Another day

"Death in the Choir Loft" is being postponed again. For those who can't wait to find out what this is all about, a quick précis follows in invisible text - highlight to reveal.

A man I frequently sat next to in church - in the choir loft, which is where we both habitually sit, though neither of us is a member of the choir - was killed in a horrible auto accident on Tuesday shortly before noon. I just got back from his wake. The 20-year old driver who struck his vehicle head-on with an airborne 2007 Mustang (he hit a concrete road divider while speeding and launched his vehicle into oncoming traffic) died Wednesday morning. I don't know the status of the investigation, or if it is even continuing.

Today was quite a day. I got in to work to find that my three presses - the presses I have worked on exclusively since starting in early August - were all down. I was assigned to three other presses in a nearby section of the plant, but when I got there I noticed three things: none of the presses were running, none of the presses had any work scheduled for them, and none of the presses had run in over a week.

Whoopsie.

So I was reassigned to another area, where fast presses were running big numbers. My day consisted mostly of unloading discs from these presses, running tests, and answering alarms. Unfortunately, with the speeds at which these presses were running - twice what I'm used to - there was no time to investigate problems or fine-tune performance. The day was a race to stay ahead of the alarms, and that was about it.

On the way home I stopped to buy a gallon of gasoline. I fired up the snowblower for the first time in nearly ten months yesterday afternoon to clean up some of the six inches of wet, heavy snow that had fallen throughout the day, and I wound up pouring the remnants of last year's gas-oil mixture into the tank after running the tank empty halfway through the job. The snowblower's tank is now full, but my gas can was empty. I needed more gas - right away, since it sounds like there may be more snowblowing fun in store tomorrow.

I have no idea what work has in store tomorrow. Maybe I'll get sent home, which is what I half-expected today. I hope not. And if I do stay in work, I hope the snow starts after I get there and ends well before I leave, so everybody has a chance to plow and salt the highways. Maybe I'll pack a change of clothes, just in case.