how to go down stairs

7927 more hours. I'll tell you how not to go down stairs. Falling. It hurts. A lot. Try to stay standing when walking down them, and don't fall back and slide down them. I wasn't totally with it at work and I fell back while going down the stairs in the house we were working on in the Westdale area, and tried to stop my fall by putting my arms back which prbably saved me from smashing the back of my head against the stairs, but gave me some real bad scrapes on my arm and hand. The really bad one on my arm will probably end up becoming a scar like my knee from my little skateboarding escapade in Edmonton. Oh well. Such is life. Just one more injury from work. So last week on Thursday and Friday (11&12) we headed out to Mississauga to help out an electrical contractor friend of James'. They were working on an Aaron's http://www.shopaarons.ca/sa/ and were supposed to hand the store over that coming Monday (15). There was still a lot of work to be done so that's why they called James. I finally got to do some commercial work and not just residential. It's more or less the same, except you only use BX (if you've ever seen the cable that has the metal sheath) instead of the usual Romex (the white bendy sheath). So according to the internets it's not actually called BX anymore and hasn't been for some time. However, just about everyone in the trade calls it BX so I'm just gonna keep calling it that. And Romex is a brand name I know that but whatever. Anyway I haven't worked with BX since grade 10, and haven't done any commercial stuff so the other guys apprentice taught me how to do everything. Thanks Tony. So that was some good experience. I also had to do 20+ plugs in the place. And there were more to do but I ran out of plugs. The whole time James was fixing all the old fluorescent lights from the previous store that was in there. I didn't take the time to count how many there were. I helped him with about 8 but then was made to do other stuff. There was at least... 40. probably more. Not all of them weren't working but a lot of them weren't. That's all he did. And he even went back on the Sunday to help out more. Crazy. I also had to get on the top of a 12 foot ladder to take down some conduit that wasn't gonna be used that was strapped to the ceiling. A little scary when the ladder moves the slightest bit. That's a long way down when my head is almost 18ft from the floor. Other than that me and Tony hung up and wired 10 of the fluorescent lights that are used in drop ceilings. the big ones you see in offices and stuff. That was cool to learn all that. Other than that we finished the house in Westdale on Tuesday (16) so he gave me the next day off cause he had to go to Toronto to get some stuff sorted out for his trip to Jamaica and because we worked hard on that house and needed a break before starting another job. So Thursday (18) I go back and by the end of the day I had installed 7 pot lights. It took me under an hour to do that. We did it at the end of the day. I did nothing all day except for that right at the end. And then today we were supposed to help one of his former apprentices with this meter changing job for some government owned townhouses. Ya you know things are bad when Hydro won't even attempt to disconnect it because it's dangerous. So we didn't end up doing anything. We are gonna have to shut down the whole block of houses but you can't shut off peoples power unless you give the people living there notice. Which we hadn't because we only planned on disconnecting the units affected. So it has been delayed to this Tuesday. Then he took me and James out for lunch and then we went to Stoney Creek, I changed an outdoor light to a motion sensor one and that was it. And I'm getting paid for all of it. Which is not bad after my raise. I got my first paycheck today after I got my raise. Wow. That's a lot of bacon. I don't know where that came from. Bring home the bacon? Isn't that a saying? I was originally thinking that it could buy me a lot of bacon. Mmm bacon. Oh ya. So BX is not always the nicest to work with cause it's all metal and it's real sharp and doesn't bend very easily, but in that house in Westdale there was this stuff that was before BX I guess because it was encased in this metal like substance. Turns out it's lead. Ya. So I tried to touch it as little as possible. I think lead is bad for you. I thought I heard that somewhere.

