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Tag Archives: work

Hi ho, hi ho / It’s off to work we go…

Recently, I’ve had to go through safety/hazard training at a mine site.  It’s mandatory of anyone who needs to work at a mine.  I may need to work at a mine within the next year.  Therefore, I had to go through the safety/hazard training.  Now that that’s taken care of…

I found out some interesting things in this training.  Things like…

  • Anyone who works on a mine site, regardless of what you do at the site, is called a miner.  This means the Sparkletts guy who delivers water to the site is also a miner.  Even though he’s a Sparkletts delivery guy.  Yes, he was in my training class.  Oh, and you have to take the refresher course every year.
  • Mine safety/hazard training involves more than just safety and hazards.  We also had to learn about endangered or protected species that we might encounter.  I found out that the Mojave tortoise is a protected species.  If you harass one of these tortoises, you can be punished with up to a $50k fine and/or a year in jail.  You think that leaving a tortoise alone would be pretty easy to do.  Too bad the enforcement agency believes that being with 25′ of one of these tortoises is harassing the tortoise.  That means, you might never see the tortoise or know that it’s there but if one of the agents knows that you’ve come within 25′ of the tortoise, you could be going to jail and be a whole lot poorer.  (Now then, I believe that the agents are a lot more reasonable than that, but technically this could happen.)
  • Sun spiders are really aggressive.  They get pretty mad at you if you try and stomp them to death and don’t succeed.  They’ll probably start chasing you after that.  If you try and stomp one of them to death and you’re wearing work boots, then you have to stomp really hard and then twist.  Otherwise they’ll just get into the tread of your boot and survive and then chase you angrily.
  • Our instructor was very chipper and has been training miners for a long time.
  • There are designer hard hats.  I think I’ll have to invest in a hard hat soon.  If not for this job then for another.
  • One of the most interesting and efficient uses for borax is fighting forest fires.  A lot of the trees in CA forests produce seeds that will only germinate once they go through a fire that reaches above some ridiculous temperature (I forgot the numbers and I’m too lazy to look it up right now, sorry).  So what they do is they air drop seeds over an area of the forest that’s on fire.  The seeds are able to germinate now, so they air drop borax powder over the fire as a flame retardant and to keep the fire from spreading.  Then, they go through and drop water on everything to put the fire out.  The water mixes with the borax and ends up being fertilizer for the germinating seeds.  I’m so impressed by the efficiency of this process.  So.  Impressed.
  • There was more but like normal, I can’t remember anything else off the top of my head right now and I’m too lazy to look things up.

So there you have it.  Stuff about mines.

Soap: The Miracle Cure

Welp, today’s post has been derailed due to some furious, last-minute clothes shopping the night before.  You see, my boss thought it’d be fun to schedule a client interview for me today.  Of course in Thousand Oaks.  It is my most favorite place ever (I don’t really have a problem with Thousand Oaks).

But in preparation for this interview, which my boss said would be a formal interview but I should dress semi-formally (I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS), I had to go out and buy something that would be suitable for said interview.  Mostly a top.  The one I wore originally for my interview with THEM has mysteriously disappeared.  I was also trying to figure out how get out of wearing a blazer.  I dislike blazers.  They’re so confining.  So…there was the matter of some kind of sweater or something.  What do people wear to formal interviews that are semi-formal?  Gah.

Anyway, here’s this thing (that is ridiculous) I found before about foot cramps.  It’s a relevant topic because…people’s feet will cramp.  Actually, I started thinking about this when I was going through the prednisone taper, which caused a lot of cramping that time.  And then it had gotten really cold and dry, both of which can contribute to cramping (because cold slows your circulation and dry provides a higher chance of dehydration).  So…there you go.

Soap.  It is the miracle cure to cramps.  Apparently, if you put a bar of soap, probably unwrapped, close to where you cramp, the cramp will go away.  I cannot say if this is true or not, but there is an online store that sells bed soap.  Because normal soap gets away from you sometimes when you’re tossing and turning.  They also sell soap slivers to stick in your socks for foot cramps because it would obviously be difficult for you to stick a whole bar of soap in your sock (I’m wondering why the soap doesn’t lather up when your feet start sweating).

From what I’ve seen, it looks like people always use a new bar of soap.  Maybe used bars of soap aren’t effective.  Their magical cramp relieving properties are washed away in the shower, I guess.  And I guess you can’t cut the soap to size because it’s the whole bar of soap that is effective, regardless of size.  If you cut the bar of soap, you have reduced effectiveness.  And…I guess people don’t go to hotels that often so they can’t steal the little bars of hotel soap.  I guess.  Therefore you have to go buy bed soap and sock soap.

Oh, here’s another reason why cramps and soap is relevant.  I had to get new shoes for the interview too.  The heels that I had worn were…not the most appropriate of shoes.  I just tried to push on through with them anyway.  But I figured if I have to do this often, I might as well get appropriate shoes.  And have you ever tried to wear heels that were too small or too narrow or too high?  Especially if you’re used to wearing steel-toed boots all the time?  Your feet sometimes will start cramping.  Yup.

Anyway, while searching for decent heels that I would be willing to wear, I found…these.

kitty heels

(Links back to source)

T.U.K. apparently has this whole line of shoes, heels or otherwise, that are cat themed.  I am trying to figure out what occasion these are for.  My guess is that they are not for semi-formal formal interviews.  They are vegan friendly though.

OH HEY!  If you decided to use the soap method to ward off cramps and your feet started sweating while you were walking around in these cat shoes, maybe it would start foaming and then you would have rabid cat shoes!  …I still don’t know what occasion it’s for though.