Knight of Pentacles

 In Construction, summertime is a race.  There are a lot of things that either can't be done, or would be prohibitively expensive to do in winter.  So, as soon as the weather gets above 0 things need to move FAST to finish up outside, or be able to close up a building before winter hits.  Things like rain, tremendous heat, or administrative/supply delays can impact a schedule quickly, so the easiest thing a company can do is increase the man-hours to try and claw back time lost. We're currently 6 weeks behind schedule on our Sherwood Park site.  The Superintendent is authorizing unlimited overtime, and has been trying to get us to work 6am to 4:30pm every day.  This means that I leave my house at 5:10am, and get home around 5:10pm.  And when I do get home, I'm sore, sticky, dirty, and sour. Now, don't get me wrong, I still love my job, and the overtime is great.  But I've been finding it harder and harder to get the energy to get to Kung Fu w...

 These last couple of weeks, as EVERYONE is aware, have been hot.  Last week was our first really hot week of the summer, and it was brutal.  My crew was working outside, the whole time, and it was miserable.  Headaches and nausea and fatigue.  By the end of last week we were all completely worn out.   This week is not ~quite~ as hot, but close, and we were doing better.  And it made me think of something from last year.  There was a job my previous company was doing in the attic of a 4 storey apartment building.  The attic spanned the entire structure with a gable roof and when the sun hit it the space got HOT.  I didn't work on the project, but I was friends with the superintendent and he told me many tales of the woes of trying to cool the space down so our people could work.  They tried fans, air conditioners, personal fans around necks, cooling towels, everything.  At first we were cycling workers through bi-weekly....

 

 This year's Canada Day Demo and celebrations was a blast.  We went to the Pioneer Centre, we did our Lion/Dragon dance (next year we really need to warm up first, I thought I was going to DIE....AGAIN), then we did our Team Demo.  It was a success!  After helping bring the Dragon back to the van I raced back to my family to enjoy some festivities. If you guys haven't tried that foam thing, you should totally do it next year.  It's like being in a CLOUD (with lots of screaming, some half-naked, children). Frankie had just hit the target on the dunk tank when WHOOOOOOOSH! FIGHTER JETS!!!!!  EXCITING!!!!! It was a really good time, and I was reminiscing about what happened at Canada Day the year before, and realized that I hadn't blogged about it at the time, so here's the story: It was my first year on the I Ho Chuan team and my first Canada Day Demo.  We had been practicing our weapons/forms and the Dragon/Lion for WEEKS and anticipation was high....