Another boring post

So I'm now back from Bloomington. Away from my biggest fan(s) and back in the routine of waking up at 5 in the morning to work and then being whisked away at 5 in the afternoon to school.

I started a new project at work. I'm at Benton Central Schools tearing it down for new lockers and flooring. You can only imagine how satisfying it is to go through a high school and rip out old banks of lockers and fill up a huge dumpster with them. If you haven't gone to a public school, there's no use in even trying to imagine it.

In other news, tragedy has befallen me. I cannot find my camera.

:(

But I'm about done eating, so I must be off to do more productive things.

blip

I have found the exact opposite of the fence post driver.

Fence post drivers, as noted earlier, make life difficult no matter what. If you're dealing with a fence post driver, you're pretty much screwed.

On the other hand, leaf blowers make everything easier. I don't care what it is. There is a way that a leaf blower will make it easier.

That's all.

Mr. E. Nygma

Enigmas are neat things. I'd make "Enigma of the Week" a regular feature of this blog if only I were clever enough to come up with one every week.

Anyway, I did find one today. I found an enigma in fence post drivers. Fence post drivers are big metal tubes with metal slabs welded to the top. You slide the post into the post driver, lift up the driver, and drop it. This drives the post into the ground. They make life a lot easier if your life consists of driving posts. However, they're very heavy and make life very difficult.

That's your enigma of the week. Or month. Or year.

...

I liked Calvin and Hobbes today. It's not an enigma, but it's really cool.

Employment Roller Coaster

Originally, I was going to begin working with Charley on the Sigma Chi frat house either on 5/15 or 5/22.

In the time between school letting out and the project beginning, I planned on working at the car wash. However, the car wash told me they couldn't give me any work to do for such a short amount of time.

Then when budgeting difficulties arose with Sigma Chi, the project got delayed for an undetermined amount of time. This means no work for Patrick for a while.

But lo! It wasn't long after this that I got an email from Charley telling me that they found another project that I could start on 5/31 or 6/1. For me, this was very good news indeed. I'd be starting a bit later than originally planned, but hey, stuff comes up and doesn't always work the way we plan, right?

Then, on May 19, 2005, at approximately 3:40 pm, unbeknownst to me, the following (paraphrased) conversation takes place:

Some guy: I need a laboror now!
Charley: Hold on just one minute

Then my phone rings.

Charley: You're not in the middle of anything, are you?
Me: No.
Charley: Alright, do you think you can get to the laborer's union, like, now?

A position opened up for me to start working on Monday. So after a trip to the union, and after being stripped of a substantial wad of cash, and after peeing in a cup, I am officially ready to begin working.

No more sleeping in and lazily reading all day for me.

YES

Mighty Wabash

If it keeps on rainin, levee's gonna break.

Return of the Rain

Anyone in Indiana knows that it has been raining for the past week or so. Today was the first day it let up. I decided I would take advantage of the fair weather by going for a bike ride.

I was riding down a bike trail that goes along the Wabash River when I came upon a flooded section. Now, I had just passed a lady walking her dog and she was not soaked or anything, so I didn't imagine the water could be very deep. I quickly looked at the railing along the trail and determined that it couldn't be any more than six inches deep, so I decided to slowly ride through it.

Things were good for about twenty feet, then I started to notice that my shoes were dipping into the water as I pedaled. Then suddenly, FWOOSH. I was up to my knees in water and I decided I should get off the bike and carry it the rest of the way.

There must have been at least 30" of water. My initial guess of 6" was way off.

I guess I have to be kept humble sometimes.

After getting out of the water, I stopped to inspect my bike and make sure everything was in working order. I popped the wheels off to clean the dirt out of my brakes, and what should happen, but it starts to rain!

For your amusement, here are my pants.

Woop!

It has stopped raining long enough to go outside and do something!

Time for me to close my mouth

..and put forth pictures.


This is me studying for my econ exam I had the next morning.



In Connersville.












She stinks and she's oily but she's really loveable.. just watch out for the breath.

Connersville = hills

It is kind of funny. In a car, you never notice stuff like how an entire geographic region is a continuous incline, punctuated with the occasional impossible hill. But on a bicycle, it's painfully obvious.

And we all know how the grayhairs would say something like, "I had to walk fifteen miles in the snow to school, and it was uphill both ways." Well, I used to think that the uphill-both-ways part was a gross exaggeration. But I've learned after biking in Connersville that, somehow, they can go uphill both ways.

