Wednesday, October 13
Nicked from arcaedia.
Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.
What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Only medium? Darn.
What scared me was scrolling through the possible answers and realizing how many of them could apply to me.
Threat rating: Medium. Your total lack of decent
family values makes you dangerous, but we can
count on some right wing nutter blowing you up
if you become too high profile.
What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Only medium? Darn.
What scared me was scrolling through the possible answers and realizing how many of them could apply to me.
Tuesday, October 12
I completely lost my temper with a cow last night and hit her as hard as I could. Cow unaffected, hand badly bruised.
There's a lesson in that somewhere.
There's a lesson in that somewhere.
Monday, October 11
Kat's Average Workday, for the Interested.
7:30 - Wake up. The time on this is theoretical and the experience always traumatic, particularly on cold mornings.
8:00 - Get self over to cheesehouse. The mother is panicking over some disaster or another (necessity of doing a fax to Italy, unable to open accounting program, unexpected large order, lack of any orders whatsoever, fax machine not working, no reservations for Italy in spite of it only being eight days away, ect.) Placate. Use any remaining time to do webwork or draft ad copy.
9:00 - The hired help finishes in the cooler and leaves for breakfast. Do a shift in the cooler washing cheese. This is a pretty simple task where one takes down a wheel of cheese and wipes the entire surface with a sponge, getting rid of undersirable mold and inoculating the cheese with the bacteria that forms our natural rinds. Wipe the shelf as well. Replace cheese. Repeat with next sixty wheels.
Simple, yes. Quick, no.
Because this is quite dull, and because knowing some French will make it easier for me to get a Canadian work visa, I have been doing French language tapes while I work. This means I spend a fair bit of my day in a walk-in cooler wearing headphones washing cheese and talking to myself in French. Most people who do this end up in special padded rooms, I think.
10:00 - Breakfast. Someone has drunk all the milk again. Dammit! - oh, wait, that was me. Fetch more from the approximately 1000 gallons over at the barn. Eat in front of the computer so I can work on the novel.
11:00 - Back to work, helping with cheesemaking. I am still pretty much of a peon in this area. My job is to stand and push the button that makes the vat go up and down. If I am good I will someday graduate to scooping up buckets of curd and handing them to the mother.
12:00 - While the mother is fighting with the fax machine, get into a long and rambling discussion with the father and our staff about books, movies, music, and politics, generally degenerating into a rant about Bush and/or the stupidity and general crappiness of the American media. At 12:45 the mother finally gets the fax working. We scatter before she catches us talking politics on the job again.
12:45 - Wash another 60 cheeses. While doing this get a good idea for the novel, which I will forget by the time I leave the cooler and which I can't write down, because I'm working and my hands are all sticky. This happened enough that I finally found Technological Salvation (available for $39.95 from your local Walmart) in the form of a digital voice recorder. I keep it in my bra because it can pick up my voice very clearly there. Unfortunately this means that I am now in a walk-in cooler washing cheese talking to myself about my imaginary world and occasionally sticking my hand down the front of my shirt. Aside from the padded room considerations, everyone now makes fun of me. Mental note: buy clip-on mike.
2:00 - Lunch. Eat at computer so as to work on novel.
3:00 - If I am lucky, extended lunch. More often, a return to the cheesehouse to deal with crisis-of-the-day or webwork or write more ad copy. Once or twice a week I will also be called in so the mother can use me as a fashion consultant, packing consultant, shopping companion, and all-around lackey and placater in her preperations for her trip. At some point or another I hope to get this slot free so I can start carrying my weight with the dinner-cooking ordeals.
4:30 - Milking. If I am lucky, this is boring. Otherwise, much swearing.
6:30 - Finish milking and wash down. Lock the cows into their field. Argue with the so-called automatic washer (aka "The Bitch", or, when she is being particularly non-automatic and PMS-esque, "Alanis".) Check email and blogs.
7:30 - Go to house. Help cook food. Eat food.
8 ish - Phone call from Dan. Yay!
Post 8 ish - Sit at computer and try to work on novel. Wake up with forehead on keyboard. Consider leaving the result, just to bring the day's word count up, but finally delete it and go to bed instead.
