qpmarl blog

I'm not getting enough sleep. I went bowling Saturday night from 10:30pm to 1:00am. They were waiting for us to finish so they could close the place.

Still working hard on the giant waterslide.

I spent Saturday night and Sunday at Marie's playing with Maggie, hanging out, and getting some much needed sleep.

Trying to actually sleep on my days off is pretty hard with my roommates/coworkers around. They all like to stay up late and get up early and it's impossible to get any sleep.

Maggie is pretty funny and very smart. It's hard to believe that she's not quite 2 years old yet. She's almost talking in complete sentences and it's amazing how much must be going on in her little head. When I took her to the park, there was a football and a little stuffed animal that someone had left there. After riding the swing and the slide a few times, she wanted to play with the football and toy. First she took the toy to the swing, put it in (the small child's swing), and pushed it a few times. When it fell out, she picked it up and put it back in. Afterwards, she took the football for a ride down the slide. Then she danced on the picknick tables for a while. I had to stop her when she got down on her knees and started biting the table - the table is filthy. On the walk home, she got down and wanted to bite the concrete curb. She almost always insists on walking the entire 3 blocks to the park and will start to squirm if anyone tries to carry her (because she walks quite slowly).

It was a good weekend. I got caught up on my sleep and got to spend some time with Marie and Maggie which is hard to do durring the work week. I definitely needed the sleep - I was feeling absolutely drained for the past few weeks.

Been working pretty hard this week and last. We are finally installing the slide. Up until a week ago, we were just doing pre-assembly and not putting anything in place. So now the slide's starting to take shape.

The slide we're building is a 65 foot bowl with more than 100 ft of tube into it. The bowl is what we're currently working on and we don't have any of the tube in place yet. The bowl itself is nearly completed.

Not much happening: Working, etc.

I rode a giant slingshot for my birthday lastnight, then ate fajitas at Chili's and they gave me a free desert because it was my birthday. Then I woke up in the middle of the night with a gall bladder attack - probably caused by a combination of the sour cream on the fajitas and the icecream on the desert. So I didn't get much sleep last night - I felt like I was going to die - like I do with every gall bladder attack.

Sunday night (the last night Thomas was in town) Marie had a birthday party for me at her house - it was cool with party hats and everything. Scott's mom and sister were there also. Scott's mom is pretty cool. Maggie (Marie's nearly 2 year old daughter) had a lot of fun. She's really smart and funny - and pretty advanced for her age.

So it was a pretty good birthday.

There's a cable system for wakeboarding and kneeboarding at the water park where we're building the slide. The lifeguards ride wakeboards every day after the park closes (at 5 pm). We talked to them today, and we might be able to ride it tomorrow after work. That'll be cool.

Left Orlando on the 3rd to build a slide in Detroit; worked a few 12+ hour days there after driving the 19 hours straight. Stopped in Atlanta to work on another slide, what was supposed to be a quick 1 day job turned into 4 and some guys are still there working on it.

But I'm back in Orlando. It's starting to feel like home now.

I've been working so much lately that I am just totally wiped out right now. I fell asleep on the drive home (no, I wasn't driving). Actually, I fell asleep 2 minutes into the 40 minute drive and didn't wake up until we were almost home.

It doesn't help that I didn't get much sleep last weekend.