finally

7735 more hours. I know I did work. I just don't remember much. I don't really care. As far as I know he left for Jamaica on Saturday (15) and gave me Thursday (13) and Friday (14) off and only worked a half day on Wednesday (12). We were in Burlington, OH YA! Monday (10) we went to this guy's place that James knows who owns Complete Roofing to install pot lights on the outside of his house. Problem is that they were to be installed on the underside of the roof that hangs over the edge of the house which is pretty high up cause the house is two storeys and the one was over the quad-car garage which is under the house so the driveway slopes down so now it was three storeys up. We had to borrow one of the guy's 30 ft ladders to get at it because we don’t have a ladder that could reach and this guy owns a roofing business so they need bigger ladders. So we did the first light then the second. At this point we were at the side of the house. The house/property isn't finished so the landscaping is not done at all. A couple days before when we were there James put his foot through the ice into a hole in the ground. While we were moving the ladder we were sure to avoid that hole. Only problem is that the hole underneath the ice was bigger than the hole he made in the ice. I got past it fine but when he walked on it he just dropped which then left the ladder to drop and then gravity and such did its job. We weren't going too far so we decided to leave the ladder upright and pick it up and move it to then gently rest it against the house so we didn't have to bring it down, carry it, then walk it back up. So now there's this teetering tower of metal that is starting to fall toward the house. The very nice expensive house with big expensive windows. So I did what needed to be done. Throw my weight at the ladder to keep it from falling toward the house. I was able to redirect the ladder, but it had already started to tip and so I used every ounce of strength I had left to try and keep it standing and not let it come crashing down. I was holding it steady, but then I realized that I was slowly getting crushed and it was forcing me to the ground until I ended up with my head between the rungs and the ladder resting on my shoulders while i was squatting in the snow. That was terribly painful so I got my head underneath and leaned forward to put the ladder on my back and tried to push up. I don't remember how I ended up getting out from under it. But I did. It did a number of my back and neck which I felt for the next few days. We did the other lights then went into the basement and wired them up.
Then Tuesday (11) we were next door-ish at this other guy's place who is still building the house. This house is 8000 sq ft with a crazy view of Burlington. House itself is sorta ugly. Might look better when it's done. James had been there before I started working for him and had put in a temporary panel and sub panel while the guys built the house but now that it's winter and the structure and stuff is all done they wanted some power inside. So first I had to find the teck cable that was buried under the snow that was running over to the sub panel to discover that it was buried under the dirt for a few feet right by the box. Oh goody. So he found me a pickax and a shovel. The shovel did absolutely nothing to the ground. So a pickaxing I went. That was exhausting. We got the cable out, got the panel inside, ran the wire inside, hooked up the new panel, plugged all the other guys stuff in and done. There was more involved and it took up most of the day but I'll leave it short.
Wednesday we were on Bond Street putting in two wall sconces and a switch for them, and an extra counter plug. Only took the morning to do. Then we went back to the office, I got my cheque for the last 5 weeks and that is all in the way of work for the next 3 weeks. Finally.

not a whole lot

7794 more hours. So after me weeks off, James called me Sunday (18) to tell me that he has stuff to sort out so he won't be around so don't come in till Wednesday (21). Ok then. So Wednesday the weather took a turn for the worse and so I ended up doing nothing all day except fix a plug that the polarity had been reversed. He had outdoor worked scheduled for the day. Now that's planning. So he tells me depending on what the weather is like the next day if I should bother coming in. It snowed that night. So no work on Thursday (22). He said that he would set me up to finish things up at the house on Bristol for Friday (23). Friday morning I'm ready to go out the door and my phone rings. He informs me that there are too many guys still working in the house so there's nothing for me to do. So I crawled back into bed. In the pay period that was those two weeks, out of a potential 80 hours.. I worked 10. weee. This past week I did a full week but I told him that I'll just put those hours on the next paycheck. I think he was relieved that he didn't need to pay me till later. I'm not totally sure about what days I did what but I know on Monday (26) I did the work at Bristol. Then another day I went back to put the last couple wires in the panel and install the rest of the lights. Then I was at a house down the street that we walked over to. It was just the attic that they were getting finished so Rupert was framing it up and I went around and put in some boxes and ran the wires, then that night they drywalled it and it was Friday (30) that I put all the plugs, switches, and lights on. Then we went back to that house on Lottridge that we worked on for so long in the summer that apparently still wasn't done. So I ended up helping with the sink on the main floor and the cabinets. But by the end of the day those two houses were done and the keys were handed over. There's still Bristol however. No idea when that'll eventually get done. Saturday (1) my parents left for Vegas. Today (2) was my birthday. 21. yay. Anyway, tomorrow (3) we're heading to Burlington as far as I know barring any early morning phone calls telling me to not come in. Roads are supposed to be bad tomorrow. We'll see.