Repeat ad nauseam.
7:30 - Wake up. The time on this is theoretical and the experience always traumatic, particularly on cold mornings.
8:00 - Get self over to cheesehouse. The mother is panicking over some disaster or another (necessity of doing a fax to Italy, unable to open accounting program, unexpected large order, lack of any orders whatsoever, fax machine not working, no reservations for Italy in spite of it only being eight days away, ect.) Placate. Use any remaining time to do webwork or draft ad copy.
9:00 - The hired help finishes in the cooler and leaves for breakfast. Do a shift in the cooler washing cheese. This is a pretty simple task where one takes down a wheel of cheese and wipes the entire surface with a sponge, getting rid of undersirable mold and inoculating the cheese with the bacteria that forms our natural rinds. Wipe the shelf as well. Replace cheese. Repeat with next sixty wheels.
Simple, yes. Quick, no.
Because this is quite dull, and because knowing some French will make it easier for me to get a Canadian work visa, I have been doing French language tapes while I work. This means I spend a fair bit of my day in a walk-in cooler wearing headphones washing cheese and talking to myself in French. Most people who do this end up in special padded rooms, I think.
10:00 - Breakfast. Someone has drunk all the milk again. Dammit! - oh, wait, that was me. Fetch more from the approximately 1000 gallons over at the barn. Eat in front of the computer so I can work on the novel.
11:00 - Back to work, helping with cheesemaking. I am still pretty much of a peon in this area. My job is to stand and push the button that makes the vat go up and down. If I am good I will someday graduate to scooping up buckets of curd and handing them to the mother.
12:00 - While the mother is fighting with the fax machine, get into a long and rambling discussion with the father and our staff about books, movies, music, and politics, generally degenerating into a rant about Bush and/or the stupidity and general crappiness of the American media. At 12:45 the mother finally gets the fax working. We scatter before she catches us talking politics on the job again.
12:45 - Wash another 60 cheeses. While doing this get a good idea for the novel, which I will forget by the time I leave the cooler and which I can't write down, because I'm working and my hands are all sticky. This happened enough that I finally found Technological Salvation (available for $39.95 from your local Walmart) in the form of a digital voice recorder. I keep it in my bra because it can pick up my voice very clearly there. Unfortunately this means that I am now in a walk-in cooler washing cheese talking to myself about my imaginary world and occasionally sticking my hand down the front of my shirt. Aside from the padded room considerations, everyone now makes fun of me. Mental note: buy clip-on mike.
2:00 - Lunch. Eat at computer so as to work on novel.
3:00 - If I am lucky, extended lunch. More often, a return to the cheesehouse to deal with crisis-of-the-day or webwork or write more ad copy. Once or twice a week I will also be called in so the mother can use me as a fashion consultant, packing consultant, shopping companion, and all-around lackey and placater in her preperations for her trip. At some point or another I hope to get this slot free so I can start carrying my weight with the dinner-cooking ordeals.
4:30 - Milking. If I am lucky, this is boring. Otherwise, much swearing.
6:30 - Finish milking and wash down. Lock the cows into their field. Argue with the so-called automatic washer (aka "The Bitch", or, when she is being particularly non-automatic and PMS-esque, "Alanis".) Check email and blogs.
7:30 - Go to house. Help cook food. Eat food.
8 ish - Phone call from Dan. Yay!
Post 8 ish - Sit at computer and try to work on novel. Wake up with forehead on keyboard. Consider leaving the result, just to bring the day's word count up, but finally delete it and go to bed instead.
Repeat ad nauseam.
Sunday, October 10
Another week of ten-hour days. My parents leave for Italy in a week and the hired help leaves for India in four days, so it's been a week of being very rapidly brought up to speed on all the stuff I'm going to have to be doing while everyone else has gone.
I'd say that I'm up to speed now and so things should slack off soon, except that, uh, my parents leave for Italy in a week and the hired help goes to India in four days. Darn.
