Michael and I went skiing this morning, leaving LW in the mountain's day care. He had fun playing with the other kids, but was a bit disappointed he couldn't go skiing. After watching some skiers jump on the slope outside the day care center, he was adamant, "Me jump too!"
I am not nearly so ambitious. This was my first time out this season, and my skiing was pretty rusty. I prefer to ski the same terrain over and over until I feel comfortable on it. Michael, who takes a different approach to learning, like to encourage me to try different terrain. Usually this works out fine, but every once in a while it goes bad.
One run today led us to an area that had been scraped pretty thin and was also at the edge of my steepness comfort level. (This is not hard to reach.) I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but next thing I knew, I was in the middle of a yard sale*, sliding backwards down the hill. I even managed to take Michael out with me, although he kept both his skis on.
Yes, I still have a way to go. Thankfully, neither of us were hurt. It was fun to spend time with Michael and have him point out the runs and woods the kids like to ski with him. They have coined their own names for many of the runs. I was encouraged to discover that my fear of the lifts has abated quite a bit. And once my muscles started remembering how to ski, it was actually kind of fun.
* For the non-skiers, a yard sale is a fall that results in your skis and poles being laid out on the ground as they would be in a yard sale.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Technical difficulties
Blogger and I are having a disagreement about where to post my account of shutting down the cannery. I think it should post it at the top, under today's date, because that's when I finished writing it and clicked Publish. Blogger thinks it should be posted two posts down, under Monday's date, because that's when I started writing it. (It's been a busy week.)
I think I'm right, but I haven't figured out how to force Blogger to do what I want. So if you are curious about the cannery incident, scroll down a bit.
I think I'm right, but I haven't figured out how to force Blogger to do what I want. So if you are curious about the cannery incident, scroll down a bit.
Friday, January 25, 2008
My new phone system
I have wanted a new phone system since our second day here at the inn. Specifically, one that would allow people to dial room extensions directly and send them to voice mail when they call in the middle of the night to make a reservation.
Many is the night I have dreamed of such a system. But other projects were always higher on the priority list. However, our old console died on us two weeks ago, bumping the phone system to the top of the queue. We are still working the kinks out of the new system, but last night we were able to turn on the auto-attendant.
When people call after we've gone to bed, they hear a lovely message: "Thank you for calling the inn. If you want to speak to a guest and you know the three-digit extension, you may dial it now. The office is closed for the evening. If you are calling to make a reservation, dial #6100 to leave a message and we will call you when the office opens in the morning. If this is an emergency, dial 0."
This morning when I came downstairs, I noticed the message light was on. Sure enough, someone called at 11:30 last night to book a room for tonight. Thanks to our new phone system, he didn't wake me up. And that means I won't gripe about him to Michael all weekend long.
So maybe it isn't worth $3000, but since we had to pay for it anyway, I'm going to enjoy it.
Many is the night I have dreamed of such a system. But other projects were always higher on the priority list. However, our old console died on us two weeks ago, bumping the phone system to the top of the queue. We are still working the kinks out of the new system, but last night we were able to turn on the auto-attendant.
When people call after we've gone to bed, they hear a lovely message: "Thank you for calling the inn. If you want to speak to a guest and you know the three-digit extension, you may dial it now. The office is closed for the evening. If you are calling to make a reservation, dial #6100 to leave a message and we will call you when the office opens in the morning. If this is an emergency, dial 0."
This morning when I came downstairs, I noticed the message light was on. Sure enough, someone called at 11:30 last night to book a room for tonight. Thanks to our new phone system, he didn't wake me up. And that means I won't gripe about him to Michael all weekend long.
So maybe it isn't worth $3000, but since we had to pay for it anyway, I'm going to enjoy it.
Monday, January 21, 2008
How I shut down a cannery
I've had a couple of requests to explain #4 on my Ten Things Meme.
When I was in high school, I worked in a cannery during the summers. Or rather, a food processing plant. Mine actually froze vegetables instead of canning them. Ninety percent of the time, we froze green beans.
In order to make more money, I worked graveyard. The cannery paid twenty cents more an hour for graveyard shift, and you also had a better chance of getting a more interesting (and higher paying) job if you worked something other than day shift. The women on day shift had been working at that cannery since World War II. No joke.
One of the women in charge of hiring went to my church, and so instead of picking dead rodents and rotten beans off the conveyor belts, I got to be the person in charge of USDA quality control testing for the graveyard shift.
This involved taking a specified number of samples and evaluating them for various things--size of bean, number of rotten beans, number of beans with bug bites, number of pieces of Harmless Edible Material, color, and taste. (Cold green beans. Yum.) Based on the percentages in each category, I assigned the appropriate USDA grade.
The work wasn't difficult, but it was stressful because of the speed at which I had to work. I monitored up to five different lines that emptied into big totes (which were taken to another plant for packaging) and a sixth line that packaged French-cut beans. I needed to take one sample from every big tote and a French-cut sample every half hour. During a busy shift, three of my lines would fill totes every five minutes. Some nights it was very difficult to stay on top of the work.
