Today was a lot easier than the past 3 days.
Maybe it was the
fog that didn't
burn off till
late afternoon. Everyone seemed mellow and
happy. As if not being able to see far ahead
makes people more content with where they
are. Marty, Mike, and I drove all over town in
Possum (the ReStore's flatbed Isuzu truck).
First to a 3-floor office building on the Queen
Anne side of the ship canal where we took a desk,
5 tall metal file cabinets, and 2 faux wood lateral
ones. Up and down to the third floor several times
in the small carpeted elevator. I knocked over a
recently watered pointsettia by the entrance; it
spilled. The toilet combo was 175. We brought
the load to the lot and transferred it to the 40-foot
trailer bound for
the
mothership in Bellingham.
Then off to
West Seattle, 99 south in thick fog. The
cargo cranes weren't doing much. I asked if anyone
had ever seen them in action. Mike said, Once. And at
the time I thought: This is the first time I've ever seen
one doing something. At a
quaint old
shack just off
Alki, we wrestled an 8-foot-long stout old nailed-in
kitchen cabinet off the
wall, took the bathroom sink,
some maple trim, and hardware such as coat hooks
and drawerpulls. This job is funny--one moment you're
battling nails with cat's paws, prybars, hammers, and
sawzall, the next unscrewing delicate ceramic knobs.
From there we went up City View--which even on a low
visibility day lived up to its name--to rescue some large
modern windows from the frivolous remodel of
an ob-
scenely huge McMansion. Two out of shape older men,
one brown, one pale, stopped on the sidewalk and said
hello over the hedge. Hello, I said. Hello, the brown man
said again. Hi, I said, thinking: Are these neighbors?
Are they insane? Is this guy hitting on me? It was the
homeowners, suspecting we were stealing the windows
they were throwing out. After we explained we'd arranged
it with their contractor Peter, they said OK and walked
away. After that,
back to Ballard,
unload,
lunch, then
finally to the Segway to disassemble a large interior arbor
"middle earth" party prop and large hobbit bar made from
salvaged 2x4s, wood panel doors, and lustrous bleacher
benches taken from a school. Today I really love my job. |
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