09 July 2006

So for those of you I haven't kept up with, (that would be everyone except Ed, Spencer, and my wife), here's the dilly yo since I moved.  A timeline would be more in order.

JUL05 Buy house sight unseen in Hawaii.  Still living in California.

29JUL05 Move to O'ahu and see the house for the first time. (More on this later)

SEP05 New job with PC Enterprises.  It's a private telecommunications company specializing in extremely large commercial projects.  It's fun, I get to learn stuff, I get to apply all that I know already, I work with a generally cool group of guys. (More on this later)

15OCT05 My wedding!!!  The absolute happiest day of my life.  (More on this later)

11NOV05 Veteran's Day  I wake up with severe blurring in my left eye.  Idiot I am, I go (read: drive) to work anyway where it gets only slightly better through the course of the day.  I go to see an Optometrist who can't see anything except a potential partially detached retina.

12NOV05 I wake up with a normal eye.  Aaaaaaand another normal eye.  Everything seems okay, but wait!!!!!  There's more!!!!!  A trip to an Ophthalmologist, then another Optometrist, an Internist, a Neurologist, a Hematologist, then back to the original Ophthalmologist and Optometrist who send me back to the Internist.  What else?  A battery of tests, more extensive and expensive than you know.  Three different requests for blood work, an ultrasound, ECG/EKG, EEG, MRI.  Yikes!!!  Good thing I had dual coverage through my wife and my union.  (Yes I'm a union man now, more on this later)  By the way, these visits and tests didn't all happen on this day.  Oh, and the final diagnosis?  Amaurosis Fugax.  Basically a temporary loss of vision due to lack of blood flow to the eye.  I call bullshit.  If this happened to me now, I'd believe it. Back then I was active, I smoked less, and was in pretty good shape.  Bah, enough about this.

DEC05 Christmas and New Years.  Like, whoa.  Fresh start!

JAN06 Work on the house is slow but one room is almost done.  Why only one room?  Because I have to finish something.  Anything.  Unlike my father, notorious for starting projects and never finishing (this is all according to my mom, I have personally witnessed my father finish at least six projects since I've known him) I am determined to get ONE ROOM done if anything to get my mom off my back.  You must understand, at the time my wife and I were still living at their house due to our house being uninhabitable.

??FEB06 The ONE ROOM is done.   A previously undiscovered benefit to this is the fact that the room is now semi-fit to live in so we pack up and finally move into the house.

MAR06  Work is slow and the boss just bought a new office/warehouse space so as soon as I wrap up the last jobsites I'm sent to the new office/warehouse where I proceed to fork everything up to the second floor and begin organizing at least six years of back inventory and obsolete materials and tools.

APR06 Work is work.  Construction begins on the office and lo and behold, I am the only one who understands anything about general construction, i.e., layout, framing, bracing, etc.  Between me and Eddie (co-worker who fucking rocks the fiber optics) we literally build approximately 95f the new office space.  (Eddie did the drywall)  Six or seven guys get laid-off due to lack of work.  Work on the house is slow going but steady. 

MAY06 I realize the only reason I didn't get laid-off was because of the aforementioned knowledge of construction.  This is not necessarily a good thing as I'm only getting union scale: $11.38/hour for an apprentice technician.  Resentment sets in as I realize I've done more at the new office than just about anyone at half the pay.  More resentment sets in as I realize I've done about the same on the jobsites where I actually get to work my trade (Telecommunications remember?).  I am on the verge of asking them to lay me off so I can collect unemployment and work on the house when the new office gets shut down for a lack of permits.  Drawings need to be submitted and while we wait, finishing inventory because we can't finish building, I discover the bosses golfing and drawing plans for a miniature radio controlled car track in the warehouse.  I quietly begin searching for other companies.

JUN06 Yay!!!  This is current.  Finally!  Still here?  Poor sap.  So mercifully I finally do get laid-off and proceed to demolish everything downstairs.  All you see now is crooked studs, unprotected openings to the outside, drywall dust and bad electrical and low-voltage wiring.  Well.  Three-fourths of it anyway.  And that's the whole fucking shebang.  Sorry for not keeping in touch but I've been a little busy with the job and the money pit.  I will post links for pics soon.  I haven't decided to post and share via Flickr or Picasa.  (More on this later.)

Any Questions?????  Alooooooooooooooha!!!!!! -Jordan


Again, for those of you who made it this far, a little something that's been on heavy iPod rotation lately.

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