Cuts and Abrasions

          Rather unexpectedly, I found myself working 9-4 on a local artist's workshop after my father's friend hooked me up. First some background. Said artist is married to the heiress of the Livingston fortune, and his current project is ambitious. Though he usually works with stone, on this piece a large array of stainless steel bars are to be arranged in a fashion resembling a blooming flower. The steel alone went for a cool $27,000. The bars, of which I believe there are 36, first have to be polished to a mirror-like finish. This is where I come in. The bars are several feet long and about an inch to an inch and a half thick, and are tremendously difficult to polish. In order to do so, my coworkers and I are using belt sanders ($800 each) and cycling through 7 different belt-coarseness levels (40, 80, 120, brown, purple, blue, grey) and two different polishing compounds. The work is agonizingly slow, so slow that it's sometimes difficult to tell if progress is being made at all. Often one has to go back and cycle back through coarser sander belts due to previously hidden imperfections in the metal. All in all, it can take a week to finish polishing one bar, and there are 22 left to finish. I should also mention that I'm on my feet all day and constantly breathing in airborne steel dust because the respirators proved too unwieldy and glasses-fogging to be practical. Small note: There was a box in the workshop labeled "United Abrasives," and I imagined an organization by, for and of thoroughly irritating people. I think this is a great idea for an NGO. If I end up working at Red Onion as planned, I might be holding down two jobs, which worries me to a moderate extent.
          Immediately after I showered and scrubbed off all the steel residue on my arms and head, I went with my brothers and mother to our hairdresser Tammy's house. She has a little salon there, and Ian, Ryan and I all got cuts. Mine is particularly severe, which will doubtlessly last about four days. Soon after I returned home, Nick and Tim picked me up for band practice. We chilled out at Tim's, played music for a little while, and then watched Odd Future videos and Tim tooling around in Minecraft. I have developed a considerable desire to purchase Minecraft for myself, and may do so quite soon. Until then, I'll be practicing in TF2 with my newly renamed Scattergun: "The Boston Massacre".
          Quotes of the day:
"She looks like a leather belt!" - Tammy
"I'm some jabroni with a guitar." - Nick
"I don't want none of them white picket fence lookin' bitches." - Tim
...
Nick: "Nascar!"
Tim: "Woohooooo!"