The Extremes of a Saturday

What's that mean? Well, my day started out by going to work at 6am like any other workday, but ended up with me sitting naked in a hot tub at Fraternity Snoqualmie!

Anyone that knows me already knows how I feel about working overtime. I hate it. Time is more important than money to me. Even if I have nothing planned, I still feel it's important time because it's my time. They asked a bunch of us on Thursday, and my answer was "Sorry, no way" as usual. Well, Friday came and things started to fall apart. My shipping/receiving workload grew exponentially because I was away from the desk doing maintenance on the high speed press, getting it ready for a product changeover. We run two different products on that press, so we try to do maintenance and such on one die while the other die is in the press. Believe me, those dies have LOT of parts in them and things to go wrong. Everything has a +/- tolerance of one thousandth of an inch. Anyway, after I installed the "next" die and fired it up late Friday, nothing went right. Part of it broke, so I took it back out and replaced that part and put it back in. Then the parts were coming out way out of tolerance. Then the parts were coming out with slug imprints in them. It was just one thing after another.

The bottom line: In an act of self-preservation, I opted to come in on Saturday.

I was surprised at the fact that about half the shop was there--Even the office personnel. Apparently, everybody was totally overwhelmed with work. At any rate, I got the die problems ironed out and reinstalled, and the press is now hammering out perfect parts again. That's a relief because we needed it to be running as soon as possible to make the next delivery of 200,000 parts. By the time we all left at noon, all was well except my inbox. That was due to the fact that the office personnel was in there also. They send the jobs to me before they go to the shop, and I have to attach copies of material certifications before the shop can actually make parts.

I rode the bike to work, which helped my attitude going in. I looked at the weather report online before I left, and it said it was supposed to get up to low 80's or so (we have been having a very cool August this year). It also said that Saturday would be the best day of the next few coming up. During work I decided that I would go up to the nudie park if the weather didn't take a total nosedive.

After leaving work at noon, I went home, ate lunch, and gathered all my supplies together. I drove the half hour there and went into the welcome center (that's where you have to stop and check in/pay, etc). I had been wrestling with membership for some time now, not exactly sure which direction to go with it, but knew I had to do something (after all, Nudestock was coming up!) Having exhausted my first 3 visits to the park, I was at a crossroads: Become a member or not. The last two times I was there were this May or June, and the during the last visit the gal in the welcome center gave me the form to fill out for my membership. Well yesterday I carried it in there, along with my checkbook. I was fully expecting to become a member yesterday. Because it was so late in the season I was opting for the "Limited B" membership, which is much cheaper, but you have to pay $11 grounds fees each time you visit. At any rate, it didn't work that way yesterday.

I wasn't in their system.

Try as she might, she could not find me anywhere in her computer. How could that be? I was at Nudestock the previous year for my first visit. When I paid the next two times (this year) the gal at the computer just did a couple clicks with the mouse, took my payment and that was it, so I know I was in it then.

Suddenly, here I was at ground zero once again. My past had been erased. She said, "Well it looks like you get to start over. This is your free visit!" While I was happy about that, I can't help but wonder how much revenue they lose from time to time by stupid things like that. Sitting in the hot tub later I found out from other members that they had experienced some computer database issues a while back. Evidently they had restored a "less than current" backup copy. Oh well, that means for $19 I can go to Nudestock in two weeks!

I took my laptop this time when I went, wanting to try out the fact that they have free wireless advertised. It certainly did work, but like all wireless, depends on where you sit and how far away. Still, it's pretty cool to be able to be in a place like that and send an email to your friends, saying "Guess where I am?" They also have a new popcorn machine in their clubhouse, so now there is free unlimited popcorn to enhance your visit. While the weather was definitely less than hot, it was no less great. I had a great time as usual. Where else can you sit naked in a hot tub and meet people?

Very cool. Very cool indeed.