So it's 3:30pm on Friday afternoon. I get to go leave work in exactly one hour. The way this last hour has been, the weekend can't come soon enough. Seth just happens to be taking a nap right now and I'm really pissed off and I need to gripe to somebody so you all get to listen.
As many of you know, I'm an x-ray technician. I work in the R & D department so I get to help build and test all the new x-ray equipment before it goes out to regular production. So about an hour ago I was working really hard trying to make the rest of the day go by fast. The thing I was working on was a radiator-like machine called a heat exchanger. This particular heat exchanger weighs about 70 lbs. It's not easy to handle.
This heat exchanger runs on oil, so when I first build it, I have to fill it up with oil and make sure there's no air bubbles in it. That's because when it gets hooked up to an x-ray tube if there's bubbles in the system, it'll make the x-rays look bad. It'll make the doctors think you have a big tumor. The oil filling process is not fun. There's long hoses flying everywhere and I have to man-handle the heat exchanger to rotate it and shake it to get all the bubbles out. It's not a pleasant experience on a normal day and today was worse.
There are 2 oil connections. One is for the oil to go in, one is for the oil to go out. I got the "oil in" hose connected and was in the process of connecting the other hose when the stupid connector got stuck open and began gushing oil everywhere. ARGH! I finally got the damn thing shut off but not soon enough. The heat exchanger and cart it was sitting on were covered in oil as was the floor. My clothes were somehow spared, but at that point it wouldn't have made any difference. I wanted to scream really bad words and smash everything on the floor.
So, I've spent at least the last half hour trying to clean up the huge mess. I was hot and sweaty and tired and pissed and then I got paint thinner on my jeans and I just want to go home. I finally got the heat exchanger filled up all the way which was no easy feat. For some reason (I wonder why...) today it felt like it weighed 500 pounds and things just weren't working. I decided I'll finish it on Monday when I've had time to forget this unpleasant afternoon.
I need a vacation.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Venting
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3 comments:
I feel your pain. I feel your pain. Life sucks.
Abe read the above comment and said that it seemed a bit....negative.
So I'll amend. Life sucks. Sometimes. Especially when you work with machinery. Or have children.
Kay,
FLIPPITY DIPPITY FINNISH FORK FUNKY CHICKEN!
I'm trying to stay G-rated... I wrote you a LONG COMMENT AND THE COMPUTER DESTROYED IT OUT OF HATRED.
If I can remember it...
I was trying to say, You DESERVE a vacation! In evil Socialist Norway, they give people FIVE weeks of vacation, and if I were a magical Norwegian fairy godmother I would TOTALLY wave my wand right this second and GRANT YOU your well-earned Five Weeks of Happy Time!
I would ALSO grant you a job that pays twice as much as your current good job where your boss (fittingly) thinks tremendously highly of you... AND grant you one where at least ONE TENTH of your awesomeness was tapped into!
I hate for my sweet friend to have a bad day! And for her to get paint thinner on her jeans!
I'm wondering, are they recoverable? The good news, if they're not, is, that we could TOTALLY go shopping for several pairs of hot new jeans at the end of the summer or thereabouts when I come visit... Cuz we'll be so trim we'll NEED lots of new clothes... And we could even get a matching pair, if you enjoy, as I do, the semi-ridiculous (but still fabulous, I THINK) thought of looking like hot sisters!
I know we all go through funks but I really hate that your job isn't tapping into the grand amazing awesomeness of you.
Guess what? I'm about to run 5K right this second! Paul's going to bike with me... He figured out that the trip from our house, along the Greenbelt, to the video store where we have free movie rental for a month, is almost exactly 5K! I would adore ANYTHING that is 5xKay (I think Seth would too) and I'm excited to measure my time today... in order to be utterly PUMPED by my improvement by the end of the summer. I don't know if I'll be good enough to run with you (VERY VERY LIKELY NOT, even if I manage to visit during the weekend of your run); and I'm planning to spend the summer mostly biking and tennising per usual; but I still wanna "train" a bit with you. It's actually making me kinda giddy at the thought of exercising, the chance to "compare notes" at how awesome and fabulous we're doing.
In our own minds.
I love you sweetie! And, if the damn puter says I'm Paul I'm gonna LET it cuz I'm not losing this comment a second time!!!!
--XO hj.
p.s. Abe's right. "Life sucks" IS negative. But LIFE DOES SUCK! It's a terrible pain in the finickin' ASS! (I was going to say "fudging" but that seemed MORE obscene than the real swear! :D)
But, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth... Life is ALSO a miraculous wonder and... "Life's a long song... but the tune ends too soon for us all." I was crying today 'cuz I realized Gpa. Dave's gonna die before me... but then I realized he's still alive NOW so I decided to try to be glad and grateful and take joy in his presence in my life.
I forget to BREATHE sometimes, can you tell? The gift of being a chef is that you get to stop and SMELL your food... and inhaling deeply to breathe in scents allows one to SLOW DOWN.
And, as Dave says--it's worth it to stick around, as long as you have at least the simple joy of munching a cookie on the porch.
As long as there's food, there's life.
Even if it does suck.
I love that Abe cares about negativity. He sounds adorable. Is it crazy that I half-love someone I've never met? I've only heard the loveliest things about him. And, I trust Rachel's taste implicitly. She has the BEST taste in sisters, and in sisters-in-law...
THE END.
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