I had another eight hour shift today and it was so much more pleasant than yesterday’s as the colleague I worked with created a much more relaxed work environment. It’s still not a job that I’ll ever be enamored with, but a lot of my red flags were taken down today. What I dislike the most is that the work is much more about cleaning and making coffee than it is about cashiering. Having spent the summer cleaning in Dawson, I’d really rather not do that all winter, too. But now that I know that every shift won’t be like yesterday’s I feel I can breathe a little and just go with the flow until something else shows up.

One thing I am very worried about is getting a caffeine overdose. We serve organic fair trade Kicking Horse coffee and grind the beans freshly before every pot. The shiny beans are so fresh they are dripping with coffee oil. This coffee is good, better than Starbucks, maybe even the best drip coffee I’ve ever had. And it’s free for staff. As long as I bring my own travel mug, I can have as much of this amazing brew as I can stomach. It was hard not to partake tonight since I worked from 2PM to 10PM and try to avoid caffeine after noon! Tomorrow, though, I work 10AM to 2PM, so I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to soak up a couple of cups. 🙂 Kicking Horse’s dark roast has a great name, Kick Ass (LOL!), and a cup of it sure is going to make early mornings go by more smoothly.

Tomorrow, I will be working three hours with a colleague I haven’t met yet, and then one hour with the owner. That should be interesting. I’m looking forward to getting my schedule for the next few weeks so that I can start to get into a routine of sorts. There’s apparently a lot of Campbell River for me to explore! 🙂

I haven’t had to use an alarm clock since early July nor have I worked a full nine hour day with no breaks in recent memory. When I got home tonight, I thought ‘Today was brutal’ and then I remember my first day at the nursery, which put things into perspective. 🙂

Issues cropped up within two minutes of arrival that got my red flag going, but I’m not sure yet if they are employee or management related. So, I’m grateful to have a job, but day one made me eager to keep exploring my options.

Well, I start a full-time job as a cashier at a gas station on Tuesday. It’s five minutes from home on foot.

Sounds great, right?

Let’s just say that minimum wage in BC, an absurd eight dollars an hour, only pays the bills. And I have to start at 5:30AM for at least one training session. I tend to go to bed at 3AM when I’m following my circadian clock, so I expect to be rather groggy on Tuesday. There’s no way I’ll be able to get myself on an 9PM bedtime routine by tomorrow night!

I’m thrilled that I’ll have money coming in this month, but I’m still looking for something that will pay a living wage. I cannot believe that there are people in BC who make only eight dollars an hour. I can’t remember the last time I only made eight dollars an hour. But beggars can’t be choosers and considering the employment situation in Campbell River, I know I’m very lucky. At least, my fixed expenses are covered. Now, to find the extra income stream to cover renos and all that gas I’ll need to make it back to Dawson in the spring.

The pattern holding, I awoke to a bright blue sky and warm temperatures today. Fortified by a pancake breakfast, courtesy of Croft, I set to work tackling the two biggest items on my to-do list: replacing some rocks in a retaining wall and then doing a bit of painting. Neither task was particularly onerous and I was done in about two hours.

A task Croft had to do that he didn’t mention in his latest post was to move the car they don’t take to Mexico into an out of the way spot. I couldn’t watch as he did this, even though I knew that the worst case scenario was that he would owe me a new paint job. 🙂

tight fit!!!

They should be leaving tomorrow and then I’ll be able to start my own projects. I’ve got some pretty grand ideas, but they all hinge on a tiny, not-so-insignificant detail: finding a job. 🙂

It’s raining again. I think I’ll need to get used to this. 🙂

Yesterday, I dug a big hole and moved a bamboo tree from a planter to said hole. I have to say that working with bamboo felt rather… exotic. I remember seeing bamboo for the first time in the ‘wild’ when I was in San Francisco.

All this rain isn’t helping much with drying the caulking on the outdoor planters we tried to fix the other day, nor is it conducive to doing the paint job I promised would be completed by the time Croft and Norma get back from Mexico. All in good time!

Even with the weather having been the way it is, most of the outside jobs are done. Yesterday, I moved the last of the dirt from the trunk of Croft’s car to the garden planters and helped Norma spread it around. I have to say that bags of dirt get lighter the more you handle them. 🙂

Today, I’m just hanging out and catching up on my online stuff. I was going to go job hunting, but the universe decided that today is not a good day for doing so. I spent two hours troubleshooting my printer only to run out of both toner and paper before dropping (and breaking) my stapler!!!