Holy Smokes...it's the end of the summer!

Labo(u)r Day weekend. Wow. Snuck up on me. Only three more sleeps and I'm on my way home!

Here's a front desk story that started out kind of gross and turned into a very funny story...guy comes to the front desk with his toothbrush. He wants EVERYONE to see it, because it has a black hair on it, and it DID NOT HAVE A HAIR ON IT when he left home. He did not know WHAT the housekeeper was doing with his toothbrush but he was PISSED OFF.
Now, yes, it's very gross to find a black hair on your toothbrush, especially when you have almost no dark blonde hair. As a company representative, I felt bad for the guy. I'd be mad too. But no, it didn't stop there. He was ranting. Showing the toothbrush with the hair to everyone around. Seething. Demanding something be done. Demanding to see a manager. While waiting for the manager, he filled out a comment form. In that form, he explained just how disgusted he was, and how he had better get this fixed in ONE DAY or he was calling the RCMP and that housekeeper would have to face the consequences!
OK, now it's laughable. The RCMP??? Get out here now, there's a hair on my toothbrush!! The housekeeping supervisor went over to the commissary and gave him TWO new toothbrushes. Not sure how he felt about all his pain and suffering, And not sure if he kept the original one with the hair for evidence for when the RCMP got here, but at least he had two new toothbrushes.

Other than that, things have been pretty much status quo. Today was belly dancing class at the gym :)
Yeah, if I were thin and toned like the instructor, I might have looked sexy too. Especially with the scarves and jingle skirts we had. Unfortunately, I looked dumpy and kind of like I was slamming a car door shut with my hip. Oh well, it was fun anyway.

It was actually dark when I went to work at 5 am this week....the days are going to shorter very quickly now.

Half way

Yep, half way through this rotation. My whole next week will be the same as this week, splits and day shifts. I have to get used to the fact that my nice routine is gone for this one. I'm trying to make myself at least do stretching and floor exercises in my room, but so far have had not much success.

The weather, in one word, is COLD. Tonight it is supposed to get down to 1c (or about 33f). And there are still people complaining that their a/c doesn't work. After smiling nicely, and telling them I'll put a work order in right away, I want to shout at them "IT'S BECAUSE IT'S TOO FRIGGIN' COLD OUTSIDE, THAT'S WHY IT WON'T COME ON!!!" or "JUST OPEN YOUR WINDOW!". Whew, glad I got that out of my system. I refuse to turn on any heat in August.

I was entertained this morning, again, by logging customer complaints. One fella - who did not put his name or room number, therefore we cannot respond - wrote a letter of complaint about steak night last night. I guess the fans over the grills were not working yesterday, so the steaks had to be done on griddles, therefore not "char-broiled". This poor guy, he looks forward to steak night all week and then to have to live with the disappointment of not having his steak char broiled. Why, oh why didn't they check the fans earlier in the day??? His disappointment could have been avoided if only someone would've thought to check the fans at noon, rather than right before dinnertime. And that's all I'll say on that subject.

Full house here this week. Had to start putting people in the overflow trailers. They are jack and jill rooms (two rooms share a bathroom) so, of course, the inevitable grumbling starts. Although I have to say, for the most part, people were not too bad about it. They grimaced and groaned, but at least didn't threaten to quit their job (see previous post).

I'm going to finish napping now, and prepare to go back to work for check-ins tonight :)

Some very random thoughts...

Ah, the world of split shifts. I can't sleep. With only 8 hours off between the time I get off at night, and the time I have to be in the next morning, I just can't sleep. I have strange, unfamiliar dreams. Usually my dreams feel like "mine", but the ones I've been having lately just don't. I see me in them, but they don't feel like mine. Today, and then Friday, should be the end of my split shifts. For this rotation, anyway.

I think the camp population probably represents a slice of real life personalities. This week seemed to be a larger than normal population that threatened to quit their jobs if they 1. didn't get a better (closer, quieter) room, 2. didn't get their important maintenance issues resolved RIGHT NOW, 3. couldn't get better food selections in the dining room, and my favorite...4. object to the number of minorities working here. A guy actually quit and said he was going to start a chain reaction of people objecting to the various minorities working in this camp. These things come from people who, for the most part, are earning approx $1,000 per day to be here. Hmm. OK, quit. I have no objections. Won't bother or impact me or my company at all. Your employer will definitely find someone else waiting to take your place.

At dinner the other night, I was trying to salt my food and noticed that the holes of the salt shaker were mostly plugged, so I smacked the shaker down on the table to clear it out. Unfortunately, I landed it right on my fork, which was perched on my plate buried in a pile of Chinese noodles. Yeah, most of them landed on me, and luckily I didn't get any of my dinner companions with any. I did have one of the ladies picking the noodles out of my hair for me, though. I decided to be happy that I could make someone - anyone - laugh (taking the hit for the team!) rather than be embarrassed. 

Working splits and days has gotten me out of my gym habit :( (I actually need a crying emoticon there!). I'm not getting there near enough, and I hate how quickly the habit disappears! 

I am going to try to add some pictures here. These pictures are of the lunch display for some visitors yesterday. All items are carved from fruit and vegetables.

