Oh man, I am so wishing my new phone would get here, like, yesterday. I finally bought one after…gosh, five years? My phone won’t even go on the internet anymore. I really want to take some decent pictures. I’m in Ye Olde Yesler housing projects, which are partly still in existence, except now I am helping to densify them and make them 8+ storeys instead of 1-2. I can see Smith Tower, Columbia Tower/downtown, the mountain, the bay, and the old VA hospital. It’s a neat place.
Today we did something called pour watch. This means you stand at the bottom of the future parking garage and a big articulated straw thing comes over your head and spits concrete down onto the floor non-stop. IT IS SO COOL. I get to be behind the barriers and actually see what happens now, which I have wanted to do since I was a kid. And to be honest it was kind of fun just to stand there and make sure our conduit didn’t get knocked over or kicked so it would stay in line with future walls, while the cement guys scrambled around to smooth and level everything.
Later I had to put on a harness and climb about twelve feet up some pre-pour rebar walls/forms to attach some big pipe so power can come off the street into the building. My jdub thought I was going to be scared or act like a little bitch up there but verily I did not.
“You okay up here?” he said.
“Yep, I was just thinking about dinner…deciding on a marinade for ribs.”
“I guess you’re not scared then?”
“NOPE. I do think this thing is some form of birth control, though. Totally riding up.”
There followed a story about This One Time when the rebar caps were not replaced properly, and This One Guy fell, and it was INCHES! INCHES FROM HIS HEART! This happens every time we do something new–you get to hear about 27 ways people died doing this exact thing
It was totally fun. I busted into the job shack after with my harness all up my butt and my foreman was like, “And how was that.” I guess this is kind of a litmus test or something. When, when will we crack the new apprentice??
“Welp, I’m quitting,” I said.
“Really??” my boss asked.
“PSYCH, I love my job!”
I get to tell jokes like this at work as well:
A man was admitted to Harborview with six plastic horses in his ass. They say his condition…is stable.