No really, I love construction workers

So I'm sitting here in my car at 11:12am writing this (sort of, typing it up later obviously). I'm at the Monterey Presidio, it is one of the language schools for the U.S. military now (Defense Language Institute Foreign Language Center). Monitoring here is always an interesting experience, most of the time quite boring. Like now, waiting for them to start digging again.

Getting on base is always interesting too. They have a little gate booth looking thing with two guards and a turn out/parking lot with a trailer (now upgraded to a more permanent trailer) with a lovely port-o-potty. I have to go to the turn out/ parking thing and get a blue pass before I can go up to the guards in the little gate booth thingy. They need to see my drivers license, car insurance, and registration. I usually have to explain to the guard in this trailer/hut thing who I am, what I do, why I'm there, who my supervisor is (which when working on the Presidio is the City of Monterey - and who ever the lead engineer is for the particular project). I've met most of the city people and they are all pretty nice.

Anyway, as I was saying earlier......... What was I saying? Oh dear. Once the guard in the hut thing gives me my blue pass (it really is blue) which has all my incriminating evidence on it (I'm sure if they could put my SS# on there, they would). This card has my name, phone number, supervisor, their phone number, make, model, and color of my car, which bldg I'll be at, who gave the pass to me, and how long it's good for (24 hours). I then finally drive up to the two guards in their gate booth thingy and show them my blue pass and my DL, which they look at, then look at me, then back at my DL, then the blue card, then back at me, etc. And finally shoo me away, and I drive onto the base and immediately get lost. This place is a maze. Today was easy though, in that they are working on the main road into the base, so I was already on it! But finding parking, well... let's just say I'm on the dead grass lawn next to the bus route side road. Yeah, I'm parked illegally on a military base.

So, why am I here and why do I love construction workers? Well this is a Presidio which means there is a lot of history here. 1. this is Monterey and indians were everywhere here (still are). 2. The Spanish built the original Presidio (a military outpost) here in around 1768. It's full name was El Presidio Real de San Carlos de Monterey. And 3. the U.S. military took over around 1846. So there is a lot of stuff lying around. The military has a contract with the City of Monterey that basically says when the city is going to do any maintenance/ ground disturbing on the base, they need to have a monitor. And well, we have an open contract with the city, so here I am. We usually get the frantic phone calls at 7am, "oh crap, the sewer line just busted, can you be here 10 minutes ago?" or "oh crap, can you be here tomorrow morning?"

So today this crew hired by the city to fix the road on the base where some cypress tree roots have done a number to the pavement. They are removing the bad sections and repaving. Oh fun. These guys are cool. The crew is usually all spanish speakers. of a crew of about 8 , there is one white chick (happens to have the loudest mouth), one white dude (the foreman and operator), one black guy who talked with me quite a bit, and the rest were latino. They all spoke very good english though, I was surprised. Today's comment was "has anyone told you lately how beautiful your eyes are?" (I'm trying not to roll my eyes here). And then there was the "how do I get a job like hers?" The response from the foreman was, "It's this place called college". I also love how they try to clean up their language as if I have fragile virgin ears. And their idea of cleaning up their language is either saying it in Spanish or not yelling it every third word right in front of me (they do it across the street instead). You can learn a lot just hanging out with these guys for a day.

And I didn't bring a lunch. I should have known better, but usually my job here is done by noon and so I just drive back up to the office. But today, all I have is a small bag of pretzels I grabbed from home and an old bag of Honey Roasted Peanuts from Southwest Airlines that I found in my backpack. Well, it is now 12:00pm and lunch is over, but I'm still sitting on my ass because they are not digging. They have to pave over one side of the road before they can dig up the other side. Oh... I think it's time to get off my ass...

*note that I finally typed this up a week later, and I ended up staying there till after 5pm, ended up being a 11.5 hour day (and only got paid for 8 - sucks being a supervisor sometimes - no overtime pay)