This Weekend

The new band I'm in will be playing our first shows this weekend with Sheer Terror, Friday in San Francisco and Saturday in Anaheim. Tickets are almost sold out for Friday night, get them while you can.

Garden

I've got a lot of my spring planting done so far, a little later than I was planning. I just got into growing vegetables last year, my wife planted a few plants and I didn't like the way she was handling it so I took over the vegetables. (Sounds mean but it turns out she doesn't like the vegetable garden anyway, she prefers the flowers.) They were planted in the dirt behind a retaining wall, really nasty dirt that contained lots of broken bottles, rebar, chunks of concrete and pressure treated planks. The plants did ok, we got a ton of cucumbers, sometimes 2 a day in the summer, the bell peppers only grew to the size of golf balls and one tomato plant got root rot and the other just wasn't very happy. This year I was determined to get my garden in the actual ground and not in the cheap retaining wall dirt. The site of my garden was to be the south fence of our backyard, all I would need to do is remove the sod next to the fence and break up a concrete pad that was ran the width of the lawn. Then I would prepare the soil and put a little fence up to keep the dog out. I began to break up the concrete and watch the sun patterns and I realized the the shadow of my house blocked a lot of the sunlight to the area for a good part of the day and it wouldn't be adequate. My wife wasn't very excited about my other ideas of getting rid of the lawn altogether and just farming the backyard, or having a million containers all over our yard so I had to come up with another plan. The retaining wall where we had our garden last year has 4X4s that the planks attach to, my plan was to remove the top plank in every other section, dig the dirt out of that section, replace the cheap filler with leftover dirt from the front yard that was removed for our sewer repair(another story), add a layer of potting soil and box it in with new wood, creating little planter boxes in the wall. I began this a couple weeks ago but as I dug about 18" down, I started pulling out large chunks of concrete and trash out of the dirt. Turns out whoever put the retaining wall in didn't fill the whole thing in with dirt, they put about 3 feet of concrete chunks on the bottom! All I could do was take enough out to make sure that the roots of my plants have enough dirt to spread their roots and not get tangled up in concrete.
I've got three planter boxes dug and working on the fourth, the wood to form the boxes is going to have to wait until the end of the summer, prices for wood are more than I can afford right now and I've already got plants in the ground that I do not want to disturb. Here's what I have planted so far: beefsteak tomatoes, sweet bell peppers, red onions, scallions, jalapenos, serrano peppers, romaine lettuce, cucumbers, and marigolds as companions for the vegetables.




When the fourth box is ready I'll be planting carrots, radishes, garlic(if it's not too late), and watermelons if I can find the space. This is my second season of planting and I'm still learning, I read as many gardening books and blogs as I can but nothing compares to being outside everyday, looking at your plants and feeling the dirt for moisture. This is something that I had absolutely no interest in until last year, now I love doing it.

New Interview

The Old Firm Casuals have a new interview up at oioimusic. Check it out.

Diet

I've been on a serious diet since mid March, I was inspired by someone on a message board documenting their program in a thread. I pretty much eat the most boring things ever, counting calories, cutting waaaay down on the carbs, smaller portions. Here's a typical day of food for me:

5:15am - 1 cup cooked oatmeal (plain) with 1/4 cup raisins, 16oz black coffee
8:30am - 1 apple
12:00pm - Spinach salad, balsamic vinegar and olive oil dressing, 6 oz chicken breast
2:00 pm - 1/2 whole wheat pita with 1 tbsp all natural peanut butter
4:30pm - 1/4 cup unsalted sunflower seeds
6:30pm - 6 oz grilled chicken, steamed green beans, 3/4 cup brown rice
8:30pm - 1 square 70% dark chocolate
Water all day long

I give myself one cheat meal a week, usually involves pasta or pizza and beer haha. I've lost about 17 pounds in the six weeks that I've been on the diet, not a whole lot of exercise due to work, band, housework time constraints. Not bad. The only thing is I've been burning off muscle with the fat so now my challenge is to try to bulk up while still staying lean. I hit my goal weight last week and I think my body is getting accustomed to this, gonna have to change things up to confuse it.

