Last week I bought myself a really nice machete for work. Now, we are supplied with them, as they are an essential tool of our trade, but what the management gets is trying to balance the reality that we beat the ever living daylights out of our machetes with not buying total crap.
Oh, total crap. We had one office dubber who was in charge of supplies for about a year. He's no longer with our company, for a variety of reasons. But he bought a bulk order of machetes for wicked cheap one time. Turns out they were that super cheap chinese steel. It would bend when you tried to cut something and the blade would fold and warp. It was like having a bit of aluminum foil. They were total garbage and we all (the field crew who actually used them) complained like it was the end of the world and they bought us some better ones. Which I've been using. But there comes a time when you just want a really good tool and you are willing to pay for it yourself so it is YOURS and yours alone.
I settled on the Condor Yoshimi machete. It has a tanto blade (it is a sharp angle at the end of the blade instead of the usual rounded curve on most machetes) and has a hand and a half grip. It is also a bit heavier, weighing in at almost 3 pounds, but it is balanced so well that even one handed I haven't found it putting any strain on the forearm that is doing the cutting. Part of the reason it weighs so much is because the blade is pretty thick. That prevents the blade from warping or twisting. It also gives it some nice heft when cutting, so gravity is helping me cut every time I use it ;-) The blade is 19inches long, which is just about the size I like. Any shorter and you can't hack from a distance. Much longer and the machete gets tangled up as you're trying to swing it. The handle is wood, which grips a lot better when your hand is wet from either sweating like a pig or it is raining out. Trust me, I've seen enough machetes go flying out of people's hands over the years to realize it is a basic safety requisite to have a good grip.
The sheath is kydex, a fancy name for plastic. We'll see how it holds up over the winter when the temps plunge below freezing for weeks or months on end. A leather sheath will eventually get a hole torn down in the lower extremity where the blade pushes down on it or the blade will cut the leather siding. And the strips of leather where the sheath attaches to your belt is always thinner and those are usually the first things to go. This kydex sheath will obviate those problems. I'll just have to hang around and see what problems do arise with it instead :-)
Since it is mine, bought and paid for, I don't have to worry about getting "leftovers" from the lot of garbage machetes we have on hand. While the office is now buying better UK steel machetes, we still have those chinese crap ones in case of emergencies. We have found they are good for about 1 week of hard use and then they crap out on us.
And that is that. I got a new toy and I wanted to share. Class dismissed!
This week once again starts with events from last week. Our kia had been making some noises when you turned the wheel so we took it into the mechanics to have them do an oil change and find out what the noise was. They heard the engine "knocking" and called us right away and said whatever was causing the knocking was going to cost more than the car was currently worth and to not put ANY money into it, not even the oil change. So we were down 1 car, just like that. The mechanic told us not to take it on any long drives either, so that meant we didn't go to church that Sabbath as it is an hour away and is mostly highway, so it's highspeed. Nothing will ruin a good Sabbath like having your engine blowup while your traveling 75mph (120kph), hahahahaa.
I did briefly consider getting a new car but almost immediately threw that option away for two reasons. One, I had it pounded into my head that making payments on a car is one of the most irresponsible fiscal decisions one can make (and while most americans do that, well, look at the state of our personal credit as a nation, it is horrible) and it will simply drain you like a vampire bat. Second, even if we did scrimp and pay for one outright, it would leave our savings in such disrepair that if another emergency happened (like our furnace breaking down, or something like that), we would be sunk financially. So the new car option was out.
That left the used option. I began scouring Craigslist for used subarus and found a 2015 impreza with only 126K miles that seemed to be in good shape. It was being sold by a company that exclusively works on and sells Subarus. I called the place Monday to set up an appointment on Tuesday to test drive it and have the paperwork filled out.
Tuesday for work we were only 20minutes from the car place, so we took our lunch by driving over. I called the place, hoping that maybe I could pick the car up then and there, but the lady who does all the legal paperwork was out of the office until 1pm. But I saw it and got to drive it. Seemed just fine. So that evening Mrs B and I drove back up, signed the paperwork, paid our blood money and drove it home.
