(Found on the web for illustration purposes.)

More decking. That’s not all I work with, but I’ve had a run on decks. This time the load was big enough to require a boom truck and I arrived after Tim had placed my planks on the ground.

The truck he operates is forty-two feet long and like a kid, he loves sitting back on the boom seat and operating the long mechanical arm. I’d never met Tim before but his ready smile and looks of a young Sylvester Stallone invited conversation. Soon we were talking about job hazards, and he told me three hair-raising stories. This is the first.

“I got electrocuted once.”

“Do tell.”

“I was in Newton. I was working for Basic Wallboard and the salesman had sold the job as an easy delivery.”

“Salesmen suck. They have no clue.”

“This one didn’t. He looked around and thought ‘No problem,’ but I had to run the boom along high tension wires to get my sheetrock through the window of the new house.”

“What are you talking about? You touch the wires with that metal boom? That can’t be true.”

“You don’t want to bring the load back and it works sometimes. This time it didn’t. I guess I scraped through the insulation. All of a sudden I’m feeling heat. Real hot, from the top of my head to the ends of my toes. Like I’m on fire. Then the boom begins to arc. I yelled down at my partner to turn the truck off.”

“What would that do besides insure you don’t die alone?”

“I wasn’t thinking clearly. I thought this was the end. I began thinking about my wife and kids. My partner yelled back that he wasn’t going near the truck. Then sections of plastic cowling began exploding off the boom. You could see lightning bolts flaring off those rear stabilizers.”

“I don’t mean to laugh, but this is a hellava story.”

“I couldn’t pull the boom off the wire. It would arc and weld itself. Finally I caught a moment between arcs and moved it off.”

“You tell this story like it’s nothing.”

“Not then, I got off the truck and tired to light my cigarette but couldn’t. My hand were shaking like this.”

I recognize one face.

Michael

Maybe if I send things for the blog you won’t have to do dangerous stupid things to fill space. So, the promised “eggs”. 

The summer I turned 13 (1971) my older sister invited me to join her on the archaeological dig she would be working on. The previous summer the archaeologist she had studied with had an exploratory dig which was small – the people were trustworthy and food had been terrific. My summer, there were about 50 archaeology student volunteers and graduate student leaders and a dozen or so paid day-laborers and me. We slept (not the day-laborers, but everyone else) 4 to a room in just-slapped-up two-room cabins (with no furniture) that would fall apart within 4 years, and ate in a similar, but larger space. It was in the northwestern corner of New Mexico. ( “Salmon Ruins is an over 250 room Chacoan Anasazi site, constructed in the late 11th century along the San Juan River in northwestern New Mexico, approximately two miles west of Bloomfield. Recognizing the research and public education importance of this site, the citizens of the Bloomfield area, through the San Juan County Museum Association, have protected and interpreted Salmon Ruins for over 30 years. Originally preserved by homesteader George Salmon and his family, the site and surrounding 22 acres have been owned by San Juan County since 1969.”)

We all worked eight hour days. (Since I wasn’t an archaeology student I didn’t have my own plot; I helped those lowest in the hierarchy screen the wheelbarrow loads being removed by day-laborers from areas that were thought to not have much of archaeological interest.) Meals were at set times; I forget now whether 7AM, 11AM, and 5PM, or what. Evenings we hung out at “Armpit International,” one of the guys’ cabins, and they didn’t smoke until after I’d gone to bed. I now realize my sister may have invited me along to have an excuse to shake a persona developed the previous summer, because we went to bed together.   

The cook was the same as the previous year but he couldn’t handle the number of people so every breakfast was two fried eggs and toast slathered with already melted butter, every lunch was two baloney sandwiches with iceberg lettuce and mustard and mayonnaise, and too many dinners were barely barbequed chicken with iceberg and unripe tomato “salad”, mashed potatoes and canned carrots with vanilla sheet cake and canned fruit for dessert. But there was nothing else and we worked hard and I was always hungry. 

So one morning I got my food and sat down, and found myself across from someone in cholesterol-lecture mode. The food we were being served was terrible and we were all going to have heart attacks. The eggs were the worst part. He went on and on, all the way through me eating my entire breakfast. At some point … I guess I was done eating, he paused and looked like he expected me to say something. So I did: “Does that mean I can have your eggs?”

Jennifer

Kate battled late afternoon traffic in New Hampshire to work on her college essay with Diane at our house. They sat at the kitchen table and blended active verbs and colorful adjectives to create a compelling narrative while I struggled not to “Pollack” our kitchen creating Diane’s weekly smoothie.

