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October 20, 2003
Blackneck In Effect
Today was my second day doing some housepainting. It feels good.
An old frat brother of mine, several years ago, decided to chuck the white collar world. He's now a firefighter and every once in a while he tells us tall tales of that adventurous world. He says it's one of the best decisions he's ever made. No more office bullshit, basically. He's in great shape and no day is the same.
Today I'm feeling some of that blue collar bliss. I've been up on ladders stretching my arms and rolling rollers, masking trim, and telling dirty jokes. At the end of the day, I got paid in cash and cruised home with Eric Sardinas on full blast.
It took me a while to find a good old pair of jeans. I'm almost embarassed to say that all I have are Gap jeans. My only pair of 501s are black and I wasn't about to use those. I threw on my one pair of athletic shoes, which are at least 5 years old but still pretty new from lack of use (until a month ago). I put on my contact lenses, got my holstein pattern bandana and got to work. No watch, no wedding band, no cell phone.
Painting has no mythical figure, but if it did he would have a forearms of steel and be able to paint without masking tape during an 8.4 earthquake and never spill a drop. We actually decided that we couldn't complete the job though. Some of the gables were simply out of reach of our ladders and better judgement. So the boss man decided to call a professional over for an estimate. I felt exactly like somebody at Albertson's about to be locked out. He kept snickering at us for using paintbrushes and rollers. Evidently the professionals take half their time just masking the whole house like a stencil and then spraypainting what's left to be painted. Still, we soldiered on with our 2 inch horsehairs on the paint-sopping wood trim. Take that, John Henry.
I've got about 3 more days worth of painting to do. So the back of my neck is going to be a couple shades darker in this October sun. I can live with that.
Posted by mbowen at October 20, 2003 08:27 PM
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