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.

Doughnuts Are Not the Solution

Growing up, I had never really thought of Kentucky as being in the Bible Belt, even though I know it technically is.  I mean, there are churches pretty much everywhere, but when you grow up with that, you think it's normal--plus it's waaaay worse further south.
But since we moved into our house a few years back, it's been a lot more obvious.  There's been a steady stream of door to door evangelizers, although we haven't had any at all this year--perhaps my no soliciting sign accompanied by me saying, "You're selling Jesus.  That counts," did the trick there.  We also routinely get mailers from area churches and flyers left on our door.

Now, typically the flyers are either friendly and welcoming, or tracts demonizing Catholic.  There was also that one time we were greeted by a choose your own adventure style copy of the Gospel of John (Read verses 32-34, then turn to verses 2-6, etc).  That was amusing.  Also, if the author didn't leave directions, you should probably assume that the book was meant to be read in the order it was written.  Just saying. 

The mailers, on the other hand, are pretty much always invitations to come to services.  I have no problem with this approach--it's less invasive than coming to my door, and it's super easy to just toss them in the recycling bin.  But every once in a while, one comes in that is just so misguided and insulting that I kind of want to scream.

Like this one:

 

Because nothing brings people to Jesus like coffee and donuts.

On one hand, I can kind of see the logic.  Everyone likes coffee and donuts.  Services are usually in the morning, so it makes it easier to get up if you can get breakfast while you're at church.

On the other hand...this is your big draw?  I should come to your church for donuts and a Starbucks card?  I'm not sure whether to be insulted that you think I'm that stupid, or sad that you're that out of touch.  It's a church for crying out loud.  People should come to it because of the message you're preaching.  Christianity is about faith, not material things.  They should be coming to your church because they believe in your religion, not for fucking doughnuts. 

But hey, people are leaving Christianity in droves.  Maybe this will help get them back?

You have got be fucking kidding me.  If you honestly think that doughnuts and coffee will get people back into the church, I've got a fantastic bridge to sell you.  People are leaving the church because it lacks substance.  They're leaving because they have questions that aren't getting answered.  They're leaving because of inconsistencies between doctrine and scripture.  They're leaving because they're tired of hypocrisy.  They're leaving because what they hear in church is inconsistent with what they know in their hearts.  What's coming from the pulpit doesn't jive what their personal experience of God.  In fact, their personal experience of God is usually written off--scripture is more important.  People are leaving because the most vocal Christians are also the most hateful.  People are leaving because they're tired of serving a church that doesn't serve them back.

Having a flashy band and special effects isn't going to fix any of that.  A pastor with jeans and tattoos isn't going to fix that.  Sending out mailers to let people know that, "Every Sunday is Casual Sunday!" (the last one we got from this church) isn't going to solve the problem.  Bribing people with doughnuts and Starbucks cards sure as shit isn't going to solve the problem.  At best, you'll get people who just show up for that.  Personally, my time is worth more.  Literally.  An hour at work will get me a lot more than a doughnut and $5 at Starbucks.  If churches want to get butts back in the pews, they're going to have to admit to themselves why those butts left in the first place.  And it wasn't because they didn't have doughnuts.

It's also not because we don't know what doughnuts are.

Awkward Work Dreams And Other Stories

So, let's get back to our roots here--I mean, dreams are in the subtitle of this blog, and I have them like every night.  Plus, why waste a good ready made story, especially the one I had last night?

Since I started my current job, I've had a lot of work dreams about it.  Like an unusual number, for me at any rate--generally my dreams have been more adventure oriented.  I blame the excessive input of science fiction, fantasy, and superhero books, TV, and comics.  Most nights I'm saving the world from the whatever, or being chased by the whoever.  But lately, there've been a lot of work dreams.  Current job work dreams (as opposed to OMG WHY AM I BACK AT FAZOLI'S??!!).  These range from pleasantly bizarre (the one where half of the machine shop was a Chinese restaurant), to annoyingly ordinary (I feel like I should get paid for putting in a shift in my sleep), to well, last night.

Last night involved dinosaurs.  At work.

Have I mentioned that I work as a CNC machinist, not a paleontologist?  And yet, somehow, last night they were excavating three baby t-rexes near the store room. 

Three live baby t-rexes.

 Baby T-Rexes.  The fact that this is a picture of velociraptors is not lost on me.

