On the 12th, I finally got the call to come back to work as the bean and summer squash season has begun in the Willamette Valley. So on Friday the 13th, I went a little early to work--which ended up being a good thing as the line to get a new punch-in card was quite long a half hour after I got there. I ended up being a tote builder, which is basically a person who folds up large boxes and puts them on pallets to be used to put product in them. Luckily enough, I got to work with my friend. Last year, we did the same thing for most of the season and smashed the old record of how many totes we built in an 8 hour shift. The previous record had been 350 boxes built by 3 people, but between me and my friend, we built 383 boxes. Several times last year and even the first day back this year, we had to go and help the tote builders on the other end of the cannery as other people don't work as fast as we do. So now when we get the call to come over, we say that they are calling in the cavalry.
Another good thing was that originally we would have gone home early, but since there was more summer squash coming in than anticipated, we got to work the whole shift. It sure feels good to be working again. Of course, I don't really view it as work. Instead, I view it as being paid to work out--especially since last year I lost 19 pounds in 19 weeks and built up who knows how much muscle. Over the last several weeks I was getting so anxious about going back to work, that I was fearing I wouldn't be able to work as good as the previous year, but that feeling is now gone.
In other news, the marionberries are now ripe. I will get a picture of them up later (they look like jumbo-sized blackberries). As the story goes, they were created right here in Marion County, Oregon.
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