The Dirt Nanny

...or, how to make money by pestering people and looking at dirt.

You work for a geotechnical firm doing construction observation and testing.

This, BTW, is the idea of heaven for a three-year-old. The Peeper utterly grooves on the idea that his Daddy gets to go "work with the big diggers". I feed his addiction with pictures of said diggers and even a visit to the job site every now and then.

This is my current job, a future large commercial venture in the central Willamette valley. These stores are commonly known as "big box" retail, since the actual stores are just immense slabs with concrete tilt-up walls. The superintendant of this job was interviewed by the local fishwrap when they broke ground.

He was quoted as saying something to the effect of "This is the biggest big box in _________ - and that's the largest excavator I've ever seen!"

That was ten weeks ago, and every one in a while one of the guys in the crew will come up to him and remind him that no matter how big the big box it's not the size of the excavator, it's what you do with it.