The Murder Saw

So, in spite of this blog's title, I almost never post about my actual job here, mostly for liability reasons.  It's so much easier to deny you said something about your employer if you don't put it in writing.

But today, I have a story from work for you.  And a text conversation with my husband prompted by this which has to be shared.  And it's lighthearted and funny enough that I shouldn't get in any trouble for sharing it.  (Which is a legit concern, given that I friended my boss on on FB.  But I don't think he was my boss then, and he'll probably get a kick out this.)

So, at work I have the pleasure of running the newest lathe in the shop.  It's shiny and clean, it has live tooling, and at this point, it's only been crashed twice (not by me).  It runs great, and I have zero complaints.  I love running this thing.  But.

I have to cut all of my parts on a saw before I can run them on the lathe (aka "Baby").  And the saw I have to use is...everything the lathe is not.  It's at least as old as my father, loud enough to cause hearing damage (and getting louder as various bearings go out on it), and it won't hold tolerance for shit.  I couldn't get you an actual picture, but here's a similar one I found online:

This looks newer than the one I use.

It's about 300 times cleaner.  Imagine the base being solid instead of having legs, it being white and rust colored, and covered in gray sludge and you've got a good idea of what we're working with.  This thing is janky as hell.  You can set the stop, cut three parts, and they'll all be different lengths.  It has an oscillate setting that you can use for thicker stock--the first time I saw it, I ran for my group leader because I thought the thing was broken.  One time the blade suddenly started bouncing up and down and wouldn't go back up--the piston rod that moved it up and down had fallen off in the back.  The fine adjustment for the stop is a hammer.  A filthy, old hammer.

 

Fine adjustment.

This thing is janky as fuck.  In fact, I had been referring to it as the jankyass saw.

However, yesterday, it tried to kill me.  The blade blew apart, which is not unusual, that being the nature of abrasive cut off wheels.  However, it blew apart in such a way that it knocked the access door/guard on the side of it open and chucked a hunk of saw blade straight out the front.  It was a triangular piece, about 3-4 inches on a side. Lucky for me, the control to drop the blade down is off to the side, and where I'm left handed, I actually stand even farther over.  So I was actually a couple feet to the right when it chucked that piece out.  Which is really good, because it landed a good three or four feet away from the saw.  It scared the crap out of me.  My awesome boss documented it, and we found a way to more securely latch the door, so it shouldn't happen again, thank goodness.


But because of that, I've decided I'm going to start referring to it as the Murder Saw now.  It did try to kill me, after all.  Which brings us to the text conversation I must share.  See, I was texting the husband to tell him that I'd finally got a new time frame for when the Murder Saw's replacement is coming in.  They got approval for a new saw earlier this year, and it's been coming in six to eight weeks since February--now we're finally only two or three weeks out.  I think that near miss may help a little, since they love me and nobody wants to be responsible for resetting the no lost work day accident counter at this point (2000+ days).  But anyway, it prompted the following exchange.

 

And lest you think I was slacking, I have some downtime while the machine is running.

Management is going to love me for the next few weeks. 

Nightmares vs Nightmarish Content

So, it's been a while since I talked about dreams here.  Mostly it's been a time constraint thing--when you dream like I do, writing about them can be rather time consuming.  Plus, most of them haven't been that epic, anyway. (Well, except that one where I climbed that rack at work to get away from the raptors, fell to my death, and the credits rolled.  That was pretty epic.)  I've also been making an effort to remember less, in order to preserve my own sanity.  For a while I was keeping a dream journal and it got to the point where I was remembering like 5-6 dreams in detail a night, and it just got overwhelming.  Now I usually remember just a couple a night, and that's a lot more bearable.  I may recall fragments of others, but the current level of dream recall works well--I still get to remember some fun adventures, but it's not overwhelming.

Which brings us to today's topic.  One of the things that never fails to amaze me is the dreams I have that somehow AREN'T nightmares.  See, I don't know about you, but I define a nightmare by the emotional content.  So, basically, if I don't wake up crying or really upset, I don't consider it a nightmare, regardless of the content.  This gives some...interesting...and strange results.  Based on this definition, the aforementioned dream with the raptors and me actually hitting the ground and dying? Not a nightmare.  But the one I had a few years back where I was at my mom's house, looked out the window and saw three huge, dark, mangy looking rabbits running in a circle around a tree? That was so terrifying it still haunts me to this day.

Yeah.

Falling to my death because dinosaurs were trying to eat me? Not a nightmare.  Actually, it was kind of fun.

Rabbits running around a tree? A nightmare so vicious it'll probably follow me to my grave.

And of course, then there was last night's adventures, which are what prompted this whole post.  The cat woke me up midmorning from a dream where I was running from zombies (not a nightmare).  Shortly after I woke up, I remembered the dream before that one and was promptly horrified. Not because it was a nightmare.  But because it should have been and wasn't.

