E-mail from Lincoln

Lincoln thought these stories were too long to blog and so he just sent me an e-mail . . . . I thought they were interesting and so I'll put them on anyway. Again . . . . if they don't hold your interest, no one is twisting your arm to read it right?

So here goes (from Lincoln):

I had an e-mail from our local group leader this morning letting me know that he would be on patrol and that he would not be present at church. He told me good luck and that he would get to listen to me some other time. He said that the other members were bound to enjoy my talk and he would just have to hear about it later. Anyway, I got to church about two minutes early, the Chaplain had our LDS box out and asked me to lock up when we finished as I was the first one to arrive. I like this Chaplain as he and I have been talking a bit and he comes over and goes around to all my job sites every other day or so. He claims he is quite bored and just wants to get out. Anyway, he is a good old Chaplain Major who is friendly to everyone. So, off he went and I sat there waiting for the other members to show up.......and I waited and waited and at 5:00 pm, I decided to sing a couple of hymns myself and had a prayer and then read my talk to myself, had a closing hymn and prayer and locked up. I went to dinner by myself and have to admit, felt a bit sad. Sunday evening is when those members that are here would all eat together. Anyway there I was eating and just finishing when one of the members came and sat down by me. He is a colonel from the medical clinic and said he was caught in a surgery for and injured local national. Anyway, we sat and talked through his dinner and yes, I actually felt a lot better. It would have been nice to take the Sacrament but there is always next week. Hard to know if the other members were on patrol or if they have left the Base altogether as so many soldiers are transitioning in and out.

All in all we all stayed quite busy today. Most of my time however was spent on something that could have totally been avoided. Last night our contracting office came over and handed me a signed contract for concrete bags. As it turns out the previous team ordered concrete bags to augment the gravel processes on this base. Their goal was to lay the gravel on the roads, sidewalks, parking lots and so forth and then hand spread the Portland cement over the gravel, wet it down and there you have it, a cemented sidewalk or road or whatever. So, they placed this big order for all of these cement bags, $25,000 worth of Portland cement bags. By the way, $25,000 worth of Portland cement is 2,777 bags or 50KG each (110 lbs). So, this morning I went to look at the delivery trucks of cement bags. Well, there sat five 48 foot semi trucks full of cement bags and not a bag of them on a pallet. What was I to do with close to 300,000 pounds of cement with no way to unload all of it? The contract stated that the delivery was to the FOB and the unloading would be accomplished by the receiving party. I started to laugh..........and laugh and thought to myself, oh who is going to lift off of these truck 2,777 bags of 110 lbs of cement and then where oh where will I put them and then what am I really going to do with them and how will I spread the cement and you get the picture.

Here is where I started wishing for my cushy job back home where I understood all the rules and such. So,off I went looking for a place to store the bags. Yep, I found a place but now to upload all of it. Since I have a crew of over 300 local nationals that work on all of the projects for our FET we decided it was a great project for all of them to have the chance to carry ten bags each and place them upon pallets so that we could then place them into an empty large building which is scheduled to be used soon for another thing but oh well we decided to use it anyway. All day we moved bags, I will tell you that I didn't touch a one of them....:) yep, our local nationals did it all. And yep the building is full. Off went the semi trucks and off I went to church. What a fun filled day where not a valuable thing got done.

We just got off the phone with the FET team we replaced, they are having drill and so we connected with them as was the plan so that we could ask and they could answer any questions we might still have. One of our questions was concerning all of the bags of cement. Well, they started laughing when we told them as they had forgotten all about the order and assumed that it was cancelled as it was ordered in September, last fiscal year. They claimed that they were relieved when it didn't show up as they had realized that their idea of sprinkling the cement upon the gravel and thus creating a natural sidewalk or road was flawed to begin with. So, they just started laughing, they had no plan for spreading the cement or how to truly implement the labor intensive job of hand mixing this quantity as in the end there are two ready mix cement plants already on the base for every concrete whim we may have. So, to finish the story, tomorrow, I'm going to try and give it all away. I will give it to the cement plants that are here on the base even if they are privately owned cement plants and will more than likely laugh at us as they accept the free cement which they will then turnaround and charge us for once they produce more ready mix....oh the stupidity of the order.

I'm still chuckling inside even though I'm bound to get in trouble with contracting when I give it all away...So, that was my day. Not boring, just what I call a wasted day. I did enjoy singing by myself but feel that I was way off key. I will have to try and sing better if I'm alone again.

I love you all. Lincoln