My Last Day of Work for 2017

Woke up and it was cold as hell out. The kind of morning when you get in your car and the windows won't quit fogging up and then icing up? I've got an old car, almost 30, and she doesn't heat up as fast as the newer cars do in the morning. There's something refreshing about it. But when those windows fog up they create this absolutely wonderful display of light that then blinds you as you turn down the street to get to work by 8am.

That drive is a beautiful drive especially when it's iced over in. And it's refreshing as I sip my tea and sing jazz songs to myself in the van, steem drifting from the cup and my breath. And then I turn into the parking lot at work and gather my things and walk inside.

Once inside I enjoy the warmth of the indoors for a minute before stepping outside into the bone cold morning. It was refreshing. My cheeks got wind burned and chapped as I drove the forks to move 3 frost covered stovetops that had been left outside in the frost of the morning. Honestly, I dropped one. Not far. It was low to the ground but just didn’t fit the tines just right and slipped sideways. It really wasn’t a problem. But for the last one Frank came out to help. Frank, maybe because he’s a manager, hasn’t really been the easiest to get to know. And I’m slowly getting to know him. He’s a very interesting guy, and I honestly don’t understand him at all. Guess I don’t need to but when you figure you’re gonna be working with a guy a long time, you wanna get to know who this person is. It was nice to chat with him this morning.

And then the day began, I was gifted the show room this morning. On a morning as cold as today, being inside at the computer with a wide open room in front of you is pretty much the best. It was busy though and we were understaffed by 3 people. When you work the “Show Room” shift, you have quick access to the bathrooms, the kitchen, your locker, a nice place to stroll around, and the warmth of the great indoors. But by a certain point you get a bit bored of the showroom. The place is the epitome of multitasking. Usually when one person has a question so do about 4 others in the room. Someone wants help with a tool rental which can be notoriously tricky because there isn’t much organization.

Someone else wants a price on the cabinet set, another is on the line waiting to know what kind of wood we have out in the yard. Because we have all the time in the world to stop and check. It gets exhausting.

So I switched out at 12:30 for donations to see what was being brought in… not much due to the cold. It was slow. Which means you’re cold. There’s the propane heater in the rickety old shed that you can escape to but it’s dark in there. So you make up a job to do outside the shed but soon it grows too cold for that and you retreat again. Coming out for a customer or two.

Did we get anything good today? Sure…

This was cool and went fast, an old oak easle. Really cool.

I don’t know how this got here but we got a bunch of cool old jewelry in. There’s some gold in that box. I’ve always wondered when I’d find gold here and now I have.

This ring was pretty sweet too!

This didn’t come in today but was still here. It’s a wood boiler. Pretty cool really…

And this radiative heater came in too. I want to take out the new fangled radiators in my house that go along the floor and look … pretty ugly with these. Good Idea? Bad Idea?

This whole set of matching doors came in, old and beautiful.

This came in the other day too, an awesome piece of rough sawn cedar. I want to make a desktop.

Not a great picture of this gorgeous iron gate but it was already going in someone’s car and I had to act quickly.

This left too. OMG what an amazing stove/oven!

It was cold. Really cold. Did I mention that? And it only got colder when I got back from lunch. The sky grew dark, we chatted and waited for the day to end. The sky was dark not just from the sun setting but also from the clouds coming in. And soon the small flecks of flakes began to fall. Slowly at first and then faster and faster until the asphalt was covered. Now 5 short we spent another hour locking up the yard until we all drove home in thick snowfall.

And now I’m here scrambling to be ready to go at 5 am tomorrow morning. I mean we’ve got a flight at 7:45 am and there’s gonna be snow and ice. I’m trying not to get tense about it.

Talk to you all next from Boise…