Time flies when you're having fun, but it also zips by at the speed of light when you are fully engaged in an activity for over half of each day and sound asleep the rest of the time.
Today is Wednesday of our third week "up the river" and we really need this day off.

We worked overtime again on Sunday, so we've already put in 30 of our 50 hours this week.


 I know some of my friends just cannot comprehend why I go and do crazy things like this, but there IS a method to my madness and it's not all about the money, though the money was the major reason we opted to try this one more time.

I am an information junkie, I suppose.  Many times in my life I have taken on a job or a project just because I wanted to know more about something.  That's why I have enjoyed working as a temp in the past.  There are so many interesting things out there, and if you stay in one place and work at one job for your lifetime, you'll never experience most of them. 

Bob and I are alike in this need for novelty, and we've learned that it doesn't go away just because you get older.  It only makes you a little more selective about what's left that you want to do in your time on this planet.  We are using this experience as a springboard to our plans for 2013, in which we pursue our goal of location independent retailing via the FBA program. 

The earnings from this season will finance the equipment I need, plus a trip to the ASD trade show next March where we will be able to invest in some inventory on the spot.  Not to mention the 100 or so boxes of books in our storage unit that have been waiting for us to list them. 

The thing is, now that I've worked in receiving, stow, and packing, I have observed many of the reasons why product gets damaged or lost between the time the seller puts it in the box and the time the buyer opens the package.  How many other FBA sellers know what I am learning?  My guess is not very many.

At the bare minimum, this information will allow me to package my products in such a manner that they can survive the trip through the warehouse and end up in the package as pristine as when I shipped them in.

Back to the present, we are enjoying our stay at the RV Park here in Coffeyville.  Last year we stayed across the street from the fulfillment center at Big Chief RV Park.  We laughed often at how small our 1987 Argosy by Airstream looks when sitting among the much newer and much taller RVs.  We called it our little cracker box, because it looked like a tube of saltines sitting in a row of loaves of bread.

This year, we are at the Buckeye Mobile / RV Estates and we like it.  There's a pond for fishing, and there is a lot less noise here, although there are trains that pass in the night.  However, unlike road noise, the trains don't wake me up.  In fact, until I was awake in the night from body aches, I didn't even realize that any trains came by at all.

This year we know at least two other couples who are staying in this park.  One couple from Minnesota stayed at Big Chief last year, and we met them at the big BBQ, but didn't work together.  This year we are in the same park and working in the same department, so we've had a chance to get to know them and have enjoyed their company tremendously.  Another couple in the park are also working in our department, and we hope to get to know them better.

The laundry facility here is nice, but it's rather small with only 3 washers and dryers, and there are a lot of people here who use it.  So it makes more sense for us to bundle up our things and go use the double loaders down at the laundry.

With two days off each week, the crock pot has become my best friend.  I load it up on Saturday and Wednesday nights, and put it on to cook before we leave for work on Sunday and Thursday mornings.  One crockpot full of meat and veggies lasts us two days, and we usually go get a fast food meal on Tuesday night. 

We shop on our days off, and do laundry, and clean the trailer.  Oh, and we sleep.  A lot.  I hope that we'll sleep less over time, but right now our poor bodies are just struggling to build up the muscles we need for stamina and endurance.  

OTC pain meds are our friends right now, although I hope we won't need them for the entire time we are here.  I've been alternating between aspirin, ibuprofen, and acetaminophen so as to minimize the risks of over dosing on any one of them.  I tried Aleve, but it only worked for the general muscle aches, and didn't touch the bone pain I have, so I went back to stacking the others.

Part of the pain is from using muscles that haven't been used for a long time.  Part of it is normal aches and pains from growing older.  A large portion, however, is from standing and walking on concrete for over 10 hours every day.  I have good shoes, but I think I'm going to invest in some even better shoes, and maybe even get some custom insoles down the road.  If I were to give anybody advice about working "up the river" I'd say to buy the best shoes you can afford, two pair if possible and break them in before you arrive.  Plus buy yourself some big bottles of pain pills, because you will need them.

