Today was going to be a good ending to a good week. Heading into this morning, I had a great feeling of excitement. I finished week 7 yesterday in school. I have two weeks of work in front of me (most of it done already) before I get my degree. Also, Keven was working breakfast for the first time on his own; I had 45 minutes of extra sleep because of it. This Friday was going to be a morale softball game with the Tackle guys. So after breakfast, I had only shopping and paperwork on my task list. I was more excited about today than I have been about any work day in a long time.
The morale event was cancelled almost immediately. Two of our three department heads were not onboard with having their people leave an hour early on a Friday. With only about seven people playing from our crew (the Tackle has about seven total crew members), there was no way we would be able to field a game. So I ordered tuna steaks from Jess’ Market. As soon as I did, plans changed and lunch was off again. I had to settle into some paperwork and wait for everyone to figure out what the hell was actually going on.
Paperwork was the one thing that went as planned today. I had a lot of issues come up in my recent compliance inspection. As of today, each one of them is resolved. I would actually go as far as to say that it was overly-resolved today. I don’t want any of these issues to ever arise again, so the last two weeks I have been organizing something that I have become somewhat of a specialist in lately: automation. Today was the icing on the cake, and it felt great putting it together.
We finally got the okay to cook lunch on time, and I ran off with Keven to pick up groceries. We went to Jess’ for the Tuna. It was $14.99 per pound. That’s more than the lobsters cost. Speaking of lobsters, I showed Keven how to properly play with the live lobsters in the tank. Then we went to Hannaford, and Keven had some beautiful woman ask for his phone number. No, I’m not kidding.
Back on the boat, we started chopping veggies. We had a lot to do. Today’s menu: Grilled Margarita Marinated Tuna Steaks topped with Fresh Salsa, Black Bean Salad, and Southwestern Corn. Keven started working on the salad, and I got to work on dessert and the marinade. Somewhere in the middle, Keven started in on the Jalapenos. Somewhere in the middle of that, the Jalapenos decided to squirt him in the eyes. He tried the classic rub-the-bad-stuff-out-of-my-eye technique. After 15 minutes of flushing his eyes in the emergency eye washing station, he was ready to return to work.
After the first aid ordeal, Keven and I were looking at about 50 minutes to complete a meal that would take 45 minutes. It was great to have him in a situation like this in his first week; we were rushing to complete a meal that we had no intention of cooking at the start of the day. We blitzed through it, the fish was excellent, and the overall meal was the best I had cooked without Christine in a very long time. Keven got his hands (and his eyes) in it quite a bit. More importantly, he learned how hectic in can get in a galley when it hits the fan, and the importance of being prepared. This was by far the best week I have had at this duty station.
Alas, that was not the perfect ending to a perfect day; as I was writing this, the Sabres tied the Rangers with 7 seconds left in the third. In overtime, the healthy scratch from game 4 put the Sabres up 3 games to 2 in the best of 7 series. Go Sabres!
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