A Battle with an Immortal Wasp and an Ice Chest
The morning packed some punches. Before going to work, a wasp entered my room. I took a notebook and smacked it down to the ground. Then I squished the notebook on top of it. The wasp was still not dead. I put my foot on the notebook to apply more pressure, but the wasp did not die. I ended up grabbing a plastic shopping bag, wrapped the wasp with it, put in the trash, and tied the trash closed.
Then as I was driving on the highway to work, an ice chest slide out from a truck with it’s hatch down. The truck was far ahead me and in the left lane while I was in the right lane. The ice chest slide into my lane. I was far back enough to slow down, turn on my emergency lights, and come to a stop on the road. When it was clear, I got out of my car and moved the empty ice chest way off to the side of the road. A dangerous task, but it had to be done because that chest would’ve caused a wreck.
Then at work, it was two people in the lab day. Of course, we were busy. I stayed over an hour extra to help Eric, the closer, get supplies reclaimed. Yeah, that was my adventure filled day.
Read More
Call time. She’s dead.
Bill stepped into the lab. We were short staffed, short on hours, and over-packed with patients. We all kept our cool. We had been through worse. It was Saturday. The weather was humid outside. To tip the day even worse, Emma went down.
“What’s the status Doctor Spielman?” Bill asked.
“Not good, sir. We’re in the process of transplanting the belt from Arthur to Emma.”
“And how’s that coming along?”
“Well,” John stepped in, “not good. Nathan said this would be simple, but it’s anything but.”
John rambled on about the problem when from behind the service window, Dana delivered a message. “Dennis, diagnostics is on line one.”
I answered the phone and explained the situation to diagnostics.
They replied, “Yeah, you’re fucked. That’s not easy to fix out in the field. You’ll have to send it for repairs.”
That was work Saturday in a fancy hospital drama style story. One of the belts on our main edger (named Emma) broke. After trying to fix the problem ourselves and failing, we called diagnostics. They told us that that belt was not easy to replace. They were also concerned as to what caused it to brake, so they requested for us to send the machine to them. This all went down Saturday afternoon. Since it’s Memorial Weekend, the earliest we would get a new edger would be Wednesday.
Thankfully, we were able to borrow another store’s edger in the meantime. (Funny side-story, while I first went to this other story to use their machine to run some orders when their lab manager started asking me about my car. I told him. I was confused as this came out of nowhere. Then he explained to me that the regional was on the phone and suggested that I take one of their edgers back to my store.) All day today we played catch up from all of the jobs we didn’t finish yesterday. Here’s hoping we get a new badass high-tech Optronics edger (though I’m not holding my breath).
Read MorePainfully Slow
On Saturday, Cox shut off our cable services because apparently my Mom’s payment to them did not go through. For shutting off all of our services, they forgot to shut off the TV and we still receive, but not send, e-mails from our cox.net addresses. Cox wanted over $100 to turn everything back on, but my parents were like, “fuck it,” and we went with a new service for Internet. They got a wireless card through Alltel. It is so slow. Average speeds are 351kpbs when I’m used to 3.1 to 5.0 Mbps. Of course, it’s better than nothing. I won’t be able to get online with my video game systems until I get my own place and my own Internet. As for TV, they’re looking into other providers.
If you didn’t see the update on the main page, there is a new short story online, Entering a “Do Not Enter” Room at Work. It follows Danny after a typical day at work, when sees a mysterious door with a “Do Not Enter” sign that he disobeys. What’s in the room? When did the room appear? Is he going to get in trouble? Will he die? Read the super short story to find out or don’t and be curious forever.
I have the next three days off from work. I thought about flying to New York City to do some shopping, but it would cost me $1,000 for plane and hotel. If I did, I would so totally call work and say, “Guess where I’m at?” I figure I’ll just head south to Texas for some shopping. I just want to get out of the state, you know, travel really while gas prices aren’t killer.
Read MoreWork was cloverfielderrrfic today
For the first time that I’ve worked at the mall, we had to seek shelter from a possible tornado this evening. For Dana, the retail manager who has been there twice as long as me, it was here first time having to do this as well. We locked the gate, gathered our belongs, shut off the machines, and headed underground. My coworker, Eddie, described the experience like the attack from the Cloverfield monster. We were underground for about half an hour until the storm passed. Next time, we’ll bring the radio down so we can hear what is exactly going on since we couldn’t hear anything while in the sheltered hallways. Our business for that night was pretty much blown away.
In other news, I got a check for $7.21. Apparently when I paid off my car, I paid extra by that amount. I don’t know how I’m going to avoid spending that all in one place.
I’ve been editing my novella, The Crashing of Heaven and Hell. I’m giving the characters and locations much more depth to them. Everything was a bit shallow as the book was focused on the story and not so much the characters. I’ve also been replacing overused words such as “many,” “a lot,” and “like.” I was surprised that I used the word “many” a lot of times. In this sweep, I really have been going through and expanding details. Before my latest revisions, I made a back-up copy of the story to allow me to be more comfortable to make major changes. The first chapter has undergone paramount expansions.
Alright, I’m running out of puns. Before I go, I added new sayings in the Yearbook Quotes section. I plan to see Ironman tomorrow. That’s all!
Read More