Working as a fire alarm technician with a company that does an amazing 100-mile radius for service calls leads to my eyes being exposed to a ton of sights and adventures – both lovingly good and giant-naked-lady bad. I have tons of stories and supporting pictures to share with over 6 years of working in the good and the bad.
This week’s journey leads me to a Thursday night (day 2 of 3) in Caldwell, TX. I am doing fire alarm inspections for four local schools that are pretty huge and thusly I am hanging out at the Sunset Inn for 3 days. This means that I get paid to torture the summer cheerleading camps and office ladies with blaring fire alarm sirens all day long. 
And just so you know, in the picture on the front page of my hotel’s (Sunset Inn’s) website, there is a huge Walmart sign right there looming in the background for your nightly dose of subliminal Caldwell advertising – it’s like a bad smell that you can’t help but keep smelling.
Caldwell TX is about 25 miles south of College Station. So everywhere I turn, I see AGGIE COUNTRY signs and all sorts of aggie references. Nothing new here, just overloaded with it. THIS IS AGGIE LAND!!!
Last night, Katie and I were hanging low with the locals at the Texan Lounge about 0.8 miles away from my hotel room. Everything was typical Texas – maybe so insanely Texan that it was just… normal. A sign on the wall said – IF YOU AIN’T OILFIELD, THEN YOU AIN’T SHIT. And I didn’t even want to ask the bartender and get shmacked in the head nor do I even want to Google it. Just let it coexist within my mind, alone and peaceful.
Now to the media: Yesterday, when inspecting the local high school’s fire alarm and deafening the occupants to their demise (and my pleasure), I came across this room (it was actually in the faculty “work room”). Hmm, my school didn’t have one of these:
Smoking bans in Houston bars, smoking rooms in high school faculty lounges, I see the real truth now.
Next up, in the bathroom reserved for only the staff and faculty to do their dirty handywork, located smack in the center of the building amongst the hallways, where surely a middle school student could take wafts of their biology teacher’s deuce:
Thanks Caldwell schools for keeping my teachers clean and freaked out by psychadelic super graphics from space!
And finally, the local schools are plastered with reminders and motivational messages from Aristotle, Einstein, and other great thinkers. But this one particularly caught my eye; they sure do want to remind us of something here.. what is it? Oh yeah!:
I can’t make this stuff up folks. I love it. This job gives me random input from all angles that I never see coming. Good pay, good travel, good summer work. And great timing! – I am definitely getting my Texas fix in before I leave this great state in 20 days.
After working until 8:30 pm tonight, I only had the energy to visit the Brookshire Brothers about 400 feet from my hotel and gather some resources for my last night here: cold beers, a TV dinner, a banana, and a bear claw for breakfast in the morn. During my checkout process, the grocery sacker told me about six and a half times how cool it would be if “you could buy beer when you were 15 years old.” He was about 2.5 times larger than me. Noted.
Thanks Caldwell. Seriously, I love your offerings, no jokes. And here’s to tomorrow. I <3 you Texas.
P.S. Thanks to Sunset Inn for making this blog post all possible with a $35 dollar room with free Wifi! Ahh America!
