Mondays with Tony.....

8:50 am - Tuesday - July 24th - Southwest Harbor, ME - 65º F, 100% humidity, 6 mph out of south......heavy cloud cover with a forecast high of 70º F.  Taking a bike ride later today.

I enjoy Mondays with Tony.....he is funny, he is irreverent, he makes me laugh, he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him.....he always says exactly what is on his mind.  On this Monday it was just the two of us for most of the day doing the important outdoor work at SDC.  One and a half armed Alex had a doctor's appointment in Ellsworth to see if he can become 2 armed Alex once again, and would not be at work until early afternoon.  Normally Alex would be doing most of the site cleaning, and all of the flower care on Monday, but because of his absence that fell to Tony and I, so after retrieving 32 bundles of wood to refill our beloved wood box we picked up the site cleaning equipment and proceeded to do just that.

How many sites one can clean prior to the 11 am lunch break really depends on how many of our customers choose to depart prior to that time.  11 am is the checkout time, and as one might imagine, a certain percentage will always push their departure right up to 11 am, which is fine, but if a large percentage choose to depart right at 11 am it puts a crimp in our site cleaning.  On this Monday it appeared many of our departures were in the 'leave at 11 am' category.  Another thing Alex does on Mondays is take care of all the flowers, so we had to work that into our routine as well.

Nonetheless, no matter what task we may find ourselves doing we (Tony and I) must break away to make the daily trash pickup and run over to the transfer station by 10 am at the latest.  By 10 am we had only 3 sites left to clean, and it was time to change hats and become refuse technicians.  Normally we will fill up the truck bed with trash bags, but on this particular Monday we had a grand total of 10, or 11 bags of garbage to offer up to the transfer station gods.

We were back at SDC at 10:55 am and 'clocking out' for lunch......Tony lives about 3 miles from SDC and usually goes home for lunch, which he did on this day.  I took the cart up the hill to the Newell to find TLE making me a wonderful grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.  One thing about Sundays and Mondays is that TLE works the 2 pm to 10 pm shift, so is always home making me some kind of lunch involving the induction burner, which means hot food, which I love, but the downside is she doesn't come home until after 10 pm.

Whilst eating my aforementioned wonderful, hot grilled cheese sandwich I remembered Tony and I had forgotten to do 'site checks' before retiring for the lunch hour, so I cut my lunch break short by 15 minutes to get them done before noon.   By the time I finished site checks it was noon, and time for the daily bathroom cleaning ritual.  Tony was already taking care of the trash and replacing paper towels, and TP when I arrived.

Normally it falls to me to do the water work in the bathroom, but Tony likes to spray the soap, rinse everything down, and then apply the disinfectant, and I am happy to defer to him one day a week.  The other big job, which comes first, is the vacuuming of the restroom floor, which takes about 10-12 minutes, and then it is time for Tony to take over.  On this day the floors were quite dirty, so it took me about 15 minutes to complete the vacuuming phase.  Nevertheless, we still finished cleaning the women's side in about 35 minutes.

We had about 25 minutes before we could close the men's side, so Todd asked us to help him replace a full size refrigerator in cabin # 308.  It actually took us until about 12:15 to do that, so we got a late start on cleaning the men's side, but still managed to finish at 1:50 pm.  While we were occupied with the men's restroom Alex returned and commenced to clean the last three sites.  Tony goes home at 2 pm, so I bid him adieu and went to work with Alex to finish the daily flower care.

Each summer SDC hosts 'Hawaiian Night', and this Monday was that day.  After finishing with the flower care we began to haul all the Hawaiian props (tiki lamps, tiki god, leis, tables, and other assorted decorations) down to the the area by the live music stage.  We were done about 4:40 pm, so I went home and showered, got dressed in my finest Hawaiian shirt and headed back down for the 5 pm start.

On 'Hawaiian Night' we provide a free meal consisting of grilled hot dogs, buns, chips and soft drinks.  In all we had about 100 people participating........

.......included in the festivities are separate hula hoop contests for children, and then adults, and that is what is going on here in the above picture followed up with a 'limbo' contest.  Our co-worker, Steven Scott, was the emcee on this night for the 15th consecutive year.  A great time was had by all, and by 7 pm the festivities were concluded.  

On Mondays I am the night manager, so I headed home for about 20 minutes prior to commencing the nightly pool closing ceremony.  There were a few people in the large pool when I arrived at 7:45 pm so I gave them the 30 minutes till closing time warning.  They were gone by 8:10 and my pool work was complete for another night.  As I patrolled around the campground I could see that Beech Mountain was covered in a heavy mist like cloud cover.......

......I was home by 8:30 pm relaxing, and looking forward to being off work for two days.  I watched the last half of 'Sleepless in Seattle', one of my favorite movies of all time.  Nora Ephron is such a great writer!  She also wrote 'When Harry Met Sally', and 'You've Got Mail', and I love them all.

TLE was home by 10:10 am, and I was in bed by 11 pm......TLE followed a while later......thank you so much for stopping by!

P.S. - I do intend to write more about the 11:30 pm call on the night manger phone, and what transpired, but I need more time to think on how to present it so no one is embarrassed.

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