Not a Work Potluck

 
I enjoyed the best of both worlds today. I went to a potluck at work, where I don't work any more! All the food and fun and friends with none of the pain and stress. Works for me!



Of course I forgot to take any pictures before we dove into the food, but at least I remembered to get something. We had turkey, mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, rolls, green bean casserole, and pies! They have not forgotten how to eat well since I've been gone.



They are gearing up for the biggest issue of the year with 17 inserts next week. Om has to work that shift anyway, and I said I'd go and just volunteer, because it's SUCH a big project and SO hard to accomplish.

I was going to come home and work this afternoon, but after doing some errands I was just pooped. Not sure why. So no writing happened. That is NOT good, but I can't write when I'm beat.

Have to be energized for an all-day author event tomorrow. Need to leave the house before 7 am. As we know, this is not my favorite time of day.

Big week coming up with Steve home. After that, I'll need to hunker down and write, write, write while other things take a backseat. I have one more event on December 8th in Holland, but other than that, I must write if this book is to be done to come out for Christmas.

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Tired of Work Lists?

 
I'm sharing a sunset again, because it's at least a spot of color in the gray Michigan winter. It seems like I haven't been doing much outside lately and am only telling you what kinds of work I get done. Seems a little boring.



Other winters, I have sometimes taken you on a past journey through my memories. I have one I've sort of been saving, but currently my scanner isn't working. So I'll have to just take pictures of pictures for some of it. Maybe we'll do that anyway.

Today, though, you just get another work list. We did get the blue stacker working, and then tweaked things to get the kinks out. This included adding a set of rollers near the top to make it fit better into our conveyor setup. Beth figured it out, and the boss was impressed!

But work took longer than I expected and then I had errands.

When I got home, I went out intending to get that well cover close to done. Nope. At least it's warm enough that I could get the concrete blocks and rocks off the tarp that had been frozen in. This allowed me to access all of the wood. The "problem" is that some of it isn't in terrible shape. I couldn't get enough leverage, alone, to pull away some of the plywood.

Most of the framing is modern dimensioned 2x6s, and much of that is just fine. So I can't mix that with the old 2x8s. I'll buy the needed pieces tomorrow, and Michelle from work and Joe are coming Saturday to help me.

So much for that. The weather is supposed to be cooperative for outside projects.

I'm working on Chapter 2 of The Hitchhiker.

I think I've had more than my share of publicity today with the great article on the front page of the Ludington Paper that is being shared around Facebook. If you haven't seen it, it's linked below.

	See Local Author, Joan H. Young, Completes Fifth Book in Mystery Series
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Stacking Papers, Covering Holes (Almost)

 
The "new" blue stacker is making its way closer to being usable! Tech guy was there all day. Here he is getting things ready to add the rollers where the papers make the transition from the stacker to the conveyor belt.



Then it was moved closer to its niche, and plugged into the air and the electric- you can see the line/cord. Everything lit up correctly and we watched it cycle a few times. The old brown one is still in its spot on the right



However, we still had to put papers out the window, and that without any stacker at all. That means we pull them off the end and count by hand, which is a fairly energetic project, but we got it done!

My understanding is that the stacker is now in place and we'll be using it tomorrow!

He also replaced the belt that takes papers from the strapper out the window to drivers. That was a real mess, and I am VERY appreciative of having this fixed because it makes one less thing I have to carefully monitor (it was ripping up papers if you didn't do things just right.)



I was supposed to get the framework for the well pit cover made this afternoon. That didn't quite happen. I did get the boards collected, measured and marked. That was the best I could do, since I had another meeting at 6. Hopefully, tomorrow afternoon will have fewer surprises, and I'll get it done. It's also supposed to be quite warm tomorrow- above 40 degrees!



The other surprise of the day was that I thought I had a gas leak in the kitchen. Turned out to not be true, but that chewed up a fair amount of time.

	See Well, Well Cover
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Some Things Are Looking Better

 
I will confess to being a tiny bit grumpy yesterday. Sorry!

Today, we had heat at work. That's a big plus.

Beth decided she wanted to make burgers and homemade fries for everyone. She was the chef.



We brought all the fixin's, and healthy appetites.



I made the buns last night. They are good, but I forgot how big to make the balls of dough, so they were more like slider buns. We ate 'em anyway.



Dig right in!



The electricians were there, so I think the wiring is ready, or nearly ready for the "new" stacker. They also used their handy lift cart to change a couple light bulbs for us. Much safer than how we usually do them with the fork lift.