Wednesday was a ballbuster of a day. We had been doing what is called an "Asbuilt" of a new apartment complex. An asbuilt is when you locate everything on the property so the town has a complete record. This particular town needed a level of detail that is insane. We had to get all the parking lines where the cars park and all the decorative planted shrubs and trees. That part was actually all done several weeks or months ago. But what was left was pulling catch basins and sewer manholes and measuring all the inverts. A catchbasin is a square grate that water runs into and inside of that are pipes that channel the water to appropriate drainage areas. We had to measure the size of the pipes and how far they were from the top of the grate to make sure that the water was draining in the correct direction.
That was the nice part. Then we had to measure the sewer manholes and essentially do the same thing. We had to measure the size of the pipes and the distance from the top of the manhole to the inflow and the outflow to confirm that it had been built as it was supposed to be and that the crap was flowing in the right direction. What I'm going to show you is the cover itself that we have to remove (it weighs about 80lbs/36kg) and then a nice new sewer so you can see how the pipes go and then, a real life sewer.
There were about 50'ish structures in total, so that made for a very exhausting day. I was glad, on so many levels, when Wednesday was over. Mrs B meanwhile took care of registering the new car and getting license plates for it.
Thursday and Friday I was with yet another new guy. Tall Guy, the one I had worked with before and who was a whole foot taller than me, had quit during the two months I was gone due to my eye. Nobody missed him because he did such pisspoor work. But that does mean we don't have 3 full field crews and we have enough work that we NEED 3 full field crews. So one of the guys from the engineering department, who is working on getting his engineering degree, is being transferred over to the Survey department for the rest of the summer and the fall and he'll be working with me. He has zero experience with working in the field, so I'm teaching him everything from the ground up. The good part is that he has no bad habits I need to break him of, as the only way he will know to do everything is the way I show him (hahahahaha!) but the downside is that for the first month or so our productivity will be at turtlespeed as he learns. I should be happy that the head of survey feels confident enough to keep putting the new guys with me to train, but it is mentally, emotionally and physically exhausting. But eventually Friday was over and I was done work, at 3pm. I was happy about that!
Because that meant Mrs B and I were heading down south to go to the Cheesecake Factory! We go there once a year to celebrate our wedding anniversary (not on the day, but sometime during the month. And this year was our 17th, whooohooo). It is calorie laden food (I ordered the shepherds pie and I think it alone was 1200 calories) and we always take leftovers home. We also always order 4 slices of cheesecake to go. This year, we decided to just order whatever we wanted and to blazes with the calories.
Bookstooge ordered:
diet coke (watching my waist line after all, hahahahaah)
Cheeseburger spring rolls
Shepherds pie
side order of mashed potatoes
Mrs B ordered:
water
Sweet corn tamale cakes
honey glazed carrots
vegan cobb salad (that thing was the size of my head)
For cheesecake, we ordered a slice of the regular plain, 2 slices of the pumpkin cheesecake and 1 slice of the banana cream cheesecake. We ate enough of our regular food until we were comfortably full and then had them box it up along with the cheesecake to go. We were satiated and it was a great ride home. I feel asleep at 10pm sharp :-D
Of course, I ended up waking up at 4am this morning, sigh. But I ate the rest of my shepherds pie (it was just as good as last night) and had the slice of regular cheesecake. That's the way to start a day! Then I went to the men's meeting that our sunday church has each saturday morning and then Mrs B and I went to church at the SDA church. Drove the new impreza there and back with nary a hitch. I took a nap at 2pm and at 3pm we went on a nice leisurely stroll around a local park to perk us back up. Once home, I began banging out this missive and that brings us to now.
What a week! But today has been good and it is sunny and warm and we have a car that is safe and cheesecake slices sitting in our fridge. What better way to end the week!
This post is going to encompass last week as well, as Life and Stuff has been on the spin cycle and I've still not found my footing.
