I’ve settled in nicely to my new home! My room is perfectly
comfortable, I love the people I work with, the project we’re working on, and
how every day is something new. Because some of the lab is fishing in North
Carolina tomorrow (Monday), we had A TON of work to do last week. I love this
job because there’s absolutely no “typical” day.
Some of the people from my lab went down to North Carolina
to go tuna fishing, to hopefully transport some up the coast to fill the tank. I’m
not in North Carolina this week because I haven’t learned to drive standard
yet, I’m the newest student in the lab, and there’s still a lot to do up here
to get ready if they bring fish back from North Carolina.
So before they come back, we had to essentially redo a
20,000 gallon tank. That required draining it (Wednesday), scrubbing it and
scraping vertical strips off the walls (Thursday), sanding down and taping
around where wanted to repaint the new vertical stripes (Friday), and then
figuring out what to do when we were unable to use paint. We decided to use
boat lettering, as that’s waterproof and should last quite a while. So after
wiping away all the dust from the sanding that I did by hand on Friday, the
boat lettering strips arrived at about 8:00 on Friday night. Because we had to
get things done, we started applying them right then. To stick them on, you
first have to wipe the fiberglass with rubbing alcohol, and then stick the
strip to the wall, scrape out any air bubbles, use a heat gun to get it to adhere
to the wall better, and then peel off the backing. It took SO long to do. The purpose
of these vertical stripes is so that the fish doesn’t run into the walls of the
tank. If there are markings on the walls then they realize there’s a boundary
there and they won’t hit it.
Also on Friday, I was drilling, siliconing, installing
tubing, transporting tanks between the lab and the box truck…. I absolutely
love what I’m doing because I’m constantly working with my hands, problem
solving when something we build isn’t quite right, and it challenges me. I don’t
think I could ever be bored.
Cross your fingers that they catch some fish this week!
Saturday my friend Mike came up from Groton to go diving. We
went diving out at Fort Wetherill, a state park in Jamestown. It used to take about
an hour to get to, but it only took me about ten minutes. Even though the
visibility was bad (only about 6 feet), the dives were good! I got tangled up
in some fishing line on the second dive but Mike cut the line and I untangled
myself. I was trying to pick it up so that divers wouldn’t get caught up in it,
because it’s a really popular dive spot. I even saw another Mike from Seaview
Scuba teaching a class there. At night we tried Gregg’s Place, an awesome
restaurant with both good food and amazing desserts (there’s a separate bakery
at the front of the store). I’m really liking figuring out some of these local
places!
Onto the start of another week…
No comments:
Post a Comment