Extra hour of sleep tonight!

Yeah!!

Funny how changing to and from daylight savings time has never really mattered since it happens on the weekend. Well, let me tell you, this year its very important since we are working the week-end shift at Amazon. We work Friday through Monday. I will love getting that extra hour of sleep tonight.

I haven't written about some of the wonderful people we have met. I am very surprised to see so many women who are working and traveling alone. There is a woman who drives her own fifth wheel and one who drives a class b (looks a little like a van). One women who is in her 60's is driving a 30' class a with a tow dolly and car!!! There is a man working with us who is 84 years old and walks faster than I do!!!

The work here is very physical as I have said before. We start each day with a meeting and then we go through a series of stretching exercises. We also do the same after lunch. They are very safety conscious. We have to walk in what they call the 'green mile' since there are so many different motorized vehicles going around. In receiving, there are pallets of merchandise all over with 10 truck bays. Its been a long time since I visited Amazon.com. It's amazing some of the merchandise that we are seeing come through. They aren't just books and tapes any longer. Lots of toys, kitchen items, electronic items and a lot of apparel everything from underwear to coats!!

Our receiving line has 3 different conveyors. The middle is where we pull the boxes to scan into totes. The bottom is where our loaded totes are taken to someone who loads them onto pallets to be taken to the different areas for the stowers. The top one is where we put our empty boxes to go to this machine that crushes them and they come out looking like bales with wire around them. Really an amazing set up. Now that I have switched over to receiving, I'm liking it better (but not enough to do this again!!)

Happy Birthday Savannah

You're 5 years old today. Doesn't seem possible. Such a big girl now. No more Dora and Diego not its Hannah Montana and Taylor Swift. No more Mickey Mouse, now its all about the Princesses.

Nine Months

Like her mother she loves the beach!!











Her first concert experience....Taylor Swift, of course!!









Had to go back and edit...just received more pics.



















Happy Birthday Savannah!
Hope you have a great day!!
Love you Lots!!!

Tom Mix Museum

We have been working hard at Amazon.com. It is really physical work with a lot of heavy lifting. They try to keep the weight of the totes to 23 lbs but I know some of those totes loaded with books weighed more than that. I never knew Amazon.com sold so much stuff. They have a lot of apparel, toys, kitchen items and some high tech stuff. I have switched my job to receiving instead of stowing. Now I get to load the totes. But since I know how hard it is to lift some of them, I am careful not to load them to heavy!!

November 8th we start on mandatory OT working 4 - 11 hour days. We will start work from 5:00am to 4:30pm. After thanksgiving we will probably by working 5 - 11 hour days!! Hope we survive!!

Last week on our days off, we went to the Tom Mix Museum in Dewey, Oklahoma. It was very interesting. Here are some pictures.


Tom Mix was doing stunt shows when he started doing bit parts in Selig films. As his popularity grew so did the roles. He changed the image of the west by portraying a romantic figure of the mythic west. He rode Tony the Wonder Horse. Tony stood 14 hands and knew 20 different tricks and stunts.



Tom Mix was a Texas Ranger at one time and he also was the sheriff of Dewey, Oklahoma.

After all of the stunts he did over his career, Tom was killed in a car accident when driving at very high speeds, his car went into a ditch. He was killed when one of his suitcases hit him on the head and broke his neck.

Hopefully, next week it will be nice enough on our days off to go to 'Little House on the Prairie'. The homestead of Laura Ingals Wilder isn't far from Independence, Kansas.

Working Amazon

For the next 11 weeks, we will be working at Amazon's warehouse distribution center here in Coffeyville, Kansas. We are actually employed by Express Employment. They have about 300 workampers working all different shifts. We haven't actually started yet. Friday will be our first day, since we signed up to work the weekend shift. We will be working from 6:30am to 5:00pm, Friday thru Monday. 4 10 hour days. They say that the work isn't hard, however, you are on your feet for the whole time. When we filled out the paperwork last summer, they asked if we wanted days or nights, and if we wanted a stationery position or one with walking involved. Ed has always been a machinist and has always stood in one spot for long days, so he signed up for a stationery position. I signed up for the walking, since I do better moving that standing in one spot. (Also hoping that I will lose some of the weight I have added over the past year!!)

I bought a good pair of walking shoes while in Virginia. Hope they help. Express is paying for our site plus $10.50 an hour. We are also expecting some overtime once we get past Thanksgiving.

Home Sweet Home for the next 11 weeks.


Our gathering place. The workampers in the motorhome have set up a book swap. They have all the books in plastic bins.


We got very lucky when we found this spot. This is one of the only 50 amp sites on this side of the park. We also have water and Express also pays for a honey wagon that comes around 3 times a week. So, I can run our small electric heaters and also have the refrigerator and water heater on electric. This will save on our propane which is the only thing we have to pay for ourselves. Weather so far has been dismal. It rained, or should I say poured, for 2 days last week and we discovered that we have a lake outside our door if we get that much rain at once. It has since dried out, we have put away our rug and I went to the dollar store and bought a couple more rubber mats to help with mud. I keep hoping that we will see an Indian Summer soon. Seems way to early to be this cold for the rest of the year.

My posting might not be very often, but will try to keep up as things occur. With so many workampers here, I am sure there will be pot lucks happening soon!!

Early Morning

We have been having some trouble with our engine. When we were trying to climb any grade whether it be steep and long or just a long steady climb, we were losing power in the engine. It would start to skip and sputter and would not downshift on its own. We were imagining all sorts of things that could be wrong. So when we arrived in St. Louis yesterday, we happened to find a Kenworth service center open. We described the problem we were having and the service man told us he thought it was a fuel filter. He didn't have the parts we needed but he was kind enough to find us a dealer that did and made us an appointment for this morning. However, they opened at 6:00am!! Yes thats very early in the morning. So we set the alarm for 4:30am and arrived at the service center a little after 6:00. It's one of the very few times we have ever driven in the dark!!

They were able to install the new fuel filter and we were on the road at 7:30. They were right! That solved our problem and we arrived in Springfield, Missouri around 1:00pm. We are at a Walmart.

Today is our anniversary. 12 years ago, we were married in at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. It's been a great 12 years and hope for 12 more.

Early to bed tonight to catch up on the sleep we missed this morning!!

Bye for now!

On our way to Kansas

We left Chesterfield, Virginia this morning on our way to Kansas. It's never easy to leave family but we will be back through this area. We are hoping to workkamp in Lake George New York next summer (I have lots of family in the area)and we will see them there, sometime, I'm sure. Of course, everything is written in chalk, so who knows what will happen.

We drove about 280 miles today, stopping at every rest stop to get out and walk. This is what the chiropractor told us to do and it seems to work. Ed's back is getting better everyday.

Never did post any pictures of Savannah taken during her cheerleading class. So here are more pics of her.



She has a tumbling class every Thursday and Cheerleading every other Saturday.