giddyup

7998 more hours. So much has happened since I last wrote something here. I really should have written it down cause I can't remember a whole lot. We finally finished the house we were working on for 6 weeks down by Ivor Wynne on Lottridge. After doing almost all of the wiring I then had to put all of the plugs on, and all of the switches, and then all of the light fixtures. Oh ya! I think all of the light fixtures were from IKEA. yay. There were these lights that were for the two kitchens in the place and the instructions said not to use a regular bulb. That was apparent since they didn't fit. So we tried the smaller ones that we used for some of the other lights but they were too small. We had no idea what it wanted. James made several trips to Home Depot looking for the right bulbs but kept coming back with either nothing or the wrong ones. So the one day we were out doing a service call in Ancaster and on the way back he decided to stop off at Home Depot to grab some stuff and he sent me to look for the bulbs. 5 minutes later I had them. It's a gift what can I say? He couldn't believe it. He obssesed about it the rest of the day how I found them no problem and they were right in front of him the whole time. Win. That house is done and it turned out a lot nicer than I thought it would. If you would have seen what it looked like when we first got there and what it looks like now. Ya. I should really take a camera to work. Mine is messed up though. gotta look into getting a new one. We did some service calls after that and then this past Monday (10th) we began work in Westdale on Paisley St. I certainly enjoy working in that area. A lot. Because it's not ghetto and... it's a very nice looking part of the city. Yes. That's it. Anywho, we're rewiring the entire house, but unlike the last house which had no walls, this one still has them. So it's back to using the fish tape and getting my hands shredded sticking them into the holes for the boxes trying to grab the tape. Not pleasant. We finished up the top floor yesterday and then started the main floor and then started the basement. Today I finished all the lights and the smoke for the basement and started on the main floor. James had some words of wisdom for me. "Work smart, so you don't have to work hard." Works for me. I hit myself in the teeth with a light fixture. I remembered that the other day. I was working on the wires and it swung around and hit me right in the teeth. I didn’t like that. I got paid today, and he gave me a fancy pen with the the company name and phone number etched in it. Very swanky. Oh, and he decided to give me a raise. BOOYAH! FTW! And the TV is finally back after being gone for a month. My eyes got so used to staring at the little screen we had and now it looks huge. (that’s what she said) AND it’s the long turkey turkey gobbly weekend. Not bad.

back to work

I'm back at work now after my week vacation, which I couldn't enjoy because I was sick. It wasn't actually vacation time, I just took the time off work cause I was sick. The cold symptoms have more or less cleared up, but there's some sort of respiratory thing that I have developed. Saw a doctor about it and he prescribed me Ventolin. It's an inhaler. He thinks maybe I have some sort of asthma or something. The stuff doesn't help. If it keeps up I will take my families advice and go for a chest x-ray and whatever else I should get. They're the medical professionals. I'm just a lowly electrician in training... who got shocked a couple times today. Not a huge fan of it. The one time really hurt. And the one really crappy part is that it lingers for a while. You still feel tingly a few minutes after it happens. We went to this really cool building on Upper James today. There's a Taekwondo place that takes up a small part of the main floor and the rest of it is all empty. We were walking around inside and it just keeps going. It would be a really good place to shoot something. Unfortunately the job would require too much time to fix the place up so James probably isn't going to take it. He's already been working on getting two other huge jobs. Oh well. Watched the premiere of Prison Break at Doug's place. It's gonna be crazy sauce! I'm excited.

all your base

8090 more hours. So a bunch of stuff has happened since I last wrote, and I can't remember it all. But I'll do what I can. The one day I was working on the top floor in the one house and I heard a cop pulling someone over outside. So I looked out and saw the cop had someone pulled over. No big deal. I went back to work and checked again to see what if anything interesting had happened. Just looked like a regular traffic violation or something, back to work. Checked back in a little bit and saw a guy that was in the back seat was out of the car standing on the sidewalk while the officer was searching through some things in the back seat. After a bit of work I checked again and the girl riding shotgun was out of the vehicle as well. I could see the officer saying something to the guy who looked like someone who you would see on the show Cops. Sure enough the guy suddenly made a break for it. He just took off down the street and turned down the next street running full out. Cop just stood there and grabbed his radio. I assume he didn't go after him because he was alone and couldn't leave the girl and the driver there. So he proceeded to put the girl in the back of his cruiser and then talked to the driver some more, frisked him, and sent him on his way with a ticket for something. Two more cars showed up and drove around looking for the guy who ran. I don't know what ended up happening but it was certainly something. It was just like on TV. Exciting. I know there was other stuff that happened but I'm drawing a blank. I'm sick right now and have been the past few days and took today and tomorrow off of work. Oh ya I bought a bass guitar. Epiphone Thunderbird IV. It's pretty awesome. I like it. Me and Jenn went a little crazy buying DVDs. In one trip to one store we bought, Prison Break Season 2, House Season 3, The Office Season 3, Heroes Season 1, and Stargate SG-1 Season 10. Most shows are starting back up the next two weeks. Prison Break on the 17th, Heroes the 24th, House the 25th, and the Office the 27th. Can't wait. What else. I accidentally burned my arm while making food in the oven. Left a nice little scar. Hit myself in the face with my screwdriver. Not intentional. Saw 3:10 to Yuma. Great movie. Friends plus fire = fun. I'm running out of stuff I can remember. Just had a NeoCitran and am feeling a little sleepy. And sleep.

