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Feb. 21st, 2008 08:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittydesadeSo, this entry is being written up in bits and pieces and will probably be posted after work today, after the sale that will eat my brain. That said.
A dragon ate the moon last night! I went to bed afterwards so I have yet to see if it coughed it back up again. The Elf Lord, who is now made of win and awesome, walked by me on his way to see the eating proclaiming "A toast! A toast to the moon!" I turned around to remind him that he shouldn't drink while on his medication, only to see him waving...
A toast. A piece of rye bread toast.
I loves me my Elf Lord, I do, I do.
So. Monday? Was bead day. An order came in for, literally and exactly 200 small 1/2 ounce bags of beads. 20 of each of 10 different colors. Now, our beads are in 3 oz jars or 1/2 to 3/4 (depending on the size of the bead) packets, the packets being in tiny little ziplock baggies. The packets are in jars. The jars don't even HOLD 20 packets of beads. So, rather than deplete our entire front of store stock of those colors of beads, I made them up out of the tubs in which we keep the beads before they get decanted into jars or packets. So. For about FIVE HOURS. I decanted beads from tubs to packets. And realized that, actually, we didn't have any yellow, didn't have any orange except for one 3 oz jar that I wasn't about to dip into and then send a partial order, and we depleted our stock of white from the tub and our stock of red from both the tub and the front. Just to fill that order.
FIVE HOURS. DECANTING BEADS.
So, Aunt E places the bead order on Monday. On Tuesday the theme of the day was breaking wax. For candlemaking kits we need a certain amount of a chemical, a certain amount of dye, a certain amount of wick, candle bases, and instructions. And five pounds of paraffin wax. This needs to fit in a bag of a certain size. And the wax comes in 10 pound sheets. So I spent the better part of that morning scoring the wax into, um. 10ths of a sheet, I guess. Slab. Sheet. Something. And slamming 10 pounds of wax, and then 5 pounds, and then some amount of pounds of wax, against a sharp edge of a table so that it would break along the score mark. For about three or four hours. It was loud. It was heavy. It was actually very enjoyable because I like being occasionally violent. But, dayum. It was also tiring.
The next day? Was also bead day. The bead shipment came in, only this time it wasn't just the beads I knew we were out of or low on and it wasn't for a bead order (although I did get to finish up the bead portion of that bead order of doom). Oh no. I got to count how many packets we had in each bead jar, or get a rough estimate. Make a list of what we had in the back. Make a list of what we had in the FRONT, because inventory doesn't say how many packets are made up or where they are, it just says how many kilos of a certain bead color and type we have. And THEN I got to cross-check all THAT against the list of what we had on the shelves so I knew what to restock. And then I got to decant beads some more. For SEVEN FUCKING HOURS. Seed beads. Pony beads. I had beads coming out my ears. Opaque beads. Silver-lined beads. Shiny beads, well, they were all shiny. I got to cut them off of strings and into the tub, take them out of the tub and put them into packets and jars, pour the jars back into the tub when I realized I only had enough for a couple of packets and not enough for a full jar, go BACK into the back and grab another bundle of strings of beads so that I could then cut the beads off the strings and into the tub, and then decant them from the tub into sufficient packets to fill the jars both small and overall.
Today, Thursday? Was the sale. Which meant getting there two hours early. Which meant getting up about an hour and a half early. Which apparently meant a splitting headache on my part until I visited Oona's pharmacy. The prenatal vitamins I felt I could skip but dear god that woman has a lot of drugs in her desk drawer. Some prescription, some vitamins, some prenatal stuff, some painkillers. I took a painkiller. I took a Nuprin, which I haven't seen in ages. Only it was neither little, nor yellow, nor very different. It was, however, effective. So I was able to bag many purchases and help a couple people carry their heavy chemicals out to their car and so on. There were lines three or four deep pretty constantly, we had both registers running, and for the small store that's pretty impressive. Well, small in that it's a specialized store. The square footage is actually pretty impressive. After the early bird sale and everyone bought their demonstrator spinning wheels (people had been coming in all week and in at least one case all month to spin on the demonstrator floor model and go "It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.") things sort of slowed down for a little while. I got to do some knitting. There were some orders to ship.
Tomorrow, hopefully, things will be if not necessarily back to normal (and I kind of hope they won't be but busier than usual, because the store's been feeling the same pinch retail businesses all over have) then at least quieter than the morning was. Afternoon speed was about right.
And the thing is, despite all this craziness? I still love my job. So, so much better than my old job. I love this place, I love their brand of crazy, I love this place.
Not much else has been happening, really. The moon still seems to be in the sky, which is good. I haven't been doing as much writing as I mean to, which is less good, but not entirely unexpected. I knew it'd be lagging a bit once I moved down here, at least between moving down and moving into my own place. I'm still kind of getting into that groove, figuring out what I can and can't do. I did get a lot of knittin done today, which is kind of cool. And I, um. May or may not have bought beads and a beading book (which is more a handy spiral-bound cheat sheet for about a gazillion types of basic beading techniques than an actual book) so that I can make a handstar. At least, that's the plan. The PLAN is to get the knitting done this weekend and/or tomorrow and then do the handstar later. We'll see if that actually works out.