One of them was going to be donated to a museum or a zoo or something for the science, and we were going to keep the other two for...something....  I don't know what.  In real life we make pneumatic cylinders.  I have no idea what possible application dinosaurs could have to that.  Anywho, the first one sort of starts running around, and I'm like, wow, this cannot end well, I'm getting the fuck out of here.  So, I run through the stock room, and I realize, I'm not making it out of here before those things get to me.  I looked around at my options, and immediately decide that the shelves are my best bet.  Sure, they might be able to climb up the chain link fence (even in the dream I wondered why the store room shelves suddenly had fencing in front of them all the way up--I guess Dreamlands work had been having shrinkage issues or something), but they would go after the easy prey on the ground first.  So I climb the fence.  Partway up, this black guy from the office sees me, and thinks I have the right idea, and he starts climbing, too.  We make it to the top and start clambering around on boxes.  He just sort of collapses on a couple, and then falls.  (We're talking about like 20-30 ft racks.  He did not survive.)  I'm like, damn, and I settle in behind some boxes and lean back to get comfy, at which point I discover that the boxes behind me are much, much lighter than I thought and I go down, too.  At some point in all this, the thought crosses my mind, "Well, I suppose it's better than getting eaten by dinosaurs, right?" 

Then boom, I hit the ground with a resounding thud, breaking every bone in my body and, well, I died.

And then  everything went white and the credits started rolling.

And then I woke up.

On a side note, I think the credits may have been in Japanese and may have included God and at least one of the archangels (St. Michael, specifically).  Also worth noting is that this somehow did not have the proper emotional content to qualify as a nightmare.  It doesn't count as a nightmare unless I wake up crying and/or whimpering.  I actually wouldn't even consider this a bad dream.  But the one the other night where I was being given free kittens and then this giant bug (imagine something somewhere between a shrimp, a chest burster, and a really big, brown silverfish and you've got the idea) ran across the floor and then it was on my arm and I couldn't get it off, that was a nightmare. 

Giant bug on my arm=whimpering and clutching the husband for emotional support

Actually falling to my death=Tuesday

Sweet dreams, everybody!

Various Updates And A Story About A Camel

Hey kids!
So, it's been forever since I posted anything, and while I generally prefer not to do the whole, OMG, sorry for not posting in forever posts, I feel like it's been long enough to warrant it in this particular case.  So this one may be a little whiny and annoying, for which I sincerely apologize.  Feel free to skip to the bit about the camel.

I've been pretty busy with work (for those who don't know, I started my first "real" full time job around a year and a half ago), and my schedule has been kinda bizarre.  It's been a regular bizarre, at least, unlike retail (where a schedule that involves clopening is a real possibility), and I've had my weekends off, but second shift is a struggle, let me tell you.  I would also like to point out that you can, indeed, get used to anything, to the point where my scheduled work time of 3:18-11:48 seems perfectly normal now (there's a lot of industry in the area, and apparently all the businesses got together to stagger their start times).  Anywho, this leaves me with the awkwardness of either having all my free time before work, which makes it hard to enjoy, having it all after work, when everything is closed, or splitting it up and never being quite right.  I have opted for the latter, mostly because the idea of sleeping until 2pm everyday just seems wrong.  Either way, I haven't had a lot of free time, which means some of my hobbies get neglected more than others.  Couple that with the sheer exhaustion of actually working 40 hours a week, much of which is spent standing on the hardest concrete you've ever seen (no, seriously, the concrete floor where I work is harder than the one where you work.  Pretty sure it has to be to support the weight of all the machinery and forklifts and other crap), and most of the week I'm too tired to do anything.  I now have a better understanding of the phrase "working for the weekend" than I ever wanted.
In addition to the time issues, I also have additional social awkwardness in that, while all of my coworkers are wonderful people and very much like family, they're also all from a very different background, so there's not a lot of common ground.  It's a little isolating.  Couple that with the actual, physical isolation of the work itself (back in the machine shop area we're all pretty much in our respective corners running our machines), and my social skills--and verbal acuity--have taken a bit of hit.  When you're not using words all the time, it can get hard to string together a cohesive sentence.

The other reason is actually fairly ironic.  I've noticed an increasing toxicity on the internet, and it's really not something I want to contribute.  I'm saying things have to be rainbows and butterflies all the time, but there is a crap ton of negativity, and I kind of noticed a lot of my posts kinda heading in that direction.  While I like to think I'm vaguely entertaining in my snark, I'd like to have a more positive focus (or at least a more thought provoking one) and well, most of my stories lately are either really boring or kinda bitchy.
I do have a number of topics I'd really like to cover that I can do so in a manner consistent with the direction I want to go, but they're pretty massive subjects, and getting started and keeping them somewhat concise has been a little tricky--if you're curious about some of the somedays, they include but are not limited to: sexism (what it is and is not), women in STEM (this is actually kind of personal, as machining kinda falls under that umbrella and there are very few women in the field), Christian fundamentalism and witchcraft (It's only been fairly recently that I've been exposed to fundamentalism and it is bizarre and baffling.  Of particular note is how disturbingly misinformed this group seems to be about what witchcraft actually consists of), and the value problem in the arts (we love nice art, and music, and TV, but we don't want to pay for it and thus allow artists to afford to continue making it).

