Well, this stinks.

Nothing like being stuck in your apartment on a beautiful day to really get you peeved. And that's exactly what's happened to me today, and, yes, I'm slightly peeved.

I'm not hopping mad, mind you, or even mildly upset. More like annoyed. As I write this it's late Saturday afternoon, the sun is shining brightly (as it has been doing all day long), and I'm in South Beach, Miami, Florida. Specifically, I'm stuck in a condominium in South Beach, Miami, Florida--as I have been all day. NUTS.

I suppose I'd better back up a bit and fill in some details. You see, After seven years of school and a year of job-hunting, I am now gainfully employed--have been since the beginning of the year. As of January 5, 1998, I am an engineer in the Atlanta office of Corrpro Companies, Inc., and damn proud of it. We do all kinds of things; cathodic protection, coating inspection and analysis, underground line location and mapping--the list goes on and on (I won't bore you with details, but let's put it this way: if you've got steel in the ground, call us). It's not your typical engineering job; unlike most of the people with whom I graduated, I'm not stuck in a manufacturing plant somewhere on the Gulf coast dealing with noxious fumes, finicky control systems and ornery EPA bureaucrats. I am a field engineer; which means I'm performing tests, creating system designs, and keeping up customer contacts. Eventually I'll be putting together bids, managing projects, even making sales calls. This is job is definitely not solely engineering in the strict sense of the word.

But most of all, what I do is travel. Oh MAN do I travel.

In the roughly four months that I've been working for Corrpro, I've spent quality time in Memphis, Nashville, Chattanooga, Augusta, San Juan, and, now, Miami--and that's not even including all the small hamlets that I've hit on the way to these and other places. Right now, while I'm learning and training, I probably spend 80% of my time "on the road." When I reach the point where I'm in command of what I'm doing (i.e., not feeling like a bumbling idiot), I'll probably only be traveling a mere 50% of the time. I told my roommates that I don't actually live in Atlanta, I just visit (and could I have a break on the rent?).

Other people might not like all this travelling, but I love it. It's one of the reasons I took the position; what better job could you have than to travel around the glorious Southland?

The only real frustration is this: not enought free time to adequately explore the places visited. This particular project is a perfect example. For the past month, another engineer and I have been working on a project at the Miami International Airport. It was tough mainly because it was incredibly time consuming; our job was to locate and survey ALL the fuel lines at the airport, using GPS equipment and a current mapper. Every day we'd walk the lines around a concourse, dodging planes and wild-eyed luggage tug drivers, and enter in location data from our GPS survey equipment. Then, when we got home, we'd upload all our data to a PC, process it, and send it to a CAD drafter to make some sense out of it.

We worked six days a week, ten or more hours a day most days. And when we came home, we were so tired we didn't want to do anything but rest. It was the same on our off day. So when we finally finished up the project, I had this weekend to myself. Sunday I'd have to drive to Lakeland for another small project, but Saturday was all to mine, and I'm thinking one word: BEACH! The condo where we've stayed on this project is less than a mile away from the coast; I can see the water from my balcony.

And then, thwarting my plans, our CAD man decides to work on Saturday. My Saturday, the one I've had earmarked for total relaxation. And since he's working on the drawing, I have to be available to answer his questions. All day I've essentially been chained to the phone.

Everybody khows you can't go to the beach when you're inside all day.

Oh, I've tried to make the best of it. I've gotten a little work done, I've made some headway on this Webpage, and I got to watch the Auburn baseball team womp Kentucky on national TV. But the fact is, as I write this the sun is setting behind a high-rise across the bay, and have not left this condo. I have been robbed of my vacation.

And that is what it's like to be a field engineer; to visit these wonderful places and spend all your time doing something other than wonderful--working. Very little time for fun, and if you do have time, it's usually by yourself. And most things are much more enjoyable with a companion.

But you want to know the truth? So far, that's the only real problem I've found with this job--and when you think about it, it's not really a problem at all. Only being able to spend a couple of days exploring and enjoying Miami Beach is two more days than I'd have in any other job. And that's a good thing.

So you can see why I'm not really peeved, just mildly annoyed. I wouldn't even be mildly annoyed, except for one reason: after about 10 AM, I never got a call from our CAD drafter. He didn't have any questions, I didn't have to provide any answers, adn I could've gone to the beach after all.

NUTS!