Random thoughts...

Firstly and right off the hop I want to apologize for not writing yesterday. When I got on the bus Big Dale (or US Dale) sat next to me and we had a great conversation about self help, agreements to live by and of course about our kids. I really enjoyed the chat so I skipped blogging for a day. All good! Yesterday during the day my wife Julie sent me a photo of my daughter taken the night before heading into her high school prom. She is in a long white gown and is in the arms of her latests hunky boy toy. It's so hard to believe that just a short time ago she was a tiny little baby that I held in my arms. I know the boy in the picture is 6'3" and my Hailey appears not much shorter. God forbid they should have kids or the little ones would actually end up as big ones! Speaking of big ones I should be getting some pictures of my son Jak at some point today. He spent the last couple of days at Comic Con Toronto and in the spirit of cosplay he dressed as the character Ryu from the Street Fighter game. Apparently his costume and likeness was so good that they brought him in and did a photo shoot of him in costume. I can't wait to see the pics. Unlike his sister Jak was never small. When he was born he was three weeks early and still weighed 9lbs 3ounces. At six months he was 26 lbs and at a year he was 41 lbs. so rather than me rocking him to sleep I got him to rock me to sleep! Just kidding of course but whenever he asks me why I have such big arms I always answer: "because I had big babies." I still think that's pretty accurate! Switching gears for a minute it has gotten pretty warm these days at work. Yesterday I was flying in and fitti g wear plate in the bin with Jordy the Gypsie and Big Dale. Like me Dale is an older ironworking apprentice. He is a third year and is 49. Also like me he is in really good physical condition. Actually he is as big as a small mountain being 6'3" to 6'4" tall and weighing probably 240 lbs. he is in good shape and lifts a lot of weights but in spite of all that size his most memorable feature is his ever-present smile. Dale is a big, happy guy. So am I and so is Jordy. As a result we had a great day flying in 250lb iron wear plates and weld-tacking them into place. The biggest challenge we faced was immediately after lunch. We moved at that point to the west side of the east bin to do the plates at the 14,000 level and the sun was baking down on both us and on the wall. The metal in the walls held and radiated the heat so it was like working on hot black Tarmac in the middle of a sunny day. When I flipped my helmet down to grind or to weld the perspiration would run down the inside of my hard hat! Talk about brutal! But I loved the work and we had a great team thing going by then (the team included Spuds McIron who was rigging for us outside and also Adrian who was the guy operating the crane). Even with the heat it was a great day! I have to run so have a good day! :)