I was at work.  We were having some power fluctuations, with the lights going off and coming back on.  During one of the outages, this evil spirit came up behind me and started trying to get me to cut my hands off (not with a saw, or any of the dangerous equipment at work, mind you, but with like a machete or something). I fought it off and the lights came back on.  Later, it found me again, this time while possessing someone else.  I looked at it and was all, "I know who you are.  You have no power over me."

Now, logistical and realistic issues aside--when we have power issues at work everyone goes to the cafeteria until it's resolved, we don't stay at our work stations; also, how the fuck do you cut both of your hands off with a machete?  Seriously--this should have been a nightmare. I mean, I'm really attached to my hands.  The idea of losing my hands is honestly terrifying to me, because I wouldn't be able to do like 99% of the things I enjoy.

But it wasn't a nightmare.  To be honest, it was pretty average--just Tuesday, as the husband and I like to joke.  And what made it not a nightmare was the emotional content.  Instead of being absolutely terrified in the dream, I was fighting.  I had control.  I was all, I got this.  And I think that's what makes the biggest difference.  What makes a nightmare a nightmare is never the content--it's that sense of powerlessness. 

And I can't help but wonder...is that dream confidence related to my real life confidence?  Because my current job has made me a lot more confident in general (maybe not at work, but in the rest of life, for sure), and I've noticed I don't have as many nightmares anymore.  I've also noticed that the people I know who have nightmares frequently, tend to not have as much self confidence--that's not a judgement, just an observation.  And it makes me wonder if there's anything to that.  Do more confident people have fewer nightmares?  Thoughts? 

Aren't Those Free?

Tonight I had an extremely bizarre experience that I just have to share with you all.  Don't worry if you miss something the first time, because we'll be going over it in excruciating detail in a bit.

So, I'm in Barnes and Noble.  The husband and I are both total bibliophiles, and usually wind up there every weekend.  Anyway, the husband is off looking at who knows what, and I'm wandering over to stationary and getting ready to look at the rack of random doohickeys leftover from Christmas when this woman stops me and asks, "Do you have a library card I can borrow?"

Now, this strikes me as a bit odd, and I sort of cock my head a little in confusion and reply, "I'm pretty sure they give those out for free."  I have a brief moment of panic after saying this because I remember they ask for an address and maybe they wouldn't give her one because she's homeless or something.

"Oh, I'm from just over the Tennessee border and they said maybe if I could borrow one...."

At this point, I just shake my head, politely decline, and carry on my way.

I wander briefly through stationary, but the more I think about it, the more wierded out I get.  I grab the husband and insist we leave, because there's only so much weirdness I can deal with in any given location.  I tell him I'll explain in the car, because I'm worried she'll overhear me.  Although, as I check out and we leave, I scan the store vigorously and she's nowhere to be seen.  It's like she disappeared into a pocket dimension or something.  When we get to the car, I tell the husband what happened, and the more I think about it, the more WTF the whole thing was.

First of all, WE WERE IN A BOOKSTORE.  Why do you need a library card in a bookstore?!  What the hell?  Just buy the damned book!  Maybe she meant the discount card and just used the wrong word.  But if that were the case, her being from Tennessee wouldn't matter because B&N's discount card is good in all fifty states and I'm pretty sure you can sign up for it at any store.  Also, if that were the case, she would've corrected me when I made the "they give those out for free" comment.

Second, WHO BORROWS A LIBRARY CARD?!  They're free!  Even to the kiddies!  On a related note, who would loan one?  What if the person you loaned it to never returned the books?  You'd be on the hook for the replacement cost (which could potentially be really expensive if they borrowed something rare or out of print.)  And I'm not even going into the logistics of getting the card back.

Third, WE WERE THREE MILES FROM THE CLOSEST LIBRARY.  That's not exactly across town, but it's quite a ways away.  I mean, there were a lot of closer places and shopping centers she could have gone to.

Fourth, EVERY SINGLE LIBRARY  IN TOWN CLOSED AT 5PM.  It's Sunday, the library closes early.  I can't give an exact time for the incident, but it was just past 7:45pm when we got to the car, so basically the library had been closed for over two and a half hours when this happened.  Had she spent the last two hours looking for someone to loan her their card?  WTF?!

Fifth, WHERE THE FUCK DID SHE GO?  Maybe she went to the bathroom, or was in a different aisle.  But the fact that she just disappeared afterwards is super suspect.

And finally, THE LIBRARY'S NOT EVEN OPEN TOMORROW.  I noticed this when I looked up the hours online.  Tomorrow is MLK's birthday, so they're closed.  Was she just going to take my card for like a day and a half or what?  What.  The.  Fuck.

Given the location of our B&N, we're thinking her plan was to borrow someone's card to checkout some books and then maybe try to sell them back at the nearby used bookstore.  If that was the case, I'll at least give her credit for not using her own card, like the guy who got caught trying to sell library books while I worked there did.  But still, there was absolutely nothing about whatever she was trying to do that wasn't sketchy as hell.