Stuff and Moonshine

It’s normally Mon-Tuesday, but it began Tuesday this week. After a brief hitch finding the place (I should have checked that the address in the work description was the same as the one on the company website— it is not), I arrived and had my nose swabbed (I’m negative, yay). We also wear masks, and being on the evening shift the building (a warehouse, with ceiling fans) isn’t particularly crowded. The project for which the company’s hired on extra help involves digitizing an archive that was transferred decades ago to microfilm— so, they’ve a scanner or two that can handle reels of microfilm. My part is then to go over the initial scans and make sure that the little frames the software puts around the image of each page is in the right place, and correct it if it isn’t, before handing it off to the next person in line, who marks the frames that contain the slips of paper with the document numbers and labels them. Basically I spend seven hours a day drawing rectangles on a screen— it’s pretty easy, no one interrupts me, and I can pretty much do it on utopia or while thinking about other stuff. We’ll see if they move me to a different task as the projects goes on. There’s music playing down at the rectangle factory— I’m not sure which of my co-workers picks the tunes, but they skew heavily towards North American pop stars ca. 2005-2015. Last night I heard numerous songs I previously only knew from the Post-Modern Jukebox cover versions, and spent some time wondering if Bruno Mars had dropped off the map (per Wikipedia: no, he’s now part of an R&B/rap act called Silk Sonic).

Dress in progress.
Need to pick up some zippers so I can finish this and the previous one. This is from the same pattern as the blue one, but I tried to draft a collar; I'm not entirely happy with it, it's too floppy. The orange and purple combo isn't bad, though; it sort of looks like something Velma from Scooby-Doo would wear to a party.

ETA: I start a new job tomorrow; maybe I can buy zippers on the way home.

I've got a temp job lined up for the next few weeks - in Don Mills. Starting Monday morning I'll see how long it takes me to get there.

First day at the warehouse seemed to go ok, except I may have got into a minor disagreement over Patton's role in the North African campaign.

Hoping I didn't come off as too shy during the job interview - it mostly consisted of the other applicant and myself being asked "what would you do in this situation" questions; then at the end we were given five minutes to pick a celebrity and put together an outfit for him/her. Not being up on living celebs, I picked River Song (low-heel lace-up boots, men's pinstriped trousers as the store had no jodhpurs, sophisticated little black dress but with some punkish studs, cropped brocade jacket and a parka), and then had to briefly explain who she was.

There's more than one position (and more than one shop); I don't know if they'll hire me (I'm hoping they found me charmingly quirky and not just weird) but I'm sure they'll hire the other applicant, as she has tons of retail experience and a friendly manner; in fact I hung out with her for forty minutes afterward at the nearest Second Cup, talking about historical and fantasy fiction and the joys of thrift stores - so the ideal, I suppose, would be if we both get hired for the same location.

Scoured Queen West for stores with "Help Wanted" signs and found three (well, five, but one needed a gel nail technician and Miss Behaving needs models, but they only pay in lingerie.) Fired off resumes, we'll see what happens.