Monday muddled along without any word from Jeanna’s attorneys. We only knew that court started at 9 AM. At 4 they were still in session. Marcy had printed off every invoice that had originated at the Charlotte rental site. The counter was full of documents in various kinds of order. Marcy had a handle on when the problem started, the two at the site that were involved and how they were connected.

Jenny spent some time investigating the dealer. Their website proved to be valuable in more ways than one. It took Jeanna and Marcy together to come up with copies of the checks from the rental agency. The bank did not want to cooperate. Marcy had four interviews from the temp agency for secretaries on Tuesday.

For me, Monday had been a cakewalk – everything went so smooth and quiet I could have slept in my office. Instead I spent the day on the phone trying to find a place suitable to hold a rape prevention seminar on the Island ‘How big a facility would be needed?’ Advertise the seminar, require a sign up period, then finalize a place to hold it – would probably be my best option.

Bob’s Construction wanted to start on the basement rooms on Tuesday. He had picked up the keys to get in from Marcy on Monday morning. I had made sure that all the BDSM equipment, tools and devices were locked up Monday night. Jenny and I had slipped away from the gym long enough to do the third insemination for this month. The rest was up to nature now and it was now a waiting game to see if it worked. She and I both believed that it was going to take several months before we were successful.

Tuesday was another story. The main transformer in the college’s substation just blew up at exactly 8 AM. The top of it landed in a student parking lot half a mile from the substation destroying six commuting student cars. The fire burned for four hours before it had consumed all the transformer oil that was in it. As if that was not bad enough, two thirds of the college was out of power and would be until the transformer was replaced.

The admin building and security had its own backup generator. That left four dorms and the cafeteria with no power and the weather was going downhill tonight. The other dorms were powered from a different college substation. The local utility company found a replacement transformer at one of their storage sites in Washington DC that they would sell the college for a cool quarter million plus installation.

Installation required a crane to load it on a special trailer at Washington and permits to carry it across the Bay Bridge. Another crane was then required to set it in place and crews to hook it up after it had been filled with new transformer oil. It had to be tested before it could be powered up. They said it would all be done in 24 hours. I did not see how that could be completed in 24 hours, let alone before the bitter cold tonight and the super cold tomorrow night.

I hunted down the head of building and maintenance; he was in a meeting with the College Board. As head of security I simply pulled up a chair at the table and listened to the sob story that was being dumped on everyone. With no heat and no place to put the students and frozen pipes coming, there were long faces all around the table. They were trying to find one generator to do it all. I asked how much electrical load was on each of the dorms. I knew from accounting and walking the grounds that we had our own meters on each of the dorms and the cafeteria.

The head of the buildings looked at me like I was crazy but made a call and then said, “The dorms use about 200 KW and the cafeteria about 300 KW,” he replied. In my travels I had seen trucks from Annapolis Mobile Power pulling portable generators up and down the highway just like the marines used in the battle field. Every time a camp was set up or moved transportation had to move the generators; I had done it dozens of times.

I looked up the number on the smart phone then rapped on the table for quiet and dialed the number. I asked for the man in charge. “Do you have four 250 KW and one 350 KW 120/240 three phase generators that you can deliver and hook up today?”

He asked all the particulars. The maintenance man answered all the questions. The final answer was they would be on site, hooked up, and making power by 5 PM, but we had to maintain the fuel supply for them. They would each run 16 hours at 80% load on a 300 gallon tank of fuel. I knew that Mr. Bozman could get someone to deliver the fuel twice a day until we were done with them.

Maintenance was going to pull the meters on the dorms and the cafeteria, then get the generator wired to the load side of the panels, fire the generator then turn on the main breakers in all the panels as the generator stabilized to the load. It was a no brainer. They had been looking at the big picture instead of divide and conquer.

Suffering States Fuel Supply made the twice-daily fuel deliveries. The generators ended up running for 10 days. The contractor that unloaded the transformer broke a cable and dropped the 100,000 pound transformer 24 inches. It could not be energized until the inspection plates were removed and a complete inspection and test was completed. The five rented generators and the two that powered the admin, security and the sewage control system used 1500 gallons of fuel a day.

Marcy had sent me several texts while we were in the phone conversation about the generators. I had ignored them at the time. When I looked at them the first one was all caps and just four words, “WE HAVE FULL CONTROL.” And then “Money in escrow accounts to be transferred to our accounts tomorrow.” That was followed by an e-mail to all site managers announcing that we were the new owners along with contact information and on site visits and inspections by executives would begin at once.

As I stood to leave the meeting Chairman of the Board Mr. Nobles asked if I could get 6 rental cars to replace the six damaged cars until the insurance company had replaced them or reached a settlement with the owners. Of course, he also asked if the college could get a corporate discount on them. The word of our business ventures had spread like wildfire after Saturday’s meeting at the gym. I sent Marcy a text, “Are you ready to give your first command decision? Call me ASAP.”

I explained the events of the early morning and Bob’s request for the 6 cars. Marcy replied, “The only place we have close by that has any number of extra cars is the BWI site. They have 30 on the lot and reservations for 10 for today. How do we get them to you in the necessary time frame? We do not have enough people to send to get them.”

“Announce on the PA that you have an emergency need for 6 people to drive a rental car from BWI to C-town and the pay is $50 cash. You could offer a hundred but that would not be fair to the full time workers. If you get six takers fly over in the King Air; that will take 30 minutes and an hour and a half to make the drive to C-town. I will have Patti take them back to the gym in the Suburban. I have one of our laptops with me; I can do the driver rental paperwork here when they come to get the cars. I will add the $50 as a destination charge or something,” I said. “Let me know if it works so I can tell them the cars are on the way.”

Twenty five minutes later Marcy called, “I am in the King Air, we are ten minutes out from BWI – it’s only a 15 minute flight from Island Airport over the bay. I thought it would be as good a time as any to meet our people. The secretary interviews start after lunch, I will be back in plenty of time.”

Two and a half hours later I was looking at 6 midsize rental cars and six gym members. One of them remarked, “So this is where you hide out during the day.” “Yes this is the day job,” I replied. “If you ladies are interested in shuttling cars around from time to time have Marcy add you to the driver list.” Patti carried all of them back to the gym and I started filling out the rental forms for the cars as each person came to pick them up. I had to chuckle as I hit the college for the high end daily add-on insurance for each car plus an additional $100 emergency delivery fee, but they did get corporate rate.

I walked into the gym to look at a frazzled Kim at the customer window. She looked at me and said, “The phones have not stopped ringing all day.” She handed me a stack of phone call messages, “Take these up as you go please. I only answer after seven rings.”

The scene upstairs was just as bad. Marcy, Lorrie, Ching Lee and Vicky all had phones to their ears as did four girls that I had not seen before. They were occupying the extra cubicles that were unassigned. I also noticed that the first four along the wall had the names of the four we had interviewed on Saturday pinned to the overhead storage compartment.

Edit by Alfmeister