God's blessings to you all. I know it has been more than a week since I have posted anything, but it has been a very busy couple of weeks. The first couple of weeks of work are off to a great start. I have been mostly working in the shop servicing equipment, changing oil and greasing everything. The state's budget is out of money. In fact every budget the state has is out of money until the new financial year starts July 1st. So until then we are just doing little jobs like picking up tire shreds and dead animals off of the roads and picking musk thistles out of the ditches. I have spent two days picking up rubber and animals off of the interstate. We also had to fix two signs that strong wind blew over. I took some pictures of our equipment and some of the jobs I have been doing. I forgot to take pictures of the signs, and do not have any of the thistles. I will post the ones I do have below.
Other than work, I have been spending time with friends and helping my buddy Bill build his garage. Yesterday we spent nine hours in the sun, putting roof trusses on the framed walls that he and his father-in-law already had built. The garage is 45 by 34, which is a pretty good size building, and the trusses were 36 feet long and 8 feet tall. They were heavy, and my job was one of the ground guys carrying the trusses from the pile to the building and manually lifting them up to the guys on the scaffolding who were nailing them up. Today we spent another 8 hours in the sun sheeting the entire roof. My job on the first half was to lift the sheets of plywood up to the guys on the roof. Then once we had the first side tacked up, and they moved on to the other side, I went back with the nail gun and actually nailed the sheets down. I had to do all the seems by hand, and then did the rest with the nail gun. By the time I finished that side they were done sheeting the second side so I did the same thing to that entire side. It was not difficult work but walking up and back down the roof twenty-four times per side to make sure the sheets were nailed to every truss wore my legs out. Plus all the hammering and walking on the slant of the roof used many muscles that aren't used to being used. Needless to say I am a bit stiff and sore. Good thing I know work should be pretty easy for the most part again this week.
My thoughts for the day will most likely not be as good this summer since I do not have classes to learn new and interesting things. However, I still want to keep them going. My thought this week is time for God. Not only have I been very busy already these first couple of weeks, but my entire summer is going to be very busy too. I will constantly be on the go or working. Not only am I busy, but working on the interstate I find my self watching traffic a lot. Just sitting there eating lunch on the side of the road in the pick up, I can watch all the cars, trucks, and semis speeding down the road. We have quite a bit of construction in our area right now as they are re-doing the interstate, and that backs traffics up as they funnel down to one lane. This only puts people in a bigger hurry to get on down the road. Watching these people in their rushing vehicles makes me think how often we forget to make time for God. Summer is busy for everyone and I think most often the time we find ourselves farthest from our devotional lives and prayer lives. I am trying my hardest to still make time to spend in the Word, and find myself praying every chance I get. I try to make my conversation with Him a priority in order to make sure I keep Him in my life and my faith strong. I pray that all of you never find yourselves too busy for your Lord. Life goes by fast, but it is still important to take time in Word and prayer. No matter how busy life gets, make time for Him, because He never gets too busy for you. All Praise be to Him who is always there listening and protecting us even when we sin by not finding time for Him in our lives.
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please keep our faith strong in each one of us. Give us Your guiding Spirit to help us find time for You. Let us hear Your Word and take time to speak personally to You through the gift of prayer. Thank you for always having time for us, and forgiving us when we have gone astray. We pray in the name of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
This is our motor grader. I have not actually got to use this, but I did drive it around the yard for a while before I serviced it. It was pretty fun playing with all the levers.
This is our brand new truck. It is a bad picture because it was parked in cold storage where there is not much room. Most of our trucks are pretty old, rusty, and beat up. So this new shiny one really looks good next to them.
This is another one of our dump trucks/ snow plows. This one is in the shop because Corey and I were using it to haul a piece of equipment called a sheep's foot back to Lincoln when the air brakes decided to spring a leak. Luckily, we were parked when we discovered the leak.
This is our old loader. I love driving it, but it is very old and worn out compared to the new one we have. The new one hasn't been in the yard much because we are using it to load dirt that we were hauling. So I do not have a picture of it yet.
I spent an hour and a half driving this beautiful beast from Utica back to the shop in Seward. It is only about seventeen miles by interstate from where it was to the shop, but I had to take back roads which took much longer. However, I did not care and enjoyed the drive.
This is our disk. It hardly ever gets used. However, a farmer decided to plant his beans in the ditch on the state's property. They put in new Right of Way markers that show exactly where the state's property ends. The farmer intentionally drove out and around the markers and kept on planting. So our boss had me get the disk all fixed up and ready so one of us guys can go disk up all the planted beans that are on our property.
This is the biggest fix I had to do to it. It is where the hydraulic hooks up to the actual disk in order to raise and lower it. The shop that borrowed it from us had an old hitch pin where the bolt is and they wired it on to keep it in place. I put a new bolt in but my boss wanted spaces in it. However, as you can see the hydraulic mount is all bent up and not in very good shape. So I spent a couple hours fabricating the metal spacers to fit the bent up mount.
This is the beauty I get to use to mow the yard. That job happens more frequently now that we are pretty slow.
This is called an ASV, All Surface Vehicle. It is basically a glorified skid-steer. It is broke down right now so that's why I had to take a picture of it in the shop. I will try to take more pictures of equipment and try to remember to take pictures of the jobs we do so you can see what kind of stuff I am doing.
This is Bill's garage. I did not take a picture of it sheeted, but we will be putting on the tar paper tomorrow after work, and then shingling it Saturday. I will try to remember to take pictures then.
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