Day 28: Garth Batty...

I started the day working with Luis on the hole-punching crew. We used the mag-drill to create the holes on a bunch of the I-beams. Then we installed the blocks. Fernando kept us from getting started, delaying us a good half hour because he walks so slow and couldn't find a power source for us to plug the drill into. Luis was getting pretty frusterated with him, but we just laughed about how slow he was being. We installed blocks for about an hour, until Luis saw Arturo down below with nothing to do. Luis asked me if I wanted to go down, so Luis could go up and help cause he "looked bored."

I took Arturo's place down below the scaffold and was going to help Fernando push the scaffold (cause he needed help). But instead of doing that, Lawrence walked up and asked me to help Geneva do the floor layouts. When I got over to help her, she showed me the measuring tape and pen and I went to work without her, cause she was talking to Alfredo and Felipe.

Then it was 9am break...finally. Break went by really quickly and I went back to work. After the break, while I was doing more floor layouts, I caught a glimpse of Brad in a "bunny" suit. I smiled cause he looked like he was enjoying himself. He was basically moving around the scaffoling inside the Level 4 area, so the workers inside could install the vents. He spent half the day doing that.

After I finished the layouts, Lawrence took me over to Jayson to see if he needed help on the floor crew. I was just thinking the other day that it might be fun to work on the floor crew, just for one day, to see what it was like. I enjoyed it for a while, as I started out merely screwing all the peices together that hold the actual floor tiles. But after a while, my back started to hurt--then my arms hurt. It's pretty tough bending over and then straightening up every few seconds, over and over again, for hours on end. I did that until lunch break, and met up with Brad and Skye

Skye was working at the pass-thru, like always. He told us that Josefina--who only knows like, 4 english words--has started to use the word, "no." Brad and I laughed. Apparently now she just says "no" all the time. Skye will ask her to do something--or rather make hand signals to her for what he wants her to do--and she'll say, "no" and walk away. Skye just gets a kick out of it. The few phrases she knows are, "please," "thank you," and "no." To get Skye's attention, she'll say "please." Like the time she tried to tell him it was break time and he heard her saying "please...please.....please." He turned around to see a cell phone in his face. She motioned to the time, and he got the idea. It was pretty funny. We like hearing about his adventures with Josefina.

After lunch, I switched off screwing the floor peices together, caulking, assembling the floor peices to be screwed together, and carrying materials. I ended up getting really hot and sweaty. Not to mention that I was like, 99.9% parched. At about 3:30 I went to the restroom and got a drink to refresh myself. Part of what was making me tired was a newer worker named Garth Batty. Garth Batty reminds me of Daniel, in that he suggests ways to make things go faster--namely things that he would normally have to do by himself. He has me help him take things out of buckets and put them on the floor. Most of the things we're not in a super-big rush to have, so it's basically pointless to make me help, when I should be caulking or assembling the floor frame...things that need to be done quickly for the rest of the crew to keep working smoothly. He also talks really fast and runs his words together, so you have to say "what?" about 4 times, and you feel like an idiot. He also says random things that you can't really respond to, so it gets really annoying to have him around. He was driving me crazy in a matter of an hour or so. I finished off the day, doing the same stuff, but I was so tired that I could barely walk by cleanup. I helped Jayson move the leading edge barricades and the day ended--but not until I heard the f-word from Pedro a lot of times (in fact, that's the only word I could distinguish from his conversation with Jayson), and he farted right next to us. Good old Pedro--looks like Saddam.

All in all, it was an exhausting day. I'm still tired from it. Working on the floor crew was fun, but I hope that I have other work to do with Lawrence for the rest of my working week. I don't think I can take another day of Garth Batty...


Quote of the Day:

(Daniel's assembling the floor tiles and pounding on the side of the tile--apparently that's bad...)

Jayson: "Hey, Daniel, check this out. Do you know all the secrets to assembling the floor?"
Daniel: "...Most of them..."