wake up call

7832.5 more hours. Thursday (8) I woke up cause my phone was bouncing around (it's on vibrate). It was my boss calling. I thought, why would he be calling me. Maybe I don't need to come in today? First thing he says to me is, 'Where are you?'. I'm at home. 'Are you coming in today?'. Ya. Then I noticed what the time was on my other phone. It was after 9. I'm supposed to be at work at 8:30. Then I started to freak out. He told me to meet him at the house we were going to be working at so I wrote down the address and started feverishly getting ready. I found the street but not the place so I called him and he said that he wasn't even at the house. He got caught up at the supplier downtown and to go wait for him at the Tim Horton's nearby. So I got a hot chocolate and waited. and waited. I sat there for over an hour and a half and then he finally showed up. Apparently there were issues with his brother, and then the supplier didn't have stuff, and other people were calling him and he was exhausted before we even started working. So out of all the days I could have slept in (because in my sleepiness the night before I left my alarm clock on the set alarm time thing so it never went off) the morning where he had a slue of problems that delayed him getting to work is the one that it happened on. That's not chance. Anyway we ended up at this old Italian guy's house. Oh look the whole house has aluminum wiring. Great. Oh what's that? None of the plugs and switches are rated for aluminum? And the light fixtures were connected with marrettes that aren't rated for aluminum? Awesome. So here's what we get to do. Take off all of the plugs and switches. Disconnect all them. Take a piece of copper wire and pigtail the aluminum wires (with special marrettes and special goopy stuff) to the plugs and switches. Oh and also take down all the ceiling fans and lights and replace the marrettes with the special ones and if there is copper to aluminum connections, use the goopy stuff. I was terrible in chemistry class but there' something about copper and aluminum that when they're put together they oxidize and corrode or something and crumble and fall apart and then your house burns down. So these special marrettes you can use with aluminum and the goopy stuff is Noalox (made by Ideal) which impedes that corrosion. Yay. Anyway it sucks. And the old dude has been smoking for who knows how many years and I can hear him coughing in other rooms and it sounds like a lung is coming out and he has this laboured, slow breathing. It's creepy when you're working and he kinda shuffles up behind you and you don't hear him coming cause of the little slipper things he wears but you hear the breathing getting closer and louder and he just stands there watching you work. just. creepy. he and his wife are really nice and kept offering me ginger ale and then some sort of cake at one point. But ya. Then James left me there to fend for myself all day Friday (9). Then I told him that the next week is not such a good one for me. Monday (12) night was the Switchfoot/Relient K concert in Ypsilanti which I would have to leave early afternoon to get to in time, and then wouldnt get back till the next day. Then Thursday (15) I was getting my wisdom teeth pulled out in the morning and I would need the next day off as well to recover. So Wednesday (14) was the only day I could work. That just happened to be a day he was going to give me off because he had meetings with hydro or something. So I said that I would come in Monday (12) morning to help out for a little before I had to leave. He appreciated that. So the concert was awesome. Wrote about it in my Facebook notes. Switchfoot = so good. Got to meet them again and talked with some of them for a while. Jon played Corey's guitar again. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngqmcdgpY7o So then that brings us to Thrusday. All four wisdom teeth ripped from my skull while I'm wide awake. The chloral hydrate definitely failed me. It knocked me out before they started, but once he started injecting me with the freezing stuff, I woke right up. It was horrible. I'm on some painkillers so i don't feel too great right now. If stuff doesn't make sense that's why. I'm tired.

rain, puke, sleep

7847.5 more hours. Ok so once again everytime I would go to write this I got distracted and now I can't remember everything. Ok so we started work on a house that I think was bought by his nephew, or he got suckered into buying it or something. Either way we're fixing up this house on Bristol. Complete rewire again. Nothing too exciting there. Oh wait yes there is. It was the end of the day (22) and James wanted to get going so he told me to just get the wire in the box and not worry about mounting it so i tried to do it quick and my knife slipped and left quite the gash in my left hand. He was standing in the room so I just kept going pretending nothing happened. Once I was done I grabbed some kleenex and got my electrical tape and taped up my hand. Over the next few days the cut would keep ripping back open which didn't make the next few days any easier. The next day (23) was the day that we were to help his old apprentice with some meter changes on some government housing. Sure enough, it rained all day. That would be fine except that meters are on the outsides of buildings. So Hydro showed up cause the shutdown was scheduled for 9 and they asked if we wanted to go through with it and obviously it's not up to me so we worked all day in the rain. I was given a nice cheap pvc rain suit which by time I got home had been heavily damaged. It kept getting caught on the fences. It was not a lot of fun. I gave myself a new job title that day. Electrical bitch. Not only James', but his former apprentices, and his apprentice. I did none of the electrical. All I did all day was get them tools, get them material, clean up everything, and slowly die into a bright yellow lump on the ground. (The rain suit was yellow) Cleaning up involved carrying 8, 2" rusty steel pipes, and 4, 3" rusty steel pipes, 4 old meter bases, and some bricks. Then theres all the drills, saws, and new meters, and pvc pipe(which isn't that heavy), and the generator, and ladders. Sometimes I would have to carry those things long distances to walk from the one place they were working to the other. All while its raining. Happy. Then it was back to Bristol (24), then back to the government townhouses (25) for two more meters. This time it wasn't raining. But still left me very sore. After that I seem to have stopped writing stuff in my notepad for a couple days so I don't know what goes on in there which brings us to the 30th. Time for another concert. This time it was Red, Seether, Breaking Benjamin, and Three Days Grace. I wrote out the story on Facebook in my notes read it there. If you can't, comment on this blog to let me know. I have to accept any comments so it'll be like sending me a message without anyone seeing it and you don't need to sign up or anything. Anyway. That brings us to Sunday (4). I wake up. I don't feel so good. Had this really bad pain above my stomach area. Went to church, started feeling sick and spent most of Lane's sermon in the bathroom over the toilet ready to spew. I could still hear him in there. Then we went out to lunch with Mike at BP, had a few fries, felt sick again, went to the bathroom and spent most of lunch in the bathroom over the toilet ready to spew. To no avail either time. I tried too. So we travel home and on the way I really don't start feeling well, so I told my mom to pull over. We turned down a road and I got out and over to the ditch I go and puke. So that felt awesome. Did feel better but I had just puked so there's only so good you can feel. Called James later to tell him that I probably won't be coming in cause of the sickness which mom had diagnosed as stomach flu. So Monday (5) morning I called him again to let him know that I wasn't any better and he told me to take Tuesday (6) off as well. Sounds good. Was feeling better Wednesday (7) so things seemed to be getting better. This morning however, was a different story. To Be Continued... Oh and we saw Mr. Noel at Mandarin.

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.