Great... just great.

I demand to know whose fricking brilliant idea the switch to digital TV was??? I demand to know! I want to be able to personally smack them upside their head with something smelly and disgusting. I am sooo not a happy camper.

Let me explain why I am so unhappy. The local CBS affiliate has always broadcasted over the radio as well as the TV. For the last oh, say...20 years, I have listened to this broadcast at work. I started when I worked at the barn, and just out of habit, continued right up till 1:00pm yesterday. At that time, the local station went ahead and changed over to digital. They apparently have not made any provisions to continue the radio broadcasts, despite the fact that a lot of people listen to them during emergencies when the power goes off. This is so ironic, because they stated the reason for not waiting until June, which is the government deadline, was because that is severe weather time here, and they did not want to risk being off the air during a weather emergency. Bah!

What am I gonna do now?? NO weather for when we are out on a job. No news! No SOAPS!!! I am sitting here listening to "Fire and Rain" on the radio. Every 10 seconds, I reach over and start to change it to the TV broadcast, only to remember it is GONE! In place of my regularly scheduled The Young and the Chestless, is some idiot telling people how to hook up their black box, which is then repeated in spanish...over and over. This is serious. How can I have a decent Stampmonkey Nap (tm) without being able to drift off to someone being murdered, having an affair with their ex's dead brother, or having a miracle baby pop out of a 93 year old woman?? I am asking you HOW? I am jonesing for a fix... My head aches. I think the shakes are starting. What-to-do-what-to-d0???

I have written an email to the person in charge of such things at the TV station. Perhaps they will realize the real importance of this. Seriously, I do wonder if they considered just how many people rely on the radio during bad weather, which indeed is coming fast.

I wonder if any of the teeny portable TV's will get digital signals????

Progress

We are still working on the big performing arts center. It is a nice job for us. There is abound fifteen thousand square feet of imprinted concrete. It has some difficulties, but every job does, and these are minimal really. The biggest headache are the traffic control bollards that run through the middle of the traffic area. Whatever genius put them there did not think about the inevitable problems that will occur when someone hits one with their car. It will cause considerable damage to our stuff, but I guess that is kind of good because then we will get to go and fix it. Yay! Heh.

The latest fun has come because they are pushing us. We are sort of like bulldogs in that if you push us, we push right back. We talked to the super on the job and asked him when they expect to turn the building over. He told us 6 to 8 weeks. Well that is great! We have 3 pours to make before we reach the front door. Apparently, the people working on the interior are nowhere near finished. This means that we cannot pave in front of the door until they get all of their big machines out of the building, because the front door is the only one big enough to get them through. So they are pushing us to do about 4 days work so that they can then tell us we can't work. WTF?

The super came to us last Thursday, and asked us if we were pouring on Saturday. I said absolutely not, since it was my birthday, and I do NOT work on my birthday. He declined my offer to show him my driver's license, and said he agreed that nobody should have to work on their birthday. Of course, it is his job to um, encourage the various trades to get their part done. I have no heartburn with this. Someone has to do it, and as supers go, Carl is a good one. As long as you tell him the truth, show up, and actually do some work, he loves you. He calls me Miss Mary Sunshine. (Boy do I have him fooled or what?) Carl loves us, but he still pushes us to do more, every day.

Here is the drill on a typical commercial construction job. We have been waiting almost a year to start this job. They told us they would be ready for us - in three months, then next month, then next week ad nauseum. We have been on this job exclusively since we started. We have not pulled off, and have turned down work to concentrate on this one job. So, in 4 more working days, we will be sitting on our hands because everyone else is behind, but they are *still* pushing. On most projects, the actual concrete (not asphalt parking etc) is one of the last things done on the job. That is great for us, as the other trades are all gone, and they don't slob up our stuff. Now if this was the case on this job, it would make sense for them to push us, but the interior is nowhere near completion. As it stands, it makes no sense to me, but that's just how it works. I think Carl is pushing because it is what he does. He cannot help himself...sort of like me and my shoes!

