How to make me cringe

Current mood: annoyed (at the loser kid wandering around the computers)

A woman starting working at the jobsite this week. She is with the HVAC company and is rather pretty. Unfortunately she swears. Badly. Thankfully it's a large site and so I'm rarely within earshot of her but when I am it's not a pleasure. In the book'The Gulag Archipelago' by Solzhenitzyn, he mentions that there was a priest who was tortured by having a female officer come into his cell and just swear at him for minutes on end. I didn't understand it before but now I see why it was torture for him. Hearing a pretty woman (or any woman really) swear is just like getting kicked in the stomach. Because of the enviroment where I work I hear people swear constantly and am actually getting slightly inured to it.However, I pray that I will never get used to hearing a woman do it. Maybe I'm just old fashioned but it just seems to go against nature to hear words like that come out of a woman's mouth.

Little Boys and Big Trucks

I've heard countless times that guys never grow up and just as many times thought, 'Yeah, whatever.' But now I have to admit that there is some definite truth behind those words. The children of my friends play with dozers and dump trucks in their sandbox, and they love them and have a great time. So little kids like big trucks. Just the other day I had two experiences that made me realize that I still like them too. On the way over to my brothers house I was driving around a corner and saw traffic ahead of me stopped. When I got up there I saw the reason was a large tractor trailer blocking the road by trying to back into a driveway. This truck was bringing water to fill up someone's pool (how do I know? the container said in great big letters, POOL WATER, kind of gives that sort of thing away) and he was having a very difficult time getting his truck into position. Move a little this way, move a little that way, pull forward, pull backward until eventually he was lined up and backed right down the driveway, finally clearing the road. And I was fascinated the whole time! Watching this guy delicatly handling his truck and getting it to do what he wanted was not an imposition, even if he was making me late. Another example; where I am currently working they just put down the first layer of blacktop for the driveway. All during that day, I was constantly going to the windows and looking out at the paving crew. I have no idea if the paving machine has a name but it is cool. The way it slowly creeps along laying down a flat even surface, making it look so easy. And then the rollers, going back and forth, shaking the ground and making the whole building vibrate. So young guys like big trucks too. Even old guys like big trucks. Several months ago the plumbing foreman's daughter and grandson came to visit him on the job site. The plumber had a short talk with the general contractor and then he and his grandson went over to the front end loader, climbed in, and started it up. Now this wasn't some homeowner loader. This was the kind that had a ladder to climb into the cockpit, had wheels five feet in diameter, and whose bucket could handle several cubic yards at a time. It was a monster. The grandson was probably about four or five, and loved it, but the grandpa had just as much fun or possibly even more. He spend five minutes in the loader, driving around, pushing dirt, and simply having fun. When he climbed out a couple of different people made jokes about bringing in kids so that they could have a turn driving the loader as well. So the moral of the story is, when it comes to big trucks, maybe guys don't grow up. But why should, we can't let the kids have all the fun.

Coming Soon

Currently tired.
Just wanted to let all my fans know that a new blog will be coming soon. I have an idea for one, I just have to find enough time to gather my thoughts together so I can put something worthwhile down. Which makes me wonder what category this entry falls into.

Sorry, I couldn't resist

I was going to use this picture of death as my profile pic but then decided it was to Grim :-)

Attack of the Pollen

Current mood, cautiously optimistic.
This last week I've witnessed a curious thing. Pounds and pounds of pollen and plant dust have been coating everything in view. My car looks like it has been sitting in the middle of a field for years on end even though it was washed clean the day before. The back porch on my house has such a deep layer that when I went out the other day I left a trail of footprints behind me. Yesterday when my housemate was on his way out, he came back in to tell me that my car appeared to be leaking a yellowish green liquid. Before we realized what it was this guy was worried that someone might call the epa and report us for spilling harmful fluids. I went out later and discovered that it was nothing more than pollen saturated rain that had washed off my car. There was a puddle of it at the end of the driveway that looked like a pool of waste. I'm not sure if the multitude of the pollen is due to the weather and season, or if it is because of where I'm currently staying. Either way I can't help but think of the spores in 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' and wonder if this really is just simple pollen or something far more sinister.

