My Life

Jacques Cartier, Eat Your Heart Out

It was a fun Canoe trip! We went with Josh’s family, so there were 5 couples/canoes:
Myself/Josh
Josh’s mom/husband
Josh’s stepsister Jen /her husband Chad
Chad’s mom/dad
Josh’s aunt/uncle

The women all sat in the front to get free rides part of the time ^_~ (Hey, it’s a woman’s prerogative, eh?)

So Josh is partly right; I didn’t paddle full-time. To quote the Simpsons, “hard work made us quit”. I did paddle enough so that my back and shoulders are still a bit stiff, and the trip was two days ago.

I used the trip as an excuse to buy a nice new swimsuit (I got two, actually)! A nice red and navy blue sports bikini (sports-style top and the kind of bottom that’s just a teeny pair of shorts) with a racer back to show off my tattoo, and a nice blue one-piece for the sake of having a one-piece. ^_^

It wasn’t overly hot, but the sun was brutal, and despite the SPF 45 sunscreen both Josh and I were wearing, we got some nasty burns. My whole left arm, and the left side of my right forearm got it the worst. I’ve also got some mild red around the edges of my bikini top, but they don’t hurt. My mom had some aloe spray that helped, and when we got home we just slathered on the Tattoo Goo I had, since it’s a vitamin E gel, it’s good for things like burns as well as fresh tattoos. ^_~

And in case anyone is wondering, no they won’t turn into a tan. I’ll go back to winter-white ^_~

As Josh said, Jen and Chad went through the break in the dam/bridge without much preparation, and were dumped along with everything in their canoe. They managed to recover everything (some things were far downstream) except Jen’s sunglasses. Josh and his uncle were a little more prepared, in that they pulled over and emptied the canoe they used before they went through it. The still got dumped, though. Hehehe ^_^

We might turn this into an annual event. ^_^

Outside Cat

It is so beautiful outside right now! It’s about 26 degrees, the sun is shining, but there’s lots of shade to hide from it ^_~

We took Dax outside today! In her little harness and leash, of course, so she doesn’t get spooked and run off.

She’s gained a bit of weight since she was last outside (last summer) but her harness still fits.

She didn’t freak out this time! Last time we took her out, it was too “big” out there and she was freaked. This time she wandered all over the place. For the first while, it was more like:
*step*
*step*
*step*
*lay down for a minute*
*step*
*step*
*Oooh! Look! A bug!*
*lay down for a minute*
*step*

We walked all around the house and up on the porch, and down the backyard a little way. Out landlord was out there working on his garden.

Fun day! ^_^

The Joys of Work – Part II

5:30 am the next day (Wednesday) my alarm goes off. I still have a stress headache (Yay! I just love when sleep doesn’t fix those!) but I get up and haul my butt into work.

My boss isn’t in today, so I have to get some Very Important samples today by myself. Which is normally perfectly fine, I’ve obviously been doing my job by myself since I was finished training.
But these are Special Important Samples, from the Special Tanker that arrived yesterday. Today we’re going to test rack it (put it into kegs) and see if we’ll be able to produce this type of beer (proprietary). Now, not only are the sample volumes 250 mL more than normal (meaning 750 mL, meaning it will not fit into a single 1 L jar because beer foams, especially when collected through a tiny needle) but they’re only running the trial for 10 minutes.
So I ask the Packaging Lab girl to help me. None of us Lab Techs know each other’s job – obviously we only do our own – but she agrees to help me if I just show her what to do. All she needs to do is collect beer from one sample point, and I can get the other two. I’ll only be able to get two by myself in 10 minutes because they are close together, and the other point is all the way across the room (and – of course – you can’t just walk straight across the room, you have to go in the opposite direction, and over a stair-ladder and all the way around the racking equipment).
We agree to meet in the Racking Room at 11:45, fifteen minutes before the test is scheduled to happen at noon, so I can show her what to do.

A little work background:
There’s a test I do every week, the Wort Series. I test the wort (duh) which is beer before any yeast has been added to cause it to ferment. It’s one of the (many) Important tests I do each week. I can’t miss this one.
I usually spend all morning collecting samples, and then all afternoon plating them. Deviating from this causes me to be late, because if I start plating when I have only a few samples, then have to stop to get more, it wastes media (which I have to make again when I run out) and time-consuming because I have to set everything up again.

So I have to schedule my wort series very carefully each week, as I can only sample the wort when a brew comes down to Fermenting from the Brew House (before that, it’s not wort yet, after that it has yeast in it and so my samples are no good) and it is better for all involved if I can get it in the morning.

So today, my Wort Series is scheduled for 11:30. Eep. That’s cutting it a little close to the time I need to show the other Lab girl what to do. Delaying that could cause us to be late getting ready to actually get the samples at noon.

Another little bit of work info:
Everything that is scheduled will be late. Unless you plan for it to be late, in which case it will be right on time and you will miss it. So I have to plan on the Racking trial running right at noon.

A Wort Series usually takes about 15 minutes. If everything goes exactly on time, I can make my 11:45 appointment at about 11:46, which is ok.

