Night time is the right time?

There are some drags to being new. The main is working in the morning from, say 4am to 10:30am and only getting a half hour nap in during the day under the assumption that you would be working the following morning and could "marathon" it until bed time at 8:30pm.

Upon calling in at 7:30pm (this is mandatory Sunday-Thursday) to get your route assignment for the following day you find out that after eating a huge dinner that you have to show up for the next days work at 9:30pm that night (it took me a long time to wrap my head around that one).

This happens more than I prefer.

I have learned that eating Ethiopian food or Indian food is not conducive to bending over or carrying huge sacks full of trash down 30 narrow stairs in the rain with no toilet in site. I have also learned that eating these rich foods are pretty much a guarantee that I will be working that night. Bummer.

On this particular evening of enchantment, after eating two substantial boca burgers and an entire bag of garlic fries I found myself whoring in Union Square.

Hanging off the back of the truck as we moved from pile to pile (garbage man slang for a group of cans) when I noticed what appeared to be a neatly dressed middle aged Asian woman talking up to the driver in the cab. The exchange was brief and he continued moving the truck up, time being so valuable at this job guys have little patience for chit-chat.
I hop off and start in on the cans. The lady then heads over to me and starts talking before she reaches me, she still looks neatly dressed but has that loon look in her eyes that I learned to spot growing riding a skateboard in the city.
I motion to her that i cannot hear her (these trucks are fucking loud. deaf by 40.), she then says:
"I want to give you something."
"Oh yeah, whats that?..."
"Put out your hand."
I show her my nasty ass glove thinking that she is bat shit and what she has to give me is a lit fire cracker or some shit. It could happen.
"No take that off, put this in your pocket"
"No, you put it in my hand" the glove is off by this point, yet she still tries to stick her hand in my pocket. Now I don't keep much in there but lip balm but I would prefer it if randoms would keep their hands out of my pockets uninvited. I grabbed her hand gently and told her to put "it" in my hand.
"Here." she says as she drops the tiniest piece of a reefer nugget ("nug"?) in my hand.
"It's for you and your partner, you work hard."
Did I mention she was wasted?
"No thank you ma'am, we cannot partake in this sort of activity."
"Not even at home?"
"Not even on the moon, they drug test us."
I placed the contraband back in her hand and told her to take some of the tobacco out of her cigarette and smoke that shit.
She began to walk away and stopped short, turned back and asked me "what do you call this stuff?"
I ran down the list as she walked away and slumped in a doorway where I assumed she would spend the rest of her bender.

Rough(age) draft

I was under the impression that I would be awarded an "excellence in Excrement" certificate if I were to crap on your desk...
You know, you really ought to update your employee handbook to avoid this confusion in the future Sir.

Terror attack survival kit

These hail from the same trash can.
I am sure that if I dug a bit deeper I would find spent No2 cartridges from weekend whippit binges as well. I figure you can imagine this individual pretty well without the incriminating evidence... then again what is all this?

Gurl...

This is pretty much how all my dates used to start.
I guess you can imagine how they used to end...

There are other pages to this song but they read like the rest of the "club bangers" (i.e. "shouting" out names of other rappers etc.) that are out there. So obviously I chose this jewel for its innovative lyrical content.

If I did..

Not that I do, but if I did work here (ahem, cough) this
is pretty much exactly what it is, or would be like. Only taller, much taller. thankyouverymuch.

p.s. some awesome found items updates coming your way, that is if your are still standing in front of this site waiting to be hit with it.

THA FUCKIN' UNION. IT WORKS FOR YOU!

Seriously. Watch it.
Last youtube video. maybe...

Sur name again?

I told him my name. It was 5am so I can forgive anyone missunderstanding a mumbler who was awoken about an hour before by a phone call instructing him to get to the yard for work, perhaps not my finest hour of orration. He repeated it back to me and through his thick accent it sounded right, again it was 5am and the truck is fucking loud.
As the day moved onward at a very rapid rate (this guy who has worked here for 45 years is the fastest sonofabitch I have ever seen go) he would yell out "KREES! KREES!". Now my name is clearly printed on the shirt of my uniform, and I have come to understand that some of these guys are not the best at reading or writing english, hence the job, but I was not about to start taking offense to the name misshap as it was nice to be someone else with a more common name for the day. As I climbed out of the truck I informed him of my actual name so that he could put a good word in for me with the managment, if things like that even happen.

I came as a rat

As it turns out rats will run the opposite direction that they are being moved.
So, if you ever find yourself in the position that I was in and its 4:30am in China town and you can't tell if its a dead hamster, chinchilla or a live rat masquerading as a stuffed animal inside a pink shopping bag remember to pull the can behind you. Opposed to the easier to steer and to manipulate method of pushing it in front of you.
Further more. Do your best to not mix up the direction the rat will jump, things have a way of confusing themselves when you are not there.

Thanks for the stamp

This postcard is so old you can still see the World Trade Center.

What's good for the goose...

So do you uh...work out?

Garbageman

Paint. Balls.

Is this from your mom?

Where does one sign up?

I found this in a nice area.

What's underneath...

The morning regiment is often done in a hurried stumbling manner. There are, however some things that must not be done in such a rush. The above are a few of the folks that I have gotten very close with over the last year. From left to right:

-Daily usage, so long as there is movement there is baby powder on the floor of the bathroom in the morning.

