photo posted from my iPhone
We had to remove a marble bar built around a tree inside the location, along with a bunch of old carpeting before we installed the display pieces. A little advertising job I got.
photo posted from my iPhoneYet another after picture.
We started out, Marika, me, Lawrence and some hired help, moving a woman two blocks down the street to her new digs. Took 8 hours. Then it was time to go start the second job – clean up an empty restaurant and install three custom built display racks. (Courtney built two but my picture didn’t come out! Sorry Court, they look great!)
photo posted from my iPhone
Here is the after affect of running a giant saw through concrete. This whole before and after photo thing is something I need to work on.
photo posted from my iPhone
I’m starting to understand the necessity of day labor. I don’t have that many friends willing to work for $12, or even $25 an hour, that know how to do cement work. Not that mixing cement with a shovel in a wheelbarrow is something that takes more than 20 minutes to learn, but people are busy meeting friends for drinks in Dolores Park at 12:30 in the afternoon. Or they have a job that requires them to be there for whole uninterrupted blocks of time and they can’t say, “Hey boss, I’ll serve these diners after we build that form over on 19th Street and Jon gets rolling.”
Some of my friends even suggest I hire someone to do the work when I tell them what needs to be done. Which is basically what happens when I go to Cesar Chavez. That’s the street day laborers hang out at. This guy Fernando had a nicer truck than mine. He didn’t want to ride with me when I pulled up the curb, he has his pride. The Hard Worker was too dusty. So he follows me to the site and pulls out his cordless Makita set and brand new Skillsaw. Even his extension cord was clean. And he gets paid less than half of me?
“Some people do amazing things with money,” Marika says. Well, spending it on tools and trucks is an investment, but he’d have to be working more hours than there are days to have this stuff and I picked him up at noon sitting in the shade. But I’m not casting stones or implying he imports cocaine or exports pallets off of trucks, I’m just saying that this guy was until recently doing better than me, and now due to the English language food chain around here, he is working for me.
“The Irish boys went back to their country,” he tells me later. He was working all the time for them, things were very good he tells me. Then the Irish get fired and a Mexican loses his job. It’s like the butterfly affect. Now he has to work for a pinche guerro. Which I heard him say about ten times. Perhaps it’s time for a wise latina woman to start making some decisions around here. Things aren’t exactly operating on merit.
photo posted from my iPhone\
Seaqn and I paint a loft space today. That’s his tool box he painted.
I broke up with my girlfriend about a month ago, and I think about that. Maybe I work too much. Too much to have a relationship. I’d rather build a business.
I go to work and see my friends, Sean or Glenn or Chris or Ian or who ever, and we make each other laugh. Most women don’t make me laugh. Is that why I’m single? Women don’t make me laugh? I’d rather be at work laughing?
Still haven’t updated my blog so I can upload images from anywhere other than my phone. This really sucks, because I have a picture of Doug with straight hair. It happened last weekend, two hours of a hot iron and it was completely straight. So hang on friends, maybe this weekend I’ll get this taken care of.
In other news, I worked too much this week and it won’t stop till monday. So entertain yourselves. Perhaps you could take over the blog till then. Thanks.
I forgot to take the after picture this time. You’re looking at a sidewalk just before I lay into it with that big blue saw with a 14 inch blade made of slivers of diamonds that cut through cement like butter. I’m going back tomrrow early to lay sand down in the trench so the electrician can lay conduit. I’ll try and remember to take a picture. I’m going to bed now.
A rainbow appeared to be shooting out of the Transamerica building, an iconic triangular office structure downtown. “It doesn’t even bend,” Marika said about it. “What a lazy rainbow.”
Happy discount birthday pal! A day late but it’s cheaper that way. Marika’s at Rusty’s. We’re picking up the electric pepper shovel.
photo posted from my iPhone
Here she goes wrasslin’ the tub into the scrap pile.
photo posted from my iPhone
Marika came to visit. She’s moving to Portland. We went to the copper buyer this morning and learned the difference between communication and house wire. House is more money.
For my 36th birthday my parents sent me a new grocery bag, pepto bismal and baby wipes to keep in my truck in case I ever have a bathroom emergency like the one that happened to me a few weeks ago. It’s nice to know my parents are paying attention.
I heard a bird singing yesterday. Assumed it was a cell phone ring. Turned out to be real.
photo posted from my iPhone
Sean needed a hand rolling a four foot thick section of redwood tree into his van tonite. He’s in the picture to establish scale.
i love how a cat’s teeth are for killing. I’m living with a cat named David as of late. You should see the fangs on this dude. He has an eating disorder triggered by the trauma of being locked in a garage for two weeks. He eats so fast now he throws up immediately after. My roommate Chris puts an apple in his bowl so he can’t stick his head in there and eat quickly; rather, he puts his paw in and fishes out a kibble at a time.
One kibble at a time. That’s my motto now. That and don’t puke on the rug DAVID!!!
I need to make an online appointment at the DMV. This is the states homepage breaking news. Very Californian….
“Due to the State’s fiscal emergency, all DMV Offices will be closed on the following Fridays – July 10, 17, and 24, 2009
Drive tests will not be administered at the Los Angeles field office on Tuesday, July 7, 2009, in light of the Michael Jackson Memorial Service at the Staple Center. Drive tests are being rescheduled and redirected to neighboring offices.
The Hollywood field office will be closed on Friday, July 10, 2009 for renovations and will reopen at 8 a.m. on Monday, August 24, 2009.”
Hollywood gets a remodel, a superstar disrupts life for regular folks in LA, and the rest of the state is shutting down.
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