Today I went straight to North Portland in the morning. Much easier drive than to Beaverton from my house. When I got there the architect Hiromi Ogawa (I think), Ian the home owner, and Jeff were wandering around and talking about the project. Mychal and Esteban in the other room were complaining about how much noise they were making and joked with me about how we needed ear plugs to block out the jabber. Interesting dynamic. The newly laid floor needed to be covered with this heavy brown paper to protect it while we did the trim (i.e. "trimmed out") the whole extension.

My job was to use the lady of the house's Swiffer to get the dust off the floor before the paper was taped down. I did some taping too.

After the taping and after architect, home owner and boss man had left, we started to do some real work. Esteban touched up the dry wall in the master bath with some "mud." Mychal and I assembled an Ikea cabinent/sink for the daughter's bathroom. Something like this:

Brought me back to the days of building legos with extensive yet not quite adequate instruction booklets.

When we went out to lunch a hilarious yet vulgar conversation ensued. If you think you might be offended, don't read on.

Mychal, upon seeing the toilet paper in the pocket on the back of the front passenger seat exclaims to Esteban,

"Esteban, he's got toilet paper back here, so you can go poopy!" Esteban laughs and asks me,

"Why you have that Eddie?" then to Mychal, "I think it's so he can clean up when he's done with girls." Back to me, "Eddie, how many girls you have sleep in this car."

"35," I respond untruthfully.

"35?!" Esteban exclaims, "this guy's a Mexican." He continues, "18 and this guy's already got 35 girls. But you got to beat my record, I got 80."

"Very impressive," I respond.

Mychal asks me if I want to go to Mexico with them for two months next year. I say I'd very much like to.

"Two months," Mychal says, "35 to 135."

I don't know if he's serious about me going to Mexico with them. It seems like he really is, in fact they both really are for a while. A good portion of the time I spend with Esteban and Mychal I can't tell if they're jolking around or being serious. Esteban is happily married and has a daughter. He is not the philandering hound dog that Mychal often makes him out to be. Mychal never brings beers to work. By now I've figured out that whenever one of them says they're going to do that, they're joking.

We got lunch at a little Mexican food cart on Killingsworth. I got two tacos and a burrito. So did Mychal. Esteban just got a burrito. As it turns out Esteban had also brought a bowl of his wife's home-cooked tacos, a big bowl and so I probably had about 7 tacos in addition to my burrito for lunch. Esteban forced the last two on me. At that time Esteban had also anounced that whoever, between Mychal and I, spoke english first (instead of spanish), was buying lunch tomorrow. We exchanged insults in spanish and argued over who had eaten more tacos. Good stuff.

That afternoon we worked on IKEA cabinents for the master bath, which is going to be painted tonight. Esteban started trimming out doors. I finally had to go, but definitely a fun day with Mychal and Esteban.

Tool of the Day:  Hitachi Sliding Compound Miter Saw (with laser). I didn't personally do much with this saw today other than set up a vaccum to collect the dust from it. However, I've learned how to use this bad boy over the last few weeks. Today Esteban was using it to cut trim to the lenght he needed. When wood is placed under the blade a laser line shows where the saw will cut the wood. It's a "compound" because in addition to it's abilit to rotate on a horizontal plane for different angled cuts, it can also rotate on a verticle plane, meaning the blade's angle with the ground can change (if that makes sense). Bad ass saw.