And now... well, now I get to figure out if I actually want to go to bed or not. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. I think, yeah, bed. Am exhausted.
A dragon ate the moon last night! I went to bed afterwards so I have yet to see if it coughed it back up again. The Elf Lord, who is now made of win and awesome, walked by me on his way to see the eating proclaiming "A toast! A toast to the moon!" I turned around to remind him that he shouldn't drink while on his medication, only to see him waving...
A toast. A piece of rye bread toast.
I loves me my Elf Lord, I do, I do.
So. Monday? Was bead day. An order came in for, literally and exactly 200 small 1/2 ounce bags of beads. 20 of each of 10 different colors. Now, our beads are in 3 oz jars or 1/2 to 3/4 (depending on the size of the bead) packets, the packets being in tiny little ziplock baggies. The packets are in jars. The jars don't even HOLD 20 packets of beads. So, rather than deplete our entire front of store stock of those colors of beads, I made them up out of the tubs in which we keep the beads before they get decanted into jars or packets. So. For about FIVE HOURS. I decanted beads from tubs to packets. And realized that, actually, we didn't have any yellow, didn't have any orange except for one 3 oz jar that I wasn't about to dip into and then send a partial order, and we depleted our stock of white from the tub and our stock of red from both the tub and the front. Just to fill that order.
FIVE HOURS. DECANTING BEADS.
So, Aunt E places the bead order on Monday. On Tuesday the theme of the day was breaking wax. For candlemaking kits we need a certain amount of a chemical, a certain amount of dye, a certain amount of wick, candle bases, and instructions. And five pounds of paraffin wax. This needs to fit in a bag of a certain size. And the wax comes in 10 pound sheets. So I spent the better part of that morning scoring the wax into, um. 10ths of a sheet, I guess. Slab. Sheet. Something. And slamming 10 pounds of wax, and then 5 pounds, and then some amount of pounds of wax, against a sharp edge of a table so that it would break along the score mark. For about three or four hours. It was loud. It was heavy. It was actually very enjoyable because I like being occasionally violent. But, dayum. It was also tiring.
The next day? Was also bead day. The bead shipment came in, only this time it wasn't just the beads I knew we were out of or low on and it wasn't for a bead order (although I did get to finish up the bead portion of that bead order of doom). Oh no. I got to count how many packets we had in each bead jar, or get a rough estimate. Make a list of what we had in the back. Make a list of what we had in the FRONT, because inventory doesn't say how many packets are made up or where they are, it just says how many kilos of a certain bead color and type we have. And THEN I got to cross-check all THAT against the list of what we had on the shelves so I knew what to restock. And then I got to decant beads some more. For SEVEN FUCKING HOURS. Seed beads. Pony beads. I had beads coming out my ears. Opaque beads. Silver-lined beads. Shiny beads, well, they were all shiny. I got to cut them off of strings and into the tub, take them out of the tub and put them into packets and jars, pour the jars back into the tub when I realized I only had enough for a couple of packets and not enough for a full jar, go BACK into the back and grab another bundle of strings of beads so that I could then cut the beads off the strings and into the tub, and then decant them from the tub into sufficient packets to fill the jars both small and overall.
Today, Thursday? Was the sale. Which meant getting there two hours early. Which meant getting up about an hour and a half early. Which apparently meant a splitting headache on my part until I visited Oona's pharmacy. The prenatal vitamins I felt I could skip but dear god that woman has a lot of drugs in her desk drawer. Some prescription, some vitamins, some prenatal stuff, some painkillers. I took a painkiller. I took a Nuprin, which I haven't seen in ages. Only it was neither little, nor yellow, nor very different. It was, however, effective. So I was able to bag many purchases and help a couple people carry their heavy chemicals out to their car and so on. There were lines three or four deep pretty constantly, we had both registers running, and for the small store that's pretty impressive. Well, small in that it's a specialized store. The square footage is actually pretty impressive. After the early bird sale and everyone bought their demonstrator spinning wheels (people had been coming in all week and in at least one case all month to spin on the demonstrator floor model and go "It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine.") things sort of slowed down for a little while. I got to do some knitting. There were some orders to ship.
Tomorrow, hopefully, things will be if not necessarily back to normal (and I kind of hope they won't be but busier than usual, because the store's been feeling the same pinch retail businesses all over have) then at least quieter than the morning was. Afternoon speed was about right.
And the thing is, despite all this craziness? I still love my job. So, so much better than my old job. I love this place, I love their brand of crazy, I love this place.
Not much else has been happening, really. The moon still seems to be in the sky, which is good. I haven't been doing as much writing as I mean to, which is less good, but not entirely unexpected. I knew it'd be lagging a bit once I moved down here, at least between moving down and moving into my own place. I'm still kind of getting into that groove, figuring out what I can and can't do. I did get a lot of knittin done today, which is kind of cool. And I, um. May or may not have bought beads and a beading book (which is more a handy spiral-bound cheat sheet for about a gazillion types of basic beading techniques than an actual book) so that I can make a handstar. At least, that's the plan. The PLAN is to get the knitting done this weekend and/or tomorrow and then do the handstar later. We'll see if that actually works out.
And now... well, now I get to figure out if I actually want to go to bed or not. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions. I think, yeah, bed. Am exhausted.