I'm sorry doctor, it looks like we lost him

I was sitting at a stoplight this morning, idly watching some county workers messing around with the lights on the corner. One of the lanes in the cross traffic was coned off and closed and there was a guy there, on his knees working on something in the road. Then I did a double take because it looked just like he had a doctors stethoscope around his neck. My second look reveled that, yes, indeedy, it was a stethoscope around his neck, then he put it in his ears and started listening to the road. It was then that the light turned green and I figured the people behind me probably wouldn't be too happy if I stuck around to see if he could find a heart beat or not, so I had to continue on my merry way. But, my question is, is a stethoscope standard work construction equipment where you live? Also, I'm still trying to figure out the purpose of those round thingys dangling from the back of the county workers hard hats. Anyone know? They look like a cover to a bottle of juice or something and every guy has one hanging from his hat.

In other exciting news, I finished Nanowrimo again this year. Yep, I just wrote a 50,000 word novel starting on November 1st. I have til the 30th to finish, but we're going out of town for Thanksgiving weekend and won't get back until the night of the 29th and I'm going to be playing catch-up with my life on the 30th, so I wanted to get done before we left on Wednesday. I did it with time to spare. To say I'm slightly burned out would be a bit of an understatement. My story isn't finished yet, but at least I've got my Nano word count, which was my goal for the month. Now I'm going to crawl into bed and sleep the sleep of the hardworking.