Friday Report

I like to tell stone quarriers that we are 100 years after market, but this is
not always the case.

Needed: precast stretcher.  This business of making a fake extension to a fake
material, resembling limestone, is perplexing to me.

A precast fabricator in NJ, I don't even know their name, has decided that
whenever their customers run into problems that their customers should track
me down and harass me on the phone.  I'm not exactly sure if I am happy or sad
over this.

On one project we have been getting paid good money to do very little work,
unless you consider seven 5-minute site visits to meet the Modern architect
work.  Modern architects seem to be in a hurry, particularly in a hurry to
proclaim a solution to the problem without listening, act as if you are a
stand in despite contributing 4 hrs. of travel time (2 hrs. for each
participant from Apple), and have no concept of the limits of the composite
patching art.  With the pressure of cold weather approaching we are beginning
to get through to his consciousness, he finally asked us to fax something to
his office and was kind enough to give us a business card with his name on it.
We did not think to ask for a signature.  I predict this guy is going to be
famous.

The other project, for which I had to get lost this morning in the hinterlands
of Queens, a Borough of New York, I have been getting for the last two weeks
frantic desperate pleas to assist Mr. Audio.  Mr. Audio has a very thick
accent and is difficult for me to understand on the phone.  I suspect he is
first generation Italian masoning in America, and therefore he hits a soft
spot on my assistance meter.  Unfortunately, his directions to the site
contributed to my being lost and I got stuck on the LIE for 1-1/2 hours
earlier in the morning with an impromptu detouring of the police investigation
of an accident.  It sounds so ominous on the radio.  The geese flying north
over Long Island, and the freely moving helicopter scoping the investigation
scene, seemed to be mocking us as I prayed for a urinal.  Mr. Audio's problem
is that the subcontract mason, possibly from Uganda, for whatever reason, cut
the precast too short and left 2" wide joints between the units which he then
tried to fake up with a real tuckpoint job using store bought mortar.  The
blemish remained hidden as the work progressed until Mr. Audio decided it was
time to clean down he masonry.  The fakery did not work, and now I was being
asked to do a better tuckpoint as the expert.  I hate this expert crap and
remember when apprenticing to an Italian mason that I thought he was the
expert.  I told Mr. Audio up front that patching would not work and that he
should consider cutting back the face of the units and slipping in a dutchman
from a new precast unit.  This seems to be out-of-frame thinking to a
production oriented mason.  After visiting the site and seeing the workers at
work I can understand his panic.  He told me the Parks Dept. were jerking his
chain.  Imagine saying that with a thick accent.  Does this mean I am buying
into his game?  There were two guys working and two guys supervising the task
of trimming structural steel rafters with an oxy/acet torch.  At close range
they were blowing slag all over the ceramic tile, precast, and brick.  A nice
mess to clean up, which I did not volunteer for as the expert.  All the joints
on the precast were smeared with Portland.  And, yes, the precast units were
too short.  I explained to the two supervisors that there was no easy solution
to the problem and that I would advise Mr. Audio accordingly.  They both
begged that I not mention them in my letter.  One was Mr. Audio's brother Vox,
and the other, Ramsan Dingoop, I think was angling for future employment. I
love NY.

Rudolph Guiliani, our Mayor, now wants to ticket people who spit out their
gum.  BP rules!

Two homeless individuals are suing NYC for coitus interruptus on the subway
tracks.  This is not fiction.  Though the train stopped prior to reaching
their mattress they claim that they were injured when the train interrupted
them.  The lawyers are saying that despite their being homeless they should be
able to have sex somewhere without interference.

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