1/3 of a year.

It was 8pm for what felt like forever, and all of a sudden it is 1am? Dang.

Today I worked a regular persons shift of 8 hours. Started with setting up screens to burn. Then I burned them. Part of the way through I did a palette change and cleaned the sleeve palettes. Then I resumed burning the rest of the screens. I coated the remaining screens as well. Now there are mucho screens to burn, which is good because there are several more things to burn come tomorrow.

After that I...oh I fired up the heater and set up the sleeve job and...there was something I think I did between those two though. I didn't clean squeegees or reclaim. Didn't tape screens. Hmmmn. We didn't get to printing till later on. AH oh well, it will come to me or it won't.

Caught some shirts, then did another palette change.

Listened to Clouds of Witness. Felt like some Wimsey.

Back home I did laundry. Awww yeah Thursday night. I'm working Sunday. Not sure what I'll do with my Saturday. I need to run some errands. I'm starting to get an at home screenprinting set up started, so I need to find the clamps and figure out what kinds of lights to use for exposing...among other things.

Remember Ma and Pa to bring my screens down when you visit! Also my zine library. My zine library is a plastic tub next to my bookshelves. Also that art case thingy we made is on top of it, bring that too.

My first day of work was June 13th. Been at it for four months now. Seems much longer. Maybe because it is so fast paced? Should figure out the date I moved to Santa Cruz. Yay for having a blog to keep track of these things.

screen queen

The milk chocolate covered toffee popcorn from Trader Joe's is quite tasty. Mmmm.

Another long day at work. When I got home, I sat down and had no intention of moving for a while.

I finished listening to Pyramids. I've now listened to so many Discworld books that I've lost touch with what is actually reality. They are good but tend to repeat a bit...time to move on to Snow Crash or Good Omens.

Cleaned all the squeegees and floodbars at the start. Then I coated some screens. Then I reclaimed a big stack of screens with the new and not busted pressure washer. The ones that were prepped for discharge ink and had been sitting for a whole took a looooot of pressure washing. But I got it done! And then I cleaned and burned some screens. And reclaimed a few more. And ended the day with one more final coating of screens. Used up all the emulsion and mixed up some more. I think there are about 30 more screens that will be burned, and all of those will need to be taped, though Stuart has been taping. A lot of jobs to be done! Hurray!

Nice to be pulling some long hours. Tiring, but nice.

soft skin but not in a good way

Work is wrecking my hands. Well, the skin on my hands. My digits have spent too much time in water, what with washing out screens and cleaning screens, and reclaiming screens. Too much prune fingers. My cuticles are a wreck. I don't want to wear gloves ALL the time.

Today was a busy day. Burned a stack of screens. Coated the screens from last night. Stuart brought his electric, but less powerful, pressure washer so I reclaimed some more screens which will be coatable tomorrow. Taped some screens. All this stuff takes a lot of time. I need to time myself, so I can give good estimates as to how long certain tasks take.

Finally went grocery shopping after work. Just got my staples. I need to make another enchilada casserole, so that I don't have to put a lot of effort into lunch making for a while. I think I've just become not sick of eating it from the last time I made it. HMmm.

Back at home, I put my feet up and had some pasta. Yum nums.

what a Monday

Uhhhgggg. God. Had one of those days at work. So I'm having a beer now. And will probably have a beer later. So I am blogging now.

The first chunk of my shift was spent weeding vinyl stickers. That was all right. I listened to John Finnemore's Souvenir Program and Pyramids. It is tedious work but at least I stay dry while doing it. Then came a couple screens to burn. That was all right. Have a rapid succession of big jobs coming in, so it should be a busy couple weeks, so that is good.

Then came the end of my shift. And it was time to reclaim (after spending the time cleaning the ink off the screens and prepping them). I made the mistake of getting all the screens nice and wet and goopy with ER-45 before really kicking the pressure washer into gear. It was on for all of 10 seconds before a hole burst in the hose. Heat had burned a hole in it, and there was no plugging it. Tape? Nope. Bike repair kit patch? Nope. We (bossman Chris & I) ended up wrapping a piece of aluminum in the patch and taping THAT to the hose and that, well it didn't repair it but it stopped it enough to keep it from showering the both of us. Though by that point, both of us were well and truly soaked. Oh and did I mention that the sun had gone down and we had the illumination from spot lights to go from? Because that was also happening. It was one of those stressful times that goes right past anger to hilarity. I'm quite pleased at how I was able to keep my head instead of crumbling in frustration. We ziptied the handle on the pressure washer (my idea), so that it was never accidentally released, which would put pressure into the hose and thus put more pressure on the patched leak. We managed to tandem reclaim the stack of screens in record awesome time.

I mean seriously. Dang. What a shift! I love my job because it is always changing. Better or for worse. Hahha.

So I returned home, popped open a bottle of beer, and jumped into some clean clothes. Now I am going to relax, watch some TV, and forget my worries. Tomorrow is another busy awesome day.

And I love it.

Shit, still need to buy groceries....ahhh I'll do that tomorrow.

is October halfway over already?

What a lovely Sunday! I slept in, which was nice. My body needed it, what with the wedding and the previous week of fighting illness. It was good to sleep in like that. I'll be going to sleep shortly.

I helped clean the house a bit, as Janet was having a big birthday shindig thing for her friend. Lots of people. I cleaned the floors and made sure all my dishes were out of the sink. They came over at 4ish, though I was upstairs being antisocial. Though I wanted to socialize, but I gave the company some space...and then some more space and then I had been up in my room for an hour and a half and by then I was like "ahhh jeeze, probably too late now." But I had plans to meet Ray for Looper and some after movie drinks, so that got me out of the house. Still, I met a couple of the guests and they were quite nice. Though some of the guest's kids gave me odd looks.

Looper was just as enjoyable the second time around. Such a great movie. I saw it at the Regal 2, which was tucked into a complex I've yet to explore, but is right next to Trader Joe's. There are lots of areas in this city I need to explore. We had drinks at The Poet. At the first dinner we had, it was someone's birthday, and yet again another familiar happy birthday song was rung out. Fun how that goes. There was a pub quiz going on and the questions were quite tricky. The teams were already established by the time we arrived, so we just listened in.

It was a nice night. The weather last week was gray and Pacific Northwesty, but it went back to calm California.

Had a very nice Sunday night. Now I shall climb into bed. Another awesome week starts! I need to make a to do list.