Thursday, March 23, 2023

680 Pounds Of Corn Pops

This afternoon I went back to the food shelf where we sanitized the clean room last week. Today we had to wear gloves, hair nets and beard nets. There was a pallet with a large bag of corn pops laying sideways on top. The top was sliced open. One woman put labels on bags. Others scooped corn pops into bags. Two people measured 1.5 pounds of corn pops into each bag. Other people heat sealed the bags. One guy constructed boxes, filled each box with bags of corn nuts and sealed them shut. I did a little bit of all the jobs except constructing boxes. I spent a lot of time carrying bags to people. I spent the most time on the heat sealer which is odd because in my former job I helped train people to use heat sealers. I am very talented at sealing plastic bags with a heat sealer. I tried to do a very neat job because these bags of cereal are going to families who really need the food. So now I have grit and salt and corn pops in the tread of my winter boots plus maybe a little mud from the Colorado River in Texas. This picture was taken near Enger Tower in Duluth. If you squint you can see the lift bridge down there.

We had all 680 pounds of corn nuts packaged in 1.5 hours. We spent another half hour sweeping and cleaning the clean room. I left wearing that hair net. When I felt the hair net on my head as I removed my beret I felt like Ruth Buzzi playing Gladys Ormphby on Rowan and Martin's Laugh In swinging her purse at the old guy leering at her. One lady in the group asked for a white hairnet to cover her completely white hair.

Later I went to a party at the property management company which is downtown on First Street across from the Salvation Army shelter. They had punch and fruit and vegies and cheese and naan bread with spinach/artichoke dressing and freshly baked cookies. I ate with a couple of other women while we chatted about rent and maintenance and neighbors. I signed up for free drawings. I hope I win. I especially want to win the $250 off next month's rent. After the party I walked back up the hill four blocks to my car. The guys at the Essentia parking lot are going to dump snow off the roof. There is a man wearing a green vest to the left. He lets the bobcat operator know when it is safe to dump a load.

Bombs away!

I watched snow falling for a good five minutes.

That is some heavy snow falling. The snow makes a "whoomp" sound when it hits the ground. The construction guys at the property management company wonder if the Miller Hill Mall will be repaired or just torn down. I remember seeing buckets catching water from the ceiling from the first time I walked that mall back in 2020.  So the people at the Mall knew there were problems. Aldi and Michael's Crafts store had problems too. I prefer older buildings.

One construction worker told me that there will be no more snow this season. We can hope.

 

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