I would have stopped to take pictures, I didn't want to have to get started moving again.

So the freshman year is over..

Since everyone deserted Cair Paravel for a while, I decided I may as well go home for a bit.

First thing I did upon getting home was unload my car and take the bike for a victory lap around the Triton Central school district. Well... all of it except Lakeview and Boggstown. No one ever needed to visit those places. Then I went out for a little trip to the south side of Indianapolis to get some pants. It feels like it's been a really long time since I've been around there. It feels all different and stuff.

On Sunday Pastor Keddie preached on Christ's authority from Mark 11:27-12:12. And after that, Nathan and I headed out to Centerville to see our Aunt Ann and Uncle Jim.

We were wondering what ever became of Grandma's house on Fifth Street out in Richmond. Nathan and I asked Aunt Ann who was living there now, and we found out our cousin Jason bought it off the guy who won it at the auction and is living there now. So Nathan and I swung by there. It looks really different now, but at the same time, it's pretty much the same. It's kinda strange, but really neat to see a house go from an old person's house to a 20-something year old's house.

There was talk of the old farmhouse my grandparents used to own. That made me all nostalgic. They were having a virtual walkthrough of the house by talking about it, and I was surprised how much of it I actually remembered since I was about five years old when they sold the house and property. I most vividly remember the twisting stairs and how white it was. I vividly remember being creeped out every time I walked up them to the bedroom. And I remember the slave quarters beneath those stairs.. I think they were beneath the stairs, anyway.. Ah, I'd like to walk through that old house again.

We didn't get back from Richmond until something like 12:30. And naturally I woke up all bright and early at 6:30 that morning so I could bike down to the high school and see an old favorite teacher. Then I loaded my stuff into my dad's car and we headed down to Connersville where we planted some crown vetch and unloaded some concrete blocks.. then it was off to a local hardware store to get the boots.

Then I had a nap. And after my dad left, I climbed up on the roof to check out the view. I dunno if I'll do that again.. the roof is really really steep. At least I won't do it in sandals again.

And now here I am sitting in my new home that I never had. All I can really think of is how I don't have any homework, and it's a wonderful feeling.

Achilles got smart

If only they had been around in 1200 BC...

I sadly realized that in order to work this summer, I'll have to kick off the faux-Birks.

Wabash at Night

The secret to getting one decent picture is to take 1,000 and throw out 999 of them.

Playing with the camera

Last week, I didn't play wallyball due to my janked ankle.

Instead, I edited my old English papers and took some pictures.

I was messing with the color settings on my camera. They really didn't turn out terribly great for the most part, but it was interesting.

Work

It is true, I will probably work at the car wash a few weeks into the summer. But for the most part, it looks like the days of working at the car wash are over. I doubt I'll start working there again at the start of next semester.

Let us reflect in pictures upon the good ol' transportation maintenance building.




Someone forgot to pull the little yellow string that says "Remove before first use" from this washing machine. As a result, it vibrates and scuttles across the floor when it goes into the spin cycle. As this picture was taken, the radio was singing, "Do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight..."


This is the coolest truck ever. It's old, and it has a big metal structure affixed to the grill. The steering is loose and easy, but oddly, it doesn't have any play. And the brakes are really really strong. The first time I came to a sudden stop, I accidently made the tires skid and the back end swing out. I love this old truck, and I will miss driving it through Lafayette.

One down

Two to go.

My Math 154 is officially OVER! It might be too soon for me to start celebrating just yet, but I feel like there's a distinct possibility I aced the final. Everything was like the practice final, except easier. And I had more than enough time left over at the end, so I was able to work through the entire test again and I even fixed a couple of stupid mistakes I made. Dumb stuff, like forgetting that cosine in the second quadrant is negative and another was a simple arithmetic error.

Also,

Think of me like Achilles or not, this particular wound has not done me in. On the contrary, it has finally scabbed over and stopped seeping. I was able to make it through the whole day without gauze. Oo-rah!

Finals week is great

What other week of the school year would we hide in the turns of the bathroom to jump out at people?

ahhhhhhh

So I was taking this totally awesome break by going through some old pictures and not thinking about finals when I stumbled upon this photo of Robert trying to pick a lock when he was down at my house.

AhhhhhhH!