Catching up

Wow, April was a crazy month... actually most of May so far has been too. I was working on a bridge down in Pasco for most of April, but I'm happy to say we've finished that project. It was crazy, I think I spent maybe 3 weeknights at home that whole month. The second week of May was nice, I got to spend the whole week at home... shocking I know. Of course, the following week I was in Fort Worth, and this week I was at a Committee meeting in Austin. The committee meeting was something I really wanted to go to, and since it was at least in the same state as Ft. Worth I just stayed over the weekend. I have to say it was kind of nice, I went to church and caught up with an old high school classmate. Him and I had not really been friends, aquaintences, but not friends. Now, though we've both grown up a lot and I found out we have quite a bit in common, though I think he's a lot smarter... he's doing lab work on DNA before he goes to med school, he tried explaining some of it to me and I have to be honest and say I was completely lost. Anyway, his wife actually grew up in the town I currently live in so she and I had a chance to talk about some mutually known places.

Austin this last week was nice... but I think I've already wrote about that...

This weekend should be interesting, unfortuantly I do not get Memorial day off, we have a bridge to pull out (putting culverts under it) and the only time the transportation department would give us the 10 hr window needed was Monday. Though I heard the company management is talking about allowing officers (myself included) equivalent time off if we are requried to work a holiday. That would be nice, especially if I'm allowed to pick it, I can chose some weekend both DH and I have off allowing us the opertunity to go camping or at least for a weekend getaway.

Committees can be interesting

I got to spend this couple days involved with the Steel Structures committee for AREMA. It was actually interesting. Before this week, I had only gotten involved with the Education & Training committee, also lots of fun. I got to meet quite a few guys and a couple other women who love bridges as much as I do. It was great, yesterday we took a field trip to the University of Texas - Austin to look at their structures lab. That in itself was fascinating, but after that we took a bus tour of interesting bridges in the area, including a long precast segmented bridges that were basically viaducts they were so long. And, they took us to Austin's signature bridge, the Pennybacker bridge, apparently it's a great nesting place for the local cliff swallows, their nests looked like oversized wasp nests. It's also creating a maintenance hassle for the crews, they are not allowed to work on the bridge when the swallows are nesting in the spring.

Yesterday evening we had a reception with a presentation on the bats under the Congress Ave bridge... followed not suprisingly by watching the bats emerge later. I found out alot of info about bats I didn't know before... like they account for 1/4 of the species of mammals in the world. Or, a colony of 150 brown bats can protect famers crops for almost 33 million or more rootworms each summer, reducing our reliance on pesticides which is great for everyone. Unfortuantly, on this trip I completely forgot my camera so I won't have any new pictures to post, but those bat emerging pics would have been really neat. I may contact someone else and see if I can get copies of their pictures from this week.

Update: I was able to get photos from another member.