But it's okay. I do after all choose to do all of these things and I mean why wouldn't I choose to take my boss up on his suggestion to go visit our other office in Gaeta on a Friday? Why wouldn't I plan on going to a dinner with local orphans to present them with Christmas gifts? Why wouldn't I plan to attend my class field trip to Naples? ...but I get ahead of myself. One day at a time.
After a rather hectic week in the office and my cancelled trip yesterday, my boss fully supported our reschedule trip to Gaeta to happen today. So this morning, a good hour after I normally leave my house I met up with my coworker and we headed up the coast to Gaeta. Gaeta several years back was the base for this area and still remains the home port of 6th Fleet's Command Ship- USS Mount Whitney.
The MW and I have really gotten to know each other over these past few months as I process, log, and closeout all funding documents for her necessary repairs. Let me tell you- she has a lot. Only recently did she return from Croatia from a dry dock. Yeah, as in they pulled her out of the water to make some major repairs. At any rate I feel like she sealed her fate as my #1 customer this week when I processed at least 2 documents for her each day and stressed over the fact that although these were emergency things I had no more money to use. Nothing like having to wait 6 hours to have the east coast to approve funds before your person signing documents in Bahrain goes home...like I said, busy week.
Today's mission was to gather information the MUSE barge, the power supply for the ship when it's in port. I tagged along as "official photographer" and to foster customer service. It was good to see some of the guys I talk with weekly (if not more) but never see. After hanging out in their office reminding that accurate estimates are key to not tie up funds in jobs (the reason for my headaches this week) I headed out to the barge with the real engineer. The Italian contractors gave us a great tour and offered us coffee. I'm still not 100% sure what all I saw but come Monday I'll get the big picture from my coworkers and start making sense of all of this.
After a fabulous seafood lunch with great company talking shop and other stuff we headed back to the port to get on the ship. The SSU engineer, knowing the week I had, suggested that I meet the chief engineer on the ship so I had a face to go with the next requests I saw. Why? Apparently he feared for my computer screens' safety this past week when I kept seeing the requests come through. Well, like most of his ideas this was a great one. As in gold star quality. The chief engineer is a great guy who agreed to take me on the 5 minute engine room tour but it quickly turned into the 45 minute tour as he lead me around, taking the time to explain how things work. (Can I just say that I find it rather ironic that after my days on the TSGB I never though I'd be in an engine room again and yet this is the second one this year?) During our tour I got to see the galley with its new hoods and met the Captain of the ship. He personally thanked us for the support our office provides him- sweet!
Realizing that we'd put in way more than our 8 hours and it was late Friday afternoon we thanked everyone again and headed back south. Along the way we called our boss to report in. He was once again impressed that I have no fear running around engine rooms. Shoot, I was even in heeled boots today. No. Not exactly ship exploring shoes but that wasn't our original plan! Oh well, as it was also pointed out on the drive back, when I tag along for visits we get the VIP tours. The things I do for my country :)
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