To end on a bright note, however, you will probably lose weight if you work here.  I've lost at least six pounds so far, and I have been eating 5 times a day.  I discovered quickly that if I eat a small snack at each of my breaks in addition to my regular breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that I am better able to keep up the pace during the four work segments of my day.  I wasn't trying to lose weight, and the only reason I stepped onto the scale was because of a change I noticed in how my new clothes were fitting.  It was a delightfully pleasant surprise to see the lowest weight I've seen there for the past 3 or 4 years.  I've always said the only way to get me to exercise vigorously enough to lose weight is to pay me ... and this proves that it's true.  If this keeps up, I may have a brand new body for Christmas.  If I were to lose 2 lbs a week for the next 16 weeks of work, I'd weigh less than I did when I worked at the shipyard.  I would like that a lot.   I bet Bob would like that, too.  :)

Essentially, that's what we are doing, you know, selling our time for money.  No matter what you do to earn a living, essentially you are selling something.  Whether you sell a product or a service or your time, selling is involved.  Funny how we don't always grasp that fundamental fact, and associate the word "selling" with a  horrid mental image of a less-than-honest "salesman" whose entire purpose is to separate your money from your pockets.

It's a shame, really, because the exchange of products or services is the crux of all commerce, and without it our civilization would never have grown as it has.

But I digress ... what I wanted to say is that we are doing fine on the new job, and we've completed our first week.  This year, unlike last year, we did what's known here as "work hardening" and worked only half days this week.  With a 6:30 a.m. start time, one paid 15 minute break, and leaving at the start of lunch, we've averaged 5.5 hours each day this week.

The big surprise on Sunday was that we'd been placed on the donut shift, so our regular work week will have Wednesdays off in the middle, and the weekend off except on mandatory overtime, when we'd be expected to work on Sundays.  This is where the title, selling time for money, comes in.  There's mandatory overtime for donut shift on Sunday, only because we haven't completed our first 2 weeks, we have the option of working or not working.  Working would put around $300 more on our first payday, and that's not chump change in our book, plus an additional $20 into our completion bonus.  The big question is, are we physically capable of working 30 hrs in 3 days next week?  Is the wear and tear on our bodies and psyches going to be a fair trade for the money?  Because this will be the last time we have the option of not working an overtime day from here on out, I'm sort of on the fence about this.  I guess I'll have a better idea once this day is done and I see how much preparation for the coming weeks I can complete.

Last year I don't think I'd have made it through the first week if I'd had 4 tens in a row, as it was extremely tiring, especially at first.  So while the work hardening meant less than 40 hrs, I'm glad we got it.  As it turns out, we didn't lose all that much time, because day 1 of orientation gave us 7.5 hrs and we were able to work on Wednesday for a half day, bringing our total paid work hours up to around 30.  If we both work the OT, we'll have a full 80 hrs on our first paycheck, with 10 of the hrs being time and a half.  That would make a nice beginning to this adventure.

We are working in the packing department this year.  There's not as much walking, and there's no climbing of stairs, but it's still physically taxing work.  It's relatively easy from a mental perspective, and once a person has memorized all the box sizes and where they are located, and what each of the steps entails, one could almost do the job without thinking, on automatic pilot, kind of like driving becomes second nature and you don't have to actively think about each move before you make it.  It could be a very ZEN experience, if you don't let the pressure for speed get to you.

Working donut shift means we deal with two different sets of managers, and I can already see some differences in daily expectations.  Nothing major, but I am already developing a preference for one shift over the other.

One nice thing about this department that's worth mentioning is that our metrics are displayed right on our computer screen as we work, so there's no need for anyone to track us down, stop our work, and tell us what our numbers are.  That's nice.  In fact, both Thursday and Friday we were pointed to a line and pretty much were left alone to work.  We have a signal light to call for help when and if it's needed, and when we don't need assistance, they let us work uninterrupted.  That's also nicer than what happened to us last year, when we were continually (or so it felt) being told to drop what we were doing and rush over to another area.  One night I climbed 14 flights of stairs being sent from one area to another, ending up back where I started.  I was a bit hot under the collar that night, too.  I wasn't a happy camper on days when I had to deal with what I felt were incompetent people who had positions of authority.  So in many ways, this year is already much better than last.

So maybe this year won't be nearly as hard as last year was.  I hope so.  In any case, essentially we are selling 19 weeks of our life for enough money to accomplish some big goals in 2013.  I hope it's a win-win situation for us all.

That's about how I felt today at the Amazon Meet and Greet for Camperforce workers who are starting in August.  Seems many things have changed since last year, and some things I'll just have to wait to find out how they affect me.

Still are not sure of the hours we will be working - one lady said we won't start work until 6:30 am ... which is probably right, but somehow I had it in my head that we had to be to work by 5 in the morning.  6:30 sounds much better, but I won't get my hopes up just yet.

