Three-Day Work Week

Even though I was up this morning at 5:30 for PT, I had the luxury of heading back to bed after breakfast. And, after a plate of potatoes, sausage patties and pancakes, that is exactly what I did for an extra four hours of sleep. It was definitely needed, because even though I had only put in three days of work so far this week, they were all of the long variety that we were warned about in our informational packet that came with our NCCC acceptance letter.

I’ve been on construction crew this week, and my fellow ‘konstrucktioneers’ and I were pretty much left alone to work on a laundry list of tasks inside one of the project houses.  I suppose the crew last week made such an impression, that our sponsors trusted us to follow suit and keep the ball rolling.  This makes me laugh, because this really left us trying to figure out what we were doing on the job; a bit of a thrown in the deep end situation.  Most of what we were charged with doing wasn’t too difficult, spackling the joints between drywall and Sheetrock, but the owners changed their mind on how high they wanted the ceiling after the drywall had been installed for a drop ceiling.  This just made for an annoying patchwork job for us that is still ongoing and has taken about three days longer than it should have.  We were also told to begin installing Sheetrock into another room, which again was an on the job type of learning experience, because of the 6 of us working, only three of us had ever had experience doing that: myself, Sarah, and Alli, who helped put in two sheets of it total last week.   Lastly we were asked to fill in some gaps in the wall where there was no framing to install the Sheetrock.  This fell on my shoulders and entailed me and my teammate Mike to piecemeal a frame together and find places to nail it in.  Oh, but the entire existing frame is skewed and slanted from age and the hurricanes, so installing wood that is square makes for even more skewed and slanted framework that makes the simple task of cutting and screwing a ceiling into place very frustrating.

Then there was the chimney that I had to work around and wound up staring at for almost an hour an a half before really figuring out how to cut, nail, and install a workable frame.

It did help that I could use the nail gun.  It gave the job a very needed adrenaline kick.

I finished the framing yesterday and expected to see if it all worked out today, but was an unexpected change of plans nixed that.  Because of a large volunteer group coming in this weekend, a few ISPs that had been pre-scheduled, and two teammates taking extended weekends in New Orleans, our work schedule was changed last minute.  Half the team was given an early weekend and asked to work on the normal days off.  So, instead of working Friday and Saturday, then having Sunday and Monday off, I am just the reverse.  So far, the highlight of my day has been sleeping in, but the excitement doesn’t end there because later today we will be making a…wait for it…Wal-Mart run.  Let the good times roll!

Ah, Friday in Biloxi.