...."Give Me Clean Hands"......

What to say….
It’s been a few days since I last blogged, and who knew that when I got to my new place of residence that there would be a computer with high speed internet waiting for me? Certainly I did not, but certainly that is what I found.

Life is good. I have survived my first two days in the agricultural industry, and more specifically the fertilizer and agricultural chemical industries. My job, once it gets more busy will be to oversee shipping and receiving out at the chemical and or seed warehouse. So what that means is that someone will come to me with an invoice and I will get the products and load them on to the customers truck……because none of our customers drive anything other then a truck, I live in the country don’t forget. Anyway, other then doing a bit of that, I have been working the forklift, which is actually quite stressful at times. Like today for instance I needed to get to something at the bottom of a stack of chemicals. And when I say pile, I mean five pallets full of stuff, seed in this case, stacked on top of each other and what I needed to give the customer was of course at the bottom. So I began taking things off the stack, which would’ve been a whole lot easier if I would not have had to use the crappy forklift and also, if the stack was not in an awkward corner. In the process of unstacking this pile I ripped my first bag of product. It was quite frustrating for me. I tried to remain calm and breathe and so on, but I was not feeling good about the whole forklift thing after that. I tried to stay away from the lift for the rest of the day, but was unable to. Anyway, it was very stressful and unnerving for me.

I just looked at my hands, they are pretty dirty still. I need to go wash them. Anyway, life is good, the living accommodations are amazing, and I am feeling good about life other then the long hours at work. The long hours haven’t even started yet, and I am already dreading them. But I mean, honestly, who wants to work from 7:30am to 8 or 9pm anyway? Not me thank you! I have gone right to bed after dinner almost every day so far, which is only two, but I have been exhausted.

My send-off from the church was good. We had a big potluck lunch, also called dinner in Alberta, and I gave kind of a speech. It was sad, but true. I mean sad but good. They really blessed me as a church over the nine months that I was there, and then they also really blessed me financially, through the love offering. I really had something to praise God about there. I won’t say the figure, but I will say it was 4 times more then I expected, so it was wonderful and I am so thankful for these people.

Anyway, I need to go. It’s almost supper time and I think Nita is making Fried Chicken. The great thing about where I live now is that the lady of the house actually cooks food. Another place that I stayed, it was all frozen food. This is all real! Like last night she made a turkey dinner for goodness sake. I haven ‘t had the strength to ask her if she killed it and cooked it though. Maybe tonight.

Thanks to the miracle of radio, I have had a terrible song in my head all day. “No Surprise” by Theory of a Dead Man, also known as “Theory of a Crappy Band”, anyway. That’s not the song of the day. The song of the day is “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. This song is amazing. Passionate lyrics, scorching guitar, and wonderful memories. This song always makes me think of two things. My dad (cause it’s his favorite song) and the film “Forrest Gump” cause it is featured prominently in the film. I watched a film the other day, oh yeah, Braveheart and I ate steak while watching it….amazing. If you have the means and or the desire….check out “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Love and Peace and Dirty Feet
Mike