My last day of the contract on Friday went very well, and although I am glad to be getting some time off I also felt some regret in having to go out. I chatted with some other managers there and was told by all of them that they want to see me back next year when things ramp up. It will be something of a drain financially but it won't break us as that I've had two years worth of house payments in the bank for the last several years just in case. As stated last time, I will be keeping in touch with my boss, and if there's an indication that the up and coming project slips or gets cancelled (which I doubt that it will be) then yes, I might have to do some serious looking.
In the meantime, I have been resuming my radio hobby, and picking up where I started some 40+ years ago in high school, and that is, tuning in distant radio stations on the AM broadcast band and identifying them. I can't recall if I ever told the story of how I got into this, and if I don't see where I have told the story then I'll have to address that in a near-future post. With winter approaching, the "season" for medium-wave (AM broadcast band) DXing (long distance listening) is starting to kick into gear, and I've already logged some good catches.
So far the easternmost station I've gotten is KFAB out of Omaha. I remember getting WWL out of New Orleans when I was in San Jose but I haven't gotten them here yet, but I think I will before too long. Another one I'd like to get here is KMOX, which I heard when I was in high school back in New Jersey, and getting them again would bring back some memories. One station that I was pleased to get was KLPZ out of Parker, AZ, which runs only 58 watts at night. They came in one night last week but the conditions must have been unusual as that I haven't gotten them since, though I think it was KHEY out of El Paso that I was getting last night on the same frequency.
Some lower power stations out of Oklahoma and Texas have also been logged, as well as a high power border blaster out of Ciudad Acuña Mexico. I'm fairly certain that I've also gotten with regularity XEP out of Ciudad Juaréz on 1300, but I'll have to listen to their internet stream to make sure it's really them (though who else could it be?).
I'll be taking the radio with me when I'm on the road next week. Maybe in San Jose I'll be able to log stations out of British Columbia, Montana, Oregon, and Washington. I may also tune the shortwave bands some, but I haven't heard very much here aside from time signals and the rantings of Brother Stair, who is as of today conveniently forgetting about his rapture predictions he recently made about it happening this weekend.
On the coin collection front, I've done some organizing and sorting, and I plan on returning some rolled coin from my box searches to the bank in drips and drabs as that I think it might be bad form to drop them all off at once. Well, I'm not taking them back to the source bank, but I do take them back to three other branches. I try to use only one or two banks as a "source" and two others as a "sink".
Sheila has tomorrow off, and we'll be spending some time together before I leave Tuesday morning. Regrettably she doesn't have vacation time on the books to come with me, and I'm not sure how long I will be gone. I'm thinking of two more trips to San Jose this year after this one. On the way back from this one there might be a detour to Las Vegas to visit with some friends I have there, though to be honest I might want to get home sooner to be with Sheila.
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