A Rare Day

I've seen some bad days at work before, but last night really tops the list. I don't know what happened, whether it was just a coincidence or what, but it seemed like as soon as the clock hit midnight on January 1, 2007, things went completley haywire. Things have been running very smoothly lately at work with very few problems. But we certainly made up for all of the good times last night. The end of the shift was spent shoveling off a conveyor of "muck" onto the floor of the structure we were in, nearly 50 feet below. We were protected by railing and platforms to our sides, so there was no real danger of us falling to our death. But it was a lot of hard work and unfortunatley, we had to pass it on to the next shift. One of the things I hate doing is passing our work onto the other crews, as if we can't get the work done. But this would've taken a lot of work, no matter which crew this happened to. It wasn't fun, and days like these are rare. I'd certainly rather keep things quiet than have equipment down for long periods of time.

The main reason why we had to shovel this conveyor off is because of what we call a "jackpot." It's when a conveyor belt drops onto another belt and then creates too much of a load and basically overloads the belt the load dropped onto. This was caused by a couple different power bumps at the mine, all thanks to our crazy weather. It rained most of the day yesterday. This was no simple rain shower, either, as it poured. This went on until late, when it started to let up. But then shortly after midnight, the rain turned to snow. Huge, wet snowflakes came down from the sky and quickly started accumulating on the ground. I was amazed as I left work to see how much snow had fallen; almost six inches of wet, heavy snow. Tree branches and power lines were bending from the weight of the snow. There's no doubt the snow caused our problems in the plant. And it's not like I didn't do enough at work to which I then had to brush all of this slop off my car before I could head out of the parking lot. The drive home was no picnic, either. The main state highway was not plowed which means I had to poke along at 30 to 35 miles an hour as I rode in the tire ruts that other vehicles had already made before me. If I strayed ever so slightly out of those ruts, I started sliding. So I kept it slow and steady. Eventually I made it home - 20 minutes late. I was pretty wound up when I got home so it was not easy for me to fall asleep. Eventually I did, but it was kind of a restless sleep, too. So far on this stretch of midnights, I have not gotten the sleep that I would've liked. I am hoping the last three go better for me.

So needless to say, the new year has not started off that great for me - and I haven't even gotten through the first day yet! I sure hope this isn't a bad omen for the overall year. If this is only day one, I hate to think what the other 364 days are going to be! :-o

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!