As I listened to sentence juggling, I filled our old blender with fruit, flax seeds, and orange juice. Instead of Odwalla’s green potion, I added Bolthouse Farms vanilla chai tea with soy protein. Then I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out an old carton of pure soy milk. Maybe too much soy, I thought, and then I shook the container to make sure it was still fresh. We buy this stuff by the truck load, and that’s a good thing because once opened soy milk spoils quickly. It never smells bad, it just turns into one long clot.

Listening to the buzz at the table, and multitasking, I popped a pizza into the oven and then raised the soy milk to my mouth for a quick, freshness-confirming taste. One gulp and the sides of my mouth slammed together like a collapsing Big Dig tunnel. I pulled the carton away from my lips and stared down at the top. Surrounding the spout and waving up at me was a trim layer of mohair-like carpeting in three shades of hackle-raising green. I tried to spit out what was in my mouth, but like the Alien spawn, the spores had found a host and they wouldn’t let go.

I clutched my throat, fell over backwards behind the oven island and heard Diane say, “What are you up to now, weirdo?”

Matt has a single window and this is what he sees. No wonder he’s in such a hurry to get home for the holidays.
Debbie, how about your window?

Matt has a single window and this is what he sees. No wonder he’s in such a hurry to get home for the holidays.
Debbie, how about your window?

My sisters and I visited the Museum of Glass in Tacoma while nearby for a Quaker conference this summer. (To check out why one might be interested, browse some Dale Chihuly-related sites. Remember, we’re adults. We had a semi-disastrous visit at the Museum because the exhibits weren’t nearly as good or interesting as the free-to-see Dale Chihuly work we’d already seen elsewhere in the area and two of us lost the third (or first) sister and the staff — despite being asked two or three times politely where else someone might have gone besides the Gallery — did not mention their live showroom where visiting artists directed a work involving glass. Which was where that other sister was for an hour or so — too enthralled to let us know where she was.

At almost closing time, after two of us had wasted that hour looking for her over and over again in the small Gallery, going out to ask the information desk about where she could be, etc., we found her and she decided to efficiently show us the best work in the whole museum, which was in the hallway to the bathrooms. (Neither of which had been mentioned by the staff, either.) In the long hall there were about 10 cases with one work in each which had been created by a different visiting artist. Some artists used glass just because they were supposed to, but there were several quite beautiful and interesting pieces. As we approached the best piece, two people came out of a door not open to the public … they seemed to be on break of some kind. They stopped at that case and continued a long conversation. They put their bags down. They all but leaned on the case. We went all around the nearby cases … they didn’t budge. We approached that case. We peered at the case from as many angles as we could without physically pushing them. They didn’t budge. Two of us started to talk as loudly as we could about the rudeness of people standing in the way, making it impossible for others to see works of art in a museum.

Then we fought all the way back to the conference about whether our rudeness had been justified.

Cell Phone etiquette

Since I still feel that my dad is not living up to his responsibilities on the blog, and i can’t remember my own username and password, I have logged on through his name to write a small post of my own.

So today I am leaving class and taking an elevator six flights down, there are around six other people in the elevator with me, four kids and two adults. Me and two of the other kids are minding our own business, or at least not saying anything or talking to anyone, and the other is on her cell phone. The two adults however are in a full conversation when the woman notices that this girl is on the phone.  In a voice more then loud enough for all to hear she says ” You know what I really find rude is people on a cell phone in a elevator.”

Now, I do not care where or when you use your cell phone. Especially considering that I could not live without my own, although there are times I will not pick up because of the situation that I am in. Still, using a cell phone in a elevator, i would not consider to be a capital sin. It was not as if she were talking loud, in fact she was being more quite then the two having the conversation.

What I do consider to be rude though, is the woman that pointed out that she was using a cell phone in a loud voice. I mean, how is what she was doing any different then the conversation that the two others were having. In fact, I was more distracted by the two having the conversation than the girl on the cell phone.

I was very close to saying something, however, being as sleepy as I am, and not having gotten enough sleep lately, decided to hold my tongue.  Still, i think she should have held hers. I know that I am speaking to many people over the blog, including those (adam) who have many cell phone pet peeves of their own. However, she was not hurting anyone and certainly not being nearly as rude as the lady who pointed out what she was doing.

Well, I was just looking for something to add to the blog. Maybe now that I have added something my dad will come back to life. Considering that usually I have conversations with him at four in the morning because he is just a big a insomniac as I am… at least usually.

Still looking for you dad

matt

We had another one of those potluck dinners last night, this time at the Nadlers. There were too many people scattered through too many rooms for a group photo, so here’s a mini gallery . On the whole, (my apologies to Lorraine for the final frame) I think they’re pretty good candid images, but I did miss Mark Schreiber as he arrived just as everyone was leaving.