Taking stock, pt 2: Home and refocused
So, I returned home yesterday from a trip w/ my sister to Central Florida. We were visiting our parents, who I hadn’t seen in more than a year.
It was quite lovely. On the same day that I stepped off the plane I was photographing manatees in Blue Springs with my new camera. I got to see a pre-dawn Space Shuttle launch (sadly, the last). I got to watch the Superbowl with my dad. My mom gave me a sewing lesson and I stitched a hole in my favorite sweater; it’s good as new. I paddled a kayak through a mangrove swamp with my sis, mom & aunts. I won four games of ping-pong, three games of Scrabble. Climbed an orange tree, and scrapped-up my hands leaping out of it. (plus, the oranges I picked were under-ripe and mercilessly bitter. oh well, it was fun anyway.) I saw hawks, herons, huge pelicans, ibises, ospreys… birds of all shapes and descriptions, everywhere. Watched some charming films: Up in the Air, Pixar’s Up, The Hangover (also, an old favorite: Jean Reno & the 13-y.o. Natalie Portman in The Professional). Just a fun week all around.
Last year my family went through some serious upheavals, so– most of all– it was good to get back together with my sister & parents and see that each of us is falling into our new routines pretty well.
Now I’m back in B’ham. Mostly ignoring the big Winter Olympics hubbub going on 50 miles to the north of me. I may wander over to the brewery later this week and do some spectating, but right now I have other things on my mind.
Since it’s been such a warm winter here in Whatcom County, folks at the greenhouse are talking about planting even earlier this year. I could be starting my “summer” weekend job this month(!), maybe even this weekend. That means going back to a no-days-off schedule again– kind of a bummer– but I’m excited by the prospect of two more paychecks each month. If my budget stays on track, I could have more than 50%(!) of my remaining debts paid off by October.
In the off-hours, I have my usual spread of pursuits and hobbies. Getting more serious about practicing on my guitar and piano again. My friends & I are still playing a lot of MtG, and I’ve also started playing Pauper Magic on MTG Online, which is a surprising amount of fun. I bought a new-used camera (a Canon G10) with the intention of improving my photography and getting back into Flickr. I’ll be restarting Nodeslam.com this week, finally. I’ve also been recording myself reading The Silmarillion outloud, purely for my own amusement. (I may upload the recordings at some point, but in a more out-of-the-way location. I don’t want to run afoul of the Tolkien estate. I’ll let you know.)
Taking stock, part 1: a miller’s tale
It’s pretty warm in my apartment right now. It’s a 3rd story loft– a big open space– so it’s hard to keep the temperature consistent. When I turn the heat off, all the warm air tends to drift to the top. A fan would probably do the trick, but I haven’t figured out how to rig one up. Haven’t given it much thought really, to be honest. It rarely gets this cold in Bellingham. It’s been below freezing now for nearly a week. Jet predicts that it’ll snow soon. But anyway, I’m comfortable.
We’ve been busy at the mill. A lot of people dust off their cookbooks around this time of year, and that means a lot of extra demand for good flour. I’m happy to provide.
I’ve had two jobs in my life that I’ve really enjoyed. The first was my I.T. internship at Oakland CC in Auburn Hills, but that was mostly due to the laidback work environment; I loved the comraderie of hanging out in nerd central with the other I.T. guys, playing Unreal Tournament on the college LAN and waiting around for trouble tickets to roll into the queue so that we could swoop in and save the day. When it came to the actual job though– fixing finicky PCs & printers– meh, it was fun but it got boring after awhile. I didn’t feel like I was really doing anything, just maintaining other people’s tools so that they could carry on with their day.
I never get bored of making flour, though. Mostly because my job is so easy. I feel as if Kevin– the miller, or in other words, the mill’s owner, my boss (I find it an interesting statement about 21st century life that all of my friends know what an I.T. guy’s job is, but I have to explain every facet of what a miller does for a living)– I feel as if Kevin has the hard job, talking with customers & suppliers, making business decisions on what grain to buy & what prices to charge for our flour. Making the flour (my job) is the easy part. It’s so simple that there’s nothing to get bored *of*. Hell, making flour is something that hunter-gatherer societies had figured out. Using electricity to do it makes the machines more complicated, but it tends to save on labor. And since we only use organic grain purchased from trusted sources in WA, the nearby states, & Canada, I have complete confidence that the flour I make every day is at least as good or better than the flour made by every other miller’s assistant in the entire history of humanity.
So, in other words, I like my job. It doesn’t pay a lot but it pays the bills, and it helps pay my debts, and gives me a little left over on the side to have some fun and a lot of extra free-time to enjoy it. Sometimes, in moodier moments, I come down a little hard on myself for living as a modern-day peasant in a world where wealthier people have access to such incredible things– books with electronic ink, cars that run on cooking oil or get 200mpg, hiking gear made out of space-age materials, routine travel on intercontinental airliners, …. But then, I look around even within my own circle of friends and also see a lot of people who are currently looking for work & having a stressful time of it– most of them better educated & more hard-working than I am– and I feel supremely fortunate that I’ve lucked my way into such a lovely lot in life.
Though that doesn’t mean that I expect to be a miller for the next 40 years. I’d be content to do that, sure, but I have other things in mind.
More on that next time.
a late summer pseudosummary
It seems I’ve fallen into a once-monthly update schedule for this. That suits me fine.
How are things? Outstanding. Those of you who’ve known me for any length of time know that I’m running out of …
Projects for July
So I’m back from a week’s vacation. Had a wonderful time. Drank a lot of good beer, hugged a lot of fun people I hadn’t seen in months or years (or ever), ate a lot of too-rich food, climbed some amazing dunes, and …
Skype-me Friday
I am quite pleased tonight, all-over pleased, yes I am. For almost two years now, ever since I moved back to Bellingham, I’ve been WiFi freeloading on the networks of generous neighbors and local latte-slingers. The hipster ‘net. Tonight, I am back on the serious internet. The copper-wired, 7Mbps, streaming-video-in-HD big kids internet. …
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