Other than that things have been pretty good. The cheese coolers are still stuffed, but one of our accounts ordered 16 wheels on Tuesday, so mom was able to make cheese this week. The mail orders have been picking up again too. And the website is finally more-or-less in shape. I am still not entirely happy with the frontpage, and one of these days when I have, oh, six or eight hours to spare, I'm going to sit around doing the patient tweak-and-test, tweak-and-test that will be required to make it do what I want, but right now six or eight hours to spare are at a premium, so people will just have to deal. The order page is quite spiffy and professional, though. I shall content myself with that.
We did have a cow go down on Friday, but it turned out she'd just eaten herself sick. It was also my day off, so that was a Happiness. I wandered over when the vet came to hear the verdict. The cow (Raspberry) was lodged in the barn with all the alfafa hay, and was standing there looking very sorry for herself and sort of nosing the haybales. You could almost hear her thinking, "Damn, I'd have killed to get in here and stuff my fat face with this stuff, and now they let me in all on their own and I am completely not in the mood. Figures."
All God's creatures gots irony.
The contruction project has experienced actual progress, although it's been plagued with snakes. Well, snake. He'd been around for a bit, sort of crawling about in there - at one point my father had to stop work for the day because he needed the stepladder and the snake was sleeping on it. We finally realized why when Dad and the bro found him sleeping in an upright pipe they were trying to string wiring through. He'd been looking for a place to hibernate, and now he'd found the perfect spot. And wasn't planning on leaving, no matter how much they banged, poked, and swore. They even filled the pipe with water to try and drive him out. The snake just lurked in the bottom, probably thinking, "Ignorant mammals. I am a superior form of life and can hold my breath."
Then they pulled the plug on the bottom and the snake came sliding out in a cascade of water, probably with the snake equivelent of a stupid expression on his face. He crawled off to find somewhere else to live out the winter. Mammals triumph again.
I'd say that I'm up to speed now and so things should slack off soon, except that, uh, my parents leave for Italy in a week and the hired help goes to India in four days. Darn.
Other than that things have been pretty good. The cheese coolers are still stuffed, but one of our accounts ordered 16 wheels on Tuesday, so mom was able to make cheese this week. The mail orders have been picking up again too. And the website is finally more-or-less in shape. I am still not entirely happy with the frontpage, and one of these days when I have, oh, six or eight hours to spare, I'm going to sit around doing the patient tweak-and-test, tweak-and-test that will be required to make it do what I want, but right now six or eight hours to spare are at a premium, so people will just have to deal. The order page is quite spiffy and professional, though. I shall content myself with that.
We did have a cow go down on Friday, but it turned out she'd just eaten herself sick. It was also my day off, so that was a Happiness. I wandered over when the vet came to hear the verdict. The cow (Raspberry) was lodged in the barn with all the alfafa hay, and was standing there looking very sorry for herself and sort of nosing the haybales. You could almost hear her thinking, "Damn, I'd have killed to get in here and stuff my fat face with this stuff, and now they let me in all on their own and I am completely not in the mood. Figures."
All God's creatures gots irony.
The contruction project has experienced actual progress, although it's been plagued with snakes. Well, snake. He'd been around for a bit, sort of crawling about in there - at one point my father had to stop work for the day because he needed the stepladder and the snake was sleeping on it. We finally realized why when Dad and the bro found him sleeping in an upright pipe they were trying to string wiring through. He'd been looking for a place to hibernate, and now he'd found the perfect spot. And wasn't planning on leaving, no matter how much they banged, poked, and swore. They even filled the pipe with water to try and drive him out. The snake just lurked in the bottom, probably thinking, "Ignorant mammals. I am a superior form of life and can hold my breath."
Then they pulled the plug on the bottom and the snake came sliding out in a cascade of water, probably with the snake equivelent of a stupid expression on his face. He crawled off to find somewhere else to live out the winter. Mammals triumph again.
Monday, October 04
Can't talk. Must work.
Pretty much summarizes my week.
