a third!

Yep, we finished week #3 at Amazon and are 1/3rd of the the way done. The work is pretty mindless and repetitive but you are busy enough that the time goes fairly quickly. We are both tired and sore when our shift ends as we hobble, moan and groan our way to the parking lot. :-) We have been using a lot of
these

My shoulder muscles are bothering me the most. I find myself stooping over a table for hours on end and am trying to watch my posture while working to help relieve those muscles.
We have both noticed our hands have swollen the last couple of days so we are not wearing our rings until either the job ends or the swelling subsides.
When the orders are slow Amazon offers "VTO" which stands for "voluntary time off". Our department was offered VTO three days this week. The first was Wednesday night (actually Thursday morning) at 2 am. We declined since we had less then 2 hours to finish our shift, plus it was our first 10 hour shift and we wanted the accomplishment of finishing. They offered it again Friday evening so we took them up on it versus being sent to another department to work. Last night when we got to work we did our start up meeting, stretches and got our work station assignments. When I got to my station the conveyor belt was empty. No totes full of "stuff" to pack. There is usually a line of totes on the belt for as far as the eye can see, Oh Oh. Our supervisor started making calls and a few totes started arriving but not nearly enough to keep more then three or four people even remotely busy and there were twelve of us. The announcement was made that we should start cleaning and restocking the entire department so that is what we did until our first break when they offered VTO once again. A few of my co-workers took them up on it but we decided to stay since it was pretty early in our shifts. There were still no totes after break so they had Rudee and I putting colored tape on the floor of a new area they are setting up. The different colored tape outlines "parking places" for skids, carts, trash cans etc. That took us to our lunch break when they offered VTO once again. Our supervisor said he needed to get the department down to just three people since they had another 13 coming in for training on the second half of our shift. We decided to go ahead and give up and go. We had stuck it out for 5 hours doing "busy work" and just wanted to be done with it. We ended up with three of our co-workers needing a ride so we all piled into the Dakota and headed for the Huddle House restaurant where we had a great time eating, talking and getting to know each other better. We had a great time!

I'm not sure what next week will look like, we will have the five work campers who joined us last week and have been working 5 hour shifts now working the full 10 hours, plus 13 new employees that are training. I sure hope the work is going to be there for us, otherwise our area is going to be the cleanest packaging area in Amazon history! :-) I'll keep you posted.

Really??!!

We survived our first long shift at Amazon. We are both sore and that last hour went really, really slow. I guess we were both doing a lot of clock watching. :-)

When we arrived at the campground here there were not very many sites available. We chose to move in next to blogger buddies Jessica and Harry http://rikerrvdays.blogspot.com/ who have been here for several weeks. I think I mentioned that we had to ask a guy (our other new neighbor) to move his truck, he was using our site as his parking space. He was not real pleasant doing this and said he would move it so we could back in but would be parking there since "that is where I park". Well he moved it and we have all parked our vehicles in a grassy area in the middle of this small campground.
This morning when we got home at 4:30 am the center grassy area was packed with cars and trucks so I moved our gas grille a little and parked on the gravel area next to our front door like a lot of the others do. When I got up early this afternoon this is what I found:

I waited a couple of hours thinking he may just be unloading something but it was obvious he was just trying to make a statement. Amazing how some grown "adults" can act like a 4 year old! I took our trash to the dumpster and the fellow parked on the opposite side of him came out too. He was also blocked in by this dimwit. He said the guy put up a fuss when he arrived and didn't want him parked blocking his view. I decided to call the campground owner and he came right over and talked to the guy who then moved his truck onto his own site so we can all get our vehicles out now. I guess we will just see how it goes. I'll keep you posted

playing tourist

We finished our "work hardening" days at Amazon and are getting ready to move to our normal shift of 10 hour days, well actually it's 10 hour "nights" in our case. We will report for work tonight at 5:30 and get off at 4:00 am. I sure hope we are ready and can handle the standing, stooping, lifting and bending!

On our 3 days off we decided to be tourists and check out some of the local area. We took a nice drive through the winding back roads to this place.

We took a great tour and learned a lot about distilling "spirits". Here is our tour guide Lindsey.

Both of us are fans of the TV show Moonshiners and now understand a little more about what they are doing when they are "cooking the mash". :-)

One little tidbit I never knew was the distilling process releases a "mold" that attaches to the wood of the buildings, fences and surrounding trees leaving a black residue. They say it is not harmful to humans or the trees but it is the reason they paint their buildings black. :-)

They age the liquor in charred white oak barrels for around 7 years.  The barrels are stored in a large 4 story warehouse where they are moved from the top floor to the bottom over the course of the 7 years.

Once the bourbon is aged it moves to the bottling room where it is bottled, capped and hand dipped in their signature wax sealing process.

The last stop on the tour was the tasting room where we sampled their product in different stages. Cheers!

The first was pure moonshine watered down to 90 proof. Then we tried their aged Bourbon and some that had aged too long. Frankly my tongue was pretty numb after the moonshine so the rest of the samples were more for fun. :-)

To regress a little bit, Sunday evening we were watching TV when Rudee lost a cap from her tooth. Luckily she didn't swallow it and have to go "searching" for it the next day or two like our buddy and fellow fulltimer Steve did at FOSJ. :-)
I called a dentist first thing Monday morning before leaving for the distillery and got her an appointement for Tuesday. The appointment was for 11 am and we had to hustle a little to make it on time since our sleep time is still a little screwed up. We walked in the door at 10:58 and I was a little worried. The office was pretty fancy inside with ornate wood desks and trim. Oh, oh this may be a little more expensive then we had hoped.
Rudee started filling out the paperwork and someone in the waiting room said "Hi, Phil and Rudee". Needless to say we were a little surprised that someone would know us here in the waiting room of a dentist in Kentucky. Turns out it was co-worker and fellow fulltimer Karen http://wishuponanrvstar.blogspot.com/. We have been "blogger buddies" for awhile now and she is working the same shift and area at Amazon ... cool!
They re-attached Rudee's cap in short order and only charged us $25! What a deal! Should any of our readers happen to need a dentist while working at Amazon in Cambellsville, check out The Smile Center.

Once we were done at the dentist we checked out some of the other campgrounds that Amazon pays for their workcampers to stay at. We are happy where we are at, it is quiet and fairly close to work and shopping but we wanted to see the others too. The nicest commercial one is about 17 miles from town, large level sites, WIFI, and even a large buried storm shelter for bad weather but 34 miles round trip several times a week just doesn't work well for us. The local State Park is also on their list and is a wonderful park with paved sites, WIFI and sits right on a lake. Beautiful! The downside is they do not have sewer hook ups. Amazon pays for a pump out service that comes in once a week but since we have our own washer and dryer in the rig it just would not work well for us.
While at the State Park we looked up Larry and Betty who had arrived last week end. I have followed their blog, Mountainborn for quite awhile and we have swapped emails from time to time but never met face to face. They were home and we sat out on their patio sharing stories and had a great visit. We were soon joined by Karen and her husband Al who had worked the sugar beet harvest with Larry and Betty. Small world we live in! :-)
Tuesday evening we checked out the local movie theater. They have 6 screens and we chose to watch Last Vegas. The movie was entertaining and we had a fun "date night". :-)

Today we are both being lazy and trying to rest up for our first long shift. We should be OK but I'm sure we will be tired once it's over. I'll keep you posted.