Redneck Wannabe

We had a paving company doing some work on the site today. The crew consisted of several Mexicans working their hearts out while one fat White Guy barked out orders from the sidelines. That’s pretty standard in this part of the country. Incidentally, the man in charge was wearing a shirt that said, “Proud to be a Redneck.”

For those of you that don’t know, I grew up in Illinois, in a town of 700 people. I’m pretty familiar with rednecks, and this guy….no redneck.

I was once again reminded of high school when I saw his “Redneck” shirt. See, I spent my freshman year of high school in Sacramento, California, a town riddled with street gangs. We then moved back to Illinois for my sophomore year, and I saw many little kids that thought they were hardcore gangsters. Evidently they had seen Dr. Dre on the MTV and thought they were tough guys. I always wanted to take one of these wannabe gangsters back to California with me, drop them off in the hood and see how hardcore they thought they were afterwards.

When I saw the so-called redneck’s shirt, I had the exact same feeling. I would love to take this guy back to the town I grew up in, leave him there for a month, and see if he still thinks he’s a redneck.

It’s easy to act like you’re a redneck, but let’s be honest, we live in Lake Tahoe. The last time I looked, we were surrounded by mountains, not pig farms. I have not seen a combine or tractor driving on the road since I moved here, and I never see pickup trucks with gun racks in the rear window. Our environment is the opposite of that which creates true rednecks.

There’s only one thing worse than a redneck, and that’s someone who tries to act like they are a redneck. I may be wrong, but in my opinion, this guy is clearly a poser redneck. If you want to be a redneck, that’s fine, but go do it somewhere that actually has farms and narrow minded people. Don’t taint our paradise with the racism and stupidity that accompanies the redneck lifestyle. In short, take that garbage somewhere else dude…this is Tahoe.

Daily Weight Report

Other than the mild annoyance I felt at the wannabe redneck, I had another fantastic day at work. It is always nice when that day of the week that feels like Monday is actually a Tuesday. In addition to the holiday making this a short week for me, it gave me an extra day to recuperate after my first week. Once again, my feet are sore, but they’re not as bad as last week. I think I may be getting used to those boots. I finished the day out at 177 pounds, and I had to tighten my belt to a notch that has never been used. I don’t want to jinx myself, but I think The Blue Collar Diet may be yielding some results already.
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End of the Week Wrap-up

The week is over, made it through without any major injuries. I finished the week out at 179 pounds. I'm not expecting to see any real weight loss for another couple of weeks. My body is a little sore, but I'll get over it. It's time to enjoy a fabulous three-day weekend in Lake Tahoe....and since I already live here, it's a pretty easy vacation destination for us.
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Fat Man on a Ladder

Well, I've made it through to Thursday. My feet are so sore, it’s ridiculous. I've been busting the double pair of socks to avoid blisters, but there's not much cushion in those boots. Guess that's what I get for buying boots for $22.93 at a certain horrible-paying, small-town killing, union-busting, cheap retailer that we all know and love. I'm convinced that it's a plot on their part to get me to come back and buy some of those gel inserts. It's all about the up sell with that place.

I crawled my fat rump up the extension ladder to sand those outriggers. It was delightful, let me tell you. I was only able to sand two out of the three though, because one is at the peak and we need a longer ladder to get to it. My boss keeps promising me that he is going to bring over a longer ladder so that I can get to it, but I wouldn't be heartbroken if he keeps forgetting.

After I finished sanding the two that I could reach, he informed me that I would also need to stain them. So, I got to set up the ladder and once again take that oh so fun first trip up the ladder, you know, the one when you're not quite sure how well it is set on the ground because you haven't tested it yet.

Don't get me wrong, I don't have a problem with heights at all. I like working up in the air, but from a boom lift, not an extension ladder. I absolutely hate extension ladders because you never know when one is going to give out on you until it happens. The feet of the ladder skid, and you're on the ground, it's that simple.

That brings me to the true reason that I hate those things. It happened in high school when my father and I were doing an exterior rehab on my grandmother's house. We were near the end of the job, so a lot of finish work was already done. We had an extension ladder in the carport leaning up against the side of the house, which thankfully was only one story. I was on the roof, and stepped onto the ladder to go to the ground. As soon as I got all my weight on the ladder, which was only like 150 pounds back then, the feet of the ladder skidded and I found myself in a freefall.

As I plummeted towards certain death, ok certain pain at least, I quickly tried to grab something, anything to catch myself. The only thing I found was the gutter, so I grabbed it in a desperate attempt to stop my descent towards the concrete below. As I fell through the air, still holding the gutter, I realized that grabbing it did nothing but bring it down with me, and I was still going to hit the ground.