As I noted in my Excerpt, work is just chaos. Between the workload not getting any lighter to people taking time off, every day is a new adventure. I never know who I am working with or what job I'm heading to. Even though work itself isn't getting harder, I'm coming away each week more tired because of the chaos and uncertainty. And this would appear to be our new normal. I am at the point of living week by week now. I can't take thinking about a month of this, or even two months of this, or more!
Church has added its own little melange to the mix. Our SDA church has held an End Times seminar the last two Sabbaths. We experienced one of those at our previous SDA church and this had all the same hallmarks so we decided to avoid it altogether. Which meant picking some random Sunday church to go to over the weekend (church attendance is one big checkmark for the health of a Christian as far as both Mrs B and I are concerned. We've seen too many people stop going to church for any and all reasons and before you know it, they're denying Christ altogether. We don't even want to step NEAR that precipice). One Sunday we went to a big baptist church that one of Mrs B's friends attends and then the next we chose some random one that she had had a Ladies Tea at and had been invited. Both times were nice and I was glad to hear the sermons, but the worship time for each was nothing but contemporary christian worship and just reaffirmed to me that I'll keep going to the SDA church for the hymns alone! Going to a different church might not sound like a big deal, but it really is. Church going is not some solitary activity that you do "to be good". It is commanded by Scripture and it brings us into fellowship with other Christians and brings us, together, closer to God. It is hard to have real fellowship with people who you don't know. That takes time and effort. It takes going to the same church week after week after week and BEING involved. So not to have that for two weeks was just unsettling, and coupled with work, was a bit too much.
Thankfully, home life has been the same. I've been extra vigilant about that! Church, work and home, they are my three spheres of activity and they affect each other. But just like any tripod, it doesn't take much to upset the stability. But with us returning to the SDA church tomorrow, and me being so vigilant about the homesphere, stability will reign in at least two of the three spheres. Not perfect by any means, but survivable anyway.
One of the ways Mrs B and I have "vigilantly" kept the homesphere intact is by playing Munchkin on the weekend. While it is intended for at least 3 players, we have found that as long as we don't use the "backstabbing/betrayal" cards, the game works relatively well with just the two of us. It is an RPG-lite dungeon crawler and gives both of us that fantasy fix we want from a game. And it's all cards that only needs one die to roll. We love it. The artwork is wacky and silly and makes Mrs B extremely happy. I just like that I get to stab and stomp and poke and kill things :-D
And today is now over with for me. It's 5pm, I am home from work, I have eaten something yummy, drank something cold and am now chilling on the couch until I'm ready to fall asleep at the extremely late hour of 9pm (if I'm lucky!). I am steadfastly looking forward to the blessing of the Sabbath as it fast approaches. Blessed Sabbath to you all!
Well, another week come and gone. Amazing how time flies. I'm wondering when I'll get to the stage where I judge things by the month, instead of the week? I mean, I'm thankful I've matured enough to do a week at a time instead of a day at a time, but just like a teenager champing at the bit to be an "adult", I want to be old enough for time to fly by. I have found myself referring to things by who was President at the time and not just the year, so that's a start ;-)
Didn't work a lot this week. I had to take Tuesday off because Mrs B had a procedure where she couldn't operate machinery afterwards, so I had to do the driving and make the decisions while she was still loopy. We went out to a diner afterwards and had some seriously delicious omelets. Mrs B had a cheese omelet with toast and homefries while I had the cheeseburger omelet with toast and homefries. Oh man, we were both so stuffed afterwards, it was great!
