Summer at Last

I'm almost afraid to utter the "S" word, but the last couple of days actually feel like summer: warm and sunny. Which lets me work on my "census tan" that I'm sure will be a big hit at the beach this summer. We took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to put some miles on the bikes. Near as we can figure, we rode somewhere between 4 and 5 miles (not all at once; we're not like nuts or anything). That may not sound impressive, but that was more miles in one day than we've ridden in the rest of 2010 combined. We keep saying we're going to ride every day, but it ends up being more like once a month. Maybe we'll do better now that we don't have to bundle up in parkas.

Both of our jobs continue pretty much as they have been going. I was talking to the crew leader today about how long it looked like we were going to take to wrap the census thing up. He said the head office had figured the whole thing would take three weeks. We've completed 10% of the work in the first two weeks. I'm certain we will be kicking out more work now that everyone has a better idea of what we are doing, but I seriously doubt we will complete everything in a week. Meanwhile, Debbie's work is slowing down now that the busy season is wrapping up. Nothing unusual or unexpected, but it does mean the end of monthly bonuses, which were helping us a bit. Ah well; looks like less steak and more Hamburger Helper for a while.

Of course, nothing has changed with the undersea oil fountain in the Gulf, but BP was confident in their latest attempt to slow down the amount of oil pouring into the ocean. Management always is. And they are almost always wrong. Work continues on a permanent solution, but it will take months to complete. Meanwhile, 5,000 (or 50,000 or [insert random large number here]) barrels of oil gushes into the ocean.

Air travel in Europe may be permanently altered thanks to Iceland's collection of volcanoes. Given that most airlines are operating right at the ragged edge of solvency (or somewhere below that edge), I'm not real clear how they can absorb a decade or more of constant disruption.

One of the biggest dangers in giving a person or group of persons nearly unlimited power is that they will inevitably abuse it, whether that means using full-body scanners to check a co-workers pecker size or doing a little snooping around in the private lives of completely innocent people. After all, what sense is there in having power if you can't use/abuse it?

Well, lunch break is over and I need to go pick up Debbie from work and do some more census work.