So... Happy New Year

Well. It's a new year now. I've been quite busy of late.

We went to Disneyland to celebrate my wife's birthday. Excellent fun. Places like that are incredibly fun to watch through the eyes of a child. Granted, my daughter is yet to be one year old (although she will be this weekend), but she did enjoy meeting several Disney characters. She seemed very fond of Donald - not surprising considering how much she likes playing with her bath-time ducks. She also fell in love with a four foot tall Mickey doll that her father was not going to be able to afford. Luckily, he was able to switcheroo and get her a more appropriate size doll. We flew on Dumbo, rode Casey Jr.'s Circus Train (i think i can i think i can ...), and marauded the Caribbean with Captain Jack Sparrow. It was a wonderful first trip as a family.

By mid last week, a strong storm system (say that six times swiftly) was pounding California. I got called by my supervisor as I was thinking about how much I was enjoying time with my family. Time to go to work.

I worked from Friday (called in from vacation) until today without a day off. As the company thought it would be a good idea to send 90% of the local workforce to the Northern reaches of California, I was left to tend the fort in Fresno along with a couple of slightly rusty Linemen (myself included - the rusty part). Did I mention that supervision sent those workers off with all of the vehicles needed for linework? We made do with what we had. I replaced a pole, a transformer bank, and aerial cable without using a bucket truck, repaired downed power lines, replaced some more transformers, repaired some transformers damaged by a hawk (no. the hawk did not survive), replaced several underground transformers, and some other stuff that I can't quite remember. The days have blurred together. After being called in to work at 3:30 this morning, I'm pretty much feeling like the wrong end of a dog. I'm glad it's the weekend, and the regular crews are back in Fresno.

I just finished watching Stardust. I recommend it.

That's all. I'm going to bed.