Thursday was a rain day. It started raining around 7am and went all day and into the evening. Maybe 25 years ago I would have gone in, but at some point I have decided that being soaked and miserable all day, while accomplishing almost nothing, isn't worth being paid for. So I called out. It helped that the office manager knew the storm was coming and gave all the field crews the option to call out. All of us took that option ;-)
I spent the day putting together my new tv setup. I had bought a 50in tv about a month ago and ordered a tv stand to go with it. There were missing parts and it was a bleeding process to get 8 little feet mailed to me. But I put it all together and then hooked everything up. Tv, soundbar, bluray player and I attached a 25ft hdmi cable for when I eventually will hook that up to my computer to play computer games on. I started at 8am and was expecting it to be a horrific experience. New electronics are picky and have a bajillion options and I was expecting things to go wrong at every step. Imagine my surprise when everything went smooth as glass and I had everything setup by 9am. I was shocked, in a good way. So I turned on the tv and watched the 3 Stooges until Mrs B got home that afternoon. That was a good day :-D
Friday it was back to work and boy, I did NOT want to go in. It didn't help knowing one of the other crew chiefs had taken the day off, so between the rain day on Thursday and having the next Monday off for Memorial Day, he was getting a 5day weekend, the lucky duck. The site we went to was about 90min away. So we had a lot of driving to do. And it was raining up there. Not enough to stop us, but enough to make it "slightly" miserable. On a Friday, sigh. Then we found out that one of the owners of the company said everyone could leave at 2pm if they wanted to. So we took lunch and hightailed it back to the office. It was a 7hr day and 3hrs of that was pure driving. It was a total waste, hahahahaa. But I was out at 2pm and ready to start my 3day weekend. That's a good feeling!
Today we're leaving for church in about 2hrs and once again, it is foggy, cloudy and drizzly. I hope that is going to help keep the traffic down, as we have to use a major highway and I don't want to share the road with a bajillion people all driving to their summer homes for the long weekend. Once we're back, I suspect I'll either be reading or writing up posts for June. Can you believe it is almost June already? I just blinked and it's the last week of May. Maybe I am getting old enough!
That is just a little statue of a bear, not a real one. But from this distance, it LOOKS real enough. See, I can have fun on the job too.
There was a decent amount of rain this week. Not enough to ever be called out, but we did have some short days. Thankfully, that was all balanced out with some wonderfully sunny days where working outside was what every right thinking person wanted.
I'd ordered a new tv stand, one of those "tool'less" ones that is simple enough for even me to put together without getting all frustrated. So of course, the feet that screw in to the bottom that keeps the whole thing together didn't ship with it. I sent off a request for replacement parts but still haven't heard anything back from the company I bought it through (via Amazon). Aye yi yi! If I haven't heard back from them by the time this goes live, I'll just pick something up locally and pull my trusty hammer and screwdriver, sigh. My goodness, the things I put up with!
Coke has come out with a Zero Sugar Orange Cream version. It is basically the old Vanilla Orange Coke Zero. I loved that stuff, a lot. Bought a 12 pack yesterday and yep, it's the same thing, just "re-branded". Whatever gets it on the shelves, that's all I care about. I suspect it will have a similar life span, so I'm going to enjoy this part of life while I can. Carpe diem!!!
For whatever reason, this week has gone on forever AND sped by super fast. Ever had one of those kind of weeks? It's very disconcerting. Every day felt like Tuesday and Thursday, no matter what day it actually was. That's just a weeeeeeeeird feeling.
I have been reading the first Dr Fu-Manchu book this week. Oh, that will be some review, let me tell you. It was published in 1913 and Dr Fu-Manchu is an eeeeeeeeeeevil genius. Definitely not one for you woke folk. But come on, is that cover AWESOME or what? Yeah, it's awesome. Guess you'll find out if the book was awesome or not on the 27th ;-)
Finally, the change in scheduling time. It's been working out ok and I think I'll be sticking to it. What made me change from 5am posting to 5pm posting was that I'd been letting my devotions go. I wasn't reading my Bible or spending time in prayer that I knew I needed to. Mornings were the time I had always used before. I tried the evenings, but with work being what it is, I'm so tired that I can't concentrate. So instead of continuing to let things slide, I realized I needed to change my blogging. Real life should ALWAYS come before blogging. So that's the reason for the change.
Well, Sabbath will be here in just a couple of hours, so adieu for now and get some rest. You need it!
This has been a brutal work week. If you’re one of those “Centigrade” people, here’s a link to a handy converter for you: Online Temp Converter
By the end of each work day, I felt like a steam roller had run me over, multiple times. In the 9hrs at work, I would drink about 3/4 gallon of water and about 1/2 gallon of gatorade.
I came home, cooled down and went to bed. I had no energy for much else. And I still have to get through today. Wish me luck!
