CHECK ENGINE


by Jonah

On my way to work early Friday morning, I noticed the car making a funny noise. Of course I had no idea what it was, but the car makes weird noises all the time, at least according to Berck. “Do you hear that?” he’ll demand, “Do you hear THAT??” Hear what? “THAT! You can’t hear it?” Oh, that noise? “NO! It’s not making it NOW.”

So I congratulated myself on hearing the car making odd noises and made a mental note to inform Berck about it.

As I turned on the home-stretch to work, the noise got louder, so I turned the radio off to listen better. At the same time, the CHECK ENGINE light started blinking on. Uh oh. I checked the temperature gauge. Pegged at past-H. Oh dear. I was almost to work, and there aren’t any other turn offs on this road, so I slowed way down till I got to my parking lot. White vapor was streaming out from under the hood.

I had to get clocked in, so the next time I checked the car was at my first break. The oil was fine, but the coolant overflow bottle was empty and the radiator was bone dry. Well, there’s my problem. So I started filling the radiator with my little water bottle, walking back to the breakroom to fill it at the sink for several trips. That ate up my first break.

At lunch, one of my coworkers showed me where a big igloo thermos lived in the breakroom, so I only had to make one more trip out to the car. I started up the engine, which sputtered and complained before settling into a nice purr. I looked to see if any water was leaking out but none was.

I checked the coolant levels again before I left for work, but they were just as I had left them. Then I drove carefully home.

Berck got home late last night from picking up his dad’s Miata from California. He was able to find the leak today in a hose near the back of the engine. Supposedly, the auto parts store will have the part in the morning.

I’m glad to have my baby back to fix the cars.

I don’t want to know how long a 30 minute ride to work on country roads would take in Arthur.

Posted in Automotive Frustrations | 1 Comment

Chicago


by Berck

I’m enjoying a much-needed break from Oklahoma. I’d been planning to come to Chicago for awhile, and it seemed like Sydney’s birthday was as good a day as any to do it, especially since Mom was here as well.

We went to a Steppenwolf Theatre production of “The Dresser” which is about someone who dresses rather than a piece of furniture. It was well-produced, though the meta-play thing really seems overdone. It had what had to be one of the most elaborately constructed sets I’d ever seen. And Fraiser’s Dad.

I spent most of yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago. After the Met, it’s probably the best survey museum in the country. And I’ve never been to the Met. The University of Chicago apparently has its own art collection, which I’d like to see, as well as the contemporary art museum which I haven’t seen since the first time I was in Chicago, in ’98.

The more exciting things at the institute included a Magritte quite different from any I recall seeing and two Magritte sculptures. He didn’t do much sculpture, so that made me happy.

There’s a traveling exhibit from U of Indiana of Art Sinsabaugh. 90 prints of the American landscape. He traveled around with a large format banquet camera and took landscapes with it. He’d take the negatives and crop them to 1″ x 20″, which is a very strange format so very well suited to the midwest. I liked it a lot.

There were three “Exquisite Corpse” drawings, which were combined efforts of the likes of Man Ray, Tanguy and others. Several of them were really good. “Exquisite Corpse” was a popular surrealist game, where the artists would get together and draw on a folder sheet of paper. Each artist would only see the fold he was working on, though he would extend the lines of his figure just barely over the fold for the next artist.

Museum shops annoy me. They never have posters of anything I want.

I saw Napoleon Dynamite tonight. I’m not sure if I can recommend it in a meaningful way. It’s not really offensive at all, I think it was made by Mormons. It’s basically a hilarious character portrayal of many seemingly impossible characters. I was amazed that it’s being so widely distributed. It needs to be appreciated from a standpoint which is so very different from most of cinema these days.

Posted in Wanderings | No Comments

All Alone


by Jonah

Berck is gone. He left early yesterday morning for Chicago to visit with his mom and his sister for Sydney’s birthday. I wanted to go, but my boss didn’t want me to go, we can’t really afford for me to take time off of work, and this way Berck can stay longer and teach Sydney how to cook.

Syd sent Berck an instant message recently saying to the effect, “I need to fry something for this recipe I’m following, and I know you told me that frying can be dangerous. My question is what oil is the least dangerous for frying?”

So I’m using my time alone to search for jobs. I’ve spent most of today doing that, and I’m about cross-eyed after looking through hundreds of classifieds. Otherwise, I did some shopping and got some Dr. Scholls inserts for my tennis shoes. I seem to be wearing through the foot of my right one. These gel thingies are really comfortable.

Although I’m not on my feet quite as much now. This week I got shifted from the puller crew to the in-checker crew. So instead of pulling stuff off of the shelves of the warehouse, I put stuff up. (Berck asked, “So if you’re not a puller, does that make you a pusher?”)

I’ve got a different schedule now: 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Mon-Fri. But we usually end up working at least half an hour overtime each day…except Fridays, whey they tend to let us off early.

Stocking is a lot easier than pulling, at least, I think so. The pullers are timed and have to spend the whole day dragging a heavy cart up and down aisles grabbing stuff as fast as they can. In-checkers open packages delivered from UPS, FedEx, or by freight, make sure everything is there, and put them up on the shelves. So while I’m opening packages I can often sit down on the floor next to the box I’m unpacking.

My boss Barry, the warehouse manager, told us that he likes to put new hires on the pulling crew first, because it’s more structured and he can see how they’re doing, then shift them over to the in-checking crew. So I guess I passed the test.

More likely, I’m the only one who survived. Every single person hired after me has quit, except for the four most brand new people. The latest was my buddy, Brandi, who was hired just two weeks after I was. She confided to me Monday that she got offered a job in the little town where her church is (she’s a youth minister by night) doing office work for the city for the same thing we’re paid for grueling warehouse work. She was really excited, and I was excited for her as well but sad to see her go.

And irritated that I can’t seem to get employment that can support us.

So I’ve been playing the fill-out-the-application game all day. The last one I’ve found is an adjunct professor position at a local community college. It’s part time, but I’m qualified for it, so I’m a little excited. After I finish that, I think I’m calling it a day. This sure is a lot of hard work for little pay.

Posted in Nonclassified Nonsense, Warehouse Blues | No Comments