Yes. No. Maybe. I Don't Know. Could You Repeat The Question?

The weather has been pretty horrible lately. But here is one brightside.

My boss is a tough old grizzly bear of a man. His way of encouraging you to work harder or faster is to say things like, "Do you need me to do that for you? I would have had that done by now," and so on. It doesn't bother me because I understood his personality from the first day I worked with him. The bottom line is that you aren't really ever allowed to complain about anything to him.

So when the wind was blowing all directions and the rain came pouring down yesterday we were standing in a four foot deep trench I had dug, heating up some PVC pipe with a little blowtorch.

It was seriously like being in the shower with your clothes on. We were soaked and dripping from head to toe. I sat there smiling like I didn't even realize it had started to rain and finally he snapped and said, "I think this work will be waiting for us when we come back next time. I'm going home."

So even though the weather was bad, I got sent home early with pay. I would stand in the rain for that any day. He also told me he had got us some inside work for the next day.

Today, we were moving some equipment in at a hospital. The equipment was bigger than the door to the building. The thing was heavy but we got it in by laying it down on its side. But it involved standing in the rain and snow for over an hour. I said, "I thought you got us some INSIDE work today."

But later we did go do some work at some other businesses that was inside so he wasn't lying.

After digging trenches for a week and working in the rafters of a warehouse that had never been cleaned once in the 50 years that people have been welding there, I gave up on trying to keep my sweatshirt clean.

I heard that the word "Khaki" is an old persian word meaning "dust." And today I realized that khaki is the color that ALL clothes turn when you never wash them. I have a hypothesis that if you look at homeless people from a hundred yards away they will all have a khaki tinge to them.

Today, my boss and I pulled into a parking lot on 4th South in downtown Salt Lake and we saw some shabby guys running to a coffee shop. They wore ragged work coveralls and winter coats and hats and they were very dirty. They each carried a small guitar case and a bunch of other stuff. It looked like they were carrying everything they owned.

My boss pointed at them and asked, "Homeless?"

I said, "No. They're just musicians."