Hey all;

 

  I have had a badish kind of day today.  Many things go bad for Fred.

  First, I slept through my alarm this morning, only to awake 5 minutes before work.  I leap out of bed, get dressed, bathroom, grab my book and iPod and race out the door, with no time to make lunch or do any house work.  Outside, at my car, I find that my doors are frozen shut.  Grrr.  And Brrrr.

  I fight Jack Frost's frigid grip for a ten minute round before he finally throws in the towel and allows my car door to come open.  The car starts no problemo, so I let it warm up while I scrape off the snow.  Fifteen minutes late for work is not a good start to my morning.

  Pulling in to the lot, I see a truck load of plywood waiting to be unloaded.  Quickly, I throw on my warm clothes and start to unload the 24 lifts of OSB, two lifts at a time.  About half way through unloading, I am taking two lifts to where I'm stacking them and I hear a snap.  It turns out that the plywood was banded with plastic bands.  I say 'was' because that snap?  Yeah, it was one of the bands on the bottom lift snapping.  That, in turn, starts to spin the lift, thus snapping the other two plastic bands.  The bottom lift slides along like a deck of cards, taking the top lift with it.  When the top lift hits the ground, it also splits it's plastic bands, spreading THAT lift out, as well.  180 sheets of plywood, spread out in the snow, mud and slush.  Wonderful.

  I returned to the truck and unloaded the rest of the plywood, signed off and returned to pick up the cascaded boards.  Somehow, I managed to get most of it in installments with the forklift.  After I had it all picked up, I brought them inside and started to stack them nicely again.

  Side note:  we got these OSB lifts fresh from the mill.  The reason I know?  Because as I was restacking them, each sheet from the inside of the lift was so hot I almost couldn't touch them.  Seriously.  They were covered in snow and mud and they were still so hot that standing over them felt like standing in front of a heater.  It was crazy, and the very first time I ever saw something like that.

  Anyway, lunch rolls around.  Of course, I never had time to make lunch, so I get the rare 'opportunity' to run and get lunch.  As soon as I announce that I'm going to go buy lunch, I suddenly have a list of stuff to get for co-workers.  Alright, no problem.

  The lunch choice of the day was Subway.  I drove to Subway at 12:30 pm on a Friday.  School kids get out of school at noon on Friday.  And school kids LOVE Subway.  The line up was just about out the door.  I stood in line for 15 minutes to make my order.  They start to make my order, putting two of the subs in the toaster to toast them.  She pulls the toaster lifter out of the toaster, but accidentally snags it and launches those two subs across the building.  It wasn't just 'dropped the subs'.  No, it was 'launched the exploding subs like fireworks'.  So, back to square one.

  I finally return back to work, far, far past my 30 minute limit.  Oh well, right?  I quickly ate and went back to work.  The rest of the day was quieter and less eventful.  But it was enough.

  Alright.  Take care everyone and I hope your day was better than mine.

 

Fred