boomerang

It snowed again today.  It really messes up flights.  A guy that was supposed to leave yesterday is still here, and angry, today.  His flight was canceled both yesterday and today.  He has engagements that he is currently missing in New Zealand and I can understand his frustration.  But what is worse than that is that the plane that was supposed to take him today got all the way to the ice runway (from New Zealand), circled, and decided it couldn’t land.  Back to New Zealand for all those people that had already been on the plane for 5 hours.  Yikes!  What a tease.  They refer to that as a “boomerang” flight and apparently they happen occasionally.  Especially with weather like we’ve had here this year.

I worked outside for about 2 hours today.  That doesn’t make me tough and I’m not bragging, but it was pretty cold today.  In the teens and snowing.  I volunteered to help clean out a mobile storage unit they call a milvan.  Me and a few other guys had to move a bunch of stuff out to be sorted through, remove the ice and snow that had snuck in through the tiny crack between the doors, reorganize the things deemed keep-able and put in stuff we brought from another storage area.  It was all brainless work, but that ice had been building up over years and years.  Thawing and refreezing and just becoming more and more stubborn.  As it thawed and refroze over the years, it captured all kinds of things including anything that was on the floor, pretty much cementing it in place.  In addition to that it caused some things to start to rust and the temporarily thawed ice went ahead and captured the rust too, making it a reddy-brown color.  We had some shovels and a long handled scraper, but that wasn’t doing the trick so I went and got a pick axe.  I really got after it with that pick axe and the that gross ice was flying everywhere.  A huge chunk came back and hit me square in the nose and cut it a little bit.  And you know how when you get hit in the nose it makes your nose run, well all that froze into my mustache.  And a lot of that gross ice went down my shirt.  So I ended up with a blood crusted and frozen snot face and in a rust-ice and sweat drenched shirt.  All things considered, I enjoyed my day working outside.  I can’t imagine how some people do it for 9 hours a day or what I would look like if I had done it for 9 hours.  I volunteered for more manual labor outside on Friday…