Here are a few updated pics. It doesn't look like much of anything yet, because it hasn't been cleaned and sealed. It will look a lot different when it is finished. See the diamond shape in this sidewalk? Those are spread out in the white sidewalks and are going to be filled in with black granite tiles. How cool will that look??

See this guy on the ladder? He is an electrician. These guys are moles I swear. They dug trenches along all of our pours, just the right distance to be in the way when we are working. They dug them 6 or 7 weeks ago and just left them. Nice way to break an ankle. Bad bad moley electricians!

Here is someone's idea of brilliance...NOT! This is going to crack the concrete as sure as Prisoner Y has blue eyes. Apparently when they were designing this thing, nobody thought about where the water would run off, and made the grade too high. So we get to pour to fill in that sharp point, and it is too shallow to add any reinforcement, so it will fail. Of course, they will try to blame us, but I have before pictures, so try somebody else...like whoever planned the grade. That dog don't hunt :-)

Here is the pour we made under duress yesterday. Dumbest thing known to an imprinter is pouring when there is a 70% chance of rain. Rain BAD! Big-assed hail is even worse. They were forecasting spring-like thunderstorms for last night through this morning. Any fool who has lived in Oklahoma for any time at all knows that this means hail, horizontal rain, and possibly tornadoes. Fortunately our Karma account was paid up, so we think the pour was not too damaged. DH is going to look at it and pump out the swimming pool next door so we can pour that tomorrow. There he is on the left. Ain't he something?? I sure like him :) Here is the pool he is going to try to dry out by tomorrow morning...good luck man!

I am STILL not Imelda Marcos

Imelda Marcos had questionable taste in shoes.

My shoes however are high class....well ok, they are hi-TOPS. I do have one pair that are not. They are bright yellow, neon even! Anyways, on to my latest acquisition. They are blue. Electric, cobalt, fingerpaint blue. You know the color... They are even better than the purple ones. These will definitely not go into the lineup for work. I am setting them aside for special occasions! Am I a dork or what? I may be the only woman I know who will actually wear tennis shoes to a wedding. Well, if I wear a skirt, I have boots, but other than that it's tennis shoes or riding shoes. No heels for me! Hee!

Here they are in all their blueness. I adore them. They are actually a deeper shade, with a hint of purple, but my camera said no, so here is the pic!Seriously, if you don't love them, you should see someone...there's something wrong with you. Seriously :)

Satan invented fiber one bars

I am telling you, it's the truth. Fiber one bars are evil. You are supposed to eat them so that your gut stays happy. Well let me tell you, my gut had a party. It partied all day and all night. Of course, the party was thrown without my permission. If I'd have known what was going to happen, I never would have eaten the damn thing. I farted more in one day than in the last month. When you are out working on a job, the bathroom (portajohn) is often a long way away. Not to mention when it is freezing out, you wear your warm stuff, which is hard to get on and off. Both of those things make you not want to take a 1/4 mile walk just to let off some steam. It is frowned upon to rip off a big fart in a crowd of people, even on a construction site. So you have to go sit in your truck, or walk far enough away that nobody wants to put you under the concrete. Then there is the concern that when it is way below freezing, and you fart, does it make a big old foggy cloud so that everyone on the job *knows* you just ripped one off?? I mean really, how embarrassing is that? For all of these reasons, I will not eat another fiber one bar. They are yummy, but the benefit is outweighed by the unending amounts of gas they cause.

You can try it yourself if you like, but don't say I didn't warn you....

