Smooth Operator......

We had to be at Sugar Valley to start our 4.5 hour shift at 7:45 am in order to "clock in" for our shift starting at 8 am Friday.  It was still quite cold.......43 degrees.....when we got in the 'Bird at 7:10......and we had both bundled up a little warmer than the day before.  It's hard enough at my age to fold yourself up so you can get in that car, and with several layers of clothing to ward off the cold of the morning it is, as you can imagine,  even harder.  

We arrived at Sugar Valley at about 7:30.....15 minutes earlier than we needed, so we'll have to adjust our departure time a little.  Shortly after we clocked in Travis, our supervisor, came up and let me know that as part of my "rover" responsibilities I would need to learn to operate the sugar beet piler.   Based on the pictures I posted yesterday you know that these pilers are the biggest Tonka toys I'll ever get to play with, so wasn't I excited!?

On Friday they were having a few trucks come through to dump their beets so test the pilers to be sure they were working properly.  We were given a little more detailed, hands on instruction on the operation of the piling equipment, and our respective jobs.  Since I will be a rover I'll need to know how to do all the jobs around the piler.  I think I'm going to like being a rover a lot.  Nothing like a lot of variety to help move time along.

TLE learned that she has been given a new job......beet temperature taker.  I think I mentioned that the temperature is very important during the beet harvest.  If the outside temperature, and the temperature of the beets is too high they cannot dump then in the piler.  Beets that are too hot when they arrive will begin to rot before they are shipped.  So it is important to monitor the temperature of the beets as they are arriving.  Of course, for TLE, this is kind of a good thing, because it means she will be sitting inside a lot as they only take the temperature once an hour.

Since this was  more of a practice day we only had to be on the job site until 9:30 when we were dismissed, but will still get paid for 4.5 hours just as Thursday......not bad!

We took at easy the rest of the morning, but around 12:30 we headed into town to check the thrift shops to see if they had any padded bib overalls.  A lot of people here like them a lot, and say they are more comfortable, and warmer.  The new ones in town run up to $129 a pair.  We came up empty at the thrift stores so we headed back to the Tru Value Hardware store to see what they had.  As luck would have it they had some padded bib overalls on their clearance rack that were only $45 a pair.  They were not as high a quality as the $129 ones, but they only have to work for 3 weeks, so we bought two pair.  

Once the "bib" issue was taken care of we headed directly to "Footers", which, as you can surmise, is like Subway.....they specialize in foot long sub sandwiches.  Yelp gives them 4.5 stars.  I'm not sure I would go that far, but they make a pretty good sub sandwich.

We spent the rest of the afternoon re-organizing our closets in order to have the clothes we will be wearing for the next 3 weeks as handy as possible.  For TLE that meant taking a large armful of clothing out to the trailer to hang.  I think I need to have her look at my closets and reorganize them......I'm amazed how much she gets in her closets!

We read the rest of the afternoon, and I took a couple of naps.  Starting Monday I don't think there will be much opportunity for napping the next 3 weeks, so I better get them in while I can.  We watched a recorded episode of "Elementary", and then watched MasterChef Juniors.

We were in bed by 10.........

Thanks for stopping by!