Please pray for Rich. He had a 20 hour work day yesterday (started at around 6:00 a.m. and worked until 3:15 a.m., with a "lunch" break to shower at home), and this was after a 14 hour work day the day before. Tonight we should be back to normal, because the deadline for the projects he's been working on was this afternoon, and he's finished. It's been hard on him, though, between the work stress, the lack of sleep and trying to take care of Yasmina when he's home and spend time with me, and actually see his children.

Our relationship was mostly IM and phone calls over the last couple days, because one of his projects with the deadline today was given to him Monday. The children and I actually would go up to his office to visit with him, so he could say hi to the children, and talk to them a little bit. He works two minutes from our house. The last week and a half have been even busier for him in his regular duties anyway, because he no longer has an assistant, and the new guy doesn't start until Tuesday, so he's been doing all the budget, monthly report, paperwork, leases, coordinating stuff on the field, plus all the maintenance on his own. On top of that, this has been moron week.

Saturday, while we were getting cleaned up after breakfast, Alexander knocked on our bathroom door to tell us there was someone at the door with an airplane emergency. Rich jumped out of the shower, dried off quickly and threw on some clothes to get to work. I showered and when I got out, he was back home. This is not normal if there is an emergency. He came in telling me how angry he was.

One of the line guys from an FBO here had a customer come in looking for his plane which was being worked on in the avionics shop. The avionics guy wasn't there and the hangar was locked. So, they called Rich. The airport office is closed on weekends and holidays, but Rich always has his cell phone and pager on for real emergencies. He has learned only to answer after hours when it is the FAA, the tower or if it is someone he has scheduled with, since most of the time it is people who can't be bothered to remember the gate codes, or want to chat about contracts that should be done during the week. This reduces his after work junk, since most people don't leave a message when it is something stupid, and he can screen out the work week things until the next work day, and if it is something that does need to be dealt with that day, he can tend to it once he's heard the message. He checks his messages from the pager as soon as he gets them, and he checks his messages on his cell phone a million times a day.

When the line guy didn't get an immediate answer, he sent the customer to our house! Rich runs out expecting a plane down, only to find that it was a doctor who wanted to get his plane. He said the avionics people told him it would be ready for him to fly (as in fixed and on the ramp) on Saturday (turns out they said no such thing), and he told my son that it was an emergency. He told Rich he was a doctor and needed to get to an appointment in Bend. Well, it turns out that those two facts were true, but not related. He was going to an investment meeting. Rich asked Alexander if the man actually used the word emergency, and he said he did. Also, the instruments were still out of the plane, so he couldn't go anyway.

So, Rich reamed out the line guy, and sent an e-mail to every business owner on the field reiterating that nobody was to come down to our house without invitation unless there was an actual emergency (which he clarified and defined for them, making reference to airport employees who do dangerous illegal things on the field because this same FBO still has in their employ someone who did such a thing last year), asking them to respect our privacy. He said that one of the recipients would know why this was being sent and the others could guess. This is also the same FBO whose owner complains to Rich about the snow when it is snowing, and asks Rich what he's going to do about it. Evidently, Rich has the power to change the weather. Would that it were so. We'd have far more 70 degree sunny days, I can tell you that.

I'm thinking of dropping off the children in their lobby later, so I can get some errands run while they watch the kids. We've had people come by our home for work reasons that are not emergencies before, usually evenings, some Saturdays, and I am always tempted to ask where they live so we can go have a picnic in their yard, use their things or ask them for babysitting. I have never understood why these people think it's okay to show up uninvited and unannounced to our house to deal with work things that should be dealt with during work hours. I have never tried to go to a store manager's home to ask about the store even when I knew where he lived.

That was Saturday. A little before 6:00 a.m. yesterday, Rich gets a call from one of the employees of another FBO on the field. He can't get into the field because of this SUV which is still blocking the tower gate, which is the main gate. Rich went down to see what the deal was and why it was still there, and asked around and found out the FAA had been blocked entrance by this same vehicle. Oh, and there were rows and rows of parking less than 10 feet from the gate. The security people had taken the license plate number of the car and the end number off the jet when they came through at around 2:15. So, he tried to contact the people who run the jet that was on the ramp, he had assumed it was the company people's car, the folks who sit in the back. Nobody answered, there was nobody around the jet, so he called to have the vehicle towed at around 6:30.

A couple hours later, he gets a call from someone claiming to be a part of the crew from the plane. He's angry because his car's been towed. Rich told him what had happened and asked him why he didn't simply park the car. The guy gets belligerent and says they were in a hurry and they were right there in the jet, so why didn't anyone talk to them. Rich asked him where he was based, and had he ever been at any airport anywhere where it was okay to block a gate, let alone the main gate. He told him that another manager would have towed it after 15 minutes, not four and a half hours. He also told this guy that they hadn't been able to get a hold of any of the crew or the bosses, and there were lots of people around who tried, and who were certainly making enough noise to get their attention (Rich suspects they slept in the jet). Then, he tells Rich that he's going to be out a couple hundred dollars because of Rich. To which Rich responded that no, he was out a couple hundred dollars because he couldn't be bothered to park his vehicle in one of the many parking spots less than 10 feet away from the gate.

So, the guy asks him what he should do. Rich told him the name of the towing company, and said he could get their number off the fence in front of one of those nearby parking spots and to work out with them what needs to be done. 20 minutes later, Rich gets a phone call from the towing company. They are calling to make sure this guy is lying and that Rich hasn't just lost his mind. The fellow called them, this time he said he was part of the maintenance crew, and said that Rich told them to bring the car back. It was a stupid lie, really. Didn't he know that they would call to check? Anyway, he told them to charge as much as they wanted to give him his car back, and had to call the jet's company headquarters to have it sorted out and make sure this never happened again. Then, he got to get back to the regular daily work and budget stuff and monthly reports and a construction revision that was handed to him.

We're waiting for more stupid aggressive dog walkers to show up, someone to land gear up and for people to start harvesting from our garden this week. I'll be standing guard with a shovel.

Labels: Family, Prayer Requests