Gearing Up

I am working on a project in a California refinery as a safety supervisor. This just means that I advise the workers and management on working safely and following OSHA rules. I go around doing job audits most of the day and correcting anything that is out of compliance. The other part of the day is spent sorting and filing forms and other paperwork that may be needed if there is a safety investigation. The job itself is pretty good, I get to travel pretty frequently, see new places, meet a lot of people and watch craftsman build some pretty amazing pieces of equipment. My work is project based so I'll typically work for 3-6 weeks on a project, have a week or two of downtime, then start on another project. I usually work 7 days a week for 10-12 hours per day. I really like being able to make a nice chunk of money in a short time period and then have a week or so to spend at home doing nothing. Being in one place for too long drives me crazy and I start to feel like a working stiff that's getting nowhere.
The project that I'm starting right now is an upgrade to a coker unit. The coker unit in a refinery is basically the last stop in the production process of crude oil. The oil gets all of the useful products pulled out of it along the line and the stuff left over is called coke, it looks like black porous rocks or black gravel. The coker unit I'm working in has four coke drums, about 100 feet high and the unit operators have to manually dump the coke out of the bottom of the drum into a pit by using a pneumatic wrench(similar to what is used in auto shops to loosen lug nuts, just bigger) to take all the studs out of the bottom flange, slide the bottom head off, wheel a chute into place over a hole in the floor and let the coke fall into the pit. This is very time consuming and labor intensive. What the project is going to do is automate this process by replacing these bottom heads with gigantic valves that open and close by the push of a button, thus eliminating the need to move these heads on and off every 10 hours. I've worked on a project similar to this before and the process is pretty cool. They will use a "water laser" which shoots a 35,000 psi water stream to cut off the bottom of the drum which is made from thick steel, weld a new piece on that will fit the valve, then use an enormous crane to lift these enormous valves into place(the valves themselves are probably around 15-20 feet long). The crew I'm with will hook up all the electrical components to make the valve work and all of this will be done in about 30 days. There will be 1000 workers total working day and night to get this done. It's really neat to watch this from beginning to end.
Refinery work isn't for everyone though, there is a lot of money in the construction side of the oil business but the long hours and traveling are too much for some people to take. I meet a lot of interesting characters as well, I'll probably talk about some of them in the future.

Summertime

I can't wait for this summer to start. I had become accustomed to working long hours and away from home for the past few years and I was really burnt out by the end of 2009. The economy had canceled a lot of refinery construction projects that I had planned on working and I was beginning to get nervous about finding work. I accepted a position on a long term electrical project at a refinery in last April, working 4 days a week, 10 hours a day at a refinery in Northern California, about 15 minutes from home. I'm used to working 60-84 hours a week so I wasn't too excited about the smaller paychecks I would get from a shorter work week, but I felt lucky to have steady work for several months. Three days off every week was so killer. My wife and I bought a 2 1/2 foot deep blow up pool and started barbecuing 4-5 times a week. I'd come home from work and my wife and the dog would be sitting outside in the camp chairs, the coals had just been lit, Tecate in fridge and we always had fresh salsa ready. We would barbecue and eat dinner outside and just enjoy the nice weather. I always had plenty of time to get all my chores done on the weekend and still relax in the sun.

This summer is gonna be a little busier, I start a busy project in mid may that will last about a month. OFC will playing shows and then we leave for tour in late July, 2 weeks in the UK and 1 week on the east coast. I come home for about 3 weeks before my wife and I fly to Spain for my cousin's wedding at the end of August. In between all of that, I'll be barbecuing, hanging out at the Russian River in Northern California, possibly lounging on the beach in Southern California and chilling in the pool in the back yard. I've got so much fun stuff planned for this summer, after this work project is finished, it's gonna be the best summer I've had.

The Old Firm Casuals

Here is a band I'm playing drums in, there's an interview here. Casey from Look Back and Laugh/Never Healed/No Tolerance is playing bass and Lars from Rancid/The Bastards is on guitar and vocals. We've got a 7" coming up on Oi! the boat records and some other releases coming up. Most news comes from the facebook page if you're interested. New releases and tour info coming soon.