Closet Extremist

I gots a headache

It's no big deal though. Just a little hangover headache from my time spent at the bar last night. I'm sure that the nine hours of sleep had something to do with it as well. (When I sleep too long, I always wake up feeling worse than I did when I went to bed). I needed both the bar visit and the sleep though, so when the acetamenaphine kicks in I'm sure I'll be much better.

Let's see. What's been going on?

We got tall the wiring hung in the hoistway for the passenger car week before last, and we helped install the cab and hoistway doors onto the first freight elevator. No more injuries to report, so that's a good thing. Thursday before last I went to the doctor so they could check up on my finger. This was a little wierd as I was initially scheduled to get a check up that Monday, and then get my stitches out last Monday. Since my appointment fell right between the initial two dates, I wasn't sure what was going to happen. The long and short of the story is: I got my stitches out. Woohoo! They also gave me some fabric "splints" to hold my bad finger to another one so I would actually use it a little. (Keeps it from getting stiff don'tya know.) The best part of this deal is that I could tie my "ouchy" finger to my ring finger instead of my index finger. This was an awesome thing. (You never really understand how much you use your index finger until you can't.)

I was worried about pain becoming a problem, so when I was at the hospital on the day of the accident, I asked the doc about whether it would become a problem or not. She didn't know, so she gave me a prescription for Hydrocodone just in case. I'm proud to say that some WalGreen's brand Ibuprofin was enough, and I have yet to take any of the heavy-hitting stuff. I'm a little paranoid about what doctor's want to put into my body, so I just "cowboyed up" and kept trucking. I'm not sure if this means I'm just a tough MoFo, or I'm overly sceptical of the medical practice. I (of course) prefer the former explanation. (Big Bad Construction Worker and all that.)

Last week started on Saturday. Ford and I were kind of in the way at the first freight elevator, so we pulled off and went over to start on the second freight. All that was done on this one when we came back over to it was: the rails stacked, and a hole in the ground for the jack. We jumped right in. It took us a day to get the pit channels in, the buffer stands set, and the casing for the jack assembled.

Hold Up! Terminoligy time. "Pit channels" are two pieces of channel steel (think of a "U" with short sides and a long bottom) that stand on their sides parrallel to each other on the pit floor. They support the "buffer stands" and the tabs at the top of the jack, and distribute the weight across the pit floor. The "Buffer stands" are reinforced steel boxes that have big springs that go on top of them. In the event that the car travels below the bottom landing, the buffer stands will support the entire weight of the elevator, and keep it from going all the way to the pit floor. The springs act as shock absorbers in case the car comes down "hard". In smaller passenger elevators (say 3000lb capacity) there is only one spring atop each stand. The stands that we put in there hold six springs each. AKA: Big Freaking Elevator!

Since this one is a three-stop elevator, the travel is around 32 feet. In order for the jack to be shipped in handleable sized pieces, the factory sent it in two sections, so we had to put it together. We hung the bottom section of the jack casing down into the hole, and then put a "wood wrench" on it to hold it in place. (The wood wrench is two heavy timbers that have notches cut out of them that point toward each other. Two sections of threaded rod go through holes in the timbers, and nuts are placed on the outside of the timbers. Put this rig around the casing, and tighten up on the nuts until it will support the weight. The timbers are then set perpendicular to the pit channels, and set down on top of them.) Once the bottom section is hanging, we hang the top section from the hoist, and lower it atop the bottom. Both sections are threaded, so all you have to do is screw them together. Sounds easy. It's not. Simple? Yes. Easy? No. After we had the casing (or cylinder) put together, we loosened the wood wrench, and began lowering it the rest of the way down into the hole. The tabs were about 4 feet from the top of the pit channels when the rope broke. I wa holding onto on of the tabs to make sure that it went down into the hole in the proper position, but I had no trouble getting my hands off of it when the rope snapped. No autopsy, no foul. It even landed in the right position, so we just proceeded with putting together the two sections of the piston, in the same manner as we did the cylinder.

Saturday night, we got a visit at the hotel from Ford's wife, two of their daughters, and one granddaughter. Ford's wife had been having trouble with her car, so she went out and got a new (to her) one, and was just itching to bring it down and show it off. They stayed for a couple of hours, and we all had a nice visit. It was a welcome break from the standard monotony of sitiing in the room staring at the TV.

When Monday rolled around, we decided that we were both extremely tired, and that we really needed to do our laundry, so we knocked off at noon. When we got back to the hotel, Ford decided that he was going to take a nap, so he asked the girl who cleans the rooms if she had completed our's. She had, so we went on into the room. Now I hate to make any disparaging commentary about people I see around, but this cleaning girl was not attractive. Something on the order of 350 lbs on the hoof. Quite a big girl. When we sat down at the table in our room Ford said (out of a clear blue sky) "Damn! I should've given that girl ten bucks." I just looked over at him and said "What? You need someone to snuggle with during your nap?" His reply was something like "No! To do my laundry you Jackass!" WE do this sort of thing all the time. I like Ford.

When he took his nap, I decided to run on down to the Wal-Mart to get myself some clean clothes to wear to the laundromat. On the way there, I saw a sign that said "Library" with an arrow on it. After I got my purchases, I decided to slide on in there and see if they had internet access. They did. Yay! But they had a timer on it limiting me to one hour. Boo! I got to check my email, check my site, and check a few on the blogroll. As previously stated, I lost a post while on that machine, and just had to put up a quick something to let you all know I was still alive. Something I hated about those damn "LiBary" pc's was the fact that they all had their screen resolution set at 800 by 600. I normally run mine at the house at 1280 by 1024, so I had a bit of trouble navigating on it. Also, the scroll wheel on the mouse didn't work, so that was another irritant.

Why the hell didn't you go to the library sooner Johnny? Well Virginia, I'm glad you asked. The stupid liBary closes each night at 6 pm. I'm normally still on the damn jobsite at 6 pm, so why the hell would I go there there when I can't get in? Didn't think of that did you, you little whelp?

Speaking of blogging, my sister showed my boss a copy of the post that I did with the pitchers of my hurted widdle finger. She copied it all into a Word doc, so he couldn't get my sites' address, but she wanted to show him what I'd said about getting in a hurry. When he came down to talk us into working last weekend, all he wanted to talk to me about was my blog. It seems that he is extremely curious about what goes on here, and the curiosity is killing him. I haven't given him the URL to get here, and I don't plan to. I've been deliberately evasive about this site to him, but I think I should pull him aside sometime and tell him why I won't give him the address. I don't want to lose my job when he takes something out of context. It's just that simple.

One of the big things going on is the Bad Example Family Reunion that Tammi is putting together. I've talked to her about it, and have been non-committal, as I'm not sure where I stand on this job. I talked to the boss yesterday about it, and it looks like there's a chance I'll be able to attend. I may just pull the seats out of the old mini-van, and throw an air mattress and a sleeping bag in there, but I really don't care. I wanna come down and be a part of this thing. Opportunities like it just don't come along often enough. The guest list looks to be quite auspicious. I'm sure that adding my name to it won't hurt the "curve" too badly.

I've got a fish fry down at the Marina to go to this evening, and a few friends that I need to meet up with tomorrow, but in the meantime, I'll be catching up with what else has been going on out there in the 'sphere, and then doing some sitting and staring for awhile. Should be nice and relaxing. I'll see you all around.

Posted by Johnny - Oh at January 15, 2005 12:05 PM