Still no water, but I've got the well pit warmed up. Now I just have to get the pump guy back here to figure out what damage was done.

I'm brain-cooking a new design for a decent cover for the well pit. I also shoveled some of the dirt out that the miserable animal-whatever it is- has moved into the pit. Really a LOT of dirt. And getting it out would be MUCH easier with two people- one in the hole and one above.

In other news: I mailed some books. That's just about it, except for little stuff. I'm chilling before heading back to work. Have good hopes for some writing progress this weekend. The Book Launch party at BookMark in Ludington is tomorrow at 4 pm!

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Fix-it Day at Work (Sort of)

 
We had a repairman with us at work all day. First he got the front station on the inserter working, which has been non-functional for two weeks. No picture of that.

Next he replaced this belt that was really torn up. It's just spread out on the floor here, to measure for the new piece, but you can see it was completely split up the middle.



It's part of the belt system that carries papers up the wall. Here's where it came off of. It goes around those exposed rollers.



He was going to also replace the belt that carries papers from my station out the window, but that didn't happen for some reason.

He was also going to hook up our new to us (refurbished) stacker.



Guess again. Now we have to have an electrician come before that can be accomplished, and we have a large inanimate object to work around for another unknown length of time.

The strapper didn't heal itself in my absence either, so we have to do the little dance with the strap reel for who knows how long. That's making my hip ache. We've looked at the manual and on line, and can't even actually figure out what part is causing the problem. Clearly not the part that's listed in the troubleshooting guide. If we take it apart now, before the current reel of strap is used up, that will all be trash because they just come unwound if you take them off, mid-reel. So, I'm sure we won't even look at it till it's empty.

And there is still no heat at work. Only in our room... We are special.

And there is still no water here. I thought the heater I bought was defective. I could not get it to turn on in the well pit this morning even though the little light said it was getting power. So I took it to work and it was fine (although it couldn't make a dent in heating our huge room). Brought it back and it still wouldn't work in the well pit. What the heck, right?

Took it to the house, and it's fine. I finally figured out that the sensor to turn it off if it tips is REALLY sensitive. I'll have to go back down in the pit with a board and a level because there is only has a dirt floor, which that clever animal has dug up. What fun. I should do that before I go to work in the morning. We'll see.

I went out to catch you another sunset because color is GOOD!

I also caught the red-tail hawk. Not a great pic, but I'll take it. S/he always makes me smile.





Bed soon. We hand-stuffed papers for hours today because we couldn't run the machines while the guy was working on them. I'm bushed.

	See The Stacker
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We Survived!

 
Another year of the Black Friday edition of the paper is out the door! In fact, we did it in record time, starting at 11:40 and having every paper done just a little before 2 pm. This is an hour longer than it usually takes, but is our best time for this huge, once a year, edition.

It was scheduled to have 20 inserts. This morning, the order got upped to 21. That is not good. We only have 9 stations, one for the cover and 8 for inserts, so if there are more than 8 inserts we make packets ahead of time which can then go through as if they were one thing. We had already finished all the packets. But guess what? We had to make yet another one this morning.

Here are some of the insert packets.



Here are some more of the insert packets.



Here is Beth, bringing in another pallet of insert packets.



Here are pallets full of the inserts that didn't go in packets.



One of the real challenges of papers with so many inserts is how the loose bundles of stuffed papers will stack. If there are certain sizes or types of paper next to each other they tend to jam or slide which can lead to machine stopping, or an inability to handle the bundles and get them to the strapper neatly. Some inserts have flaps which are especially nasty for the machine. So Beth did a very good job of planning the packets to alternate glossy paper with non-glossy, prevent catching flaps, etc.

Here is the inserter machine, running papers (you can see them in the track on the far right).



The semi-broken stacker did agree to accept them, and we put them in stacks of 10. (Usually it's 50.) Each paper weighed 1.6 pounds, which puts a bundle at 16 pounds. I sent close to 600 bundles out.

Actually, the challenge of doing something out of the ordinary tends to energize me. It was kind of fun to succeed, and succeed well, at pulling off a very complicated puzzle with a team of people who individually work very hard at what could be described as 'not a very satisfying job.'

After that was all over, we had to run some packets for the next publication we do (Friday). We get tomorrow off. Yippie!

In other news, I'm doing a little writing and nursing a runny nose.

