Thursday, March 06, 2008

Beating a Dead Horse

Let's talk about the most interesting of subjects: the weather. Here's a brief description of the conditions yesterday:

Not under a bridge:

Mostly sunny, temperature's in the low 60's with a light breeze. A beautiful day if there ever was one.

Under a bridge:

Dark, frigid, gale force winds.

The section of 395 I was working under yesterday happen to run alongside a small park in Federal Hill. I was wearing four layers of shirt, gloves, and a winter hat and was freezing my ass off. 50 yards away was a guy playing tennis in shorts and a t-shirt. And to think I used enjoy shade. If I was a little closer I would have thrown one of the chunks of concrete falling from the bridge* at him because I was so bitter about his carefree, whimsical lifestyle. Seriously, who's playing tennis at noon on a Wednesday and where do I sign up?

Fortunately I'm back in the office for the rest of the week. For all those who find themselves complaining about rotting away in a cubicle working for the man for the rest of thier lives, cherish it, if not you could find yourself stuck in the bucket of a lift truck 80 feet in the air when the controls stop working and you have to hang out for like 45 minutes until someone can come and get you down. It's a harrowing experience.

*One of the few fun things about this job is knocking concrete off of a bridge. I've probably knocked a solid 50 square feet of failing concrete off of the various bridges of Interstate 395 so far. Enjoy that fact next time your driving into town for an Orioles game. Don't worry, it's still structuraly sound. Or is it?

3 comments:

Paige Jennifer said...

At least you're getting paid to hang from a bucket under a breezy bridge. The other day, I stood outside a car dealership waiting for a coworker to fetch me. It was 22deg. And windy. And my cell phone was on my desk back at the office. I was out there for an hour before sheepishly returning to the dealership to borrow the phone. I didn't get paid to stand out there and it further confirmed the fact that I sometimes make really dumbass decisions.

Los said...

Wait, Baltimore still has a baseball team????

Brian said...

how much is 50 square feet of concrete? if it were 100 feet thick that might be a lot. if it were 1 inch thick, that isnt as much.