Life's Too Short to Eat Cheese You Don't Like.

Top 5 Things I Like About My New Job

1. My crew. They’re all awesome (sort of. There’s one guy who sometimes annoys me, but it’s fine most of the time)

2. The amount of time we eat up just cruisin’ in the truck. My team lead’s got taking the longest route possible to get from Point A to Point B down to a science.

3. Pulling weeds. It’s one of my preferred jobs because I can just sit on a bucket in an area that is densely populated by weeds and pull them all. Makes it easier to pay attention to the NPR news stories I can spend almost all day listening to. Which leads me right into

4. I can listen to NPR all day. My phone can use the wifi from the residence halls, so I have constant access to NPR’s news programs as well as hourly news updates.

5. Most of the rest of my coworkers. This week, my crew got assigned a project with a due date of Tuesday, May 28th. We were able to borrow one other crew on the first day, and two other crews for the second day. We ended up finishing this past Friday. They were all awesome, and they all worked their asses off. Because of our hard work and ability to finish well before the due date, our bosses came around with sodas and we pretty much got to relax from 3 PM to the end of the work day at 5 PM. So my bosses are pretty cool, too. Except Kevin. I just don’t understand Kevin. He has trouble communicating in a way that is not barking orders in an almost incoherent way. Which is fine, you know. That’s just the effect the job has had on him over time, I s’pose. But the other day, I made a joke about someone’s “angry sweeping” because she had to resweep an area she’d already swept because someone else accidentally spilled decorative gravel on it, and I got a few laughs out of it, but then Kevin pipes up and he’s like, “She’s not angry sweeping. She’s sweeping while she’s angry.” I forced a chuckle and a smile because I had no idea how I was supposed to react. I think he was trying to make a joke. I don’t even.

Top 5 Bands/Artists That Have Never Disappointed Me:

1. Brand New

2. The Fray

3. Mumford & Sons

4. Bon Iver

5. Relient K

Honorable Mentions: Frightened Rabbit, the xx

(I’d love to include The Format, my favorite band, but in the long run, I’ve realized I just don’t like Dog Problems. The album, I mean. I’m not a fan of problems that dogs cause, either. Mimi once threw up like 5 times in one night and I hated that night like I hate Fox News.)

Work Update #2:

EVERYTHING HURTS I CAN BARELY MOVE.

OUCH.

Work Update:

Note: For those who aren’t aware, I was hired to work grounds on campus with Residence Life Support Services (so we only tend to the grounds of the residence halls). It’s a full time job, and I get free on-campus housing out of it! 

So, to refresh your memories, the way things work in the summers with RLSS grounds is that all of the workers are divided into 7 to 9-person crews, led by a veteran grounds worker, a Team Lead. Each crew is assigned a few residence halls to tend do for the entirety of the summer. For those Lumberjack followers of mine, my crew’s halls are Gabaldon, Campus Heights, and McKay Village. 

I really like all of my crew members. Including my team lead and myself, there are three girls and four guys. Everyone is really nice and helpful, we all work really well together. Each crew gets a truck to travel around in, and our truck’s radio is broken, so one of the guys just plays music from his phone’s speakers. My team lead delegates DJ duties to the rest of us, so, naturally, the guys almost always choose Disney tunes. And then they sing their hearts out! It’s really quite cute.

A list of things I’ve had to do so far:

• Trim bushes
• Shovel dirt
• Shovel gravel
• Sweep gutters
• PULL WEEDS OH MY GOD I’VE PULLED SO MANY WEEDS
• weed whack (awesome)
• pick all of the rocks out of all of the lawns located within our area (was so bored I tried climbing a tree while no one was looking and accidentally broke off a branch. It was okay, though. No one saw, I made sure.)
• pick up trash
• rake pine needles
• rake rocks

Some fun things have happened. Earlier this week, I saw a crow jumping around in a very peculiar manner. Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the crow was actually having an epic battle with a prairie dog. After watching the battle for about a minute (crouched behind a ledge, so as not to be seen), I decided to intervene, as I was concerned for the young prairie dog’s life. I fended off the crow by throwing rocks at it, and then kept a close eye on the prairie dog while it dug itself a new hidey hole. I named him Larry. Larry the prairie dog.

Another fun thing happened when I was raking pine needles. Some of us raked piles while others picked up the piles with pitchforks and put them onto burlap squares, which were then tied up and dumped at a magical place called The Forty. While a few people made a run to The Forty, the rest of us had to “look busy.” So we invented a game. Pitchfork games, to be specific. Also known as rock lacrosse. Anyway, this game originated while I was picking up rocks with the pitchfork and throwing them. The rock throwing evolved into a game of catch with one of my other co-workers. It was much like playing lacrosse catch, except with pitchforks and rocks instead of lacrosse gear. So there was that. Also, we would compete to see how far we each could launch a rock, or how accurately we could hit trees. So that was fun.

That concludes the fun things. 

Also this post. 

(forgot to mention, my hands are so sore I could barely squeeze the conditioner bottle when I showered earlier. Somehow, the backs of my knees and calves got sunburnt, and it’s easily the most uncomfortable sun burn I’ve had in my life. Also, it’s only 7:45 and I am thinking about going to sleep. This happens almost every night. Working outside all day is fun, but exhausting.)