That's What I'm Talking About!

Now, that's what I'm talking about!  

After weeks of ice, rain, and dreariness, today was just what I needed.  It was even warm enough after work that I was able to open the French doors and windows and get some fresh air into the house.  I almost --almost -- went to the Lee Tartt Nature preserve after work to walk some trails, but I didn't.  

I came home instead and piddled a bit in the back yard because it was too nice to stay inside.  I even got the ladder out and raked some of the leaves and sticks off of the top of my old chicken coops, then added all of that to my compost pile.  The big one, not the tumbler.  I'll probably hold off on adding stuff to the tumbler until it gets warmer outside.  

It was even warm enough I put all my plants out onto the back porch for some fresh air and sunshine.  It's not supposed to dip below freezing again for at least a week, so I might just leave them all out there.  I'm sure they're about starved for light about now. 

I really need to get someone out to tear all that down and re-build it.  I've been saying for a while that I wanted to turn it all into an open porch type thing, but the trick around here is finding someone who is both trustworthy and affordable.  The ones I can afford can't be trusted, and the ones who can be trusted I can't afford.  And yes, I do know this from experience. 

In other news, I got to work bright and early this morning and noticed one of the sub-brazers wasn't there.  Another brazer told me she had a knot -- and I'm assuming she was talking about a knotted up muscle -- somewhere in her neck or shoulder area that had been hurting her so badly she was literally crying yesterday.  She'd said she might go to the doctor about it, so maybe that's where she was today. 

Anyway, I told the girl I was talking to about how I'd almost gone home myself yesterday, because my back was hurting so badly I thought I was going to throw up.  She mentioned a shoulder and arm that was hurting, and another brazer came over and we all stood there talking about our aches and pains, and sharing stretches and such to try to help ease them. 

Yes, the topic of those Salon Pas type pads did come up.  I've already added them to my shopping list, but I'm telling you, I sure was wishing I had some Saturday night when I was in such pain.  The issue of how to put them onto my own back came up and my one coworker said, "You can bring them up here and [Other Coworker] will put them on for you!''

I guess when you work with people that long, they really do become family.  

The rest of the day passed largely without incident.  Though my back was still spasming, and the arm swinging thing does seem to help, the spasms seemed less intense than they have been, and didn't seem to last as long, so maybe my muscles are toughening up.  That's the whole issue, I think.  Between Christmas break and the ice storm, we'd all became couch potatoes.   Now that we're back at work, we're having to use muscles that had turned to mush during all that time off. 

Another thing I thought of was that it's been so cold in there lately --usually around 64-65 in the mornings -- and with a fan blowing on me all the time to boot, I haven't wanted to drink any water, because I've just been too cold.  I think I've let myself get too dehydrated, so I've been making a concerted effort to drink more water despite it being freezing at my work station.  

By the way, I think I know why Old Supervisor might have gotten fired.  I think he pointed out.  This is just speculation on my part, though.  I know he was salaried, but they're still expected to show up at work on time.  Old Supervisor came in late every single day.  They'd already talked to him once about it, and for the next week, he came in on time.  The week after that, he was back to his old ways -- not coming in until 15-20 minutes after the start of the shift.  As I said, it's just speculation, but it does make sense. 

New Supervisor, who will from this point on be known simply as Supervisor, came over today and asked why the conveyors were we put our finished work are so far away.   They used to be a lot closer until one of the production managers decided we didn't need such long conveyors and took half of them away.  I also saw him measuring how high our rolling tables go and comparing them to how high the conveyors are.  

Maybe he wants to try to move them closer and lower them, and to that I say, good luck. We've been begging them to lower those things ever since they put them up.  Gung Ho (remember him?) even put in a work order, but the man over maintenance said he wasn't going to do it because he didn't consider it that big of a deal.  Tell that to all of us women who have to pick those heavy bins up all day every day. 

But that's their attitude towards safety out there.  They don't care about employee safety.  They just care about giving the appearance of caring about employee safety out there.  If they really cared, a lot of things would be different. 

Same thing with quality.  They were out there complaining about our leak rate going up here lately, but they don't want to hear that it's because we've gotten a lot of oily and greasy parts.  That would require that they actually solve a problem, and Lord knows that's the last thing they want to do.  Heh, before the ice storm Old Supervisor actually came out and asked me if I'd noticed it was harder to get the rod to melt with it being so cold outside. 

You'd be proud of me, I was good.  I didn't mention that our brazing rod melts at 1425° degrees Fahrenheit, so I don't think it being 65° in the plant instead of 95° would make a hill of beans difference.  I just said no, and pointed out the oil all over the header that turns into a sticky brown gunk when it dries, but they aren't going to do anything about that, because that would require them to fix something over in Tubing.  And that would take effort and it's so much easier just to scream at the brazers.

How long until I can retire?