Day 17: Not Rafting...

Quinn and I showed up to work today to see only Brad and Skye among the Brycon employees. I guess Jeff had a doctor's appointment for his back condition...same as Friday, I found out from Skye. Quinn had already informed me on the way to work, that Brady and Griffin had gone river rafting with Lacie Jones. Something I was invited to a few weeks ago, but I graciously turned down due to work. Ironic.

I was pretty tired today, and kept catching myself lagging, but for the most part, I had enough energy. Brad and I got split up after he finally came back. I was kinda ticked about that. I was so excited to work with him, especially after he was kinda hyper in the morning during the Pre-Task Plan. I was like "I'm so glad you're back. I'm so excited to work." ...Not. I worked with Jaime again, but this time I was caulking the ceiling...craning backwards and kneeling with my neck thrown back all the way. I spent the better half of ten hours like that today, and it was so tiring.

Brad, on the other hand, also worked on the ceiling, but actually installed the cast iron hardware peices that are bolted between the I-Beams and the ceiling grids. They're very heavy, as you can tell, being cast iron (actually I only assume they're cast iron because they're so incredibly heavy). He worked with Alfredo, whom he called Fettucini during break and lunch. I got a kick out of that one. He told me that he got to hear Alfredo swear twice, despite his resolution to not swear around us. It's kinda nice that everyone's trying to hold their tongues for our sakes, even though we haven't even asked them. Anyway, Alfredo dropped his marker and Brad was like "Oh, here it comes." Alfredo let out a curt, "Mother ******!" That amused Brad, who couldn't help from laughing after he returned the marker, and had a chance to hide his face. "It's a good thing you guys are here, cause if it weren't for you, I'd already have cussed out Fernando," Alfredo said to Brad at one point during the day. We're glad because Fernando is a great guy, but he's just a little mentally challenged. He's always eager to help, even if it means his hard hat slipping backwards off his head. You can usually find him hunched over, with his arms slung behind his back, trying to balance the hard hat on his back, while simultaneously trying to get a firm grasp on it to return it to his head. Most of us will turn and chuckle for a second, before helping him out. He's just a funny guy.

I saw Skye and Quinn working at the pass-thru occasionally, while searching for Lawrence, who spent most of the first half of the day outside the clean room. At one point, though, he came in to tell me to rewrite the Pre-Task Plan because Jaime, who'd written it, had scrawled it such that it was illegible. I'm not quite sure Jaime is quite literate by normal human standards. He's a great guy...in fact, everyone at Brycon is exceptionally nice and willing to look out for you, but Jaime probably shouldn't be put in charge of such tasks as writing something...that's all.

The safety meeting made us all more tired than we were before, and the first break wasn't long enough. We were discussing the weather for the 24th of July celebration, which Skye claimed to be rainy...something that didn't raise our spirits. But then again, they were already down, due to the fact that we don't have work off on Monday or Tuesday for that.

The lunch break seemed to come quickly for me...but we did like, nothing. Jaime and I were so vastly incompetent when it came to caulking upside down and fastening the wiz nuts to the grids, that it was sad. We got like, 20 minutes worth of work done in a few hours. Daniel got fed up with our stupidity at the end of the second shift and came up to clean our equipment and prep us for the third shift.

During lunch we talked about, among other things, how sick I felt. Skye suggested going home, but I didn't feel like doing anything...not even moving to get up, to get home. Quinn said he was tired and was going to take a nap. "I'm going to take a nap in a box, and I'll have Skye put the lid on the box, so when Steve walks up, then all he'll see is a box," he said. We all had a good laugh about that, but something about that plan made me wish it were even possible to do. I'm thinking of campaigning for a nap-time between 2:00 and 2:30pm--everyone would love me.

The last shift went buy pretty quickly, especially the second half. Daniel showed us his amazing secrets, and although I felt completely incompetent and like a full-blown oaf as he explained it, it was okay, cause I was when it came to caulking the ceiling, etc. Once he took us through the routine a few times, we flew. We got 5 times the work done that we had before, during the second 3-hour shift. It felt nice to do something productive, and although I occasionally found myself about to tip over due to exhaustion or nausea, I managed to stick it out the whole time. Before we knew it, Daniel was at the bottom of our scaffold, telling us to hurry cause it was 4:14.

I was excited to end the day, and get home. It was long, and for some reason I was miserable all day. I still fell that way even...it's really annoying. Hopefully Brad will keep me company tomorrow, but the outlook isn't bright.


Quote of the Day:

"The Native-Americans said that it would rain on Monday, during the 24th of July, and they're never wrong."
-Skye