Hisashiburi, ne? (long time no see/it’s been a while, hasn’t it?)
Here I sit, typing another post from work. Yes, work. I have a job. This job is quite different from that boring job of teaching English in japan, and so often having nothing to do.
Last time I posted here, I was in japan, living in fear of the melting nuclear power plants 115 miles north, leaking radiation into the atmosphere, from where it seeped into food and water. I was preparing to move back to America, to get further from all that. Here’s what’s happened since:
I have safely returned. There weren’t any wrenches thrown into the machinery of my return. I’m not worried about how much radiation is in the city tapwater today, or where my food’s coming from, or which direction the wind is blowing. Well, wind direction does affect us right now. There’s a massive fire in AZ right now. It’s covered more acreage than thee city of phoenix, and the wind keeps blowing its smoke in our direction. It was a completely new experience for me: not being able to see the sandia mountains AT ALL from a mile away. Not even a faint outline. We get dust storms now and then, and those can block the view of the sandias from the west side. But on this day of NO sandias, I also could not find the sun in the sky. I took a picture of where I thought the sun was. I was thinking, “but soft! What light through yonder smoke breaks? It is the west! And is that... the sun?” I couldn’t be sure. But the persistent smell of a bad campfire will go away before long. A mask prevents breathing it in. it doesn’t cause cancer in different parts of one’s body. Smoke can cause cancer, but only in one’s lungs. It doesn’t get into the food (well, it does, but it doesn’t hurt humans from there), and if it gets in the water, it’s usually filtered out. Plus, you can see smoke, smell smoke, and taste it, too.
The majority of the boxes I shipped to myself have arrived. Brilliant me boxed up my warm weather clothes and mailed them by boat. They arrived about 2 months after I did. I arrived when I needed them. One day, four boxes arrived, including one of the ones I mailed first and the one I mailed last. Explain that one to me. Why didn’t they all arrive at once? One of them had a sticker on it, saying that it was received damaged in new jersey. Wait, what? Why ship it from japan to NJ, and back across thousands of miles of American land?
I got a job with hardly even trying. I was hired as an office assistant at a non-profit donation center. I took the job with the understanding that I would be primarily doing paperwork, and would be crosstrained to do all the other jobs. But so far, I’ve been doing the other jobs. Learning to drive a 16 foot truck. Picking up people’s donations and loading them into the truck. Unloading the truck at the store we sell all the donations to. Sorting donations at our donation center. Lots of lifting things and moving them around. Not much sitting down and doing the paperwork I was hired for. My wrists are hurting again. I was doing some research online this morning to try to figure out what’s causing this pain. my research suggested that it might be tendonitis, which requires physical therapy. I was hoping to avoid using workman’s compensation on this, to save my non-profit employer some money, but it would appear as if that is not the route I should take.
In case any doctors happen to be reading this, my wrists began to suffer pain when I’m lifting things, balancing things, carrying things, about a month after I took this job. After two days on the job, I had no strength left in my fingers. I found some wrist wrap thingies. They have a hole in each for the thumb, and wrap around the wrist. They give some support, and are designed to improve circulation in the wrist. They extended my usefulness at work for a month. But they apparently merely procrastinated the inevitable. The pain in my wrists is in the middle of the joint, below the heel of the palm. Hm. That’s where the tendons are, isn’t it? So, if any doctors happen to be reading this, I welcome your advice. What may be wrong, what I can do to help fix it. I thank you in advance.
So, because of my wrists being so troublesome, the boss has moved me to “light duties”. He’s been very accommodating. He’s been putting me at the donation locations with rather little work. I feel like I’m paid too much to sit here like this, doing whatever I feel like, so long as the work gets done. And there’s something to do for about 3 minutes as much as 3 times an hour. Sometimes. Usually once or twice an hour. Sometimes no times an hour. And the boss is at the busy location, not looking over my shoulder. The on the job boredom at this job is SO much better than the on the job boredom at my last job, with coworkers all around me all the time, looking over my shoulder, curious about what I’m doing, making me feel like I have to do something related to work somehow, despite having no work work to do. there, I could plan lessons, study Japanese, or attempt to talk with my coworkers who were happy that I would try to use Japanese, but mostly it was study Japanese. Here, I can read a book, any book (and I don’t necessarily have to bring one. Donors bring books all the time), fiddle around on my computer, study Japanese, or anything else I come up with. So long as the location’s clean and the donations are sorted, it’s all good. Hours of nothing to do at work is much more relaxing when you don’t HAVE to do something work related all day.
