Troll’s Hole

Last night I got caught doing something that I am not necessarily proud of;
People watching.

The lovely Missus and I were in a popular restaurant where I was enjoying a fabulous bowl of soup and trying to watch people while listening for snatches of conversation, as is my habit. The lovely missus asked if I was looking at décor or people watching. I was caught. (She knows that the decor is just short of ‘public space utilitarian’)

Was my guard down because of the attractive blonde with two kids or was it the strange snippets of conversation that often can be heard in an open room? Don’t know, don’t care. I was having fun.

I like to take the conversation snippets and add the weirdest ones to a file I keep on my computer.

Last night there was a keeper;” Junior, don’t sit by the door. If you do, your brother will run away again.” I don’t think I need to explore the inner conflicts that a statement like this implies. I could go on for a long time about the importance of raising your kid instead of letting the kid raise you.

Statements like this reinforce my feelings about people;
” I hate people. Individuals I can like just fine, but people in general are a waste of space.” – Troll

Back to Blogging

I have been gone from here far too long and have actually missed this place. Living in Las Cruces left me in an emotional place filled with frustration and distaste for all things having to do with people. The job turned into a joke on many levels and the general social attitude in Cruces is angry and overly aggressive. Friendship seems to not be based on shared likes and dislikes, but rather a complex system of implied obligations placed upon an individual by others. “If you are my friend, you will do this.” I ended up not being friends with a lot of people.

There are a COUPLE of cool things there. One is the best used book store I have ever seen. You can find things there that will leave you in amazement if you are a book type person. Another is a small brew pub just down the road from where we stayed. I am not normally a beer drinker person, but the beer there was excellent and the food was good as well. (They only do deep fry, but do it very well.)

I left Las Cruces, because once again, I caught up to the other trades and things were not ready for the things I do. This same problem plagued the whole job for me, and the general superintendent took it quite personally if he was thought that I was going to leave the job for any reason. This man insisted that things were going to be run HIS way, even if he knew that what he was doing was wrong. (Especially if he knew what he was doing was wrong.)

I could tell tales of not-quite-acceptable building practices, but will not do so here. I believe that karma will return to do its balancing act and return the ‘favors’ that were done to all the other trades. It is not my place to out these crazy bastards, but sooner or later, I believe that shoddy practices will be exposed. If not, then they win and the people who buy the project will lose. The people that buy this project are the public schools of Las Cruces.

As I look back on the past year I think it pretty much sucked. There were a few great months, but overall it simply sucked. I won’t do the ‘year in review’ thing for you. If you want to know about my year, look at my blog archives. That will tell you everything I want you to know.

So today I am hoping to begin a new trend where things go better in my life and I get back to complaining about things on this blog that don’t really matter.

Happy New Year!!!!

This is not troll but Mrs.Troll. I recently had a wonderful opportunity to visit my two bestest friends over the last two weeks and while on one of the excursions we went to a river where wonderful music was playing and her granddaughter was playing with other children in the river. I fortunately had my camera with me so was clicking away getting any and all pictures of the beautiful fall foliage when a butterfly flew by. Both my mom and I have this strange belief that we are visited by her late father in different forms, I see him in the form of a rainbow and she sees him in butterflies. I think he was visiting me via my mom as you can see by the following picture. Please enjoy….

Twice a year, the Government opens the site of the first nuclear explosion to the public. This place is called Trinity and is within 3 hours driving from here. I could not resist, and with encouragement from the lovely Mrs. Troll, went to see it. I have been talking about going for years, and the time was come.

I met some friends there that drove from Albuquerque. We met off site and had breakfast before continuing our little adventure. The place we chose for breakfast is somewhat of an institution in southern New Mexico, and we thought it would be fun. Fun does not come close to describing it. Disappointing comes MUCH closer to describing it.

You get ONE choice for breakfast; two eggs, potato slab, toast, and meat. No matter how you want your eggs, they will be over easy. Ten bucks left me feeling not full and unsatisfied when we left. I can assure you that I am quite anxious to not eat there again.

There was still a bit of a drive from there to the site. It was a beautiful morning to be doing such a thing, and I was feeling good about the trip. We made the correct turnoff and the drive to the guard shack was good, even the 17 mile drive to the site was pleasant in a desert morning sort of way.

There were far more people at the site than I anticipated. It was not crowded. With a whole desert to have the event in, crowding is not an issue. Bustling would be a good word, yes, the place was bustling.

