Tuesday, June 28, 2005 -- 9:04 PM

So... What in the Hell does He Even Do?

I don't usually like to write about my job, because I spend a lot of my time, time that I would rather spend surfing or practicing a quick-draw, doing it and it's really quite unexceptional. But in an effort to describe something of my life to the world, I've decided to just go ahead and see what happens when I write out the actual day. A day "In the Life" if you will.

So let's talk about my job. I arrive at whatever house we're currently building sometime between 6.55 and 7.00. Usually there's banter regarding whatever funny or striking events occured in the scant fourteen hours since we all saw each other last, which might not seem very interesting since probably about eight of those were spent sleeping, but it's not really what you say, it's how you say it, right? Often there's a round of cigarettes. After that, we unpack tools from the van and begin all gung-ho and up 'n at 'em.

Thusly it begins, the moving lumber, measuring stuff, making cuts, building walls, screwing down floors, passing up sheathing, leveling walls, and all of the various tasks that an underling framer engages himself with. We have one break in the morning and possibly a run to 7-11 for some munchies or a drink or more cigarettes. It's funny how a break can turn your mindset right around, it's like a reset button. At J&P Construction, however, we believe that pressing that button too often will wear it out, so we only press it twice a day. First around 10 or 10.30, and second around 2 or 2.30. At 4.45 we pack up tools and we're finished the last rounds of conversation at somewhere between 5 and 5.05.

The thing you have to see, and this is... really, I mean, pay attention now. The thing you should really see is that you aren't your job. Since I really really really am not my job because I've only been doing it for six months and I'm quitting to go to school in the fall, I'll use my boss as an example for this, and also because he (my boss) is who taught me that "you are not your job" in discussing career paths once. My boss is a really smart, funny kind of guy, who likes good-natured people and likes getting riled at incompotent ones. He really likes to laugh, and he likes to make fun of the fact that he's a framer and that framers are generally looked down upon. He doesn't laugh in a gratuitous way like you might think though, he likes it when other people laugh with him. What he does for a living isn't who he is. He decided to make houses for a living, and he's damn good at it and he makes a damn good living off of it. Also, he's a high-school drop-out with little or no chance of ever making more money than he does, which is actually okay with him, and another source of amusement, but don't push it. He turned thirty last week and two weeks before that he was installed as deacon at his church and in that evening service his new little son was baptised, so now his other son and two little daughters have another sibling.

So there you go, that's actually not what I meant to do at all. But you have to be happy with what you have, even if you feel silly going to bed now when I'm just going to get up and do it all over again in a few hours.

Monday, June 20, 2005 -- 8:10 PM

More on Mountains n' Shit.

So we were pretty resolved at this point. "The Top or Bust" was our motto, come hell or high water. Hell wasn't our first deterrent, though. It was an elderly couple who we passed coming down. We'd been walking our solitary path steeply upward for probably about forty-five minutes, and the peak seemed ever as small, when we could catch glimpses of it, and the Frenchman's optimism was a curse on our parched throats. If he can do this in one fucking hour, why hasn't he passed us yet, that bastard. That French bastard. He hasn't showed us up yet with all of his talk of one hour. We're hard as fuck. That French bastard. So we came along the older folks, headed down to the bottom, and we were able to ask them how far to the top. "Oh, we didn't nearly go to the top. You're maybe a third of the way now. Maybe. We turned back after we hit the snow." Snow? Our water was almost gone, and we were conserving the rest. If we were going to walk down and all the way back to camp and find more bears, better to do it with a full water bottle. The only way to get a full water bottle was to keep walking, so onward and upward.

It became easier after about an hour, and we could enjoy the view more. The mood lifted and we laughed at the foolish Frenchman, who we had seen hair nor hide of. We'd taken him for a seasoned climber. Haha, foolish Frenchman. Fie! Fie on him, and his talk. We found some snow, which we were too parched to ignore, and filled the water bottle. A man passed us who had full climbing gear on, complete with pickaxe, and we scoffed when he passed us. Look at him toting a pickaxe! How silly he looks! But he has a message for us us. Our friends are coming. What, the frenchie? Yes, that's him. He said to say he's coming.

We watched him go and trudged onward, and then the terrain became suddenly rocky and bare, and we could see the summit to the west quite clearly across a valley which was covered in rock and snow. As if to heighten the mood of our discovery it began to snow lightly and it became quite chill. We put on sweaters and ate some granola bars. This was the final leg. We were just getting ready to start again and there was Frenchie, grinning at us from behind. "Ha!" We laughed at him. "An hour? What's that bullshit?"

He wasn't alone. A man wearing sunglasses and a blonde girl were with him, both I would have guessed in their mid twenties. "He told us an hour, too" said sunglasses. "He's a fucking retard," and we all laughed. Frenchie wasn't bothered in the least, and he offered us water, but we didn't need any, we had snow. We decided to tackle the rest of the mountain together, and after introductions Frenchie assumed leadership.

The snow picked up almost immediately, and it didn't slack. We were on the top of a mountain in a blizzard. "Where the fuck is our view now?" asked sunglasses. We lost the trail very easily, and when the storm passed we were faced with a wall of loose shale as the final seventh level of hell. We climbed slowly and carefully, sometimes painfully, watching the storm move past us and across the mountains, revealing the wilderness below us and the smallness of ourselves. When we got to the top and looked down at the sheerness of the slope we'd just climbed we were proud and satisfied with ourselves, and as we drank from my flask, we looked on derision at those who had taken the tram up. Poor fools, in awe of something they know nothing of, the way I imagined a hunter would look in awe at the once-ferocious rug he had risked his life to display. In short, this mountain was our bitch.

More to come? We shall see.

Saturday, June 18, 2005 -- 5:11 PM

I went to a kegger last night at the house of someone I work with. It has been said of his family that, "At the Vanderveens, it is encouraged to drink," and that's what we did alright. It was kind of surreal; actually it was surreal in a big way, because everyone seemed to know me. Vanderveen's mom and sister, one of his cousins, the brother of another guy I used to work with. "Hey, you're Dave Dyck." "Dave Dyck, right?" "You must be Dave Dyck." It was explained to me later that it was the hair. My long hair is legend, and also distinct, although it is kind of starting to get annoying.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005 -- 6:15 PM

My heart beat like the rain on the ambulance windshield, and almost in time with the wipers. The night outside was as cold as my gut, but it was warm in here. Too damn warm. In the back lay what I thought by now must be a corpse. If not now, then soon.
Clear! ... and the machines took over where medicines failed. Clear! ... Again.

I think we lost it.

The anxiety emptied from the atmosphere like all of the water that was raining down was emptying into the sewers, and we all breathed a sigh of dissapointement, like a lone headlight flasing in between raindrops.

But then.

But then it.

But then it happened.

We have a pulse.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you the new and slightly improved Word for Word.