Lucky I have a job.....

This was written last week, better now then never to post it. Well, for the last two and a half years I've been working the midnight shift at our hangar here in St. Louis. I was just notified last week that we will be shutting down our maintenance facility here and maintenance will be performed at other bases around our system. Our lease on our hangar was up in April and there was no other suitable hangars to move into. Actually, there were hangars available, just not what our company was willing to spend. It now looks like we will go back to a line maintenance station, meaning we will fix and put band aids on anything that breaks here, just like we did before. We will be laying off roughly 30 employees, although many were offered employment elsewhere. I feel for many of the guys that worked for me. They worked hard and we went through a lot of growing pains opening up this new maintenance facility. Now that we are like a well oiled machine it's going to be dimantled. It also sucks for the guys being offered jobs elsewhere. They were basically given one week to make a career decision to move to another city or take the layoff. I'm sure it's going to be tough on them and their family. I, on the other hand should be safe here considering my seniority and position, although nothing is set in stone. On the bright side I will go back to a more "liveable" shift, either a dayshift or nightshift postition. It won't be the graveyard shift. In fact, that was one of the main reasons I moved back here almost three years ago, to get off the graveyard shift until I was offered my new position. Anyways, just getting off graveyards should help me physically and mentally throughout the race season. It's bittersweet.



As for my health, I go to the doc today, a neurosurgeon. Amongst my groin and ankle pains, I have neck pain resulting from several whiplash injuries. I should've been doing all this during the offseason, but never did go in until today. I will find out if the bulging disks are what is causing some of my aches and pains in my neck. I'm pretty sure they are so the question will be, what do I do now? Surgery, therapy, rehab? I'll find out some information today and then next week when I see another doctor for another opinion.