Sept 16

6.30 am. Didn't have the big noisy fan on last night so had a restless night. Still not used to all the noise. It'll be better in the winter when I'll close the windows and door, but until then I'll just sleep in fits and starts. At least, going in at 2.30 means I can catch a nap beforehand.

Work is going much better. I'm laughing more. This means I'm starting to relax and get the routines set in my head. Am doing fine physically, too. The pay periods are every two weeks and start on a Wednesday (today, actually). So the new work schedule came out for this week and next, and I realized that I'm working nine days straight. Chuck, I said, please don't do this to me. Break up my days off. He's working on it. Some big corporate hotshot is to be here today and after that Chuck can juggle stuff around. Today is my 6th working day. When I find out which days I'll have off (maybe tomorrow), I'll ask Zee if we can go grocery shopping and to the post office to set up my General Delivery status (the postmaster will even call if something comes in for me) and return the extra roll of foil insulation to Home Depot.

Chuck also told me that the payroll against sales is too high (as is usual in any business) and he's been told to cut everybody back an hour (not me, as I'm already just part-time). So it looks like I'll stay at part-time for longer than planned, which is fine. Won't be building up my cash cushion as fast as I'd thought, but it'll give me a real opportunity to get to know this company and whether I want to stay with it for a while. I haven't forgotten the carnival, either. I'm pretty sure that if the Florida carnival company calls me in January and says come work for us, I'll do it.

I've become the "display" person. So far, I've done the knife case and the geodes 3-tier table. Yesterday, when I came in, Travis said, oh good, you can do the gold cases. We carry a lot of gold jewelry, mostly South Dakota rose gold, and "Rio" which is lab-made opals, and some sterling silver with real gemstones. There was a Bowlin Collection that wasn't selling, so the company auditor (who was here yesterday morning) took it away. So I got to rearrange two large display cases with about 375 pieces of jewelry -- earrings, rings, bracelets, necklaces, watches, etc. There's also a lot of SW style jewelry in other cases, much of it signed.