For the most part, the shift boss left me alone, other than coming by to check on how we were doing. This was a good thing, because the one time I attempted to explain to one boss how to figure percentages, I fell very behind. (And no, I didn't succeed in explaining it to her.)
One night, in the middle of a very busy shift, while I had multiple samples on my counter, we failed to make grade A on the good line. In fact, we flunked. Our percentage of rotten beans was through the roof. I alerted the shift boss, who came and looked at my paperwork. They shut the lines down. They called the plant boss at home--at three o'clock in the morning--and he got out of bed and came down.
Men in hard hats conferenced together and inspected the beans. I stood at my counter and
caught up on paperwork. And then, with a horrible sinking feeling, I saw my error. I had used the total count from a much smaller sample on line C to figure the percentage of rotten beans for line A. When I used the line A total, our numbers fell within USDA grade A.
I have never been so tempted to lie in my life. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and look puzzled. It was an honest mistake. And no one would ever know.
Except me.
So, I walked over to the group of high muckety-mucks and confessed that I had made a small error, the beans were actually fine, and I was very sorry for getting the boss out of bed and shutting the plant down for half an hour, but we could get back to work now.
I'm still not sure why they didn't fire me. Or worse, send me to work picking mice out of the beans. Maybe it was the look of complete embarrassment on my face. Maybe it was because they felt protective of me (my nickname at work was Baby). Maybe it was because none of them wanted to do my job. Whatever the reason, I stayed on as the USDA grader until I quit, as usual, when school started back up.
And that, boys and girls, is how I shut down a cannery.
When I was in high school, I worked in a cannery during the summers. Or rather, a food processing plant. Mine actually froze vegetables instead of canning them. Ninety percent of the time, we froze green beans.
In order to make more money, I worked graveyard. The cannery paid twenty cents more an hour for graveyard shift, and you also had a better chance of getting a more interesting (and higher paying) job if you worked something other than day shift. The women on day shift had been working at that cannery since World War II. No joke.
One of the women in charge of hiring went to my church, and so instead of picking dead rodents and rotten beans off the conveyor belts, I got to be the person in charge of USDA quality control testing for the graveyard shift.
This involved taking a specified number of samples and evaluating them for various things--size of bean, number of rotten beans, number of beans with bug bites, number of pieces of Harmless Edible Material, color, and taste. (Cold green beans. Yum.) Based on the percentages in each category, I assigned the appropriate USDA grade.
The work wasn't difficult, but it was stressful because of the speed at which I had to work. I monitored up to five different lines that emptied into big totes (which were taken to another plant for packaging) and a sixth line that packaged French-cut beans. I needed to take one sample from every big tote and a French-cut sample every half hour. During a busy shift, three of my lines would fill totes every five minutes. Some nights it was very difficult to stay on top of the work.
For the most part, the shift boss left me alone, other than coming by to check on how we were doing. This was a good thing, because the one time I attempted to explain to one boss how to figure percentages, I fell very behind. (And no, I didn't succeed in explaining it to her.)
One night, in the middle of a very busy shift, while I had multiple samples on my counter, we failed to make grade A on the good line. In fact, we flunked. Our percentage of rotten beans was through the roof. I alerted the shift boss, who came and looked at my paperwork. They shut the lines down. They called the plant boss at home--at three o'clock in the morning--and he got out of bed and came down.
Men in hard hats conferenced together and inspected the beans. I stood at my counter and
caught up on paperwork. And then, with a horrible sinking feeling, I saw my error. I had used the total count from a much smaller sample on line C to figure the percentage of rotten beans for line A. When I used the line A total, our numbers fell within USDA grade A.
I have never been so tempted to lie in my life. All I had to do was keep my mouth shut and look puzzled. It was an honest mistake. And no one would ever know.
Except me.
So, I walked over to the group of high muckety-mucks and confessed that I had made a small error, the beans were actually fine, and I was very sorry for getting the boss out of bed and shutting the plant down for half an hour, but we could get back to work now.
I'm still not sure why they didn't fire me. Or worse, send me to work picking mice out of the beans. Maybe it was the look of complete embarrassment on my face. Maybe it was because they felt protective of me (my nickname at work was Baby). Maybe it was because none of them wanted to do my job. Whatever the reason, I stayed on as the USDA grader until I quit, as usual, when school started back up.
And that, boys and girls, is how I shut down a cannery.
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Hot tub junkies
I should preface this by saying that our crowd this weekend is by and large a pretty good group. Everyone seems cheerful. All five of the groups that arrived after hours on Friday had called ahead to let us know they were going to be late, and they were apparently relatively quiet about getting settled in.
But they do love the hot tub.
Last night, between five and ten, I kicked four separate groups out of the hot tub. One of them twice. What no one seemed to grasp, even as they were asking me if I could turn up the temperature, is that when a outdoor hot tub cover is open on a January evening in Northern New England, the water eventually starts to cool down. In order for it to warm up again, the cover needs to stay closed for a while. Hence the request that each group limit their stay to 20 minutes.