so it begins

I don't think anyone even reads this anymore but oh well. For those who read this and don't know, I finally registered with the Ministry of Training and Colleges on Wednesday(15). My apprenticeship has officially begun. Only 8200 more hours. It's supposed to be 9000 but the guy from the ministry was able to knock off 800. 500 because I graduated grade 12 (only need to have grade 10 to become an apprentice), and 300 for the two months I already worked. So that's pretty awesome. To date, I only have 8167.5 more hours to go. Giddy-up. So ya apparently hand-chiseling into a brick wall is a lot of work. Once again I say, why must we keep doing renovations. Or at least get some stupid shallow boxes. ugh. I've wired up most of this house we are working on. James has been busy doing framing which he apparently also learned, so it's been up to me and Junior. James seems to know everything. He's always telling the other guys how to do their jobs. It's pretty funny hearing them arguing over stuff. We're almost done the house which is being turned into two apartment suite thingys. Should be nice once it's all done. Tomorrow we have to run some PVC conduit before they pour the concrete for a pool pump which we will later hook up I guess. Or maybe we'll do that too. I don't know. We'll have to see. I think there was something else that happened in the past two weeks that I was gonna write about. If I think of it I'll write in in later.

grilled cheese and tacos

I am genuinely sorry about the window. See Hot Rod and it will all make sense. When did I see Hot Rod? It's story time. So there's this band called Red. They're an up and coming Christian band that has awesome music. Corey heard that they were coming to Ontario so he checked and they were gonna be in Sarnia. So the plan was made months in advance to go and see them. The day finally arrived (Friday 3rd) and Corey, his sister, my sister, and I drove to Sarnia to see them in concert. We met a girl who lives there named Tiff that Corey knows. She was a really big help because we would have been pretty lost without her, so thank you Tiff. Anyway, we got to the Lakeshore Music Festival where the band was going to be playing and just as we went to buy tickets the lady said, "I hope you're not here to see Red." Apparently they canceled a few hours prior to our arrival. So. I drove all the way to Sarnia to see a band that didn't show. How happy. So after some deliberation we decided to go see a movie. Hot Rod was the winner. It was an amazing movie I have to say. But I didn't need to drive all the way there to see it. Then I had to drive all the way back. Got home at 4am after dropping Corey and Lynzy off. Red's manager is going to be getting a phone call from either Corey or myself.
Saturday Milica, Mike, Jenn, and I went to check out Doug's new place in St. Catharines and then we all went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum. Good movie. Little too much shaky camera though.

long weekend

I get tomorrow off and Monday off. I'm happy. Now I can sleep. Sleep is good. I also really need some time for my thumb to heal. Long story short I was stripping wire with my one knife and it slipped and went right into my left thumb. It hurt, a lot. And then I looked down at my hand. Definitely definitely lots of blood. Ya. I don't think I've ever bled that much before. It took about 15 minutes to get the bleeding to stop more or less and then I went to let James know what happened. After I told him I went to get a band-aid and stuff to properly clean it but as I was searching I suddenly felt very ill and got dizzy. He took me inside and I was cleaning my cut when I looked in the mirror. I know I'm white, but I have never been this white before. It look as though I was dead. There was no colour in my face at all. So I had a seat. I've been trying to not use my thumb for anything because it's excruciatingly painful whenever anything touches it. But of course I keep hitting it on things, and forgetting that I shouldn't use it. Jenn finds the faces of pain and anguish I make funny, so she laughs at me whenever I get hurt. Anyway we finished that house we were working on for so long. I think in total it took 8 days for the one house. Ridiculous. It was terrible. Once again, renovations, are total garbage. It sucks.
On a different note, I have a little poem. It's a love poem. It's called, Are you getting hotter or am I lowering my standards?
I looked at my watch,
it was quarter past two.
I saw your face and thought,
hmm... she'll do.
(I didn't write it I saw it on Just for Laughs)