After coming down to FL March 1st, I thought it would be great to go home for a few days, see Nujoud, relax, and then jump right back into the project. Well, little did I know, our project got shut down by Florida's DEP because of Gopher Tortoises. They are a protected species and have been causing us headaches due to the stringent regulations surrounding us wanting to relocate them (permanently in the bottom of Lake Okeechobee).
Elaborating on what I mentioned in my previoius post....We thought we had permission to commence work January 1st. Then some tree-hugger hippie group got involved and so we then thought we could start around March 15th...nope. We finally start April 7th and get shut-down April 17th. The tree-huggers are trying anything and everything to get this project to go away. They "happened" to find another gopher tortoise burrow along a section of our project corridor that hadn't shown up on any previous surveys. It turns out that these tortoises are protected in the southeastern United States. This is driving me nuts because, as environmental inspectors, my group has to directly deal with FDEP. We spent 6 hours today ferrying FDEP up and down every inch of our 34 mile project today looking for these bastards. Go Away!!! It only makes matters worse that Gopher Tortoise mating season is April-May, Nice!!!
Other than that things in Florida are going well. I get to work with a bunch of cool people who only care about working hard and getting things done. Haven't worked with many of these folks in the past, I thought they were extinct. The hours are long but most days seem to fly by, which is nice. The good news is that today Paul and I realized that Fridays still feel like Fridays. The bad news is we work Saturdays. The weather is starting to warm up, high 80s mainly. There was an older gentleman who had to be taken to the ER for dehydration a couple of weeks ago. As of yesterday he's still in the hospital. He had kidney failure and a host of other problems. No one believes dehydration to be the root cause of his ailment as drug use is suspected.
I can't believe that it has already been 2 months (next Thursday) since I packed up and headed to Florida. Time really does fly. There's no time to do anything here besides eat, sleep, and work. Most nights I only get about 3 hours to myself before having to get some sleep, get up, and do it all over again. Kinda like Groundhog Day. It really reminds me of my Navy days at sea, although now I get compensated much better for the long hours I put in.
If the stars align properly, I should be home again around Memorial Day weekend. But that is dependent upon project progress. If we get too far behind, we'll start working Sundays as well....and that will genuinely suck.
Tomorrow is the NFL Draft, and I know Toby probably won't get a wink of sleep in anticipation. There is a rumor floating around that Shockey might get traded to New Orleans. As a Giants fan I hope this trade gets done because Shockey is over-rated and Boss played exceptionally well last season for the Giants. We'll find out in about 15 hours I guess.
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