Month: November 2008

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Swampin’

A little work update…

This week at the nursery has been okay so far. Half days there really suits me. Did I mention that I’m on half days there now? Probably not. The reasons have nothing to do with the nursery. More on that below.

Monday and today, I was swamping. Best I can figure, this job was so named because it is cold, wet, and unpleasant. I’d previously done this job, but it was much more acceptable this week. What it entails is bending down to pick up 20lb boxes of trees from slats, passing them to someone down a line, then loading them onto a trailer. Repeat ad nauseum (99 boxes of trees on the slats, 99 boxes of trees! Pick one up, pass it around, 98 boxes of trees on the slats!). I had a really good crew Monday and today, all ladies who go at my pace and have comparable strength, so it was not strenuous like the time I did it with the crew of three men. In fact, if I could have this crew all the time, I would prefer to do this job until my last day. The work is positively mindless and it’s easy to zone out, so time flies by.

Yesterday, I was put on the packing line, something I’ve decided I was just not born to do. I have very little manual dexterity and small hands, which means that I can either work fast or I can work neat, I can’t do both. Until 11, I was put on a slower line and was able to keep up fine, but then I was put on a faster one for my last hour. The supervisor only got one chance to get on my case since I told her that I know I have no business being on the line and that if she doesn’t like my being there, she should take it up with her supervisor. HMPH.

When I started there, I was told the job would run till about December 15th and now I’m hearing December 22nd. There’s no way I’m staying there that long. Tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be going back down to the employment office to see if there’s anything else I could be doing. I can’t believe that on Friday I will have been there for four full weeks!!!

As for The Other Job, if this camp hosting position is typical, then I am never camp hosting again. I’ve written and rewritten and re-rewritten posts on this subject, but I can’t find the right balance between pure emotion and objective reporting. Let’s just say when I was hired the manager knew that I’m not retired.

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Baking

I don’t know why people make such a fuss about baking in an RV oven. It’s really not that different from baking in an electric oven. Sure, it’s a bit more difficult to gauge the temperature with gas than with electric, but you can get pretty close and then use visual and olfactory clues to tell you when the food is done.

Today being Sunday, we’re having a social and the theme is ‘afternoon tea’ (because, as the guest activities coordinator, I said so *g*). I’m bringing fresh baked tea biscuits and jam:

biscuitsforsocial

I make two kinds of biscuits. One is a camping recipe that requires a minimal amount of prep work and then there is this one that requires kneading and rolling out, always a fun activity in a tiny kitchen with no counter space. I wound up just using the top of the stove, with the covering board laid on top of it. I suppose I could have used the dinette, but I try to restrict my messy kitchen activities to the kitchen area… which is really quite a farce in an RV. 🙂

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Better Days I’ve Known…

It’s a good thing that today is a stat and that the nursery is closed, otherwise I would have quit last night.

Yesterday morning was fine. The afternoon, however, was a nightmare. We changed tree types and bundle specifications. I was just getting the hang of making bundles of ten trees and was just about able to keep up the pace. Bundles of fifteen trees require a different pattern and the trees are a lot bigger, so I can’t pick them up with one hand. As the afternoon progressed, I got more and more behind and the line supervisor yelled my name more and more, sometimes across the harvest room, and more shrilly every time. It was humiliating. I was obviously doing the best I could, was obviously painfully aware of how inadequate I was, and obviously trying to master in one afternoon a skill the line manager had been working on for years. The 80$ I made yesterday was definitely not worth being belittled like that.

We’ll see how things go tomorrow. I suspect I won’t be put on a line again. If I am and I get yelled at just one time, I’ll be advising the production manager that I won’t be back on Thursday.

*scans the ‘want ads’ hopefully*

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Sunday Social

Every Sunday afternoon, we have a ‘social’ here at the park. Everyone brings in a light(ish) snack and we gab for a few hours. For someone on a tight budget, it’s a really good investment: spend about 5$ on a snack and come home stuffed to the gills! 😀

It’s a nice way to get to know everyone. Last week, I really did not enjoy myself until the last half hour or so because everyone was talking about retirement and their grand-kids, so there were no conversations to join. Today, I knew a lot more people and they came to talk to me about Quebec, what I do in the park, their jobs, their kids etc. Since I wasn’t ‘on duty’ today, I had planned to pop in for an hour at the most, but ended up staying till the end.

Last week, I brought in a large plate full of brownies (store bought) and went home with most of them. So, today I came with a very small quantity of Nanaimo bars. Lo and behold, it was the favourite dessert of half the people there! I should have known that they’re a BC-favourite based on their name! The manager came with BC crab dip and another had a BC salmon dip. Mmm! This really is the promised land!

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Similkameen Valley

I thought of spending the day doing the loop from Oliver to Osoyoos to Keremeos to Penticton to Oliver, but the crummy weather and pea soup fog deterred me. I wound up turning towards home soon as I hit Keremeos and taking a shortcut back. You look at my pics of the gorgeous Similkameen Valley, but let me warn you that this is my most boring travel post ever. Except for the second to last picture of the set….