Message In A Bottle/Trying Again

               Finally got this entry to go through… had to go through notepad as there were symbols OD would not recognize in my original entry. What a pain in the butt…..

          My neice is going through the pain and angst of dealing with a “terminal cat” she cares so much for. That side of the family has never dealt well with reality. Her poor cat has been declining for quite a while, and it is through selfishness this animal has been kept alive and suffering. I also blame the Vets who want to keep up heroic, painful, and expensive treatment.

         There was a web page which helped me out enormously when I was dealing with the guilt of having my Daggy euthanized. I tried to get my bookmark of that page to download this morning. An “error message” kept popping up. Bless you http://archive.org/ . Doing a copy and paste of the URL into the “wayback machine” an archived page of this site was available to forward. http://web.archive.org/web/20130121043904/http://www.messybeast.com/towards-end.htm
 
           How I hope my niece will read through all this and make the right decision to have her beloved cat euthanized. Wikipedia: Euthanasia is taken from Greek and refers to the practice of intentionally ending a life in order to relieve pain and suffering.

Yesterday I was brave and actually made the rounds to the Thrift Store, Hell-mart and Sams Club. The shelves and racks were pretty much bare at the thrift store. I can usually find at least a book or two to take home. Not today. Those shelves were empty with only a few Ann Coulter and Sara Palin remainder books kicking around. I did find a pair of sweat pants I was going to buy at .99¢. The check out lines snaked through the store. I was not going to stand in line forever for .99¢.

I was able to get a decent parking spot at Hell-mart. The store was not too horribly crowded. I usually get the same items here so I’m very aware when the stock or the prices change. I am used to getting the Great Value “Country style” frozen orange juice. The price has more than doubled in the past year or so. The country style had pulp and bits of orange left in. This is no longer available. I now have to settle for plain old concentrate. 

Over at Sam’s Club the Breakfast Blend coffee beans I wanted were not on display. I found a skid of them way up on a top tier shelf. There was nothing to climb on and too many people were around anyway. Hopefully my next trip will find a floor display!

I returned with a roasted chicken. Stumpy had fresh chicken for lunch which he devoured! I worry so about his appetite. He has gotten so fussy on his food, but seems to holding his weight. I can gauge the food he eats now and I do not think he is eating like he should. That was so deceiving about my Little Daggy… she always was kept her appetite and never lost weight. I’m positive she was the one who kept the “wet food” bowls emptied out.

This might be time for a quick trip to the Vet to have Stumpy’s weight checked and maybe a Vitamin B12 shot. That always seems to perk up his appetite.

Tim was at the “Y” today. We noticed all the machines have been numbered. As I get older certain events trigger memories. The numbered machines evoked this long forgotten happening from my “gray matter.” I’m sure I have this documented in my paper journals. I have no way to search them till they are transcribed to word, so I’m going strictly on memory here.

It must have been in the late 1980’s. I was running a clincher for the evaporator cores that were brazed by a “Vacuum Braze” process. These machines had to be run so no oil could get on the parts as that screwed up the braze process. Naturally it was a nightmare to run dry parts through a mechanical process with no lubrication. The equipment was constantly messing up. The “Quality of Work Life” teams came up with a brainstorm to attach stenographer pads to each machine so the problems could be recorded and traced. I made the first and only entries on the pad attached to my clincher. I forget what the date was, but the message will forever live in my memory: Date:00/00/19?? Machine problem:  Balls caught in 2nd tube drop, then penis caught in transfer.

For years that lone, forgotten entry lay dormant until the new plant manager made a department tour. He was pissed to begin with as our department was so messed up. Leading a pack of peons he inspected my machine. I saw him eye up that dusty steno pad. “What that pad for?” he barked to my foreman. “Oh, that it supposed to be a record of the maintenance done to the clincher.” was my boss’s weak reply.

<p class="MsoNormal" style=”margin-top:6.0pt;margin-right:0in;margin-bottom:6.0pt;
margin-left:0in;text-indent:.5in”>This plant manager opened up that pad and read that entry. It was heaven to witness that reaction. That man literally exploded. He yelled and cussed so.. the next thing I knew he was ripping all the blank pads off the clinchers. That kind of meltdown was such a treat to witness!

That was one nice thing about being invisible and a nobody in the workforce. I had the joy of knowing my “message in a bottle” innocently left years ago evoked such a reaction. There was no way the blame could be nailed on me and I witnessed the conception and the destruction of that note. That was so long ago, and now sharing this remembrance, the life cycle of that event has been extended.

This type of "General Motors history" the corporate heads would like to erase. Wait till I get my book together!!!!!