Day 10: And Then There Were Three...

Basi-cally, nobody came to work today. Brad, Griffin, and I were the only ones out of our little group that showed up today. Brady is still gone to scout camp, Quinn went to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, and Skye called at 5am to confess that a bout of severe vomiting had overcome his person. On top of half of our crew missing, Griffin was the only one who got to work on time, as Brad slept through his alarm--shutting it off and thinking he had hit the "snooze" button--and Skye woke me up at 5:10 to ask for Jeff's cell number so he could call Jeff to let him know not to pick him up.

Thanks to Skye, I was able to get to work only 5 minutes after 6am, and thanks to Griffin, Brad was woken up and got to work a few minutes after me. Wow, what a morning!

Anyway, the day started off like any other...except like, everybody was gone! Renae was gone, Quinn, Brady, and Skye were gone, and some other people turned up missing too. We were short-handed and didn't end up getting any grids today. Something that would have been an insult to mine and Brad's name, except we were given a brand new task this morning. Brand new to us, that is. Dex, a coworker of ours that we actually met just today, trained me and Brad on how to measure and mark the I-Beams on the ceiling for the hole punching crew. To hang the grids in the ceiling, we actually punch holes into the I-Beams and bolt a short rectangular tube of steel to the beam. The grids are then attached to that steel tube with the long and thick bolts that Brad and I were previously engaged in installing on the grids for the last two days. Before our task began this morning, Alex approached Lawrence and apparently tried to pull Brad away to help clean or something. We heard her say his name and I was like, "See ya, Brad." Brad cringed, not because he doesn't like Alex, but because cleaning grids and tiles is so freaking boring. Alex, however, walked off a minute later and never came to get Brad. Apparently Lawrence had talked her into taking Ron instead.

The process, although sort of tedious and actually quite important to the entire layout of the floor, is very fun and time seems to fly while you're doing it. Brad and I took turns up on the scaffolding, marking the points where each of the holes would be punched. The floor of the FAB (clean room) is hidden underneath an artificial floor of steel tiles (so wires and other such things can be run accross the room without the clutter of such a large computer dominated aread. There is a largely invisible grid layed out on that floor, with peices of tape layed out every eight feet in all directions, marking the corners of the grids on the ceiling. On each peice of tape is an X, where we line up a laser-level to project a dot on the I-Beam overhead. The man on the scaffold marks a dot with a Sharpie marker and then measures out with a square, one and a half inches on each side, where the holes are to be punched. That's what we did. It's a long process for each one, but for some reason, doesn't get old as quickly as cleaning tiles or assembling grids. We spent our morning until lunch doing that.

Brad said to me, as we walked out of the clean room to lunch, "I feel like an engineer."
"Why is that?" I asked.
"Because those dots we put on the ceiling are so important. We have a job that if we didn't do it totally correct, could ruin the whole ceiling. That's kinda cool."
"Yeah, it is," I said.

At lunch, Jeff showed up. He had just gotten out of Orientation and looked tired. He informed us that he was running off an hour and a half of sleep, because he had to work until close last night. He got off at 2am or something, after the midnight showing of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ended. Then he woke up at like 5am to go to work. After work he would go straight back to the theatre to work until close tonight, and unless he passed out from exhaustion, I believe he's still there. Poor kid. I now have very little sympathy for poor Quinn, who figured he'd be too tired to come to work after seeing it at midnight. The only thing that Quinn had going for him, was the fact that he had been working for the last 2 days and I knew just how tired he already was, and how tired he would have been with only 2 hours of sleep last night. Oh well, it's not a big deal, but Jeff impressed me that he could keep it up.

After lunch, and after the afternoon "Stretch & Flex," Jeff left again to go to Protocol Training. Brad and I gowned up and spent the rest of the day moving grids that had been delivered out of order, which was basically all of them. We moved like...ten grids, and they were HEAVY. After a while, Jeff and a new guy named Cody joined us in the FAB and Alex put them to work gasketing. We finally started to get the 170's in and we can probably start on the grids again fairly soon. I don't think anybody is going into work tomorrow, cause it's a saturday, but Skye might, since he missed today. Hopefully he doesn't go in alone, but he may anyway. I'm definitely not going...I've got sleep to do.

Oh, and poor Griffin spent the entire day cleaning grids...not much to say really. Only that he needs to get transferred or he's going to lose his mind. Maybe I can trade him for Brad...haha.


Quote of the Day:

Lawrence: "You're lucky! Alex wanted to take you, but I told her she could have Ron instead."
Brad: "Yes! Take that Ron!"