Oooooh...scary ghost stories

Oh I heard an interesting story today about the "resident ghost" here at camp. Apparently, he frequently makes appearances, in the north wing. He's native, has creeped some people out so much that they won't stay in certain dorms. My supervisor has "met" him. She stays in the north wing. I guess he disappears in the summer, and once the weather turns cool will be back. And he likes to appear to women with dark hair in braids. So guess what! I am going to try my darnedest to be able to stay in the north wing once fall comes creeping in, and wear my long dark hair in braids! I'm pretty excited to have a ghostly experience. D says she wasn't scared or creeped out at all when she had her encounter. I guess he likes to give hugs and snuggles. I forget now if he has a name, I'll have to find out tomorrow.

And I met one of the drug dogs today. She looks somewhat like a springer spaniel, but not quite. Probably a breed I know nothing about. So friendly though. She was tired out, because the day before she worked hard, checking all the bags of incoming guests. I was surprised to be able to pet and cuddle her, since I thought working dogs weren't supposed to be pet. Maybe it's different for drug dogs than it is for seeing-eye dogs or that type. She is a sweetheart, anyway.

I'm working an ugly split tomorrow, have to be back to work in approx 7 hours, so I've got to bed some sleep!

Back at the SRR...

Things are pretty much the same as when I left :)

There has been a lot of rain, as evidenced by the large puddles of water everywhere. But yesterday and today have been very nice. Very warm, humid, by Alberta standards, and lots of sunshine. I checked into an outside trailer room for Monday night only, and moved inside to a fire warden room Tuesday. Two halls closer to work than my last two stays. I don't mind the walk, though, and I'm afraid being closer is going to weaken me, haha.

Speaking of weaken, I think all the Couch 2 5K walking/jogging I was doing has done very bad things to my knee :( I don't think I should be doing that anymore, which is sad, because I really did enjoy it! Pop my headphones on and I could go and go. I tried a bike today, and maybe an elliptical machine tomorrow, plus my studio exercises, and I guess it will make up for not jogging.

What a bunch of whiners at the desk today. We had several demanding room transfers because of  "faults" in their rooms. One guy had a loose toilet seat, molding coming off his wall, his desk was scratched so when he wrote it was uneven, and his cupboard drawer didn't open very well. Yeah, OK. I think it had more to do with the room being at the nether regions of the North wing, but still inside, mind you, than all it's "faults". Another guy could hear something scratching in the wall. And he couldn't get internet service. Of course, once we offered to send maintenance to check out the scratching in the wall, he said it really hadn't been that bad, and he'd get back to us. Once again, I think the complaints had more to do with being in the nether regions of North wing than anything else.

It keeps the job interesting! Speaking of interesting...one of my co-workers has gone home ill, and we are now short-staffed. I'll be working all kinds of interesting hours in the next week or two.

Had a wonderful time in Calgary on my days off, visiting with my daughter and helping shop for and set up the baby's room.

Oh, one more funny story. This camp is "boot free", meaning nobody is allowed to wear their workboots into the camp. They are to come in through the boot room, remove their boots and switch to shoes, or just remove their boots and carry them to their room if they want. Many guys elect to just leave their boots in the boot room. Every so often, housekeeping goes through and tags the boots, and if a pair of boots is still sitting there with a tag on after a few weeks, they remove them. They hold on to them for a week, then toss them out. Yesterday was a "remove the tagged boots" day. Today we had a call from security telling us that a guy had gone to them to say his boots had been stolen. (Housekeeping manager was able to rustle up his boots). The really funny part was the woman from Security saying that she sees some guys wearing their boots with the tags on them. Apparently, they never wondered why or noticed that their boots had tags on them for a week or so. I'm not sure about anyone else, but I think I might notice if someone tagged my boots or shoes! Some guys just need mom around to help them with everything :)

And even MORE weather!!

Well, we had a day or two in between where we had no rain. I think it was one day, Wednesday. Yesterday we had another big, huge, wicked thunderstorm. Huge! The lightning was non-stop for at least an hour. The power went off twice, only for a few minutes at a time, but enough to screw up our computers, of course. There was so much rain coming down so heavily that there were leaks all over the buildings. In the dining room, in the gym, in the worker's lounge, in the manager's lounge. Mind you, some of the big floods were because windows were open. I mean, REALLY!! I went into the lunch bag-up room to grab stuff for my breakfast today, and two windows were open with the rain pounding in. Nobody noticed, or cared. They were going about their business of getting their lunches. Sheesh. I closed the windows and called for a mop-up. How hard is that??
Unfortunately, the storm was all but over by the time I was off work, so I didn't get to enjoy listening to it while I was drifting off to sleep. Although the noise from the pounding rain and the huge, close thunder wouldn't have been conducive to sleeping anyway. There must be a metal roof over the lobby, because the sound of pelting rain is really magnified in there. We had a whole groupie section in there, watching out the windows and doors and by the way, I saw many cell phone cameras recording the event. Where was security on that one??? And their office is right there in the lobby.
We also had some extremely hot weather, for this area anyway. Was 91F or 33C on Wednesday. Fairly low humidity though, comparatively speaking. These people here are always complaining about how humid it is. I just laugh at them, though :) Us mid-westerners know what real humidity is.  I hear back home is suffering from lack of rain. It's because there's none left after the clouds leave here!