field trip

MY TOE!!!!!! =( =( =(

******************

We had a field trip today at work - to a waste water treatment plant. It was a beautiful day to go out to Long Island...until I realized that WWTP's mean they treat sewage...which means...it STINKS.

We had to take as-built drawings and verify them against the actual structures and dimensions in this secondary gas compressor thing. Now...the definition of "as-built dwgs" is that once they build it, they check the drawings and modify anything that has changed. Any dimensions, locations, whatever. And I guess because we don't trust them, we have to double check them.

Clearly whoever made these drawings was lazy and decided not to modify them because there were a slew of errors. It was 4 of us with tape measurers and hardhats, trying to figure out what all these little symbols meant. And then my boss took us on an impromptu tour of the facility. Let me just say...wastewater treatment is DISGUSTING. He took us into the bowels (yes I used that word on purpose) of the plant where you have the sewage that's being boiled. You can see it bubbling and burping. And if that weren't enough, the stench would kill you.

OK it's actually kind of an interesting process. And I did get to do the mechanical drawings. And it was vaguely mechanical-ish enough. But...it SMELLED so bad!!!

That was my field trip...but it sure beat computer modeling.