(no subject)
OMG an update: whatever
I've been busier than I care to be.
I get up at 6 so I can be in Wilton by 7. Doing temp work for the Board of Ed; it's a really big piece of wood owned by Edward, but no nails in it. I work 'till 3:30 and then usually have enough time to go home, change, eat something, and then go to UPS from 6:30 'till about 9. Then I come home and go to bed around 11 and do it all over again.
Except Yesterday.
Yesterday I went straight to UPS from Wilton and started working at 4:30 because I'm the non-management co-chair of the comprehensive health and safety process. Apparently if you call a committee a 'process' that means that it's ongoing and therefore looks good to auditors etc. It just means I'm in charge of the small side of safety. Benefits of that: I get about an extra 20 minutes a week so I can do safety crap, It looks good on a resume, and it helps with my job security since no one else knows how to do it. Anywayz, I went in early because I have to do an annual facility audit by the end of the month. It's 20 pages long and takes about 6 hours. But they can't afford to let me do it during the shift because nobody else really knows the sort (which zip codes) for my trailer. So, I went and got half of it done early. Doing the same thing today. Yesterday I forgot to eat because of it. By the end of the night I was so tired all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. But wait, what's that giant black puddle leaking out from under my car? I don't remember running over any (censored, insert your favorite racially biased comment here). Oh, it's just the oil pan dripping because theres a hole from when I must have hit something, but it somehow hasn't started leaking until Now (seriously, I have no idea when the last time I actually ran something over like that was... probably the giant curb at Brooke and Nates that jumped out into the road right in front of my car. That was weeks ago.) Fucking great. So I stopped by the gas station to pickup oil and get gas because mal-wart and advance auto were both closed by this point. $85 later, I've got a full tank of gas, 5 quarts of 20w-50, a coffee, and a 2 pack deal of marbs. I called ahead to make sure the driveway in front of the garage would be clear, and I got home to find everything set up already, including cardboard on the driveway to catch the oil.
So, I jack the car up, and sure enough, there's a crack right below the drain bolt on the oil pan. So, I drain the oil, and while that's happening call Dawn. I tell her my tale of woe, and then have to get back to fixing this thing. Oh, it seems the oil decided to overshoot the catch basin when it drained and has left a gigantic puddle on the driveway. more Fucking Great. So now I have to play a combination of save New Orleans and clean up the Exxon Valdez.
For the past 2 years there has been a large plastic shopping bag full of compressed saw dust sitting in the back of the garage. I used almost all of it. If I didn't have that, I would still be out there right now with news paper and sand trying to clean it up. This is yet another point toward validating all the 'crap', as my mother calls it (but is actually 'good junk') that we have saved up.
Anywayz, I used the sand to create a series of dikes to stop to flow of oil, and the threw the sawdust on top to let it soak it.
Now that the oil is drained, we determine the best thing to do it pull the oil pan, clean the area of the hull breach, and braze it shut. Luckily the pan was really easy to get off, hardest part was getting the socket on the bolt heads while holding a mirror in the other hand so I could see them. I won't get into the details of what it took to finally get the hole closed up, but there was a series of curses and multiple flame projectors going to get the stuff hot enough to flow into the crack. So, once it was cooled and we cleaned it up, I sent the old man to bed because it was 11:20 and past his bed time. I covered the inside of the crack area with silicone gasket sealer just to make sure, and then put the pan back on the van (man, what a plan, understand? [I'm a poet and I don't know it, I rhyme all the time] :P ). I decided to let the silicone try and cure in a dry environment overnight (since it was 20 something degrees out) and just add the new oil in the morning.
Now comes the fun part of cleaning up the giant sawdust/sand/oil salad. Children's snow shovels rule, we've had this same little red thing for the past decade. Perfect for doing the steps, small walkways, and picking up crap from the driveway. It cleaned up much easier then I thought, sawdust is much more effective than sand at soaking up oil. Then I had to scrub the spill area with a simple green/ dawn/ hot water combo to try and get as much oil out of the blacktop as possible. (for those unaware, petroleum based fluids will break down pavement much faster than normal. Just look at the parking spots in front of an auto-parts store next time you might be there, or going past one. The places where all the oils drip, looks like the surface of mars, or the moon compared to the rest of the lot). Hopefully it'll rain and rinse all the rest away, it supposed to at some point today I think.
Anywayz, all done, Except for laundering the clothes I will need to wear to work again tomorrow, as well as my jacket that is covered in sand and saw dust.
yada yada yada
I went to bed at 2:35. And got up at 6.
I'm still tired from when I woke up yesterday.
I'm tired of typing, the end.
p.s. I Love Dawn.
