Chapter 122

I had planned on sleeping in and go to the college at noon but I had been getting emails from Patti all day yesterday. I was showered, dressed and in the kitchen at 5:30 setting up breakfast this morning for the brood. Toast, topped with the apple or grape jelly, fruit, several kinds of cereal, orange juice, coffee, hot chocolate or milk was the menu for today.

Jeanna came down to have breakfast with us. The G5 was going to carry her to a meeting in Nebraska and then stop at the banks corporate HQ for another meeting. Her two secretaries were coming back and moving into her house today. She was going to be splitting up her nights between there and here. Marcy had reserved two master rooms at the Holiday East chain just in case they did not want to stay at the house. There were two new GMC Terrains at the island airport rental agency for the secretaries to use. Marcy had made up two guest ID'S for the gym good for two weeks and a brochure with everything available at the gym.

Ching Lee filled us in over breakfast on the progress of an area guide she was working on. We could pass it out to customers that were coming to the gym from out of town, the car rental business, or for the extended meetings and extended training programs we were going to have. She had been going to all the businesses we were going have listed in the brochure to have them sign a permission form for us to use their name and/or business logo.

Patti drove to the College; she had listened to the details of the horrid driving conditions from PA last night and was going to give me a break. I worked on the smarter than smart phone as we went.

We were having problems with the contractor at the college again. First thing yesterday morning one of their trucks carrying over-length materials took out two cars parked on the street.

Then in the afternoon the street by the construction entrance started breaking up from all the truck traffic. We had had a month of wet as hell weather, followed by heavy freezes and thaws. In the middle of that cycle came snow. The town's solution to the snow was heavy applications of rock salt. That much salt simply damaged the road and the freezing and thawing softened up the base under the blacktop. The result was the black top was destroyed.

The town was demanding immediate repairs. It was in the permitting with the town that we were responsible for road damage. It was the middle of January, the blacktop plants were closed and would not reopen until the end of March and until the base firmed up there were no permanent remedies according to an e-mail from Richard Bozman, our construction auditor.

His suggestion was to run a grader with a belly ripper and simply destroy all the remaining blacktop, breaking it into smaller chunks to fill the potholes. It was heaved, pushed, and buckled the entire length and width of the road anyhow. Part two of the temporary fix was then to dump recycled concrete on top of that and grade it every day to eliminate new potholes and any sags that developed until the plants opened and the base firmed up. More concrete could be added as needed. Once construction of the dorms was completed then we could repave the road. His fix sounded perfect to me and that was the one I was going to push.

If the dorm builder had to rent one of those things we would pay three times the price as an add-on item. All the contractors in the area that had a grader were closed for the winter. The only thing they were doing was plowing snow as an on-call from the state and county at double and triple time rates. I was simply going to suggest the college rent one and I would grade the road myself at the end of each day. I had transported and loaded and unloaded hundreds of them in the sandbox. I was willing to bet that Richard could run one as well or even one of the maintenance guys would be proficient enough in a couple of days with OJT to handle it.

I would have our security department close the road while the operation was going on each day. The meeting was at 8 sharp and I was ready for them.

Problem number two for the day was one of the returning girls from the fall semester had fallen off the wagon. She had come back as a full time slut and a voyeur or both. We were getting complaints from everywhere, internally and even some from outside the campus. HR had already had two conferences with her. She had been seen and was on security tapes having sex in just about every hallway, room and display on campus with dozens of different male students. Some videos were said to be showing up on the internet.

HR wanted me to make her life so miserable that she would quit and go home, just so they would not look like the bad guys. Personally I did not care how much sex she had or with whom as long as it was not in public. But I did wonder what had brought about the change. I also wondered if the shrinks Misty was still seeing could offer some insight. I would make that call after the first meeting was over.