-I had not opted to use this ass saver until the end of a 13 hour day in extreme summer heat. I haven't had much use for this in the last few months but will be re-upping the tube in the next few weeks. Again soon I will be touching my cheeks before I can even see straight.

-For when it hurts (usually the knees) and I don't care what I smell like, old Chinese man anyone? I used to use paper towels for application but even then it would find its way burning at the edge of my eyes. Now I have wizened up a bit and picked up some latex gloves. Sort of like a self administered proctology exam just far far away from the region. I will not relive that nightmare again.

-This is a tool of good faith. I find it to work very well, but without the foul smell and burning feel there is not the direct connection when it comes to convincing the brain of that. Just ask a hippy.

-Notice the cheap brand. The amount of this stuff I can consume when things are bad it starts to make more sense the pay the $12.99 than the $24.99 for the name brand.

Not pictured: Lava hand scrub, fingernail brush, moleskin, second skin blister relief and band aids.

So next time you see me and dodge the hand shake, rest assured that I am a ardent hand washer, so much so that I tend to feel like I need help.

Update?

honestly, there are five or so updates planned. I have been working tons and finishing up a project that will be all done friday night (maybe I see you there). So, this weekend I will have some images and yammerings for you. As for now, I am off to work on Treasure Island. hooray!

also, my friend Brain Palmer showed me bloglines where you can make a list of the websites you visit most frequently (that may not be updates and often as you look) and it will collect the update and let you know. So instead of checking 15 sites you can check your bloglines page and see.

I shut up now
I go work.

This week in summary

I think that this may be the better way to keep this blog not boring. updating with an itemized list that contains specific and brief gems from the week.
what say you? I mean after reading the post below this one think about it and let me know. I could have just said: "lost my phone in Chinatown in the rain and basically the $340.00 I made that day will more than likely go to a new phone..." right? Anywho here are a few "touchers":

Remembered that I should have included this "winner" in the "close your mouth dear" entry: "Instead they should be celebrating the guy who shot Martin Luther King. HA! Did you hear what i said john?! i said that 'they should be celebrating the guy who shot Martin Luther King!' huh?" John (some dude at a coffee shop) then says "Martin Luther King day is not a holiday" shaking his head with his hands full of fresh baked bread (its 6:30am) he repeats "Martin Luther King day is not a holiday". I bite my tongue and say over and over in my head "try Arizona".

Told at 7:30pm that I was to show up at 2am for work which lasted until 1pm, three truck loads, two guys, no breaks.

Worked the Presidio. Amazed by how much nature there is just outside? inside? the city. I was all pumped to set up the family in the shitty apartments that over look the pacific in order to live among that many redwood trees.

Then the next day I worked Treasure Island. That name is very misleading. There is no treasure there. Its almost as if it is the land that time forgot and will continue to do so as the begin a plan to integrate the homeless in with the rest of the residents there. If you have ever read Virtual light by William Gibson or have had any doubts that Science Fiction writers predict the future, rest asure that they in fact do and in no time the bay bridge will be closed and folks will be living on it and the island that it rests on.

"It's all in the reflexes..."

Working Saturday's is a perk, you get time and a half and usually you just pick up city cans in a specific area, they however are not that fun, full of gallons of outdated leftover coffee that usually goes down your sleeve or on your pants. You smell worse than other heavier days.

I was fortunate enough to work one last week when it was pissing down rain. I was also fortunate enough to get a truck that had right side drive and was low entry. Since the cans are all on the right side of the street as you drive, and because there is little worse than getting in and out all day long from a truck that is high entry and having to walk around to the can while dodging cars, it is a job initself.

On this particular route we have to do the (name removed) Street Clean Up. This is where at a particular time of day we drive down said street and pick up everything that the folks in chinatown put out or manage to throw into the truck when you are not looking or just bent over. It's pretty sketchy, boxes full of dead and spoiled sea creatures fly just at head level and at most times I am much taller than most of these residents so you can imagine the amount of close calls I encounter in three whole blocks.

Tword the time I was to begin the clean up, while turning a corner my mom calls, seeing that she was driving home from a solo trip from Washington I thought it wise to answer and make sure she was doing OK. She was, and in the rush to get back to work I put my super awesome, big buttoned, music playing cell phone in my shirt pocket without buttoning it.

After dodging crab meat and god knows what else I back into a super tight alley and collect more garbage, most of which has me bending over to pick up any and everything that may go. After the alley was done I took a look at my map to see what I had left, map was gone. Pretty awesome, right? Maybe I should call my friend that was also working who had done this route a bunch and ask him how much I had to go from where I was, phone gone too? Serioulsy? I have never lost a phone before and no matter how many times I patted myself down it never showed up.

Once one looses their cell phone they begin to realize just how much the have come to depend on it, sort of like breaking a limb. Then once you get over that you get to cone to the realization that pay phones are a thing of the past. It is like a scavenger hunt trying to find one.

Soaking wet, tail between my legs I ask the firemen at the fire house and they allow me to call my phone and leave a pleading message to whoever had it now. No recovery of course. Take a look at the list of things I have found (see below). I guess its time I make and expensive deposit into the Karma bank.

Please excuse the longwindedness, trying to make up for lost time...

UPDATE forthcoming

sorry about the lag/halt in updating.
still trying to establish how this will all go.
since they never work new guys on holidays (ahem! triple time) i will update on Monday. seeing as i will not be the guy holding the rake over the pile of money.
be patient.
for now we are off to the bike race.