Just Elf'ing Along

Another fun-filled week at Amazon is on the books. Speaking of elves, has anyone seen this Elf on the Shelf? I've been packing many boxes with these in them, and I had to look it up...I guess if I had kids I would know about it! Anyway, supposedly this elf sits in your house and keeps an eye on you to see if you've been naughty or nice, and reports back to Santa. Personally, I think the idea is just a tad creepy, but hey, what do I know? Kind of like a tattle-tale thing to me!

So, we had an exciting start to our work week on Friday (Friday is my Monday!). I break the night into quarters...first quarter goes to first break, second quarter goes to meal break, third quarter goes to second break, and last quarter goes to quitting time...little games I make with myself to get through the night :-). Anyway, I'm packing away on my cart halfway through first quarter, and actually Al had just stopped by my cart to let me know he arrived and would see me at meal break. I heard the manager speaking on the PA system, but truthfully, all I hear is what I call the "Charlie Brown schoolteacher voice"...waa-wa-waa-wa-waa...know what I mean? I can never understand a word they say, just figure if they want me, they know where to find me :-). So I glance up the row, and see folks leaving their carts, and one of the assistants "walking swiftly" (you never never ever run in the warehouse!) down the aisle. As he got closer we heard him say, "there's a fire in the building, leave immediately through the front break room". Well, you don't have to tell me twice...unfortunately, I did leave my sweatshirt hanging on the cart as it was warm and I didn't think about grabbing it. What was odd, though, was the fire alarms in the building hadn't gone off...I later found out they had been pulled, and did work in the fact that the fire department was notified, but the alarms didn't go off. All in all the evacuation was quite orderly and no panic, thank goodness. Once out in the parking area, you have to report to your specified area and check in with the managers. Once the plant has been evacuated, the order to return cannot be given until every single person that was in the building has been accounted for. We'd been outside for quite awhile and everyone was getting pretty chilly...it wasn't a really cold night thank goodness, but I would say it was in the upper thirties, maybe low forties, dark, and it was getting cold just having a t-shirt on! Soon they were cracking out the emergency blankets and handing them out to everyone. Al was one of those handing them out, and he came over to make sure that I and the others I have become friendly with had gotten blankets. That's when we found out it wasn't a fire, but there had been a bomb threat and that is why they had to evacuate the building, and they couldn't clear everyone to return until the building had been searched. Why do people do stupid things like that? We heard that couple hours cost Amazon a half a million dollars in lost time, wages, orders, etc. If the person who made the threat is ever caught, its a federal offense, not to mention terrorism!

The rest of my work week was fairly uneventful. It is getting busier packing, although we were given voluntary time off the last quarter Sunday night. Yay, home at 2:30AM instead of 4:30AM :-)! There's no overtime this week for my shift on Wednesday night either. Plenty of time for my feet and shoulders to recover before starting again Friday!

Not too much else is going on. Dinners have become more simple as we don't have as much time to prepare..although I may prepare a couple things ahead of time that we just need to reheat over the weekend.  So there is no exciting recipes for me to share at this time. I did buy a new cookbook, "America's Test Kitchen Slow Cooker Revolution". I like these cookbooks as they do a lot of testing of recipes before publishing, give you reasons why they do what they do in the recipe, and also tell you what brands of ingredients they find to work and taste the best. I'm trying their loaded baked potato soup recipe tonight.

Its been pretty warm the past week...its nice when its in the fifties at night...not as much propane usage! We do have two electric heaters, a larger infrared heater that we use in the living area, and a small ceramic heater that we put in the hallway. They work very well together ( Al did have to do a little rewiring and put a new outlet in so we didn't pop breakers), but I'm too nervous to leave them on while we're sleeping...do many of you leave them on all the time when its cold out?

Well, as we figure it, we have about 18 days left, about 12 working days...but who's counting? So keep those orders coming in...the time passes much quicker when I'm busy! We'll see what I have to report next week....thanks for hanging in there with us while we have no interesting travel stories to tell!