Sunday, January 02, 2005
When Hell Freezes over
It's the logical follow up to a post entitled "when Heaven freezes over", a nice dichotomy or something.
Actually, today kind of deserved the title for a little while at least.
It was cold. Perhaps even colder than yesterday.
It definately felt colder when I was loading the vans for work. I didn't have any gloves, and my fingers pretty much started getting frostbite right away. Minus 25 (yep, about 50 degrees colder than the day I left New Zealand) in Fernie is seriously cold, windchill and being in the shade does not help. It was painfully cold. Seriously agonizingly bad.
The rest of the morning was pretty good - a lot of people didn't want any housekeeping, so we flew through our list. It was after lunch that things got bad. The first room we went into was a shambles, but whatever, I'm on an hourly rate.
The second room had a backed up toilet, which almost flooded the whole bathroom (and just stank). To top it all off, after I got the toilet partially unblocked, I discovered that someone had partied a little too hard on New Years Eve and decorated it in shades of carrot.
When we finished cleaning this disaster area, we discovered that our van had a very flat tire. Which meant standing in the cold again to transfer all our stuff into another van.
But whatever, we got our "Christmas Bonus" today. Basically, the supervisors had cleaned out most of the check outs of left-behind food and piled it up in the staff room. We got to pick it over in reverse order of how much our group had found during the day. I was in the last group, since Megan and I had a shopping bag full of food between us.
Amazingly, a half full bottle of Jagermeister (some sort of herb flavoured spirits that is cool at the moment) had not been taken. So I grabbed it as soon as we were given the go-ahead. Michelle (Megan's flatmate) had been eyeing it, so I gave it to her. It was mostly a reflex, grabbing the most valuable item on the table, I don't even like Jager.
I gave it to her, feeling a little silly that my reflex was to be a dog in the manger (blame my economics degree and playing too much diplomacy by email). My kindness was rewarded by a couple of bottles of a beer I do like, pretty much a kilo of nice chocolate truffles (made in France, and there goes my new years resolution of just eating healthy stuff, shattered in record time), and most of the shopping bag of groceries Megan and I found (they took some hot chocolate and maybe something else).
So really, today was pretty good - I staggered home carrying a heavy black rubbish sack about a quarter or a third full of food. I LOVE free stuff. Absolutely love it.
So really, today should have been titled "I love free stuff!" since that was the most important thing that happened to me, and pretty much made it a good day - we've still got all the recycling money (at 5 or 10 cents a bottle, our vast stash could be worth some decent money) to share out once the boss has visited the recycling place.
http://www.cafepress.com/powder_monkey.15980710 - "Sponsored by Mum and Dad" stickers
Yep, in addition to the Google Ads (which I like just for way it separates my archives from my links), I'm starting to get merchandise to appeal readers (all 11 of them according to this year's sitestats. What can I say - I might be something of a socialist, but as long as there's money out there, I'll make my grab at it.
I think I'll buy a copy of the sticker for me as a tribute to my parents' willingness to loan me money and feed me and stuff. Unless I can get them to buy it for me - although if they are going to get me a christmas present, I'd prefer a pair of warm snowboarding gloves, the ones I am using at the moment are more duct tape than gloves almost (well, at least 25% duct tape).
Nothing like laying on a guilt trip to get stuff you want. Shame that they read this blog really.
Seriously though Mum, I've emailed you about this.
Actually, today kind of deserved the title for a little while at least.
It was cold. Perhaps even colder than yesterday.
It definately felt colder when I was loading the vans for work. I didn't have any gloves, and my fingers pretty much started getting frostbite right away. Minus 25 (yep, about 50 degrees colder than the day I left New Zealand) in Fernie is seriously cold, windchill and being in the shade does not help. It was painfully cold. Seriously agonizingly bad.
The rest of the morning was pretty good - a lot of people didn't want any housekeeping, so we flew through our list. It was after lunch that things got bad. The first room we went into was a shambles, but whatever, I'm on an hourly rate.
The second room had a backed up toilet, which almost flooded the whole bathroom (and just stank). To top it all off, after I got the toilet partially unblocked, I discovered that someone had partied a little too hard on New Years Eve and decorated it in shades of carrot.
When we finished cleaning this disaster area, we discovered that our van had a very flat tire. Which meant standing in the cold again to transfer all our stuff into another van.
But whatever, we got our "Christmas Bonus" today. Basically, the supervisors had cleaned out most of the check outs of left-behind food and piled it up in the staff room. We got to pick it over in reverse order of how much our group had found during the day. I was in the last group, since Megan and I had a shopping bag full of food between us.
Amazingly, a half full bottle of Jagermeister (some sort of herb flavoured spirits that is cool at the moment) had not been taken. So I grabbed it as soon as we were given the go-ahead. Michelle (Megan's flatmate) had been eyeing it, so I gave it to her. It was mostly a reflex, grabbing the most valuable item on the table, I don't even like Jager.
I gave it to her, feeling a little silly that my reflex was to be a dog in the manger (blame my economics degree and playing too much diplomacy by email). My kindness was rewarded by a couple of bottles of a beer I do like, pretty much a kilo of nice chocolate truffles (made in France, and there goes my new years resolution of just eating healthy stuff, shattered in record time), and most of the shopping bag of groceries Megan and I found (they took some hot chocolate and maybe something else).
So really, today was pretty good - I staggered home carrying a heavy black rubbish sack about a quarter or a third full of food. I LOVE free stuff. Absolutely love it.
So really, today should have been titled "I love free stuff!" since that was the most important thing that happened to me, and pretty much made it a good day - we've still got all the recycling money (at 5 or 10 cents a bottle, our vast stash could be worth some decent money) to share out once the boss has visited the recycling place.
http://www.cafepress.com/powder_monkey.15980710 - "Sponsored by Mum and Dad" stickers
Yep, in addition to the Google Ads (which I like just for way it separates my archives from my links), I'm starting to get merchandise to appeal readers (all 11 of them according to this year's sitestats. What can I say - I might be something of a socialist, but as long as there's money out there, I'll make my grab at it.
I think I'll buy a copy of the sticker for me as a tribute to my parents' willingness to loan me money and feed me and stuff. Unless I can get them to buy it for me - although if they are going to get me a christmas present, I'd prefer a pair of warm snowboarding gloves, the ones I am using at the moment are more duct tape than gloves almost (well, at least 25% duct tape).
Nothing like laying on a guilt trip to get stuff you want. Shame that they read this blog really.
Seriously though Mum, I've emailed you about this.
