Back At It

I woke up this morning exactly one hour before I needed to. I rolled over, careful not to crush the tiniest of the dogs, and shut off the redundant alarm, lest it awaken my wife. I thought about how nice it would be to stay in bed and about I'd really rather stay at home rather than go to work.

It would appear that my holiday hiatus was not quite long enough. Twenty eight years ago, the only reason that I ever took time off was because they made me. The days off segment of my work cycle were more than long enough for me to do what I wanted to do, in fact they seemed too long. As the district had a strict vacation use policy, I was forced to take 4 shifts off per year, whether I wanted to or not. As I had no seniority, I usually got four shifts off in January or February. Frankly it was a waste.

Now, I get Ten shifts off for vacation and five shifts off for holidays. I can take those shifts when I want to, as long as I arrange the person to fill the OT slot for me. I work time exchanges for the other captains in my area and I expect them to pay me back in December. As a result I was off for pretty much the whole month.

It was a bitch coming in today. I really enjoyed my time off and I put it to good use. I took a couple of camping trips, prepared for Christmas, finished some projects and did some cleaning. I enjoyed being home every night, the dogs and my wife enjoyed having me around every day and enjoyed them. It was just a relaxing time, the type of lifestyle that I could get used to.

Today was my first day back. I was in my office no more than five minutes when I was informed of a meeting between the captains in my district and the district commander. This was kind of a farewell meeting for him as he is being transferred to another district. The meeting was short and sweet, most of the important stuff had been disseminated electronically beforehand. There were some questions that required answering and some gripes that we wanted to lay on him before he left. We knew the new guy (a brand new district commander) was going to be reluctant to move our whiny complaints up the food chain, so the old guy had to hear us bitch.

In addition to the new boss, I am losing a member of my crew to another shift. He is a good medic and I will miss working with him. His replacement has been on a while, though I don't know him very well. The transfer takes place in a couple of days and it will take a few shifts for us to get used to the new member of our crew and a while for him to get used to us.

Foo, the Captain on the other shift is out. He is going to another station, one that he requested. He gets a bonus for the new assignment, but I still think he should have stayed put.

Foo's replacement is a guy named Sloven. Another guy that I don't know real well but one that has a reputation of being a bit eccentric. I don't think that he gets along with Theb, the third captain in my station. That will be an interesting situation, I will likely be asked to pick sides if it becomes a conflict. I will likely sit this one out, I just don't see any need to get involved in a silly quarrel at this point.

I plowed through a ton of e-mails this morning and a stuffed in basket. That went pretty fast, the delete button eliminated most of them.

Our station inspection is coming up, today was our last day to get some things done before it occurs. Fortunately, we won't be here on inspection day, we will be on days off. I am not sorry that I will miss it.

It's been a busy day and I am done. I hope to get some pics up in the next few days. Until then stay warm and dry.

Thanks for reading,
Schmoe