Anatomy of a good Week

Currently feeling sabbatical.
Nothing spectacular has happened this week just several small things have all come together.
First and biggest is that I got a raise at work. I don't actually know how much because I was talking to my boss over the phone and he didn't say. All I know is that it will be appearing in my next paycheck. Also on the work theme is that all this week I have been doing gravy work. Very easy, mindless stuff that is totally boring but can be done with your eyes closed.
Next the weather has been good. Not spectacular(to wet to be spectacular) but a huge improvement over the last couple of weeks. Sunny and hot, it makes for great biking weather in the evening when it cools off a little bit.
That leads into the next good thing, riding my bike. I've gone out four different times this week, none of the trips over five miles but they have all been good exercise and I've seen a lot of interesting things. Several incredible houses, slash manors, lot look like they would fit right into an English lord's estate. I also discovered a park right next to me, watched parts of two different baseball games (highschool), laughed at ten minutes of peewee girls playing lacross (think between the ages of 6 and 9), and found a running track within easy biking distance.
I also got a new camel pack that totally rocks. Two liters of water plus plenty of space for my camera, a little food, and a shirt or two.
Next up is that I have finally beaten the game halo. I had played it like crazy when I first bought it but then took a hiatus. I finally came back to it and after a weekend of intense playing beat it. Very cool game, I would recommend it to anyone who can run it.
And finally things are coming together for a long weekend up in Nova Scotia. Primarily to go to my cousin Grahams wedding, but I am also planning on seeing lots of friends and relatives who I haven't seen in years. I've gotten time off from work, have places to stay all lined up, all I have left to do is get my car checked out, which is going to happen this coming Tuesday. It is a great feeling knowing that everything is taken care of (DV).
So I'm currently feeling very good, and the only reason I'm not blaring music and dancing wildy around is because I'm at the library. They don't look kindly on that kind of thing.

Signs of the Times

Currently listening to music and feeling moderately happy.
Several of my friends started a picture collection of interesting signs while overseas. I don't think I'll quite get in a pictures worth of words,to describe two that I saw but I'll do my best. Driving to church and to work often lets me see all sorts of interesting things including different signs. One Sunday my brother and I were passing through a town on the way to church and we saw this sign, 'Temple Elections, May 28' It made perfect sense because that was the town that we were passing through. Then one of us(we won't say which twisted mind came up with this) made the remark, 'Hmm, wonder who is running for High Priest?' We were both properly shocked at this sacrilege but then promptly bursted out laughing hysterically. I can't help but wonder how many others made the same twisted leap. The other sign simply read, 'Pansy Capital of the World' Thankfully the makers had enough sense to put it outside of a flowershop. However, the twisted mind immediately thought of the slang meaning and decided it would be hilarious on a welcome sign. "Welcome to ----Pansy Capital of the World!" We're currently in negotiations with the French, talks are going very well.

I Would Pull Five Hundred Miles...

Hmmm. Current Mood, slightly frustrated.
I realize that a blog with no postings is pretty boring so here is something to keep you entertained. The other day at work we were unloading spools of wire into one of our box trucks for storage. There were several pallet loads, so out of curiousity I started counting how many rolls of wire we had in the truck. I just counted one of the piles (we were separating them neatly so we would have easy access later on) and we had fifty 1000 foot spools. Using this as an average I figured that we had over thirty miles of wire on the site. Not that much you say? Enough to lay out end to end and cover from Chestnut Hill to Fairwood. Also I don't think the average single family house uses hardly any more than a mile if even that. So then I started thinking about the cost. I saw at Home Depot that the cheapest most common wire gauge sold at 78 cents per foot with a few of the types of wire selling for several dollars per foot. If only I had had the keys,hehehe. I did get a couple of company t'shirts though so that more than made up for it. I guess I'll just make my money the good old fashioned way, scamming people out of their hard earned dollars