I like this job a lot more than my last job. The pay’s not as good, sure. The health insurance takes a while to kick in, and I have to pay for it, sure. Rent’s much lower (ah, the joys of living with a parent who’s not interested in making money off you). But when I’m bored at work, I can do something about it.
Wow. Under 2 pages to give a general update. I must be leaving something out.
Oh! Mom and I took the rail runner to santa fe one day a couple weeks ago. I nearly bought a $70 pair of flip flops. They looked nice and sturdy. But the store doesn’t do wide width. Ah, well. their loss is my wallet’s safety, I suppose. Our day trip vacation was dampened a bit by a movie crew filming some movie in santa fe plaza. We couldn’t go just anywhere. But we still had a mostly good day. On the way back, sitting on the train, the light was failing a bit early. It was hazy for some reason. Driving back home from the train station, we couldn’t make out any details on the sandias until nearly tramway. We wondered where the fire was. It was grey, not tan, so it wasn’t a sand storm; it was a fire. Apparently, this fire is about 240 miles away. I can’t imagine how much smoke there is closer.
But then, the winds have yet to die down this year. This windy this late in the year is quite unusual for these parts. The winds are helping the fires and hindering the firefighters. The winds are blowing the rain away, too. plus, it’s a little hotter than usual for this time of year, which also hurts the firefighters. But the wind itself and the utter dryness we’ve got right now are the big things the firefighters don’t want.
I’m usually quite patient with whatever the weather decides to do. after all, aside from prayer, what can I do to change the weather? But I’m tired of all this wind. I’m tired of this 2% humidity. The only thing I wanna see that 2% tagged onto is fat content in my milk. (actually, I like whole milk, so I don’t even like seeing 2% there.) I miss humidity. I miss rain. I miss breathing clear, fresh air. I don’t miss the occasional breath of farm fresh air. I don’t miss not being able to read. I don’t miss not being able to communicate with the people around me.
Oh! That reminds me of something that happened at work. One of my bilingual Hispanic coworkers was asked (in English) to do something. His response: no speako ingles.
We all laughed. He’s apparently trilingual: English, Spanish, and spanglish.
And with that, I’ll leave y’all, my devoted readers, to return to your regularly scheduled lives.
Last time I posted here, I was in japan, living in fear of the melting nuclear power plants 115 miles north, leaking radiation into the atmosphere, from where it seeped into food and water. I was preparing to move back to America, to get further from all that. Here’s what’s happened since:
I have safely returned. There weren’t any wrenches thrown into the machinery of my return. I’m not worried about how much radiation is in the city tapwater today, or where my food’s coming from, or which direction the wind is blowing. Well, wind direction does affect us right now. There’s a massive fire in AZ right now. It’s covered more acreage than thee city of phoenix, and the wind keeps blowing its smoke in our direction. It was a completely new experience for me: not being able to see the sandia mountains AT ALL from a mile away. Not even a faint outline. We get dust storms now and then, and those can block the view of the sandias from the west side. But on this day of NO sandias, I also could not find the sun in the sky. I took a picture of where I thought the sun was. I was thinking, “but soft! What light through yonder smoke breaks? It is the west! And is that... the sun?” I couldn’t be sure. But the persistent smell of a bad campfire will go away before long. A mask prevents breathing it in. it doesn’t cause cancer in different parts of one’s body. Smoke can cause cancer, but only in one’s lungs. It doesn’t get into the food (well, it does, but it doesn’t hurt humans from there), and if it gets in the water, it’s usually filtered out. Plus, you can see smoke, smell smoke, and taste it, too.
The majority of the boxes I shipped to myself have arrived. Brilliant me boxed up my warm weather clothes and mailed them by boat. They arrived about 2 months after I did. I arrived when I needed them. One day, four boxes arrived, including one of the ones I mailed first and the one I mailed last. Explain that one to me. Why didn’t they all arrive at once? One of them had a sticker on it, saying that it was received damaged in new jersey. Wait, what? Why ship it from japan to NJ, and back across thousands of miles of American land?
