Sunday, June 15, 2008

Best Summer Job

The other day I was catching up with Luke via phone and we were discussing easier times back when we were still at State during the summer.

That summer we (Luke, Michael and me) worked at the machine shop . One of our first jobs was individually packaging shelf clips for resale. This may very well have been the best job in the world. My first memory of tackling this job was sitting over at Luke's trailer and setting up our version of an assembly line. The tasks included: cleaning the clips; packaging the clips; sealing the packages; and counting them. We were able to complete this at a significant pace all while keeping cold beers in hand and watching Michael's Girls Gone Wild collection.

My other favorite job at the machine shop was packaging the hot dog rollers. This one actually required us to go down to the shop. A slight amount of attention was necessary here since we had to keep count of how many rollers we put in each box. But we had a good time talking about how cool it would be if we had our own hot dog roller at home and making plans for the evening.

Yep, those were the days. Making a little pocket change and going to class during the day. And spending our evenings grilling and pitching horseshoes. Now, I'm spending my summers working 10-12 hours a day during the week so I can have some spare time on the weekends to mow the lawn and go to Home Depot and Bed Bath & Beyond (if there's time).

This weekend I had the pleasure of replacing some rotted wood on the exterior of my house. Holy crap it is hot outside. Luckily I dragged my resident handyman, John, down to help out and figure out how to cut the ridiculous angles needed. Not quite the same as packaging shelf clips or hot dog rollers like we did at the machine shop.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ahh the good ol' days. Nothing like pitchin' a game of shoes at the Trailer O' Love aka Luke's Stabbin' Cabin after a short day of making some easy bling. LOL.

Horseshoes, disc golf, cold beer, Green Lantern, Winnie The Poo(h), turning upside down the LBC (Little Brown Crackhouse) and many afternoons at the Grill. Tough to beat those days!

John said...

Since James brought up our weekend project, turns out he's quite the stickler for details. We were replacing a pretty long fascia board with Hardie board. This particular piece had angle cuts on both ends, and one end had a compound cut. I'm delirious from the heat and cut it so the rough (wrong) side was showing instead of the smooth (right) side. We're up on the ladders doing a test fit when he decides to tell me this, and that he'd like it done right...

Not exactly what I wanted to hear, but what's another hour trying to get the compound cut with our dull ass blade between brothers.

Bonus tip for you would-be handymen out there courtesy of James: If you're 12 ft. up a ladder and toss that Hardie board we painstakingly cut to the ground it breaks into a bunch of pieces.