Makin a livin

I must confess I gave up cab driving for lent and have gone over to being a security guy. Instead of driving around I walk around, stand around and sit around. Where I perform these onerous tasks provides some interesting variety. So far I have been assigned to keep an eye on a movie crew while they filmed on a sensitive location. Kirstie Allie said hello to me once, and she didn't look at all fat to me, except for those bulges in the right places that most guys, myself included, like. Next week I willspend a couple of days patrolling a cruise ship while it's being worked on in dry dock. On weekends I am a watchman at a construction site. With all the theft of construction materials going on these days it is one more expense for the contracter to hire me.
They're digging the hole for a fancy condo here. In Victoria that's not such a simple thing what with massive rock formations sticking out all over the place and others lurking underneath the surface soil at various depths. That means the profession of blasting is much in demand here. If we ever get into the IUD thing here we have lots of guys who would know how to do it.
Usually not much happens on a Saturday but today the excavators are scraping away some of that surface soil and loading up trucks with chunks of rock from yesterdays blasting. I've been working on the site for several weeks now and every week I see new extrusions waiting to be blown to bits.
There's something about watching an excavator work that is endlessly absorbing. Beats TV all to hell. (I don't have a TV I should mention and I can't stand to be in the same room with a TV going. I've gone through a couple of generations of TV shows since I got rid of mine. That was the year the Expos were the best team in baseball but got screwed out of their day of glory by a baseball strike) So I've never seen an episode of The Sopranos, never seen an episode of Steinfield, and I haven't played the game of avoid-the-commercials for many a year.
Getting back to my construction site, the most interesting thing, far more interesting than the world's skinniest fat woman (Oprah), was watching a field service technician repair the pin on a thrown track of one of the excavators. That's the picture in the window. Of course, no jack is needed- the excavator just puts his shovel down and presto, the starboard side is in the air.
And it's a nice day today, one of the precious few we've had this spring. But when I read about the snowstorms they are having back east I guess we can't complain too much. Of course to the econazis everything is evidence of global warming-oops I mean climate change- but I say to you that we better hope there is enough warming going on to prevent the return of the ice sheets. But I doubt it. And that could happen anytime.