My Wort Series is delayed by 6 minutes.
6 minutes may sound like a piddly little amount of time, right? Who cares about 6 little minutes? Me at my job, that’s who. I have so many time-dependant things to do, that 6 minutes is a lot of time, and means a minimum of 20 minutes unpaid overtime, and a lot of stress due to worrying about missing other Very Important time-dependant things.
So during those 6 minutes I’m going crazy panicking because I have too many Very Important things to do at the same time. I already have a nice stress headache by this time, it had gone away but now it’s back and bigger than before.
So I finally get my Wort Series done at 11:51, and I rush down to the Racking room to show the other girl what I need her to do.
We make it on time! Yay! I get told the trial is starting, so we start collecting our samples.
Then she comes up to me and says that her sample point is only spraying out water, and it’s supposed to be beer! Argh! So I run over to check. It’s just water. Damn it!
I don’t know what to do about it right then, so I thank her for trying to help me, and send her back to eat her lunch and get on with her own job.
Then I’m told that’s it’s taking much longer than expected for the beer to travel from the Aging tank to the racking room.
AAARRRGGGHHHHH!
So then I have to wait there, with a ruined sample bottle (It’s ruined because it was opened and had water put into it. It is no longer sterile), for the test beer to show up. I can’t go back to the lab for a new bottle, nor can I go back and get the girl again, because the test beer could show up at any second, and now that I need to collect all the samples on my own, I’ll need the full ten minutes of the trial.
I wait 30 minutes. The beer “could” have come “at any second”, but it took 30 freaking minutes.

And I only got one and a half of my samples, because the trial was shorter than they expected. Shit.

So I say screw it, and take a “risk” (I was told to do that more in my review) and try to get ALL the samples on Thursday when they repeat the trial.
However, I still have an entire afternoon’s worth of work to do, and it’s 1:00 and I haven’t eaten lunch yet.
I skip lunch, and manage to get out of work only a little late.
But I’m insanely pissed off from two terrible days at work. So I’m crabby to everyone, including Dax and Josh. I’m pissed off, I’m starving, and I’ve had a stress headache for two days.
I get home, and there’s no food. Thursday is grocery day, so we’re out of things to eat.
I try and make a box of Kraft Dinner with no milk, but 1) there was no milk and 2) it tasted worse than having no milk would account for. Not even Josh would eat it, which tells you it didn’t even enter the realm of “edible”.
So I’m still starving and pissed off and have a headache. So I lay on the couch for a while, then go to bed.

I am so looking forward to being back in school in September.

The Joys of Work – Part I

I’ve been pissed off for two days straight, though I’m feeling much better now.

On Monday, we are told we’re getting a special tanker in Tuesday at 2:30 pm. It would leave the London plant at noon, and arrive between 2 and 2:30. I have to test this tanker, there’s no getting around it. When a tanker arrives, I have to sample the tanker itself, and get a sample from the Aging tank that the beer goes into from the tanker. I can get the tanker sample as soon as it arrives, but I have to wait an hour until the Aging tank is full to sample it.
This would mean I would need ot test this tanker at 2:30, and the Aging tank at 3:30 pm.
Since I’m supposed to get off work at 3, my boss tells me to come in at 8 am instead of 7 am so that I’ll still get paid for working until 4.

So I come in at 8 and work all day. *work work work* It was a fairly craptacular day.
2:30 pm comes and goes, and there’s no word on the tanker. At 2:45 my boss happened to be on the phone with someone from the London lab, and they mentioned that they just got their tanker sample a half hour earlier, meaning that as of 2:15 pm the tanker had not yet left London!!!
It takes a bare minimum of 2 hours for a tanker truck to get from London to Toronto, so this means I’m stuck at work until at least 5:30 (tanker arrives at 4:15, I wait an hour to get my second sample, and I plate it and clean up)
Ok, that’s not so bad. I’d only be getting paid until 4, but that’s life, right?

No, life gets even better at that point.

The tanker doesn’t even arrive until 5:20 pm. I don’t know what the hell they were doing in London, but it appears to be “screwing me over”.

Meanwhile, all this time I’m waiting I have nothing to do. I’ve already said I can’t work ahead in my job. I really can’t. I can’t sample beer that hasn’t even been brewed yet. I haven’t quite gotten this “time travel” thing to work yet.
So I’m sitting around bored out of my skull.

The tanker arrives at 5:20. I go to sample it, but I have to wait about 10 minutes for the tanker guys to be done hooking up their hoses.
I get my sample and go back to my lab and plate it. Then I sit around for the rest of the hour, and go to get my Aging tank sample.
Only to find one of the tanker guys using my petcock (get that image out of your head, it’s like a faucet used to get a sterile sample). He’s testing the DO (dissolved oxygen), which us Microbio people don’t give a rat’s ass about. He tells me he’ll be done in about 15 minutes.

So I don’t even get my sample until 6:40 pm, and a run back to my lad and rush around plating it.
I finally leave work at 7 pm. Gee, I’m ever so glad I came in late, it means I only worked 11 hours instead of 12. Of course, I only get paid for 8 of ’em since I’m salaried and not hourly.
I’ve had a stress headache for hours, and I get home so late and pissed off all I have time to do is shower and eat and act pissy before collapsing into bed so I don’t die at 5:30 am when my alarm goes of.

To be continued….