So I finally made it to the jobsite last Monday! I've been told since May that I was going out there, and I was planning on heading out in June... Anyway, I'm FINALLY out there, and I am just so happy that I get to wear jeans to work now. Well, that and I get to be out watching the building come together is really cool too. I am really excited because a) I finally get to wear my cowboy boots, b) I have a whole new wardrobe opened up to me and I almost don't know what to do with myself, c) I get an AWESOME work schedule 7-3:30 every day, and d) I get to hang out with two old, country guys. This is not so much as "get" as "have", but sometimes when these guys argue or talk to each other, it gets pretty funny.
So I already have come to some realizations about being out at the job:
-I am going to miss having a bathroom. Port-a-potties are pretty stinky at a construction site. I have been lucky enough that I can make it through the whole day without having to use one. Yet. I figured that I look nice enough that if I went to the corner gas station and bought a drink, they wouldn't mind my use of their facilities.
-I am going to FREEZE my booty off out there! These guys keep it so cold, that even THEY have to wear jackets inside. This makes absolutely NO sense to me as I have my little foot heater under my desk.
-I might need a nose plug as almost every construction worker smokes and REALLY stinks up the trailer pretty quickly.
-I am going to miss running water. Not being able to wash my hands after my morning apple makes me not so happy. I absolutely HATE sticky hands. I try with the antibacterial stuff I brought out there, but there is just no substitute to running water.
-My miles on my truck are going to add up pretty darn quickly. I really shouldn't complain about this, since it only takes me 20 minutes to get to work, but if I was driving anywhere at 6:30 in the morning, I think it would still take 20 minutes. And compared to my 10 minute drive to work right down the street, that's DOUBLE my driving time. I mean, seriously. DOUBLE.
-I also realized that I am going to get extremely tired of this routine if I don't start getting to bed earlier. It's torture some mornings. If I don't get 7.5-8 hours of sleep, I am cranky and completely out of it almost all day.
-I love being able to go to the gym and get out of there by the time I would normally be getting off work to head to the gym. It's so great!
I get to look out my window every day at the jobsite. It is AWESOME. So I took a picture so everyone could simulate what it's like in the life of Alex.

And here is the job from the top of this gigantic hill we created. It's an ugly huge hill, but luckily, will go down only a few feet before they seed the hill. It does make for great pictures of the site though.

I'm just so happy I get to wear my neon vest every day. It's such a great fashion. I've actually considered making this the jersey for our soccer team I'm on. We would all stand out for sure.

So this next picture, I started thinking about how funny I was because of a story I remembered from college. My very first class I took in construction was framing. All the guys in the class were brand new and we were given a list of items to buy before we started framing the "project house" (The program builds one every year). A big sidenote - My dad helped me out with a few of the tools we needed which I still have and use all of the time. The hammer is my absolute favorite (thanks dad!) and if something ever happened to it, I'm not sure I could like another hammer the same way. So anyway, one of the guys in the class comes to the site the first day we were starting and had on EVERY piece of safety gear you could get, completely brand new everything - tools, belt, shoes, hat, gloves... He had those measuring tape suspenders, big safety glasses, hard hat on, steel toed shoes, etc. Looking back, the tape suspenders were the only thing that was really that geeky, but we were in college and only building a house, so there wasn't a need for the superfluous items he had on. From that day on, he was known as OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). Through our four years of going to school, I still never learned his real name. We were even friends. So I put on the hard hat in the office in memory of OSHA. We are required to wear all those "geeky" safety items any time we are outside of the trailer. OSHA could slap a pretty hefty fine if they catch us without all of our PPE if we don't. That, and it's just not safe with cranes and backhoes everywhere.

Nicknames bring me to my next and last topic. I now have a new nickname. Lulu. One of the guys on the job just started calling me Lulu, and it stuck. I have a friend from Vegas that I worked with and her real name is Lulu. Really. I don't mind it, but it makes me chuckle a little inside when I hear it. Lulu.