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musings of mark since 2001

The long weekend turned out sunny and warm, complete with gazillions of butterflies and other bugs going everywhere and bees buzzing, deer lazing in the taller grasses and everyone outside. Bowen Island Marina is starting to get busy, had a visit with them and they are almost ready to put some content in their web site. The Chamber of Commerce site is going well too; found a really nice mailing list program for them and finished installing it today, too many features to list. Their database is coming along well also, made a couple queries on it for them already and looks like the mailing list will integrate with it along with the Content Management System Going to be a nice site when it’s done

Back to construction work tomorrow, nice short week – gotta love a long weekend to get the kinks out. Picked up some new gloves at the building centre, doing lots of rebar (some walls 20 feet tall) and the steel wears them out pretty quick. Must be doing some good already physically for me too as getting comments on being in good shape and of course the tan is deep even after wearing my Lawrence of Arabia neck covering and a hat.

Looking forward to hearing something about a new place to rent hopefully next week…

Another week in at the construction site and all is going well. Dad did a real cool thing and sent me a new tool pouch deluxe model with double metal hangers. Really nice touch with some necessary items like tape measure, pencils, knife, pliers, hammer and a cool old metal square, two finishing nail sets, and a single nail. Arrived Thursday and was able to put it to good use already Friday, enough pockets and hooks to rig up a reel for my tie wire and special rebar/steel worker pliers as the day was spent as iron man tying up rebar in the forms for the future foundation. Pretty nice work because it’s right in front of you and you get a good-looking web of steel when you’re done. The steel is hard on your gloves so glad we have a Building Centre on the island to pick up a few more pairs for next week. Some of the walls are 14 feet tall of concrete, sticking to the engineer’s plans makes it interesting enough not to be boring tying wire after wire and getting pretty darn fast at it after trying a few tricks and working out a system. We have a second labourer and I’ve got a job promotion to “Labourer Lead Hand” and a raise to go with it too. And every day we work with a view of the mountains and ocean, nice!

Two ads in the Undercurrent for a new place to live, one of them way out on Windjammer. Haven’t got hold of them but think it’s the small cabin which is perfect for me but have to find out if there is cable/internet service already in place. If the main house already has internet then I’ll offer to network a few rooms for them and me in exchange for sharing connections. Another one is in an apartment building, passing on that because you might as well live in the city almost as Bowen’s rentals are 98% suites in homes or semi and detached cottages etc. which is the type of situation I’m holding out for. Will see what I hear from the first one tomorrow.

And then there was two, labourers that is. Got some help on the site for a couple months and we spelled each other off drilling holes in the granite to receive 1-1/8” iron bars that will poke up from the mountain into the cement foundation of the house. 55 of them to drill, we had a respite yesterday afternoon as BC Hydro needed an air compressor for an emergency and there are only so many of them available on the island.

Landlords left me a note on the door for when I got home. Disregarding the Residential Tenancy Act completely they have decided to use my apartment for their own use and force me out on the street. The 2/3 of the house that they usually live in has the kitchen being remodelled and so they moved into the apartment upstairs to get away from the remodelling dust. Now she wants to move her studio from where it is to upstairs and they want my apartment and have sent me notice to vacate by the end of next month.

There’s not exactly a plethora of places to live on the island, this is the “high season” we are going into so choices are extremely limited and it’s more of a matter of finding anything, rather than something you like. Oh well, at least I have a steady income for the next few months and can afford something if available. The law is on my side too if I can’t find anything right away, you just don’t dump people out of their apartment because your own place happens to be a little inconvenient at the time.

Coming down to break the New World Order and listening to Morcheeba as the saying goes. Would be nice to get a little more peace in the world but looks like we’ll have to wait until some big moves from Mother Nature for that. Me too (!) – got petroleum today on the continent and it was about $40 CAD to fill up the tank, (42 litres, 11.1 US gals.[$28.73]) or 9.2 Imp. gals.[€24.33]) on my almost 20 year old Mazda GLC. It’s all part of the process, lookin’ down and all we want is some success but the chance is never around……

left my soul here down by the sea, lost control here, living free – morcheeba©

First full week of construction and the granite has been all cleaned off and the outside forms are all up. Cut one 2×4 today! Did some fastening too with the air nailer and a regular hammer without hitting my thumb or firing stray nails around. Cut a hole in the lower corner and installed a nice drain through the future cement with the reciprocating saw, carried plywood and lots of two by fours and one by tens and hardly any shovelling dirt today which was nice for a Friday.

Global warming is still coming on strong in this part of the world, warm days almost like summer already and hardly any rain through the spring so there won’t be too many campfires around this summer. Everything is up in the garden now; even poppies and they aren’t supposed to be out for a few weeks yet. The first rose is out, a red one and the raspberries are getting bigger too. Someone reminded me that about 15 or so years ago they were seeing things this early, but I don’t think it’s been a sustained dry like this – it’s beyond a “dry spell” now.