Don't get me wrong, it's great to be home and I missed working more than I would have believed possible - but I'd forgotten how frantic it always is around here. I'm working mostly in the cheesehouse, but things, if anything, are more frantic here. My mother doubled cheese production last year and - thanks to the whims of Evil Construction Contracters - we did not double our storage space, so we're desperate to sell cheese, and we lost a fair amount of customers in the spring when we were sold out of everything. So we're actually having to do some marketing for once. I spent last week retouching the website, mostly redoing the frontpage (so's I'd have an excuse to send out a mass mailing to our customers and remind them we existed) and the photogallery (so's it no longer showed us using the old cheese vat, and incidentally to get rid of the last of the nasty tables and replace them with nice clean css), but also adding some forms here and some pictures there and generally retouching the lot. In the process I made up quite a long, foaming rant about the evils of Internet Explorer, as anyone who deals with the spectre of Browser Compatability will, but I'm too tired to post that now, so you're all saved. (Explorer is INCOMPATABLE WITH ITSELF. That's all I'm saying. And they say they set the standard, but then they won't document their standard. I hates them, yes I does.)
(Use Mozilla!)
(That's all I'm saying. Uh, really this time.)
In the process of all this I tripped across a very nice review of our shitake-leek, which I showed to my mother in the hopes of cheering her up. It nearly did - the review itself, that is - but unfortunately it revealed in the process that between the distributer and the retailer our cheese is being sold with a 150% markup in the Texas Central Market stores, and she went into a bit of a foaming rage over that. It's not just that it makes the cheese ludicrously overpriced - it's that the distrubuter has been playing games with us of late, telling us that our cheese isn't selling well, making noises about how he's going to drop us entirely unless my mother flies out there for some Do they're throwing (paying her own expenses, of course), et cetera, and learning that the cheese isn't selling well because it's priced at three times what we'd sell it for did not go over well.
But she can't afford to loose the distrubuter. Not now, when we're not selling enough cheese as it is and the milk prices just took a nose dive.
Bah. Oh well, maybe we'll get some more mail orders this week.
(I was going to reply to comments and email, but, uh, it's dark out. And I'm hungry. Tomorrow, honest....)
Pretty much summarizes my week.
Don't get me wrong, it's great to be home and I missed working more than I would have believed possible - but I'd forgotten how frantic it always is around here. I'm working mostly in the cheesehouse, but things, if anything, are more frantic here. My mother doubled cheese production last year and - thanks to the whims of Evil Construction Contracters - we did not double our storage space, so we're desperate to sell cheese, and we lost a fair amount of customers in the spring when we were sold out of everything. So we're actually having to do some marketing for once. I spent last week retouching the website, mostly redoing the frontpage (so's I'd have an excuse to send out a mass mailing to our customers and remind them we existed) and the photogallery (so's it no longer showed us using the old cheese vat, and incidentally to get rid of the last of the nasty tables and replace them with nice clean css), but also adding some forms here and some pictures there and generally retouching the lot. In the process I made up quite a long, foaming rant about the evils of Internet Explorer, as anyone who deals with the spectre of Browser Compatability will, but I'm too tired to post that now, so you're all saved. (Explorer is INCOMPATABLE WITH ITSELF. That's all I'm saying. And they say they set the standard, but then they won't document their standard. I hates them, yes I does.)
(Use Mozilla!)
(That's all I'm saying. Uh, really this time.)
In the process of all this I tripped across a very nice review of our shitake-leek, which I showed to my mother in the hopes of cheering her up. It nearly did - the review itself, that is - but unfortunately it revealed in the process that between the distributer and the retailer our cheese is being sold with a 150% markup in the Texas Central Market stores, and she went into a bit of a foaming rage over that. It's not just that it makes the cheese ludicrously overpriced - it's that the distrubuter has been playing games with us of late, telling us that our cheese isn't selling well, making noises about how he's going to drop us entirely unless my mother flies out there for some Do they're throwing (paying her own expenses, of course), et cetera, and learning that the cheese isn't selling well because it's priced at three times what we'd sell it for did not go over well.
But she can't afford to loose the distrubuter. Not now, when we're not selling enough cheese as it is and the milk prices just took a nose dive.
Bah. Oh well, maybe we'll get some more mail orders this week.
(I was going to reply to comments and email, but, uh, it's dark out. And I'm hungry. Tomorrow, honest....)
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