I was looking forward to having a few days off this coming week, but tonight my boss talked to me and said, "I'll text you...," which means I may end up having to work in the next couple of days after all. Because there is absolutely no question about the fact that I desperately need as much cash as I can earn, I'm going to have to accept the hours they give me and do whatever I can.
"Desperately need as much cash as I can earn"--I've made no secret about the fact that I am 100% flat busted broke--actually more like 150% right now--and as a retail grunt I do not earn a lot of money. If I were working full-time it'd be over the poverty line, but since I don't...yeah. And retail grunts' hours get cut after the holiday season is over, because that's how retail works. And the bills aren't going to get smaller just because I'm earning less.
*sigh*
Still: I have a job, and they like me there--enough that they bought me a complete firkin' wardrobe to work in--and I'm not going to quibble about it.
Tonight I was scheduled, originally, to work from 4-11:30, but yesterday that changed to 12:30, and so I worked an actual eight hour day. Or would have, if the managers hadn't set things up so that the store would depopulate ASAP. I actually punched out at 12:15.
...and because it was an 8-hour day I had to take a lunch, making it more like 7.5 hours, which is what I was originally scheduled for, and NO I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT. I don't question it--WTF, I need a job, and they know what they're doing. I work, they pay me; that's what I care about.
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On the plus side, the Jeep seems to have heat. I ran the defroster flat out several times in the past couple of days, because it's been rainy and all. To my pleasure the air coming from the defroster is hot, which means the heater core is clear enough of gunk that hot water can circulate through it. When the HVAC is on "defrost", the air is first cooled by the AC evaporator, in order to dry it; before this most recent work on the Jeep, the air coming from the defroster vents was cold.
I'm not sure it's quite as good as it should be, but it's a damned sight better than it was: comfortably close enough to full function that I don't care to mess with it further. The forecast says "15°" for Monday, so I'll have a chance soon enough to try it out and see how well it works. But today, with the temps just above freezing and the defroster on, it was toasty warm inside the truck.
That's better than, "By the time you get to work, it's moderately warmer inside the truck than outside," which is how well it was working before.
It still drives me buggy that this all started when the Jeep blew a radiator hose. How on Earth does blowing a hose lead to clogging up the heater core?
Well, I'll tell you my theory: rust and scale in the block's cooling jacket got jarred loose by the sudden drop in pressure and temperature, and of course it got pumped into the heater core, which promptly clogged up. (The radiator doesn't clog because its cooling passages are larger than those of the heater core.)
Come spring I may want to do this again, only this time do a complete flush of the entire cooling system so I can get all the junk out. But I bet I'll be too busy.
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In about 5.5 hours I have to get up for church, because today is choir's cantata.
It's not really a cantata--which is to say it's not a collected series of songs connected by narrative or what-have-you--but the whole choir is doing five songs and there's a trio being sung by three of the ladies. I quite look forward to this every year, because I do so enjoy Christmas music.
2011 was still the best year for Christmas music, IMHO, at least out of my tenure in choir. We did all kinds of good songs for Advent and really had a good time with the Christmas music. "How Should a King Come", "Do You Hear What I Hear?", and a bunch of others--I liked it a lot.
Being in choir is the best. The only thing about it is that I wish is that I had had the courage to do this when Mom was still alive; she would have loved it. Still, I know she knows what's going on, and I'd bet she's there for every performance.
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Be that as it may--I really do need to hit the hay now.
I have all sorts of errands to run over the next couple of days, too. Blogging may suffer; you've been warned.