A lot of my body hit the concrete, and a lot landed on top of that evil ladder that had just decided to skid out on me. As I lay there hurt and confused as to what just happened, my father came running around the side of the house having heard the commotion. His first words were, "What the hell, you f-d up the gutter?" Not, are you ok, or do I need to call an ambulance, but, "You f-d up the gutter." I slowly got up, made sure nothing was broken, and told him, "On that note, I'm done for the day." I then drove home full of teen angst and a newfound fear of extension ladders.

I think about that painful event every time I'm asked to step on an extension ladder, not because of my father's reaction, that's just funny, especially if you know my dad, but because it hurt like hell. The other thing was that it was just totally random. I walked up the same ladder to get on the roof, yet when I tried to go down, it tossed me. On an extension ladder, you never know for sure, and I hate them.

I did make it through the current outrigger sanding and staining ordeal so far. At one point, as I was leaning over to try to stain the backside of one of the beams, the ladder started to slide along the wall. It just moved a couple of inches, but it was enough for me to come very close to adding color to my shorts. Afterwards it was kind of fun cause that slip was a little bit of an adrenaline rush, but I'm still not looking forward to messing with the peak beam on an even longer ladder.

Weight of the Day

I finished the day out at 181. The longer I sit on the couch and type, the less fun it is to stand up and walk. I'm only really sore at night when I stop moving and my muscles tighten up...it's great.

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Hump-day

Tonight's post will be short & sweet, as I'm tired and short on time. Check back for tomorrow's post, and I'll clue you in on my adventure with an extension ladder. My weight finished the day at 183 (Insert lead in the ass joke here).
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Hey Everyone, It's the FNG

We started off my second day of man-work with a company meeting. We talked about the status of each of the jobs, safety issues, and my boss introduced me as the FNG. One of the Mexicans on the crew seemed particularly pleased to hear the news as it meant that he was promoted, and was no longer the FNG.

In case you've never worked on a construction site, the NG part means New Guy, and I'm sure you can deduce the F part. So, it's official now, I am the company FNG. That means if there is a shitty job that no one else wants to do, I get it. At some point, we will have a new person start working for us, and hence a different FNG. Until then, I'm it.

Being the FNG means that I will probably get to catch the most hell from the other guys. Construction workers like to bust balls, and if you’re the new guy, you’re a great target. While I know it’s all in good fun, I’m trying to avoid letting anyone know that I’m coming from cubicle-world. If their first impression of me is that I’m a pansy ass office worker, I’ll never earn their respect. I don’t want to end up like a friend of mine from college. He started working shortly after me for the last contractor I worked with, back in Illinois. He was the FNG, and wore some blue jeans that one of the old grizzled carpenters felt were a little too fancy for the worksite. My friend was dubbed “The Bitch,” by the aged journeyman, and the name stuck. This happened back in 1998, and the other workers in the crew that have been there since the beginning as we were, still refer to him as “The Bitch,” to this day. Things like that stick, and I’d definitely like to avoid being called, The Suit, Tie-Boy, Fancy-Man, or any other Spanish equivalent insult name if at all possible. After I’ve illustrated my willingness to work hard and get dirty with the rest of them, I can let them in on my past life, but for the time being I think it’s in my best interest to keep that to myself.

If there is a risky job that no one really feels comfortable doing, it gets passed to the FNG. Today, the boss said we need to use some 30-foot extension ladders to go up and sand off the end of these beams that stick out of the underside of the roof, I believe he called them outriggers (I try not to ask stupid questions like, “What are those beams called,” in front of the rest of the crew - no need to accentuate the FNG label.) Anyway, the ground in Tahoe is nowhere near being level; we live on mountains after all. As the boss explained the project, the crew just looked at me. I didn’t have time to get to it today, but it’s pretty clear that I’m going to be taking my fat ass up a rickety ladder planted on uneven soil – living on the edge I am. How often do you get an adrenaline rush in the office I ask you? My only hope of avoiding the treacherous task is that in the next day or two, we hire another person to take over my FNG position.

Work was good again, more power tools, dirt, and sawdust. My feet are really starting to hurt, and it feels like I'm going to have some blisters by tomorrow. I'll have to bust out the old Boy Scout trick of covering the blisters with Band-Aids and wearing two pairs of socks. (I've kept Band-Aids and a spare pair of socks in the truck the last couple of days just in case.)

My hands are also taking a serious beating, again no blisters as of yet, but they definitely hurt, and are way too susceptive to splinters and cuts. I’m not sure how long it will take to get my leather hands back, but I hope it’s soon. I’d wear gloves, but that’s a serious FNG giveaway.