Seeing Double

It's the double-mint twins!! One is Baxter, one is not Baxer. Can you tell which is which? Dilligent students of Prisoner Y will be able to spot him...Oh I made a funny. Spot...get it? Ok it wasn't that funny. :-P Anyway, the body double is Baby Huey's full sister, Blue. I wish I could get my hands on her... Four of these pictures are Blue, the rest are The BaxMan! Have fun :)

The Broken Arrow Performing Arts Center

This is where we are working rignt now. We have a little over 14,000 square feet of stampwork to do here. Fortunately for Bill and I, the company we subbed the job from is actually pouring it out for us. Since Bill and I are the only ones on our crew who can actually finish concrete, this is a big help for us as straight edging is a butt-ton of work.

The architect had a great concept for this job. The paving is actually dark gray, almost black, and white. The white sidewalks run through our black imprint and it will look really neat...for about 3 days. For some silly reason, he did not specify a sealer for the white concrete, which means that every time a car drives over it there will be tire marks. Soon, it will be dull gray anywhere there is auto traffic. The white concrete is really white. It has white cement, sand and aggregate. It supposedly also has oyster shells included in the mix. It is incredibly expensive at almost $200 a yard. It sure is pretty coming out of a mixer though.

Here are some pictures!

This is the white sidewalk. Not a great picture, I will do better later. We are making some fairly large pours on this project. The tools we are using allow us to do much larger areas than the tools with joints. It's pretty nice to get large chunks out of the way, instead of doing a bazillion small pours. YAY!!!

This job is full of difficulties. The bollard run though the middle of our pours. That means that we have to work around them and let me tell you, troweling at a distance, around something is a challenge. Bill actually made a stamp that fits right around the bollards, so stamping is easy. He's the bomb! The bollards are actually the traffic control devices for this big drive. Every other one has a light in it. Bill and I both anticipate them being knocked over pretty quickly. It will make a mess of our work. Oh well :)

This is the pour we filled in last Friday. We had to go back and cover it with curing blankets since it was dropping into the 20's that night. The wind was gusting to over 40mph. I know this because I was standing on one of the curing blankets and it flat picked us both up and surfed us over the slab and I know that it takes at least a 40 mph wind to blow my fat ass around. I was not amused. I finally had to get down on my hands and knees to keep from being blown away. Did I mention that the wind chill was in the teens?? Well it was. I fricking hate the wind. You can see the white sidewalk a bit better here.

This is the texture the architect chose. It is a ripple slate. It's kind of a subtle texture that is very pedestrian/handicap friendly. Here, it is still covered with release, so you can't actually see the color which is a sort of silvery charcoal gray if that makes sense.

I am hoping that I will be able to get inside and take some pictures of this after we are finished. I think it is going to be very attractive once it's done. Now it looks like a puzzle that isn't finished.

Monkey wrangler!

The past two weeks have been very busy for us. We *finally* got to start the big job that we have been waiting on over a year. We made some pretty big pours, and man did it beat me down. My right knee was as big as a good sized grapefruit. These tools require you to walk a lot. In order to get good texture you have to take little tiny steps all over the things. They are about 4' x 4', so you can imagine stepping back and forth to cover that area probably a thousand times in a pour. My knee does not like this. Taking little tiny steps is hard on my knee and hips both. It is really just exhausting. It is also dirty and there is no time to eat once you start, so you get very tired. I am thinking that I'm too old for this shit.

Enter "the boys". We have two kids working for us that are around 18. They do not know how to finish concrete. In fact, when they try, they mess up more than they fix which means that Bill or I have to constantly go behind them and fix what they screw up. I finally decided that instead of watching me work, they should get their bony asses out there and do something... So I had them get on the tools, and let them wear themselves out doing what I usually do. Between the two of them, they managed to do a fairly good job, only making a couple of mistakes.

So now, in addition to being the StampMonkey, I am also a Wrangler for StampMonkeysInTraining. Thank doG. I am going to work their little asses off while I stand around and watch. I am incredibly stupid for not making them do this before. All this time they have been picking their noses while someone old enough to be their mother works till she drops...now it's their turn. Bwaaaahahahahaha! Pictures to follow :)