That said, I appreciate your patience with me, as always, and hope you'll continue checking back from time to time.

THE BIT ABOUT THE CAMEL

I promised you a camel, and gosh darn it, you're going to get one.

The other night I had this dream. (You should have expected it to start this way--how else am I going to have an entertaining story about a camel?)  And in this dream I was running through this palatial maze-like house (a common theme, actually), and I was trying to find my way out.  The owner was going to do something bad to me, like evil science experiments or something.  Anyway, I find this door and I go through it, and find myself in this petting zoo.  Well, it's still on the estate, so I go running through it, trying to find my way out, and there's like sheep and stuff all in these pens, when suddenly, I feel this tug.

A camel is eating my panties.

While I'm wearing them.

And not in the sexy way (which would just be weird and definitely verging into nightmare territory), but in an I'm a fucking camel and I'm going to give you the worst fucking wedgie of your life because I'm an asshole kind of way.  Seriously, I was still wearing pants.  Asshole camel.

"You ate her panties?  Dude, that's hilarious!  Wish I'd thought of that!"

Endometriosis Awareness Month

So, normally, I really hate awareness campaigns.  I mean, let's be honest, most of them are for things that everyone is already aware of (like breast cancer) and, generally speaking, our time and money would be better spent looking for solutions to the various problems we're supposed to be aware of.  Seriously, buying something pink for breast cancer awareness is kind of stupid when you could just donate that money to an actual cancer research fund (I have a friend who recently kicked some breast cancer ass who agrees with me on this).

But, every now and again, you do get something that the majority of people don't know about, and in those cases an awareness campaign can be helpful.  After all, you can't fix a problem if people don't know it exists.  And this month's awareness topic is one that I'm more familiar with than I'd like to be--Endometriosis.

Endometriosis is one of those problems that's not widely known.  I mean, it should be--since I was diagnosed with it, it seems like everyone I know knows another woman who has it.  But there's no cure, they don't know what causes it, and, frankly, the available treatment options suck balls.  We're not even sure exactly how many women suffer from it because the only way it can be definitively be diagnosed is surgically.

Here are some of the few things we do know about endo:

• Endometriosis is when, for whatever reason, the tissue that normally grows inside the uterus and sheds every month grows outside of the uterus instead. 
• The most common symptom of endo is pain, typically in the pelvic region.  The amount of pain appears to be unrelated to the severity of the disease.  This pain occurs mostly frequently during a woman's menses, but can happen at any time of the month.  It can even be constant instead of only being for a few days at a time.
• There is no cure.  Many endometriosis cases end in a hysterectomy, but it is possible for it to recur if all of the endometrial growths are not removed.
• The "gold standard" for treatment is laparoscopic surgery. This is often follow by hormonal treatments (i.e. birth control or other medications) to prevent it from coming back.
• Endometriosis can cause infertility--in the same vein, many women who suffer from it can still have children with few or no complications.

Like many "invisible" diseases endometriosis causes a host of other problems for those who suffer from it.  There are the typical emotional struggles anyone who suffers from chronic pain experiences--depression, despair, and hopelessness--as well as increased absences from work or school.  Worst of all is probably the way in which endometriosis symptoms tend to be trivialized as "girl problems."  Indeed, there is nothing quite as awful as being in excruciating pain and having it brushed off as PMS.  Personally, I've been fairly lucky--at the same time, I have a very limited number of personal days--for more than that, I have to have a doctor's note.  For endometriosis related issues, this is, frankly, ridiculous.  There's not really anything a doctor can do about it other than give me pain killers (which will either render me insensible or not touch the pain) and look at me like I'm crazy for wanting a doctor's note for menstrual cramps.  Once I've been there a year, I'll be eligible for additional days off through FMLA, but, in the meantime, I just have to hope that my monthlies stay bearable.  And I'm lucky.  There are women out there who can't work at all due to the pain.

Endometriosis is a very serious, and very real problem that most people don't even know about.  By increasing awareness about it, we can make life easier for those who suffer from it and hopefully increase funding to research so we can find a cure for it.  This is not something anyone should have to deal with, and if we can prevent future generations from suffering like this, then maybe our pain won't be for nothing.

Linkfest for more information:

Mayo Clinic fact sheet on Endometriosis
Endometriosis.org
Endometriosis Foundation of America
Endometriosis Research Center