Weight of the Day

Ok, so originally I thought it would be neat to get my weight at both the beginning and the end of the day. Really, I think it was just so I could eventually joke that I really did have some lead in my ass some day when I came home weighing more than I did in the morning. Now that I think about it, that joke really isn’t that funny, and my mind is way too clogged in the morning to write effectively.

From now on, I will just give the afternoon weight update. Incidentally, I weighed in at 179 after work. This is another reason I won’t be doing the twice daily readings; my weight simply doesn’t fluctuate enough during the day to make dual sets of data relevant. It’s wasted effort, and it robs me of a valuable snooze button push in the morning.

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Morning Status Check

Went to bed early last night (8pm), got a good night of sleep. I'm sore, but not nearly as bad as I expected. Weight was 179 this morning.
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First Day Down

I'm relaxing after my first day back in carpentry. My feet are killing me, and I found out that office worker hands do a very poor job of protecting against splinters. Surprisingly, no blisters yet, but the bottom of my feet just ache like crazy. I guess I'm not used to being on them enough, or maybe it's the new pair of work boots. That will change eventually, but I'm definitely a little nervous to think about what they will feel like by Friday. Thank God that Monday is a holiday; three days to recoup after the first week will probably be a good thing.

Today was definitely sweet though, I got to use nail guns, saws, ladders, wood, my hammer, my speed square & tape measure, you know, all the fun stuff. It didn't even really feel like being at work, and one of the other guys on the crew had to come tell me it was time to roll up. The day flew by.

I figured that my skill with the hammer would be gone, and that more than likely I would be swinging it like my cousin Lightnin'. (He earned that name from my pops by never striking the same place twice.) Surprisingly, I did pretty well, driving several sixteen penny nails without a miss, and a few with one miss, one or two with two misses, not bad for my first day back in almost seven years.

Now the Weigh-In

Well, after a hard day of work, I weigh 179 pounds. Looks like I sweated off two pounds today. Incidentally, the lack of humidity here makes you get super dehydrated. It's nice not being drenched in sweat like the Midwest, and even worse, that absolutely hellish nightmare of a high school summer spent in Florida doing commercial construction for my Dad. Seriously, you should not be soaking wet at 7:05 am, all summer, that's just wrong people. Construction in that kind of humidity is just punishment; I prefer working in the dry, blue sky environment of Tahoe much better for sure.


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Morning Weight Reading

Well, I'm awake & ready to go. Weighed myself, came in at 181 today...looks like the burgers we ate last night were pretty heavy.
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Final Day of Softness

Well, tomorrow is the day I start doing man-work again. I’ve been reading the book Modern Carpentry, and I’m about 275 pages into it. Normally, reading a textbook of that size would take me a few weeks, but there are a lot of pictures so it’s coming along quickly. Only like 500 pages to go….

I bought a bunch of new blue jeans to wear for work earlier this week. Decided to wear a pair out on Friday and quickly realized why I quit wearing blue jeans after I left working outside so long ago. Denim is not soft. I don’t care what anyone says, denim is a scratchy material and I don’t like it. Give me cotton khakis any day...soft cotton.

Those jeans are also a little too tight. I bought the relaxed fit Levi’s, but they still feel like nut huggers to me. Maybe I should have looked for blue jeans with pleats? I actually bought a pair that fits me right now, so that is surely part of the problem. I’m operating on the assumption that working will make me lose some weight so in a couple of months the pants will be nice and loose, the way I like them.

For now, I’ll assume they just need to be broken in. Hopefully dirt, sweat, and movement will beat them into shape. We shall see.

And Now the Weigh-In

So, I just weighed myself, wearing only a pair of boxers, and the reading was 179. I’m really kind of surprised because I thought I was fatter than that, but one good meal could easily push that back up to 185.

I’ll keep posting a morning reading and an after-work reading daily to track my blue-collar diet progress. I’ll make sure to always get the reading in just a pair of boxer shorts for consistency, and I’m hoping the daily readings will smooth out some of the fluctuation we see from meals and bowel movements. Anyone that knows me well knows that I can drop like 8 pounds with a good dump…I dominate the toilet.


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Back to School...Blue-Collar Style

So my new boss gave me a book to read before I start; it's called Modern Carpentry. He had mentioned it to me last week, and I assumed it would just be a normal book, but when picked it up today, it was actually a textbook, complete with end of chapter questions.

I've read the first chapter regarding building materials, and there's definitely a lot more to lumber than I thought. Interesting side note: The book says that laminate boards made with the grains running parallel are stronger than with the grains criss-crossed 90 degrees at each layer. That just seems counter-intuitive to me...if anyone can explain this; please leave a comment on this post.

