(no subject)

[jarrardi]

On Saturday I worked the noon shift, which was a nice change of pace (even if it meant not enough sleep because I worked the night shift the night before). The morning shifters were play-bantering back and forth like always, though when I caught one of them alone a little later, she nearly broke down in tears because of several non-work circumstances in her life (nothing very big, but everyone reading this knows that the small stuff can get you down even more easily than the large). I didn't think much of this, but then I encountered the kitchen staff, who were so quiet I knew something serious was afoot. It took all of about 2 seconds to figure that they'd been fighting; one was pouting while the other (much older) was way-too-dedicated in her cleaning, both near to tears. They were both really edgy, and my thought was "strange cats on a hot tin roof". I intended to it after I'd got my shift started, but before I got that far, I was nearly knocked out by a blast of pheromones so powerful that I'm certain it was easily discernable to the "naked" (non-vomeronasal) nose. I went outside shortly thereafter, and now that I was "tuned" to it, I could smell it as soon as I walked back inside the store. One of the kitchen workers walked by me shortly thereafter, and I'm pretty certain she was the one responsible for the smell. I tried to watch everyone there to assess their reactions, but I'm not sure if what I saw was normal or not, or whether it may have been pheromone-induced or -aided. I also kept a close eye on my own behavior to see if I would respond somehow to what my nose was telling me, but I didn't notice anything besides an increased heart rate (I was feeling kind of edgy before too long, too) and a strong desire to "hug everyone all better" (which is my normal response to tears or ominous silences). So honestly, I dunno if there was any sort of behavior affectedness. But it sure looked like it. Either way, I thought it was very interesting. A lot of the customers seemed uneasy/edgy, too, but that could have been form the dense fog.

Speaking of fog, it's been foggy here for several days now. Our first inversion of winter. Oh boy. Warm air and weather systems travel over the mountains, trapping a little bubble of cold air in the valley between mountains. Poof! Inversion! We get to breathe the same air over and over again for days at a time, and all the pollution is trapped there, too. Many people in this area depend on wood stoves to heat their homes. Which means the air fills up with wood smoke pretty darned fast in inversion conditions. Then the EPA comes along and fines us for having too many pollutants in the air, and Boise responds by slapping down a burn ban, which doesn't help because it only stops "unnecessary" burning, and that means people who have wood as the only source of heat for their home are exempt. I'm not saying that using wood to heat your home is bad, or that you should switch. My complaint is that I'm sensitive to smoke of any kind (especially cigarette smoke), and I've been breathing the same wood smoke for days now. So I'm all kinds of sick. Yeesh! I keep forgetting my #1 reason for moving away from here: inversions. Because I don't want to die a horrible, hacking, sickly death. Well, maybe not that bad, but I sure feel icky right now. :-P