Life Goes On

Hurricane Matthew came to visit. He left us without power for not quite 24 hours which wasn't enough to melt the ice cubes in my freezer so all is well. Better for me than for some, but I was certainly thinking about a generator after hearing my neighbors. All I really need is something to run the water pump for the well, but being able to run the refrigerator/freezer would be good, too.

I have a camp stove and plenty of gas for it and I have a fireplace in case of cold weather and extended outages, but water is something I have to have brought in. Fortunately M insists on bottled water so we always have plenty on hand, and we were able to use the copious amounts of rainwater collected in buckets for flushing water.

The bottom line though is we got lucky. The temperatures have been moderate lately so it was neither too hot or too cold, even after the storm had passed, so neither heat nor AC was a critical necessity. That is definitely not always the case. We were OK for drinking water but if the power had been out much longer flushing water would have certainly been an issue.

I'm wondering how difficult it would be to have an old fashioned hand pump put in. One of the houses I rented once upon a time had a small one mounted on the kitchen counter beside the sink, which I thought was a great idea. I'm thinking something like that would have to be designed with the house, but one out in the yard may not be overly difficult.

I'm also going to need to get some more lamp oil and maybe one or two more hurricane lamps. The one we had never really got used but it would have been nice to have a few backups just in case the power stayed out longer than it did.

In other news, my work schedule changed on the first of the month. Once upon a time I worked what they call a red/blue or a 2-2-3 schedule. The way it works is thusly: working 12 hour days (or in my case, nights) in one weeks time, starting from Sunday, you will work Sunday, off Mon/Tues, work Wed/Thur and be off for Fri/Sat. The next week you will be off the days you worked on the previous week and work the days you were off. The nice thing about this schedule is you get a 3 day weekend every other weekend, but the down side is you have to keep your days plotted on a calendar for planning purposes.

For the past 8-9 years, however, I've been working a front/back schedule. The way that one works is I was on every Sunday, Monday and Tuesday and ever other Wednesday, so one week I would work 3 in a row and the next week I would work 4 in a row (I was on the front end; a different crew worked the back end consisting of Thursday, Friday and Saturday and the alternate Wednesdays). The nice thing about this schedule is that you always know what days you have off and you only have to keep track of one day for planning purposes, the down side is every weekend you will be working one of the two days (the weekend being Saturday and Sunday)

The back end crew (led by their senior tech) decided it sucked working all of the prime tail-chasing days of Friday and Saturday, so they took a vote to change it (isn't that cute, they took a vote!). Of course what they WANTED to do was change our alternating days from Wednesday to Saturday, so instead of working half of every weekend (remember the weekend is Saturday and Sunday, not Friday/Saturday) I would get to work all of every other weekend and half of the rest, while they would get every other weekend off altogether.

When I pointed out that M works M-F and so I would be giving up half the days in the month I had off with her in exchange for nothing I was told that was the point; I had had it too good for too long so it was my turn to suffer. I suggested that if they wanted fair, which is what they were claiming they wanted, a red/blue schedule would be the most fair way for everyone. You would have thought I invited them to a group self-immolation.

I'm sorry...no. I have enough seniority and have invested enough sweat equity that I don't have to take that particular orifice violation. So, back to red/blue we went, which caused the instigator of the whole schedule change fiasco to put in his resignation.

I see I forgot to mention that the instigator took the boss and the bosses boss to HR over it. At any other company the HR director would have declined to get involved, but at ours they sailed right in, prepared to do battle on the instigators part, until it was pointed out to them (by the legal department) that the rest of the group was working red/blue so the instigators claim of discrimination was ridiculous from the beginning (no he wasn't a minority, just an asshole).

At any rate, taking your boss (and your bosses boss) to HR does not usually lead to a long career with the company in question, so when the resignation was tendered it was immediately and gladly accepted.

So, with the weekend of the 7th, 8th and 9th suddenly free M and I decided to take a little trip to Myrtle Beach for our anniversary...which brings us back to the first part of this post.

Obviously we didn't go. The trip has been re-scheduled for the weekend of the 21st-23rd and hopefully the weather that we have had for the past week will continue through those dates.

Last year our honeymoon was partially spoiled by the remnants of Hurricane Joaquin meandering through the Appalachians when we were trying to drive the Blue Ridge Parkway, this year it was Matthew devastating the coast on the weekend we were supposed to be going to the beach.

I certainly hope this doesn't turn into a habit.

But this weekend I'll be working the entire weekend for the first time in a very long time, and then Monday...ah, Monday...

Did I mention I turned 50? Yay me.