They were generally cheerful about getting out, although one guy did try to argue that since no one was actually standing there waiting to get in, no one would mind if they stayed. And another, a non-native English speaker, thought I wanted to use the hot tub myself and suggested that I could enjoy it with him and his friends.
Michael and I went to bed discussing the possibility of a hot tub that drains automatically 20 minutes after the cover is opened.
But they do love the hot tub.
Last night, between five and ten, I kicked four separate groups out of the hot tub. One of them twice. What no one seemed to grasp, even as they were asking me if I could turn up the temperature, is that when a outdoor hot tub cover is open on a January evening in Northern New England, the water eventually starts to cool down. In order for it to warm up again, the cover needs to stay closed for a while. Hence the request that each group limit their stay to 20 minutes.
They were generally cheerful about getting out, although one guy did try to argue that since no one was actually standing there waiting to get in, no one would mind if they stayed. And another, a non-native English speaker, thought I wanted to use the hot tub myself and suggested that I could enjoy it with him and his friends.
Michael and I went to bed discussing the possibility of a hot tub that drains automatically 20 minutes after the cover is opened.
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Ten Things Meme
Ten Things I've Done that You Probably Haven't Done:
- Ran a car completely out of oil.
- Seen a dozen quetzals in ten minutes.
- Spent two days with a six year old and a six month old in a foreign hospital where I didn't speak the language.
- Made a mathematical error that brought an entire cannery to a halt in the middle of a shift.
- Had a Swiss bank account.
- Broke my foot while nine months pregnant. (The day before my due date, in fact.)
- Flew cross-country with eleven-month-old twins and a five year old (and no other adult).
- Designed a steelhead fishing fly.
- Had my portrait displayed as part of an art exhibit.
- Got locked on the second floor of a college dorm and had to call out the window to a total stranger to be let out.
Thursday, January 10, 2008
January thaw
The weather has been ridiculously warm this week. I have been running errands with no coat on. LW brought me his sandals the other day. (It's not quite that warm.)
And this afternoon I saw a kayacker!
Fortunately for our pocketbook, the cold should be returning soon. On the plus side, the thaw removed any worry we had about the roof caving under the weight of the snow pack.
And this afternoon I saw a kayacker!
Fortunately for our pocketbook, the cold should be returning soon. On the plus side, the thaw removed any worry we had about the roof caving under the weight of the snow pack.
Executive ability
LW's fortune cookie had the following pronouncement: Executive ability is prominent in your make up.
Translation: You boss everyone else around.
LW has turned into a two-bit Mussolini. "You get out me house!" is now heard daily. In case you were wondering, the car, every room, and all the stuff is also his.
And since, unlike when NB and IM were this age, there is not another toddler to take him down a notch, Michael and I find ourselves reminding him many, many times during the day that yes, we live here too, and no, we won't get the Lego spaceship down from the high shelf in the closet where NB so carefully put it.
Translation: You boss everyone else around.
LW has turned into a two-bit Mussolini. "You get out me house!" is now heard daily. In case you were wondering, the car, every room, and all the stuff is also his.
And since, unlike when NB and IM were this age, there is not another toddler to take him down a notch, Michael and I find ourselves reminding him many, many times during the day that yes, we live here too, and no, we won't get the Lego spaceship down from the high shelf in the closet where NB so carefully put it.
Friday, January 4, 2008
Ski equipment
Is there any other sport that requires more equipment than downhill skiing? If we tried to create a sport with more equipment, could we invent one?
Today is the first day of the school's weekly ski program. Don't misunderstand me; I love the ski program. It is a great benefit to living here. Where else can you get free weekly ski instruction for your kids? (OK, so you do have to pay for the skis. But the mountain offers a $50 rental that covers boots and skis for every day the school skis for the entire season. And another shop offers $99 rentals that you can keep for four months and use daily if you want.)
However, here is what we had to gather and send to school with the kids this morning (multiply by three):
And we have to do this every Friday. Until April.
Today is the first day of the school's weekly ski program. Don't misunderstand me; I love the ski program. It is a great benefit to living here. Where else can you get free weekly ski instruction for your kids? (OK, so you do have to pay for the skis. But the mountain offers a $50 rental that covers boots and skis for every day the school skis for the entire season. And another shop offers $99 rentals that you can keep for four months and use daily if you want.)
However, here is what we had to gather and send to school with the kids this morning (multiply by three):
- Two ski boots
- Two poles
- Two skis
- Helmet
- Goggles
- Warm coat
- Two mittens
- Snow pants
- Ski socks
- Neck warmer or scarf
- Duffle bag to carry it all in
And we have to do this every Friday. Until April.
Calling all meteorologists
Today's weather forecast is High of 24 Low of 9. Yesterday's weather forecast was High of 2 Low of -7. There is no overlap. Exactly when does the temp jump from 2 to 9. Midnight? Seven in the morning? Inquiring minds want to know.
Of course, it's a moot point at the moment, because, despite our low of 9, it's currently 5.
Of course, it's a moot point at the moment, because, despite our low of 9, it's currently 5.
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