There was a festival feeling in the air with food and vendors and a certain excitement. There is a huge metal thingy there named “Jumbo” that makes a good background for pictures. People were milling around and doing all those uncertain things that people are in a large group and are not certain how to act or what to do.

From the parking lot it is about a quarter mile walk to the site and the monument. Before you go into the site itself, there is a canopy set up with scientist type people trying to educate other people about how radiation really works. I stopped to listen to the stupid comments people make at such things and was not disappointed.

When entering the site, you seem to be drawn to an obelisk. It is made from lava rock, (there is no lava for many miles from there) with a plaque on it. I am certain you can find a picture if you search in the interthingy. It is where the bomb went off. Flash of light, big boom, mushroom cloud, beginning of a new age and new things to be scared of.

I was surprised to find that some people treat this like a religious site. It was weird. Worshiping the Atomic Age seems to be the reason many people go. There was a certain intensity emanating from some people that I found a bit concerning. (“FINALLY I am at the holy shrine of the ATOM! Let me bask in thy holy radiation!”) There was nothing overt going on like a prayer circle or chanting or getting on one’s knees, but a feeling that no one would be in the least bit surprised if a glowing orb of hot gas erupted from the top of the obelisk and spoke to them.

My friends and I were having too much fun to take the thing too seriously. We were commenting about people and too people and making jokes about the whole thing. We were not there to worship, but to be able to say that we had been there. We do not see it as a religious site, but as a historical site, like the Santa Fe Trail or one of the many places Billy the Kid was shot dead. (It’s a New Mexico joke. Billy seems to have been shot everywhere.)

We really did not hang out long. We took some pictures, (The ones I had him take of me did not turn out.) and went our merry way.

All in all, I am glad I went. There is not really that much to see, and I have seen most of the pictures and historical information before, but I had fun and can now tell people that I have been there.

“All hail the ATOM, from which all things are made!”

It is finally cooling off here in Southern New Mexico. I no longer feel as though my skin is going to burn off minutes after I get into the direct sunlight. This seems like a good place for vampires. They never go out into the sun, and no one here in their right mind would want to. Not many people that live here are in their right mind, in my opinion.

Job is still delusional. Contractor is telling everyone that they will be turning buildings over to the owners very soon, when it is obvious that things are far from ready. I cannot fathom what these people could be thinking.

The lovely Mrs. Troll and I went to the Hatch Chile Festival last weekend. It was a far from fun filled event with an uncomfortably crowded dust bowl for a location and lackluster food at an event that is based on food.
I do so love the smell of green chile roasting over an open flame. That smell signals the beginning of my favorite season to my hindbrain. I like harvest season and try to make the best of farmers markets, roadside stands, and outdoor events. Downtown Las Cruces hosts a rather acceptable farmers market that the Mrs. and I like to frequent. We can even take the dogs and work on their socialization skills, while I half heartedly work on mine.

I really want to rant and rave about the state of the nation, but it is all being said by people that are more involved than I am. I know that I feel poorer than I have since I was making 16k a year and am watching the price of everything going up, while the value of everything I own is going down. It makes me want to join one of those weird fundamentalist groups that sell bread at the farmers market while the whole community lives in $37 dollars a week because they still haul water in a bucket and piss in a hole.
If we are not careful, we all may be doing without a lot more.

