Ryan McFarland

It is that time.  I’m sort of casually hunting for jobs.  I’m not going to hide it.  The last time that i did job hunting was when i was trying to move to Juneau or Anchorage to keep my marriage together.  The time before that it was because the City Manager had left and i had no idea what kind of boss i would end up with.  Well, we have a new mayor, largely new City Council, and the City Manager position is open.  That spells a lot of uncertainty for the future.  As long as i can continue to work as i have (recognizing that i do mess up on occasion) i am quite happy in my position.  I have been extremely successful in bringing grant money to town for projects.  I love feeling like i can make a positive impact on the community.  In the last 8 years i have definitely developed a sense of purpose and a knowledge of my position.  A supervisor that were to micro-manage or a significant change in direction for the department would probably be difficult for me to handle.  And i don’t want to be a difficult employee.  So it is time for me to keep my eye on jobs.  I really want to stay with the City for at least another two years though.  A position in Juneau caught my eye…

Ooooh… Parks and Landscape in Juneau!  It pays well - 64,099.62 - 73,039.98 (well over $10,000 more a year than i am paid now) and i exceed the job requirements.  The biggest problem?  It closed on October 12th.  A position in Juneau really is the best move for me right now.  I can stay in the PERS retirement system, work in a significantly larger city with a strong P&R program, and live in a city with quite a few more social, shopping, and recreational opportunities.  Of the positions in their structure the Parks Superintendent is actually the best fit with my professional strengths.  Alas, my casual approach to considering that i might need to think about possibly looking for a new job has caused me to miss perhaps the best career move at one of the most opportune times.  Maybe my approach should be more aggressive.  But as i said - i don’t want to leave - it is just looking like it might be wise to.  I had an number of people ask me not to leave the city after the pool project was built -people that must understand that without such a huge project consuming much of my time and energy that my position would feel easy in comparison afterward.

Jeff was kind enough to show Jack Mosby around the Challenge Alaska offices and equipment. As a bike shop owner this mountain bike was particularly intriguing. You can use your chest to durn the bike while propelling the cycle using your hands.

Today marks my completion of eight years of employment with the City of Petersburg.  I remember those first few days in town so well.  I arrived on the ferry at about 5:15 on a Friday (the 16th of July 1999).  Since the offices were shut down i couldn’t get my keys.  It was me, my red GMC Sonoma, Oliver, and Comet and my kayak, bike, and a few boxes of stuff.  I knew nobody.  I had no place to go (with two cats in a kennel in the back of the truck).   I slept in the back of the truck in the South Harbor parking lot for two nights.  The weather was nice - people were walking all around town and riding bikes past my hideout.  I had to kill two days before being able to settle into my new office.  I called every apartment listed in the newspaper from a pay phone.   Nobody wanted someone with cats.  I eventually moved my tiny RV to Tent City and stayed there for a little over a week - paying for showers by the quarter.  Eventually i found an apartment for $800 a month.  It only cost me about $70 in cleaning supplies to make it worthy of moving into.  I remember that the bag boy at the grocery store remembered me but the checker didn’t.  She still treated me like a “tourist” 3 years later.   That was a pretty lonely time.  Good to get settled into a new town though.

Today the news will spread through town so i may as well post something here.  Mike Tozzo and i have been approved for a credit line to allow us to purchase the inventory and tools of Petersburg Cyclery.  We have a spot downtown picked out and the business will sell and repair bicycles and also sell bike accessories and sporting goods.  I’m going to be the silent and somewhat invisible partner so i like to go by “ninja partner”.  Mike will run the shop and be the mechanic (after he is done at the newspaper) and i’ll be in charge of purchasing, inventory, advertising, invoicing… all the administrative stuff that i can do at night and on weekends.  We think we have figured out a fair way to calculate the salaries and hopefully we’ll manage to turn a profit sooner than the third year.  We still need a name so we can get a business license and all that jazz though.  Any ideas?  We’re going along the lines of Devils Thumb Bikes and sporting goods (where “and sporting goods” is in much smaller letters) but everything from The Bike Shop to Mike’s Bikes is open for consideration.  It would be nice if we could point out that we’ll carry more than just bikes though.  Any name ideas?

Tonight i am MCing a retirement party.  I wondered if i was asked to do it because my last name starts with MC.  Cena said it was because i’m witty, charming, and nice to look at.  So i asked.  Kathy said that she couldn’t say i was those things or it would be sexual harassment.  Teehee!

Since Monday i have been working on the baseball fields. We’re working on finishing up the fencing on the yellow field and would have been done fencing it today but suddenly the concrete we needed to get the foundations for the dugouts on the blue field was available so we got them poured. Tomorrow we’ll get the framing for the foundations of the yellow field’s dugouts completed and ideally finish the fencing too. Then Friday morning we’ll get those foundations poured and probably work on installing bollards to keep vehicles off of the fields. Next week the focus will be construction of the four dugouts.

Petersburg had a record year for the amount of snowfall.  The snow in front of the house is higher than the porch railing where it has slid off the roof.  The pile behind the house is seven feet tall.

High school baseball is supposed to have a home game in less than two weeks and we have $30,000 worth of sand stacked on the senior field to surface the other fields.  Everything is buried under snow though.  We need rain and warm temperatures to melt the snow so that work can resume on the fields.  Looks like we’re going to get some sun finally though.

A patron recently was concerned about the pool chlorine level because they had been swimming and had a yeast infection. It is important for everyone to know that you can not get a yeast infection from pool water and that if you have a yeast infection that swimming is completely safe for you and all other swimmers. When you think about public swimming pools you can start to get squeamish if you think about the body fluids and other substances that are likely present. Snot seems to flow from many noses, people spit, and there is no such thing as a chemical that is added to pools that turns red when someone pees in the pool. But a properly chlorinated (or - “disinfected” since chlorine is not the only sanitizer used in the pool and spa industry) pool will kill most bacteria within just hundredths of a second. The sand filters we use filter to just a few microns.

The city allows employees to “sell” their vacation time. According to yesterday’s pay stub i have enough vacation accrued to cash it out at $4,875. Definitely not what i want to do but nice to know that i have that little “savings account” to draw from when things get really tight. I would much rather spend a few weeks in Central America, a week with my parents when they come up, and have a few days here and there to get things done around the house. Maybe if i just sold off the vacation that accrued between January 1st and April 16th. That has a value of $1,200 and wouldn’t leave my vacation time exhausted.