New name for what we do is Amazon Fulfillment ... so I don't know if that means they are retiring the term Camperforce or if the warehouse has been renamed ... or what.  Totally confused on that topic.

But on the bright side, there are three other couples here in this park that are starting in August, and one couple remembers us from last year!  They are doing their third year at Amazon.  Another couple staying at a different park also remembered us from last year, and are going to drive over and take a look at this one to see which place they like best. 

We measured mileage today, and it's just under 9 miles to work one way, and only 2 miles to the Sirloin Stockade.  So Tim is within walking distance of almost every eatery in town, plus the library and a grocery store.  That bodes well for the future. 

That about wraps up all the news that's fit to print.  We'll see how tomorrow goes.  Cia

This is the only image I was able to capture to document this incident.  Of all the times for my Bloggie's battery to fail. 

This is the hub that holds a hubcap and tire onto our Argosy.  It's the rear wheel on the left hand side.  As you can see, all six of the lug studs have been sheared.

We don't know why this happened - it was a brand new wheel.  This is just the beginning of the weirdness, though.  See, we did NOT notice that the wheel had left us.  We had just made the turn from Highway 95 onto IH-35, and had gone just a few miles when a small blue car came up on the driver's side honking and pointing and looking really frantic.  We pulled over, and she did, too - and when I walked up to her car, she told me a fantastic story of how our wheel had come off, and rolled off the road into a ditch and up the hill into the grass.

So there we were - missing a tire on the trailer, out in the middle of no where.  We drove slowly to the next town, which turned out to be more of a village with a gas station and a barber shop and not much else.  Heading back towards civilization, we were lucky to find a full service trucking tires & repair center, where we dropped the trailer and went in search of the tire.

Three hot and sweaty hours later, exhausted from walking up hills and into ditches searching for Loose Wheel (sing it with me, "You picked a fine time to leave us Loose Wheel.") we gave up and returned to the tire shop.

What can I say about that experience?  Those tire folks were our heroes.  They had to drive into Waco to find the parts needed, and they were smart about how they did it, taking no chances that they'd return with parts that wouldn't fit.  Photos and samples from the other tire went with them. 

They worked diligently and we were back on the road by 6:30 pm.  The hard part of that day was that it was triple digits and we have no air conditioning in the van, so we had to get creative to keep the cats cool.  I'm sure they didn't enjoy the day, but they didn't fight me when I wrapped them in wet towels and then fanned the towels to take advantage of the evaporation cooling. 

So we finally pulled in to the RV park where we had a reservation at about 10:30 that night.  I wanted to sit in the hot tub, but was too tired that night.  In the morning, I discovered the pool and hot tub facility is under construction for an upgrade.  So there was nothing to do but head on over to the casino for some breakfast.

While Tim and I were standing in line to get player's club cards for the meal discounts, a man handed Bob a coupon for a free breakfast as he was leaving and wasn't going to use it.  Sweet!  Breakfast buffet was $12 so that was quite the blessing.

We didn't walk out of there with tons of cash, but we did win enough little bits here and there to finance our playing.  Kind of like the biblical story of the loaves and fishes, although we didn't walk out with 12 baskets full, we didn't miss out on any of the fun we'd planned on, despite the tire repair having essentially wiped out our fun money.  WinStar at Thackerville is, depending on who you talk to, either the 3rd or 4th largest casinos in the world.  I believe it - they've done a lot more building and it's even bigger than an Amazon fulfillment center, and that's saying a lot.

I can't say that the food is five star dining, though.  It all seems a bit pricey and while it's decent, it never lives up to the price.  We had 3 meals there, including a late lunch at the "Toby Keith's I Love This Bar and Grill", and a light supper at the Palladium, and they were all over priced and at best OK.  Nothing like the food at the Spa Casino in Palm Springs, which has the BEST buffet I've ever eaten at in my entire life.

Now we are in Coffeyville, and are trying to catch our breath and get our bearings.  We've had another change of plans in that we've been reassigned from Inbound to Outbound, and will be working packing boxes for shipment if I understand correctly.  Now this is the last place in the warehouse I'd ask to work, but in this case I'm kind of relieved, because my leg has been hurting something fierce with a sciatica issue, and I've been scared that I wouldn't be able to walk or climb stairs to the degree that I know is required.  So I find out that I won't be walking nearly as much, and I won't be climbing stairs at all.  My leg shouldn't prevent me from meeting my goals and obligations in this position.  So once again, something that looks bad at first ends up being for the best.

I wish I could just totally grok this concept and completely stop judging things as being good or bad and just see how it  unfolds.