Sigma Chi

On the crew we have two celebrities. They are Ozzie Osbourne and Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow (complete with eye makeup). It's a little unnerving.

The major downside of this new project is that few of the tools we're dealing with now weigh less than 60 lbs. The major upside is we're tearing apart a frat house, and Charley's there.

The Back

The Dumpster.

It has a ramp over it. The ramp is usually wet and muddy. You're expected to carry a wheelbarrow down it and dump the load into the dumpster. The problem is that wet inclines and 200+ lb loads tend to pull you into the abyss that is a dumpster full of jagged edges.

Blurry house

Sigma Chi signs

A Visit From Paul

Paul and the boys stopped by after I got off work. After hanging out the engineering fountain until it started raining, we headed over to a Chinese restaurant and had dinner.

I can still taste the crab rangoon, Stephen. It was delicious.

Change of pace

Tomorrow I get moved from working at Benton Central to Sigma Chi here in West Lafayette.

At long last, I get to tear apart a frat house.

I'm told that this is going to be much more than what's going on at Benton Central. Benton Central had five laborers, including me. The work we did at Benton Central is trivial compared to the work being done at Sigma Chi. Benton Central has some non-structural walls being torn out, closets being torn out, carpet torn up, and ceilings being taken out. Sigma Chi, on the other hand, has about 20 laborers. They are having everything taken out except the outside walls. If they were to do any more demolition to Sigma Chi, they would raze the building. It's a crazy huge project and I get to start on it tomorrow.

That's not even the last of it. I was somewhat disappointed to be moving to another project because I'd not see my regular co-workers. I would have especially missed Clint. Then what should I find out, but Clint is being moved to Sigma Chi with me!

And now I just found out Paul is swinging by West Lafayette tomorrow and I'm going to have dinner with him, and later this summer I'll spend about a week up with his family and do various awesome things like go to Six Flags. I am so pumped, not even my physics class will drag me down.

Setting out on the canoe trip on Sugar Creek.

Jon and Abram

I was being yelled at when this picture was being taken.

This turtle was much friendlier than the last one.

Some cool graffiti under and overpass.

For this shot, the canoe was turned backward. This helped in two ways: first, it put the covered bridge in view and second, it made me smile a lot because it feels very strange to paddle backwards.

Stephen!

Tucker seems to have found that rolling around on thorny branches does a good job of scratching the back.

Peter and Paul on the waterwheel

If only...

For just one day, I'd like to have long hair again.

Aural Idiosyncrasy

In the movie Stand By Me, there is a scene in which young Gordie is being chased out of a junkyard by the guard dog, Chopper. As Gordie runs away, the junkyard owner shouts to Chopper, "Sic 'em, boy!" Then Gordie's adult voice interrupts the scene and the chase goes into slow motion with the camera focused on the scared and twisted face of Gordie and narrates: "Now he said, 'Sic 'em, boy,' but what I heard was, 'Chopper, sic [certain parts of the anatomy],'" and then the chase resumes at full speed.

It's an amusing little scene, and it's executed extremely well. But then we think about the scene rationally. How likely is it that a person shouts one thing, and we hear something totally different? It's just a play on the popular legend that Chopper was trained to sic certain parts of a person.

I always thought this until today. You see, today, my boss came up to me and said, "Hey Patrick, do you think you could drive out to the hospital?" but what I heard was, "Hey Patrick, how would you like thirty bucks to sit in a waiting room for a bit?"

I attribute the mishearings to high levels of adrenaline.

The trip home

Friday night, I headed down to Indy to watch Cinderella Man at the Ray house.

Cinderella Man, aside from the excessive use of God's name in vain and some humanist undertones, it's a very well done movie that contrasts good strong relationships with weak and strained ones. I won't go too deep into what all was in the movie. If you didn't hear the discussion afterward, you'll just have to deal with it. But I will say it's a good movie, filled with laughter! tears! and characters that will leave you fightin' mad!

On Saturday, I was briefly able to reacquaint myself with the joys of welding. All that had to be done was to fix a bracket to the rear axle. I'm just kinda sad that the job was as small as it was. But I was slightly excited to see how far along the Sunbeam is coming.


The engine, painted an obnoxious Chevy orange, despite the fact that it's a Ford block. But oh well.. the turbocharger makes up for it a little.





