Sunday Night, and a dash of Monday

So, on Sunday night I worked starting at 5:00 and worked until 1:30.
Or at least I was supposed to. I was an interesting night to say the
least.

First and foremost I was working directly with someone I've never
worked with before. Now, due to union rules, and this being a publicly
accessible site, I can't divulge any particular specifics so I'll be
very general. Working with this individual enabled me to remember
exactly what it was like to work in construction. The students that I
haven't yet taught is what I feel this man would be (see, now you have
to know some of my history). Last night was like the time that I
worked construction at the Mackenzie Inn and jack hammered through the
main electrical cables to the entire hotel, causing a boiler to blow
up, and making the hotel relocate all the guests to another hotel at the
expense of the company. What went wrong?

I won't get into the dirty details but I will say this, I've had much,
much worse days; however, I do need something to write about and that
will be it. So after taking way to long to clean bathrooms, the lobby
and admin, mainly due to build up, I went to clean the swirl pool. It
should be noted that I work in a recreational facility as a maintenance
worker. There are a couple ice surfaces (which is out but we have
special events), a curling rink (that I, thankfully, have very little
to do with), a lap pool, a wave pool, sauna, steam room, tots pool,
gymnastics facility, meeting rooms, a sportex building and so on.

Now, for some intriguing facts about the swirl pool. The average
person will sweat about a liter in 20 minutes in the swirl pool
(glorified hot tub) while the temperature is about 104 degrees
fahrenheit. Coincidentally, the average time a person will stay in the
swirl pool in a visit is 20 minutes. This means, based on the traffic
that goes through the facility, and the volumes of the pool, which is
maintained at a steady 104, by the end of the week there's no water
left in the pool, it's all sweat. Furthermore, the minister of health
once said (or perhaps it was my supervisor making stuff up), something
to the effect of, "putting your head under water in a public hot tub is
the closet you'll ever get to 1000 ass holes." How nice. We refill
the swirl every Sunday, come on Monday. Don't worry by the way, even
though the stats are scary as me playing football, you're still very
safe and we check the pools every two hours.

So I'm going to clean the swirl pool. I get it drained and I clean all
the walls, seats, stairs and so on with a mixture of granular chlorine
and water (a mere two tablespoons for 5 gallons, this shit's strong).
I rinse it down and drain the foot of so of water that doesn't get
drained so that I don't mar the floor with the chlorine (this shit's
strong). Then I try and fix the two burnt out light bulbs. I get one
apart and there are no bulbs, shit. These things are complex and take
a long time to take apart and put back together, there are 9 screws,
two rubber gaskets, and a bunch of stainless steel. Oh, I should
mention this, I've never cleaned the swirl pool before, this really is
the first time for me and it therefore took much longer then has it
been, say, my second time. I didn't know there weren't bulbs because I
had to take the light apart first to find out what kind of bulb was
needed, underwater bulbs are a special thing. Get on with it Wade.
Kay I start to refill the pool, and the end of my shift is quickly
approaching (by the way, I'm skipping a tonne of steps in the blog that
I did in real life).

It's time to turn everything back on. The circulation pump, check.
The lectrinator cells, check. The jets pump, check. Everything is
working perfectly and I've only had to stay an extra three minutes.
But wait. The jets aren't working. Shit.

So for the next half hour or so myself and the graveyard guy spent
isolating the problem. Naturally, because it was my first time I
thought that I'd done something wrong (today I found out that I
didn't). Finally we isolated the problem to an air lock and were able
to vent the excess trapped by using a bled valve. Sure it sounds
boring now, but at the time it was fairly intense. The thrill of the
hunt, the glory of the win, triumphing over the evil air pocket; I'm
sure you can all empathize. I was out an hour late ending my near
perfect night.

Today I went to the sale at Bata and bought a pair of sandals, a pair
of no lace shoes, a wind breaker type coat, and a pair of pants (by
columbia). Everything was 50% off and in total I spent a modest
$131.17; thank you Visa.

Until later, goodnight.

Wader