! EZELL!". As we were leaving one woman said "I dont know who yall are, but we had an awesome time" which felt really good, we were just cutting up like we do all the time.

So I basically eat too much, drink too much, stay up too late, and all the other things after the game and up to Saturday. I would have made hedonismbot proud.



On the way home sunday I am felling sick from the previous days (duh) and my tire blows out 6 miles from home. No cell service, the road has no shoulder so I am sick, changing this tire in the middle of the road. I get my donut tire on and this thing blows about 1.5 miles from the house. Bad day to say the least. I have to leave my car on the side of the road untile monday when I got it replaced. The rest of the week I spent hanging out trying to get over my illness.

For Thanksgiving we had 55 people at my parents house. Woah indeed. My Mom is one of 8 children and my Dads side of the family came too. Thais is the first time I can remember both sides being togwether and probably the last. I dont think my Dads side was ready for my Mom's side.....who are "loud and country" to put it nicely.



The Iron Bowl is the only rivalry I know of that has names for its games:
1967: The Run in the Mud
1972: Punt Bama Punt
1981: 315
1982: Bo Over the Top
1984: Wrong Way Bo
1985: The Kick
2005: Honk If You Sacked Brodie
2008: Fear This!
2009: The Drive

and it's newest:
2010: The Biggest Choke Job In College Football History

Thats all we are going to say about this game. Although the one good thing that came out of this was our recreation of Cam Newton Getting Paid (with his little "blowing kisses" thing he does):