Check out the front brakes. A definite upgrade from the stock ones. Notice how the discs just about fill up the rims, and how the caliper barely clears the inner edge of the rim. I predict that this car will stop 239423 times faster than a stock Sunbeam.








After that, my dad and I went over to Indy to get some breakfast and then killed some time looking at guns and other various sporting items. To my dismay, Popguns has been transformed from a warm and friendly hunter's lodge with good ol' new and used rifles and shotguns to a cop wannabe urban assault haven.

Then we headed out to my Aunt Ann and Uncle Jim's place where we ate supper at Lakeview, a restaurant I haven't been to since I was about five. I remember quite vividly going there when I was younger since the restaurant overlooks a large pond with ducks and geese that you can go out and feed leftovers to.

After that, we hung out on my aunt and uncle's back porch talking.




I tried very hard to digitally catch the elusive hummingbird.





Success!




On the way back, I thought I saw a severed goat head tied to a fence. I figured it must have been a leftover from the recent June 6, 2006 superstition. Turns out it wasn't a goat head after all, but a possum.


Though it's not quite as exciting as a severed goat head, it's still sorta unusual that he is draped over the fence. You can't tell from the picture, but inside the fence is a small graveyard. Creepy, eh?





A little further down McConaha Road is this old one lane bridge.





I guess I took a little too long to take the pictures, because my dad ventured out to check up on me. In retrospect, I probably did take too long. In fact, I took so much time, I didn't head back to Lafayette until about 11 that night. I was so tired, I had to stop two times to take a nap on the way back because I was drifting off into the land of nod. I made it home at about 3 a.m.

Longest. Trip. To. Lafayette. Ever.

Random pictures

In case no one could figure it out, those pictures were posted randomly and just for the fun of it. There are no titles or anything because it was late and I didn't feel like messing with it.

Speaking of not feeling like doing things, I don't really want to go to my physics lecture tonight. I wonder if it will really do me any good, since I can't hear very well. My ears are still ringing from using the Hilti today... and I stopped using it two hours ago.

Whenever someone talks, there's a weird ringing reverb effect that goes on in my head. And all the rest of the time, there's a 10,000 Hz peal.

You don't have to touch this water fountain. The botanists at Purdue have it all figured out.

"HELLO CLEVELAND!!!!!!!!" says Stephen.

TJ Fisher in Montmartre, Paris

Triton Central High School

"hi"

The Amazing Ross. Deadeye.

this was funny

On Friday, I was somewhat wound up and happy to be getting off work. So on the way out, I might have spun my tires a little bit. The weekend passed and I didn't really think about it.

However, my boss apparently spent his weekend thinking about the rubber I left behind on that Friday.

This morning, he comes up to me and asks, "Hey Pat, Whaddaya got in that little thing?" I looked at him for a second and all I could do was laugh.

Clint asks, "What are you talking about?"

"Well, Pat here was barkin' his tires on the way out on Friday, his back end sliding out and everything! What did you do, stick some kinda V8 in there?"

I was still laughing. My boss's expression was that great. I guess that happens sometimes when people underestimate the "humble" little Topaz.

New toy

With my trusty Canon SD400 passing into the realm of lost cameras, I decided it was time to move on and accept the fact that my camera is gone. So I went out to shop for a new one. I really really loved that SD400. It was small and easy to take quick pictures with, and it was powerful enough to take some really nice pictures at the same time. So it didn't take me much time to decide I'd stick with the Canon PowerShot SD series. I ended up getting today's equivalent of what the SD400 was a year ago when I got it.

Behold, the Canon SD630. I bought it at Best Buy after they price matched Circuit City and then took off an additional 10% of the difference, and threw in a $40 gift card. How awesome is that? Best Buy just about made me a loyal customer.

Then I went out tonight to break the new camera in a bit.






This fencing is erected thanks to me. Early in the mornings, I'd help my first boss with the preliminaries for project Hovde High Voltage. So I got to drive stakes that marked where the fence would go, and spray paint the ground and stuff. It felt like vandalism, but no one cared! How great was that. Plus, I got to go down into the basement of Hovde in all the restricted areas. I wish I had a camera then. It was cool. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.









I would have taken more pictures in Lafayette, but it started raining. Maybe I'll get it next week.