	See 150 and 9
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Hope You Like Newspapers

 
Newspapers take over the life of everyone in the mailroom this week and next. The Black Friday editions of the shopper supplements, and the regular paper next Wednesday are the biggest ones we do all year. They are huge, difficult and heavy. We have several pieces of semi-broken equipment, and we ended up having to pull papers off the end by hand today instead of sending them through the stacker.

Today I worked 8.5 hours, but I did actually sit down for 10 minutes, mid-afternoon. In just a couple of hours I get to go do it all again.

This is part of what we stuffed this afternoon. Some of the tubs and high-rises had already gone to the warehouse.



And next week? This is about half of our storage space, filled with inserts for next week's papers. The other half is just as full.



After watching us work for a bit last time she was here, Ester said, "It's like getting paid to have a gym membership." That's sure true now and next week. We are all sore and tired and working right out at the edges of our limits.

So that's all that is going on in my life today.

	See 150 and 9
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150 and 9

 
Today was the 150th Anniversary of the Ludington Daily News where I work. The paper outdid themselves with a 10-section supplement (in addition to the regular daily paper) with each section covering a span of years. Here are the top halves of the covers of the 10 sections.



The bottom half of each had a different picture for each of the time periods covered. Inside were both local and national news of significance from that era, lots of historic pictures and a timeline of local events. It was a huge undertaking for a paper this size, and I think they did an awesome job.



What this meant for us in the mailroom is lots of work. We had to assemble the 10 sections into 4 packets, because there were also 3 ads that had to go in the paper. Those packets were made up ahead of time. Here are half of them, in high rises, all set out ready to go in the papers today.



Here's the line, with people keeping the insert bins filled, and the person closest to the camera fixing floor copies (ones the machine spits out with errors). Perhaps these pictures don't do the best job of showing you how this works, but I was happy to have someone take any pictures at all.



Here's what I do at the end. I'm the "lead bundler." The papers were so thick that we put them through the stacker in sets of 10. (We usually do 50). You can count the 10 papers in the stack I'm getting ready to plop the ones in my hand on top of.



Today, I took two sets of 10 and turned them into a huge stack of 20 (larger than the 50 papers are normally) to send them to the strapper and out the window.



Trust me, 10s come out really, really fast. Ester describes what we do as getting paid for having a gym membership. I kind of like that concept.

Anyway, we had one huge stacker jam, and one broken belt in the inserter machine (both of which which stop the line cold for a significant amount of time), and a bunch of small jams and stacker dumps. The smaller stops were to be expected with this big an edition. All in all, it took a long time, but it wasn't nearly the hassle we expected.

That said, we postponed the run we usually do in the afternoon till tomorrow morning because we were so whipped. That means Friday/Friday night is going to be even tougher than usual. But we'll deal with it.

So that's the 150. Oddly enough, it's also my 9th Blogoversary on My Quality Day. How's that for an interesting coincidence?

Ester and I accomplished a big project after I got home, too. More on that tomorrow. She has to leave in the morning (sad face).

	See 4th Blogoversary
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Another Day, Another Air Hose

 
OK, today is just going to be one of those reality checks. Life is not all hikes and hugs and mountain tops and scenic views.

It was back to work for me this morning. Beth said I looked less than enthused. Sigh. I was just thinking about all of the above items. When... BANG... there was a gunshot.

Actually, it wasn't. In fact, this time we didn't all duck for cover because we knew what it was. We all just hit the stop buttons to turn everything off.

Yup, another ruptured air line.



I have to say that the last time this happened (about a month ago) it was pretty scary because we didn't know what it was. We did get the machine shut down, but it was so loud that it was actually frightening. Even the press guys came in to check that everything was OK.

Easy enough to replace, but some new tubing would be nice instead of just cutting off a length of some used stuff.

Probably more pretty pictures tomorrow. Have to share a little more from the trip to da UP.

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Sure-Tyer

 
Look what we have at work! A "new" strapper. It's huge. It needs a 3-phase outlet for power so now we are waiting on an electrician. But perhaps next week we'll have a strapper with a working conveyor belt. And this would increase the number of working strappers to two... which is what we really need. You may be able to hear us all cheer the day this is operable. No matter where you live.



And, I unloaded it from the truck because no one else was there. It was tricky because of the size and because it wasn't secured to the pallet (figure the why of that one out if you can), but I didn't damage it or anything else.

Ten hours at work today and now I'm headed back for 4-5 more. Not feeling so good about that, but o well, I'll like the paycheck.

	See Our favorite strapper
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