I've been busier than I care to be.
I get up at 6 so I can be in Wilton by 7. Doing temp work for the Board of Ed; it's a really big piece of wood owned by Edward, but no nails in it. I work 'till 3:30 and then usually have enough time to go home, change, eat something, and then go to UPS from 6:30 'till about 9. Then I come home and go to bed around 11 and do it all over again.
Except Yesterday.
Yesterday I went straight to UPS from Wilton and started working at 4:30 because I'm the non-management co-chair of the comprehensive health and safety process. Apparently if you call a committee a 'process' that means that it's ongoing and therefore looks good to auditors etc. It just means I'm in charge of the small side of safety. Benefits of that: I get about an extra 20 minutes a week so I can do safety crap, It looks good on a resume, and it helps with my job security since no one else knows how to do it. Anywayz, I went in early because I have to do an annual facility audit by the end of the month. It's 20 pages long and takes about 6 hours. But they can't afford to let me do it during the shift because nobody else really knows the sort (which zip codes) for my trailer. So, I went and got half of it done early. Doing the same thing today. Yesterday I forgot to eat because of it. By the end of the night I was so tired all I wanted to do was go home and sleep. But wait, what's that giant black puddle leaking out from under my car? I don't remember running over any (censored, insert your favorite racially biased comment here). Oh, it's just the oil pan dripping because theres a hole from when I must have hit something, but it somehow hasn't started leaking until Now (seriously, I have no idea when the last time I actually ran something over like that was... probably the giant curb at Brooke and Nates that jumped out into the road right in front of my car. That was weeks ago.) Fucking great. So I stopped by the gas station to pickup oil and get gas because mal-wart and advance auto were both closed by this point. $85 later, I've got a full tank of gas, 5 quarts of 20w-50, a coffee, and a 2 pack deal of marbs. I called ahead to make sure the driveway in front of the garage would be clear, and I got home to find everything set up already, including cardboard on the driveway to catch the oil.
So, I jack the car up, and sure enough, there's a crack right below the drain bolt on the oil pan. So, I drain the oil, and while that's happening call Dawn. I tell her my tale of woe, and then have to get back to fixing this thing. Oh, it seems the oil decided to overshoot the catch basin when it drained and has left a gigantic puddle on the driveway. more Fucking Great. So now I have to play a combination of save New Orleans and clean up the Exxon Valdez.
For the past 2 years there has been a large plastic shopping bag full of compressed saw dust sitting in the back of the garage. I used almost all of it. If I didn't have that, I would still be out there right now with news paper and sand trying to clean it up. This is yet another point toward validating all the 'crap', as my mother calls it (but is actually 'good junk') that we have saved up.
Anywayz, I used the sand to create a series of dikes to stop to flow of oil, and the threw the sawdust on top to let it soak it.
Now that the oil is drained, we determine the best thing to do it pull the oil pan, clean the area of the hull breach, and braze it shut. Luckily the pan was really easy to get off, hardest part was getting the socket on the bolt heads while holding a mirror in the other hand so I could see them. I won't get into the details of what it took to finally get the hole closed up, but there was a series of curses and multiple flame projectors going to get the stuff hot enough to flow into the crack. So, once it was cooled and we cleaned it up, I sent the old man to bed because it was 11:20 and past his bed time. I covered the inside of the crack area with silicone gasket sealer just to make sure, and then put the pan back on the van (man, what a plan, understand? [I'm a poet and I don't know it, I rhyme all the time] :P ). I decided to let the silicone try and cure in a dry environment overnight (since it was 20 something degrees out) and just add the new oil in the morning.
Now comes the fun part of cleaning up the giant sawdust/sand/oil salad. Children's snow shovels rule, we've had this same little red thing for the past decade. Perfect for doing the steps, small walkways, and picking up crap from the driveway. It cleaned up much easier then I thought, sawdust is much more effective than sand at soaking up oil. Then I had to scrub the spill area with a simple green/ dawn/ hot water combo to try and get as much oil out of the blacktop as possible. (for those unaware, petroleum based fluids will break down pavement much faster than normal. Just look at the parking spots in front of an auto-parts store next time you might be there, or going past one. The places where all the oils drip, looks like the surface of mars, or the moon compared to the rest of the lot). Hopefully it'll rain and rinse all the rest away, it supposed to at some point today I think.
Anywayz, all done, Except for laundering the clothes I will need to wear to work again tomorrow, as well as my jacket that is covered in sand and saw dust.
yada yada yada
I went to bed at 2:35. And got up at 6.
I'm still tired from when I woke up yesterday.
I'm tired of typing, the end.
p.s. I Love Dawn.