All Work... Yet, All Play

Well, I'm two and a half weeks into my second summer as a painter and I think it's time to share some of my experience thus far. I'm really enjoying it, it's a super laid back crew of my boss, a part-time co-worker, and I. Nope, my co-worker is not my boy Malech this time (good times last year; check past summer posts)! This year I have the privilege to work with Ray, or as I like to call him: Uncle Ray. No, Ray is not a real uncle of mine, but he is old enough to be, and basically acts as a fun uncle figure anyways. The only difficult thing with Uncle Ray, is that he can have quite the negative outlook on life... I try to steer away from those conversations. Other than that, he makes me laugh, so I'm happy and it also keeps the job interesting. He loves to talk about his cooking. The other day during lunch, he started talking about how he found a place that didn't have chickens under 13 pounds in weight. It'd be enough for two meals for his family and he'd throw the carcass in the freezer overnight to save it for soup the next day... This was totally out of the blue! You should hear him talk about his chili and also how he gets his two kids to eat vegetables. Trust me, it's hilarious and definitely entertaining (ask me if you really want to know).

Every house we've been at has had a specific "thing" that is just abnormal. For the first week's house, there was just an excessive amount of dust EVERYWHERE! It was the dustiest house I have ever been in. When we turned off an overhead fan, the amount of dust on each blade was an inch thick (the fan never turned back on, once it stopped, it died). It was sickening. What's more, is that the owner is an interior designer and there were a lot of paintings and decorative wall art all over the house. You would think that she'd keep her house clean because of that. But nope, cobwebs EVERYWHERE! We even got blamed for leaving the bedroom doors open because "our" dust and such filth ventured in them. Jeezaloo!

The next week I spent a day on Wellington Crescent at a ritzy penthouse complex with whole floor suites. We were painting one of the suite's library. The abnormal thing about it, was that everything in the suite was priceless in value! I mean, there were golden animal statues in each corner of every room!

Today we finished doing a house's exterior for this elderly, Dutch couple. Two things: 1) They must be very patriotic; we painted all their shutters bright orange (they're getting ready for the World Cup!), and 2) They LOVE birds. Let me tell you about the latter... You walk into the backyard and the first thing you see is a luxurious bird house on a fifteen foot tall pole. Next, you walk into the garage and the first thing you see is a large, vintage Pepsi Cola cooler. You then open the cooler, and the first thing you see is bird seed filled up to the brim! I could not paint for a second without hearing a bird in that backyard, whether it be the flapping of their wings, their chirping of joy, or their chirping of anger because of cross-species bickering. I even turned around and almost fell off my ladder because I saw a hanging fake parrot in the window! Ya, Malech wouldn't have been able to work at that place (bird phobia).

Oh ya, one last thing: There is always one small dog in each neighbourhood that never SHUTS UP!

So that's a short summary of what my job has been like so far. I love how I meet new people and have to head to a new and different work space each week. It's great. Hopefully there are more unreal stories to come!

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Before I started this entry, I was instructed by Josh Dyck, through a Skype call, to write well... I hope this post met your expectations, and thank you for the inspiring words.