Yesterday I travelled, today marks the first day of my third FEMA assignment; this time for Hurricane Sandy. Ninety days away from home (except for select breaks…). The blog didn’t exist during my extended stays in California and New Orleans…..a lot of strange stuff not documented here.
Boys were a lot smaller then, now, with Skype and Facetime and texting, contact with home is a lot more accessible and feasible (I’ll be watching candles on a birthday cake later tonight…)
Want a good investment tip? When a hurricane is about to hit….buy hotel stock. In New Orleans, you couldn’t find a hotel for months (my luxury digs were allocated to me). When the news that I was going to NJ became more definite, I did the smartest thing I’ve done in months….very quickly went out and found a Courtyard a mile from the office and made a reservation two weeks out.
That reservation starts tomorrow…in the meantime, I have two nights here at this brand new Residence Inn. It’s awfully nice, and serves a mean breakfast. But, it’s 30 minutes from the office and only provides half the Marriott points. And point acquisition is a big consideration…
Residence Inn – Photo 2
Cpher is obsessed with Skylanders, and, to surprise him one night, I had bought one of the Skylanders he didn’t have, spent about an hour figuring out the game, and then invited him to go down and play with me. My dude, Prism Break, is on the left. Cpher wrapped these guys up in a box and had me open it, he wanted me to take my guy and his guy with him to remind me of home. I’m going to try and take pictures of these guys in different places….last night was pretty simple, parked bedside on the Ipad.
Took this picture in the JFO (Joint Field Office) this morning. The office is located between Middletown and Lincroft (appropriately, in the middle of this picture). You can see all of the color along the edges…that’s the preliminary damage assessment. It is not everything, it is just what has been catalogued to date.
Why is there all that green then? Not that there isn’t damage there, it is damage that the local governments have submitted that is ineligible (I saw an entry for “lost money due to tourism losses” for example….you don’t get that reimbursed).
Random New Jersey Thought: I never would have found this hotel without GPS. The crazy twists and turns to get off of three freeways and tollways and what lanes I needed to be in…..wow!
Homefront: I should note that songs made me think of the boys often….from Kesha and The Script on the Pop station to the snippet of Yes on my Iphone….
Skype’d with Matthew. A little overwhelmed with a rough draft for language arts because he procrastinated on it. Facetime’d with Kevin…..Yes is coming in concert to Detroit and he wants to go. Seeing Yes without Jon Anderson sounds stupid to me but I’m not missing the opportunity to go with him. I apparently didn’t go a great job of setting up Facetime or Skype on Cpher’s Itouch, so, we just mostly talked. Told me he liked the new showerhead in the bathroom, making good progress in his book for his book report (behind here also because of procrastination).
Suzanne is good but stressed; a lot of Kevin birthday stuff needed to happen before 12/12.
Random Work Story: So, when you are here, for the most part, people are overly friendly......everyone knows the deal, people are away from home and we're all in it together, etc. Lots of "hi's" in halls, etc.
I am assigned to the Building Assessment Team (six or seven engineers in a group that go to a building to write it up. I will handle Civil/Enviro elements). This group has about 12 people now, will soon be 25. We are going to be sitting three or four to a 12x12’ office (FEMA has occupied a 3-story old Avaya building....must have been a hq, it's a big building)
Anyway, I peek my head into one office, there's one guy there, Fred, and I say hey, ok if I sit here. He says ok, I joke that there isn't anything about him I should know before I sit down, he mentions he has a buddy on the way here that will want to sit with him and I say ok, that's three for the office, no big deal. Walk out to do something else.
Come back, sit down and he comes over to the table and mentions there are empty tables next door (there are offices everywhere with just one or two people in them...I chose the one I ended up in at random). I say "so?" and he says, well, maybe I should move over there. I slowly turn to face him and, since I'm kind of thick about it, ask, really, you want me to move? and he says he likes to be alone....
That was enough for me, I didn't need to spend three months in an office with some nut job.
