smoke shop musings; Star Island musings

PM has been doing some odd scheduling lately, to work around various people's committments, which has resulted in me working 12-9pm today and next Sunday. Normally this would never happen -- I do not work before 1pm on Sundays, ever, because of church and RE -- but summer services are at 9:30am rather than 10:30am, and there's no Sunday school, so... I am available in a pinch. Which this apparently is.

Also, AD has a new job! We're not quite sure when she'll start there, and it will leave us in a bit of a lurch, but I am thrilled for her, because she was, frankly, wasted at the smoke shop.

(So are we all, really, but somebody has to do it, and the work is more complicated than you'd think at first glance. We are not just cashiers. We also clean, put up and take down magazines/newspapers/books/etc., receive and price new stock, take inventory, place orders, do general maintenance, answer phones, put together transfers, and do a lot of assorted paperwork, like redeeming American Spirit gift certificates or figuring tobacco taxes on invoices or making sure the weekly statements from STNC match our records. Plus we deal with crazy people all day long. [I am not kidding about the crazy.])

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My parents are at the cabin now, and Aunt Jan and Uncle Bob have left for Duluth. Aunt Cara will join my parents sometime tomorrow, but she'll be gone by the time I reach the island. She and my mom will leave next weekend, I think, and Vicky will arrive.

I fly out to the Twin Cities on Tuesday the 12th, arriving around 8pm. If Ardis (my step-grandmother) is feeling well, she'll pick me up and we'll drive up to the lake on Wednesday. I will probably do the driving, since her arm is still not recovered from a bad fall a few weeks ago. But if she's not feeling well, or if she thinks she won't be able to deal with getting into and out of our motorboat... well, the current plan is for my dad to drive down and pick me up. Either way, Vicky will still be at the cabin.

We have no extensive projects planned this year, but there's always small stuff that needs doing, and we will definitely have to reroof the cabin and redo several sections of the stairs from the dock up the bank within the next five years. The roof is apparently looking quite scruffy and threatening to leak, and the stairs have been slowly warping over the past few years, to the point where last year I was a bit nervous about a few treads, and I kept having the feeling that the support posts might tilt sideways without warning.

Ah well. Life is a constant race against entropy and decay.

And Vicky wants to learn to sail this year, so Dad and I need to brush up our dusty skills as best we can. There's no way on earth I can remember all the correct terminology, but the mechanics... yeah, I think I can probably still handle tacking. :-)

smoke shop musings; Star Island musings

PM has been doing some odd scheduling lately, to work around various people's committments, which has resulted in me working 12-9pm today and next Sunday. Normally this would never happen -- I do not work before 1pm on Sundays, ever, because of church and RE -- but summer services are at 9:30am rather than 10:30am, and there's no Sunday school, so... I am available in a pinch. Which this apparently is.

Also, AD has a new job! We're not quite sure when she'll start there, and it will leave us in a bit of a lurch, but I am thrilled for her, because she was, frankly, wasted at the smoke shop.

(So are we all, really, but somebody has to do it, and the work is more complicated than you'd think at first glance. We are not just cashiers. We also clean, put up and take down magazines/newspapers/books/etc., receive and price new stock, take inventory, place orders, do general maintenance, answer phones, put together transfers, and do a lot of assorted paperwork, like redeeming American Spirit gift certificates or figuring tobacco taxes on invoices or making sure the weekly statements from STNC match our records. Plus we deal with crazy people all day long. [I am not kidding about the crazy.])

---------------

My parents are at the cabin now, and Aunt Jan and Uncle Bob have left for Duluth. Aunt Cara will join my parents sometime tomorrow, but she'll be gone by the time I reach the island. She and my mom will leave next weekend, I think, and Vicky will arrive.

I fly out to the Twin Cities on Tuesday the 12th, arriving around 8pm. If Ardis (my step-grandmother) is feeling well, she'll pick me up and we'll drive up to the lake on Wednesday. I will probably do the driving, since her arm is still not recovered from a bad fall a few weeks ago. But if she's not feeling well, or if she thinks she won't be able to deal with getting into and out of our motorboat... well, the current plan is for my dad to drive down and pick me up. Either way, Vicky will still be at the cabin.

We have no extensive projects planned this year, but there's always small stuff that needs doing, and we will definitely have to reroof the cabin and redo several sections of the stairs from the dock up the bank within the next five years. The roof is apparently looking quite scruffy and threatening to leak, and the stairs have been slowly warping over the past few years, to the point where last year I was a bit nervous about a few treads, and I kept having the feeling that the support posts might tilt sideways without warning.

Ah well. Life is a constant race against entropy and decay.

And Vicky wants to learn to sail this year, so Dad and I need to brush up our dusty skills as best we can. There's no way on earth I can remember all the correct terminology, but the mechanics... yeah, I think I can probably still handle tacking. :-)