Our Dumb Blog

Berck is spending the weekend filling out job applications and printing out resumes. Last summer I was doing this; now he gets to. I guess I’ll have to do so again soon as well.

I took last Friday and Monday off so we could drive down to Mobile for the weekend. As it was, we were so busy at work that I had an hour an a half of overtime week-before-last…even with only working four days! We were so busy again this week that I got a full forty-hour week…again with only working four days. On Thursday I was walking around the warehouse trying to solve Daily Order Discrepancies, my last task of the day, and I just felt so tired. I pulled out my watch and saw it was almost 8 p.m. I’d arrived at work at 8:30 a.m. No wonder I was tired.

We had a reprieve from the heat this last week. On Wednesday the high was 80. The HIGH! It was so nice to work in a temperate climate for a change. The weather stayed nice until late in the day on Friday when it started to get hot again. Oh well.

All of the college kids that we hired the summer to build shelves and move stuff we also trained to stock. The last several weeks we’ve hardly moved anything, we’ve been so behind on pulling or inchecking or stocking. If they stock, the incheckers can pull orders, and we only have ten-hour days instead of twelve-hour ones. But we are now consistently behind on our moving goals.

So my boss hired a bunch of temp workers to do what the people on my shift are supposed to be doing. This last week I spent a good bit of time training and supervising the temps on tearing down shelves and moving. When I wasn’t pulling, that is. My boss has hired four new pullers in the last two weeks as well. But we can’t seem to keep people for very long this summer (hmm, I wonder why?) But new people are so much slower than someone with experience.

I’ll probably be pulling again this week. The last couple of weeks I’ve pulled ahead on the departments we were planning to move that day, only to have nothing happen, because by then the powers that be realized how far behind we were for the day and put a stop to all moving so everyone could stock (and I could keep on pulling). At least my pulling times don’t count anymore. That makes world of difference from working last year.

Amazon is having an intense clearance sale on kitchen, bed, and bath stuff, for those of you with money. Lots of great deals!

I just got my Airplane Single Engine rating on my Flight Instructor certificate. I was a nervous wreck during my checkride, but my examiner said I did really well anyway. I asked if the flight school was going to be needing any flight instructors in the near future and he said, “Well, I’m actually trying to get a rid of a few right now.” So that doesn’t look terribly promising. I talked to Zach about my multi-engine rating, and he told me to plan on Monday. That should really only take a couple of days, and it’s pretty easy and fun. And, it doesn’t really affect my ability to be a flight instructor, so now starts the job search. I suppose I better get cracking on that resumé.

A cold front did indeed come through Norman at about 5pm yesterday. It was about 65 degrees this morning. Considering it was about 80 inside the apartment, Joanna opened a window in what must have been a fit of excitement before she left. I was scheduled to fly at 4pm, the tail end of the hottest part of the day. It was somewhere around 84 degrees, but it felt amazingly cool. I was astonished at the clarity of the air and lamented the fact that I was stuck in the pattern. I bet you could see the Washita mountains today. I could see well past the downtown OKC buildings just after takeoff as it was.

Ed’s going to try to get my recheck as soon as possible. Maybe even tomorrow. Maybe this one will go better than the last.

July is almost gone, I’m still “two weeks” from being finished.

I showed up for my 2pm flight with Ed a little before 2pm. One of the designated examiner’s in the area had just completed a CFI check ride for two students. I checked the weather. A little cloudy with a cold front that was supposed to come through at 5pm, possibly bringing thunderstorms with it. Ed was finally ready to fly at about 3pm after sitting through the debriefing of his two students.

We spent an hour in the pattern, working on my power off accuracy landings. I think I’m a bit better at it now. We did 8-10 of them and I only missed 2, I think. Unfortunately, it felt more like dumb luck than really knowing what I’m doing. It’s a very hard thing to judge. You can pitch up for slower airspeed and drop quicker faster, pitch over and gain some airspeed and extend your glide… You can turn in closer to the runway or further out, and drop flaps. But you can’t retract flaps after you put them down. Each of these corrections have a bit of finality about them, because you’re always getting lower and closer. Everything I change takes what seems like forever to create an observable effect, by which time the tendency is to put in even more correction resulting in over-correction.

Ed said he thought I looked frustrated. In truth, I feel more apathetic than anything. I feel like I haven’t got any control over my situation. I’ve tried so hard to finish as quickly as possible, and the harder I try, the longer it takes. One of the 172-RG’s has been down since the day of my checkride, and the other one only has about 10 hours left before its 100-hour inspection. I get the feeling I’m going to be signed off and have to sit around for an inspection.

My foot has sores on it, so I sent a picture to Dad. He thinks I have fungi.

I’m tired of the summer. I want to live where it’s winter all the time.

It took me a long time to go through the mail today. I don’t know why, but checking the mail is one of my favourite parts of the day. Considering that all I ever get is junk mail and bills, I’m not sure why. I always hope there’s something exciting in the mail, but when there is, it’s usually not exciting for very long.

I went outside to water the plants, which I hope will make it rain.