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A day in my life as a ten-hour-a-day screen printer...
3:40am Alarm starts going off
4:12am Get out of bed, bleh. Do normal morning things: bathroom,
get Tegan's breakfast, get dressed, get lunch out of fridge.
4:40am Drive to work, get there around 4:50 and read for a few
minutes.
5am The job begins. I am working on a single color sheet of
decals that are blue that say "07"... I think they are 2007 parking
stickers maybe.
7:15 First break. I eat a fruit newton thingee and read my
Mag of Science Fiction & Fantasy.
7:30 Back at it. Now I'm working on another single color
sheet, it's a red "caution, don't break these coil things or you'll
be very sorry". Well, that's not the exact wording. ;)
9:15 Second break. A granola bar and more reading.
9:30 Now I'm working on a four colour sheet. The first two
colours take a while because they are on the same screen, which means
I have to clean the screen after the first colour.
11:30 Lunch! Hummus sandwich and corn chips. Try to read,
but everyone is talking too much.
Noon I've run out of screens, so I have to go to the evil girl
who makes the screens. She says "oh crap" because I am behind (on due dates)
and she
is supposed to have things ready for me. I say "it's okay" and start
making my own screens while she orders me around and does pretty much
nothing herself. haha.
1pm My friend, S, saves me. She runs a big screen printing
machine and needs me to catch the decals at the end and check them
for spots. That's called "racking", as in "will you rack for me?"
She's making bumper stickers, blue paint on shiny gold material.
I find lots of dots in the blue and make her stop the machine often
to fix them.
2:15 Last break. I don't even get my magazine out... too
tired to read, getting low on water.
2:30 Working on my third of four colours. It's a pain, and
I can't get the colours to match up. I go to the supervisors in
frustration. They don't help.
3:35 Give up in frustration. Clock out, gather my stuff,
drive home.
3:50pm Home, make lunch for tomorrow. Eat dinner: leftover
rice medley (rice, zucchini, chickpeas, Morning Star crumbles) topped
with french cut green beans, canola oil and salt. yum.
4:30 Jump in shower. Note my new bruises, including a nasty
looking one I don't remember receiving on the front of my hip.
4:50 Online, my real life finally begins...
And that's where I'm at right now. :) I'll get off the computer
around 7 or 7:30, so I can have some quiet time before bedtime.
Do a few minutes of reading and a couple lines written in my journal.
Bedtime is before 8pm.
I need more than eight hours of sleep in order to function. It's
hard getting to sleep so early in the day, tho.
So, that's my crapola day. At the end, I'm tired and my rib hurts
and I wish I could read more. And I wish my weekend could be longer
than one day (working a full day on Saturday).
But the extra money
will be nice when stuff finally slows down.
That's what I tell myself, at least. :|
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