I got a job with hardly even trying. I was hired as an office assistant at a non-profit donation center. I took the job with the understanding that I would be primarily doing paperwork, and would be crosstrained to do all the other jobs. But so far, I’ve been doing the other jobs. Learning to drive a 16 foot truck. Picking up people’s donations and loading them into the truck. Unloading the truck at the store we sell all the donations to. Sorting donations at our donation center. Lots of lifting things and moving them around. Not much sitting down and doing the paperwork I was hired for. My wrists are hurting again. I was doing some research online this morning to try to figure out what’s causing this pain. my research suggested that it might be tendonitis, which requires physical therapy. I was hoping to avoid using workman’s compensation on this, to save my non-profit employer some money, but it would appear as if that is not the route I should take.
In case any doctors happen to be reading this, my wrists began to suffer pain when I’m lifting things, balancing things, carrying things, about a month after I took this job. After two days on the job, I had no strength left in my fingers. I found some wrist wrap thingies. They have a hole in each for the thumb, and wrap around the wrist. They give some support, and are designed to improve circulation in the wrist. They extended my usefulness at work for a month. But they apparently merely procrastinated the inevitable. The pain in my wrists is in the middle of the joint, below the heel of the palm. Hm. That’s where the tendons are, isn’t it? So, if any doctors happen to be reading this, I welcome your advice. What may be wrong, what I can do to help fix it. I thank you in advance.
So, because of my wrists being so troublesome, the boss has moved me to “light duties”. He’s been very accommodating. He’s been putting me at the donation locations with rather little work. I feel like I’m paid too much to sit here like this, doing whatever I feel like, so long as the work gets done. And there’s something to do for about 3 minutes as much as 3 times an hour. Sometimes. Usually once or twice an hour. Sometimes no times an hour. And the boss is at the busy location, not looking over my shoulder. The on the job boredom at this job is SO much better than the on the job boredom at my last job, with coworkers all around me all the time, looking over my shoulder, curious about what I’m doing, making me feel like I have to do something related to work somehow, despite having no work work to do. there, I could plan lessons, study Japanese, or attempt to talk with my coworkers who were happy that I would try to use Japanese, but mostly it was study Japanese. Here, I can read a book, any book (and I don’t necessarily have to bring one. Donors bring books all the time), fiddle around on my computer, study Japanese, or anything else I come up with. So long as the location’s clean and the donations are sorted, it’s all good. Hours of nothing to do at work is much more relaxing when you don’t HAVE to do something work related all day.
I like this job a lot more than my last job. The pay’s not as good, sure. The health insurance takes a while to kick in, and I have to pay for it, sure. Rent’s much lower (ah, the joys of living with a parent who’s not interested in making money off you). But when I’m bored at work, I can do something about it.
Wow. Under 2 pages to give a general update. I must be leaving something out.
Oh! Mom and I took the rail runner to santa fe one day a couple weeks ago. I nearly bought a $70 pair of flip flops. They looked nice and sturdy. But the store doesn’t do wide width. Ah, well. their loss is my wallet’s safety, I suppose. Our day trip vacation was dampened a bit by a movie crew filming some movie in santa fe plaza. We couldn’t go just anywhere. But we still had a mostly good day. On the way back, sitting on the train, the light was failing a bit early. It was hazy for some reason. Driving back home from the train station, we couldn’t make out any details on the sandias until nearly tramway. We wondered where the fire was. It was grey, not tan, so it wasn’t a sand storm; it was a fire. Apparently, this fire is about 240 miles away. I can’t imagine how much smoke there is closer.
But then, the winds have yet to die down this year. This windy this late in the year is quite unusual for these parts. The winds are helping the fires and hindering the firefighters. The winds are blowing the rain away, too. plus, it’s a little hotter than usual for this time of year, which also hurts the firefighters. But the wind itself and the utter dryness we’ve got right now are the big things the firefighters don’t want.
I’m usually quite patient with whatever the weather decides to do. after all, aside from prayer, what can I do to change the weather? But I’m tired of all this wind. I’m tired of this 2% humidity. The only thing I wanna see that 2% tagged onto is fat content in my milk. (actually, I like whole milk, so I don’t even like seeing 2% there.) I miss humidity. I miss rain. I miss breathing clear, fresh air. I don’t miss the occasional breath of farm fresh air. I don’t miss not being able to read. I don’t miss not being able to communicate with the people around me.
Oh! That reminds me of something that happened at work. One of my bilingual Hispanic coworkers was asked (in English) to do something. His response: no speako ingles.
We all laughed. He’s apparently trilingual: English, Spanish, and spanglish.
And with that, I’ll leave y’all, my devoted readers, to return to your regularly scheduled lives.