Anyway, I'll be spending the next few days studying Modern Carpentry. I'm fearful that I will become the quintessential college-educated-construction-guru with more book knowledge & theory than real experience, but I was able to fake it in my first job after college, so I think I can wing it here.

At the absolute least, I can pick up 4-5 obscure carpentry facts to throw out when the opportunity presents itself. Now that I think about it, this is just like college. I'm learning construction terms instead of business world jargon, but still with the end motivation being to regurgitate the info and make myself sound smarter than I really am. Maybe I'm not as far from the business world as I think....
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And So It Begins....

As noted in the overview, I'm heading back to carpentry work. I'm looking forward to doing some real work with my hands again, but I'm definitely nervous as to how my body will take it.

For the last seven years, I've spent my time in a nice soft office environment where the greatest threat of injury was from a paper cut. Incidentally, I've learned that paper cuts are painful little bastards.

I'm not sure what is going to be the worst for my pansy suit-and-tie body, but I know my muscles need to adjust, my hands need to re-grow calluses, and my feet are going to get thrashed with a new pair of work boots. In time, that should go away, and I will hopefully be in much better shape in a few months.

Goodbye Office

Fortunately, on the construction site, I’m pretty sure that I will no longer have to say things like, Core Competency, Paradigm, Leverage, Six Sigma, Best Practices, Organic Growth, Management Culture, Strategic Vision, or any of the other garbage business school jargon that I've been using for the past few years to make myself sound smarter.

I definitely will not miss the fat-office-women! Every office has them, the bloated cows who roam the halls in a desperate search to see if their fat sisters have added new candy to the glass bowls on their sad, child-photo-covered desks. These women are the scourge of the office environment, constantly pressuring you to eat candy & doughnuts, and always wearing something that even a woman of half their size would struggle to pull off.

As an office worker, in addition to the horror of seeing their bloated frames waddling from place to place, you must also keenly restrict what you say around them. Fat-office-women TALK! If someone is going to feel sexually harassed, or religiously offended, or whatever, it will definitely be a fat-office-woman. Be especially cautious with the Midwest Breed of the fat-office-woman, as their lives are acutely pathetic so the need to derive superiority by being morally outraged is ever present. Good riddance.

Most of all, I will not miss the constant sense of never accomplishing anything. No matter how hard you work in an office job, you’re still going to be doing something fairly similar the next day. When I really busted my ass, at the end of the day, I could look at a report, or spreadsheet, or some other intangible expression of my effort. On the construction site, I can go home at the end of the day and see a set of walls that I put up, and that’s just a lot more rewarding than a computer file.

Hello Man-Work

In my constant drive to assimilate and eventually conquer the business world, I never lost my childhood redneck fascination with getting dirty. Wearing business suits and wing tips is nice, and the fact that showering after work is optional was always a plus, but nothing beats dirt and sawdust. I get to go back to the days when getting something sticky on your hands means rubbing them in the dirt and moving on with your day, instead of franticly scrubbing in front of the bathroom sink.

One word; Cussing. I can pretty much say whatever foul-mouthed garbage I want to on a construction site. Hell, around the right crew, I might even be able to bust racist jokes from time to time. One thing is for sure though; I can drop the F-bomb without caution.

Over the past seven years, the closest I got to working with a power tool was the electric hole-puncher. As a side note, if you put too much paper in those things, it wrecks them…Trust me. Sure, there were electric pencil sharpeners, and electric staplers, and those huge paper cutters our teachers would never let us touch in grade-school, but all of that pales in comparison to a nail gun. Compressed air launching a steel spike into solid wood, or bone, or whatever else gets in its way….COOOOLLL. Before you get to nail something though, there is a plethora of saws and routers and drills and other various wood shredding devices to entertain myself with. Power Tools Rock!

Preparation Time

I don’t actually start doing man-work again until Monday. In the meantime, I have to get my tools ready, and just get myself psyched up to start.

I’m looking forward to doing some real work for a change, and I think that the company I’ve joined will provide a great opportunity to learn a lot about the business. Hell, if nothing else, I get to be outside enjoying the fantastic weather of a Lake Tahoe Summer.

Once I start working, I plan to write at least a short daily update with my weight and condition. I really think that going from sitting on my fat can all day to working and burning calories will give me better results than any of your new wave diets.

My hypothesis is that our society is not fat because of fast foot and sugars, but because we all loaf most of the day. When our grandparents were working, a large percentage of them were in physical jobs, while most of our generation seems to be wasting away in some sedentary office job.
I will not change my food intake; I will not pick up an extra exercise regiment. The only thing I will change is my working environment. I aim to prove that office jobs can be blamed for the fattening of America, or at least the fattening of me.

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