July 2024 Monthly Entry
The summer heat has began since late June, with temperatures hovering around early to mid 20's celcius at first. For over a week until now, we have gone up to the early 30s. It does cool considerably at night, making sleeping manageable. It doesn't affect me much at work or at home. My car ends up cooking me when I drive home from work though I always have cold water with me to cool me down. Picture above is me cat sitting upstairs while my younger sister was out for a couple of nights. Mr. Pickles enjoys his belly rubs.
While I was able to make Bellingham Pride last Sunday, I did in fact miss Seattle Pride on June 30th. My father was late in getting me to my bus pick-up spot before the border that they were pulling out of the gas station just as we were about to enter it! The implication of my not attending Seattle Pride was my not getting pictures of the leather contingent -and Seattle Leatherdaddy titleholder Rick Ruben- in the parade. To this day, I cannot find any pictures uploaded by others of the contingent and worse still, there aren't any videos uploaded on YouTube with them in the parade either. They were edited out or some users would prefer to show themselves walking the parade route and going to the festival instead! I knew this would happen and it aggravates me. Thousands of phone cameras, and less than 1% upload? I'll continue to check Flickr, YouTube, etc for future uploads. I'm not on any other major social media sites, so it does limit what I can see uploaded.
Knights Gathering will be in San Francisco during the Up Your (Dore) Alley weekend, July 26-29. My chapter is hosting it though the turnout of Knights and supporters will be low, which angers me. It will still be fun though and my entry should be uploaded by early August with lots of good pictures. And with my upcoming summer trip in August, the next monthly entry coming will be uploaded a little earlier and will have the itinerary.
The last days of school wasn't too difficult despite the classroom parties and extra treats being passed out. The only thing that got on my nerves was the constant use of the computer lab. I keep asking why they would use it up to the final days when they should be winding down. It's like they have nothing better to do. Outside of that, I started dusting on the last day of school for students and the following day for teachers. I noticed on the last day of school in one of the classrooms, a few students wrote nice notes to me (pics above). Awwww! After the Canada Day holiday, Jay and I began the scrub with up to five volunteers for that first week. One of them was Ash, who was my first sub-foreman during my first year at Montecito and has been working at Stoney Creek. Mark (the classic rock music guy) from Stoney was also around and was partnered with Jay the entire time. My first major job was cleaning all upstairs windows while everyone else was wiping down my classrooms. After I was done the windows, I helped with the tail end of wiping things down. I had no squeegee so Ash let me borrow his. While a few guys started scrubbing my floors the following day, I was partnered with the sub-foreman of Sperling for the rest of the week. We first scrubbed my washrooms - which was forced on me earlier than I wanted because of Jay. We washed the walls and stalls, then scrubbed the floors. I would finish off the sinks and toilets on our last day there though. We next spent a day cleaning the kindergarten portable. I started with all the windows and then helped finished off the wiping. Amy, the kindergarten teacher, was still showing up (when she technically shouldn't!) each day and seemed happy with the work we were doing. She gave me a small gift of a few bags of potato chips around the end of school the previous week and then proceeded to give me a couple more! It was a nice gesture, though she would kind of backstab me soon after. Late Thursday morning of the 4th, my partner and I finished scrubbing the floors of Amy's portable and put the furniture back. Before returning to the school, I let her know we may be back the following day to do some touch-ups. She thanked me and I left. Sometime just before lunch break, she apparently approached Jay and complained that the garbage wasn't taken out, and that the toilet was plugged. I replied to Jay that it wasn't the same garbage from her class on the last day of school: this was new garbage with just debris we swept and paper towels we used (there was no food or anything organic rotting in it.) This was not a big deal as it is a scrub and garbage from a scrub period is not as prioritized versus a regular school day. As for the toilet, it was an ongoing problem around that time and the problem has come back again. I told Jay I would rectify these problems after lunch break. I then return from said lunch break and find, in her irresponsibility, leaving the front door of her portable wide open even though she left for the day! Smart... so... smart. We took out the two garbage cans in her room and tried to unplug the toilet, to no avail. Jay came around and tried too, but was unsuccessful so he got me to lock the door and put a "out of order" sign up. After cleaning up the washroom, I did just that. I let Amy know the following day, Friday, about the toilet. Still, I felt soured and backstabbed by what she whined about. Also on Friday, my partner and I were tasked to vacuum and wash all three stairwells. I approach Jay and ask his permission to use his backpack vacuum to clean his stairs. If you guys read my rant last month, you know the answer! Holy shit: even when the vacuum is being used for his own benefit, he still refuses to let me use it and wants me to clean the stairs using my cannister vacuum! If I didn't have a partner helping me, this would have been exhausting to do and I'd have to be careful that the vacuum doesn't fall down the stairs. I didn't get pissed like I did the previous month, but it is quite telling of him. Last Monday and Tuesday, I was basically by myself upstairs for most of the time. I got to inspect and work in my rooms, re-touching up things and moving furniture around. The guys did a good job on my floors. A pity some of them cannot be waxed this year, thanks to my foreman. Jay used a buffer chemical on his non-wax hallway floor, but found the process time consuming and regretted it. My non-wax floors weren't buffed, as usual. I was glad we were given Tuesday as our final day to finish everything off. Ash, Mark, and one other were sent back to Stoney Creek while a couple were taking their scheduled vacation time. My partner from Sperling was taking a trip to Hong Kong, China, and Japan for the next few weeks, flying out on Monday. So Tuesday I finished off my classrooms, replaced all bags and food scrap bags in the cans and containers, and did the sinks and toilets in the washrooms. Jay finished his stuff downstairs too with help from Dean, who was my sub-foreman previous to Jay in 2019-2020. The last thing I did before taking final break and leaving, was putting things away and replacing a few things in my second floor and portable closets. I thanked Dean for his helping Jay that day (I also thanked the others previous before they left.)
For the rest of the week, Jay and I were assigned to Lyndhurst. I haven't been there since July 2021. We had four women custodians with us: Gloria, Ping, Ilene, and Shelly. Besides Jay and me, Kesler from Second Street were the only males there. I mostly worked with Ilene and Shelly. We worked well together and Lyndhurst is a very small school. In fact, we were mostly done by Thursday and we sat down and gabbed for the majority of Friday. Friday was also Jay's last day as he'll be taking his full six weeks off. He'll return the final week of the scrub when the teachers return to the schools. My vacation is not for another four weeks. He was better with me at Lyndhurst but truth be told, I'm glad I don't have to deal with him for the rest of the scrub. Tomorrow I'll be at Forest Grove.
Some of you have noticed a few uploaded game reviews after a dry spell last spring, I am getting back into the swing of things a bit. I'm early in Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection and as of this writing, have beat the first two games. I have two more games before the first of a three part review will go up. This will take awhile and hope it will be fully done before my trip next month or in September. 3D Classics: Kid Icarus will begin soon and should be done before my Up Your Alley trip. I've seen a couple episodes of Star Trek: TOS and Harley Quinn, but still will be some time before reviews are up.
Last Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Theatrical), Despicable Me 3 (Netflix)
Last Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - The Screwtape Letters
Last Game: Tekken Tag Tournament 2: Wii U Edition (Wii U)
Current Book: The C.S. Lewis Signature Classics - Miracles
Current Games: Metal Gear Solid: The Legacy Collection (PS3) & 3D Classics: Kid Icarus (3DS)