The world has been heavy on my shoulders of late. Lots of things on my mind and little I can really do about them, besides relive all my past mistakes.
I WAS working on a rather pithy post about why I hate people and another post about how criminals seem to think that their behavior is excusable.
The first post turned out to be a little too close to home and would reflect very badly about people in my work place. I may hate people, but am not going to leave myself open to a lawsuit, justified or not. (Yes, things got that bad.)There are just some people that are like an open wound, sensitive as all hell and looking for any reason to become infected.
The other post was about a teenager in Northern New Mexico that thought sticking a broom handle up his teammates butt holes was a fun thing to do. I could not find the quote on the internet that he was reported to have made. The quote that I could not find summed up the reasoning for all stupid and criminal behavior, making it seem like he was just another five year old caught with his hand in the cookie jar. At least he got to take a long vacation at taxpayer’s expense.
So it goes…..While both of these subjects were worth writing about, neither should be posted in a public forum. Posts delayed due to reality.
Las Cruces, New Mexico is HOT and filled with those things that make me so disappointed in the human condition. This place is kind of near the site of the first atomic bomb test and I sometimes wonder if it would have been a good idea to have done it here instead. “Massive explosion rocks Southern New Mexico ; Does millions of dollars of improvements.”
White Sands National Monument is white……..and sandy. Being less than an hour away made it worth going to, but it is not the kind of place that makes me want to go there and hang out. Hot does not appeal to me, and trust me, that place is hot. It is even hotter than Las Cruces and I often comment that Cruces seems to be six miles from the gates of hell. I occasionally see flaming bats flying from the south.
I am on another project that is behind schedule and am forced to wait on others to get things done before I can get in to do my things. My crew is less than half of what it was at the beginning and probably getting smaller. I see myself working alone again in the near future.
I would like to take the lovely Mrs. Troll to Carlsbad Caverns, but frankly, it is farther away than one would think. I don’t have a dog sitter to take care of the little shitters while we are gone, and hate the idea of a kennel. Actually, the dogs hate the idea of a kennel. They are both spoiled and one in particular is not all that well socialized. She would pick a fight with a lion just because it was bigger than her. Not particularly bright, but she has a big heart.
I have been trying to deal with the dentist that I paid to do my dentures. Every time I go to the office I have had a wait time of 3 ½ hours or more. When one is driving for over three hours one way, this can make for a long day. Friday I walked out of the office at 5:30 after my appointment was for 10:00 AM. I still had a three hour drive back to Las Cruces from Albuquerque and the gals at the office acted like I was the asshole for telling them that I was going to leave. I have made two trips to that office in two weeks and have taken time off work to do so. I believe that in those two trips I have actually been the chair for less than 30 minutes. I have invested over 20 hours into a 30 minute return, let alone mileage. They actually wanted me to take off on Monday for another “appointment”. I said “No. I can’t keep taking time off work to drive up here. I am trying to keep a job.”
Healthcare of the future.

They were right.

The job in Las Cruces, New Mexico, is not ready, but the powers-that-be (not mine, the general contractor) insist that they really are ready and want me to install as soon as possible.

Then I shall do so. I am a helpful Troll. (Innocent look)

I actually like jobs like this because it gives me an opportunity to show others how it is done. “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” is my motto, and now some of the other trades are going to have experience the wrath of Troll.

This place is just about as far as you can get from Idaho in the way people behave. In Idaho, people seemed friendly and smiled a lot. Down here people are generally just angry, bitter, and complain about everything, while doing little to nothing to solve anything.

I wonder if anyone has ever done a study about the relationship between climate and people’s view of the world. I would guess that there is a relationship between hot climates and hot tempers, but I am guessing.

Frankly, I prefer Idaho.

We finally got the house rented. The new realtor did as she said she would and did not take six months to tell us that she has not done what she said she could do. With the economy the way it is, I think she did a fine job and now we have to adjust to the idea that we have a small business.

Changes continue. Updates to follow.

I have been driving for the past three days, and have stopped in Albuquerque for a couple of days to get some things done.

After Idaho, it is hotter than the hinges on a hibachi here and I seek out air conditioning at every opportunity. I now remember why I hid inside all summer when I was living here.

I decided to park the rig at the house since the property is still empty, and learned that the realtor has pretty much done nothing, so we found a new realtor. The new realtor seems to feel that she can do something for us.

I understand that the market sucks right now, but I don’t think that is a good excuse for not taking care of business. I actually gave them money up front and returned to see the property overgrown and looking abandoned. I was not pleased.

Tomorrow, I am on my way to Las Cruces, New Mexico to do a job that everyone seems to think is not ready, but on a deadline. After Rexburg, Idaho, I am kinda looking forward to letting out my inner Troll. Rexburg went so well that I never had any reason to launch on anyone. (There WAS an annoying plumber there, but he was not worth getting my ire up for.)

I need to figure out how to post pictures on here. It was beautiful there and we brought back many pictures and memories. In the last two months, Mrs. Troll and I have seen Arches National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Grant Teton National Park, and Glacier National Park. Not bad at all.

I will try to be better about posting here and share tales of tourists, bears, and other unusual happenings.

I am sorry I have not been posting, but I am in an Idaho RV park that has no wi-fi!! The park told me that they had wi-fi, but the only way I can get it is to sit on the owners lap. Frankly, she is not that attractive that I am willing to pay that high a price.

I am presently in Idaho Falls at the bookstore, using the wi-fi and enjoying a coffee drink.

I love it here. There are conservatives coming out of the woodwork and the scenery is WONDERFUL!!!

After a while even the LDSers will leave you alone after you throw a drink at them.