I have finished my second day of training with the USPS.  Today I got up before 6:00 am to make it to the training site by 8:00.  It was raining and it was dark.  It's been more than a year since I've had to do anything so horrific.

Training has gone fairly well so far.  There are 8 of us in the class.  I sit in the front row.  Not that I'm a kiss-up or anything.  I just want to get the most of out the class that I can.  Really.  On the first day I quickly became the teacher's pet when the projector connected to her computer wouldn't work.  She fiddled with it for 15 minutes and it was all I could do to sit there and watch without butting in.  Seriously.  I had a knot in my stomach while I watched her.  The sound would not work and to fix it she turned off the projector.  And still I sat there.  Arrghh.  She finally looked up from the equipment and asked if anyone knew how it worked.  I jumped at the opportunity and had it working in less than a minute.  All I did was press the "pc" button on the projector to tell it to connect.  Nothing technical at all.

Later she gave her computer password to her boss so that he could access her e-mail while she was gone.  The ex-network administrator in me almost exploded.  To make it worse she was making fun of my reaction today and gave ME her password.  This caused me great stress.  Also today I got a finger waggle and she said like me, she used to be loud and controlling - in a good way.  Harumph.

Despite the antics I managed to learn a lot.  That's good because there is a surprisingly lot to learn.  Our instructor says the job is hard and she guarantees that at some point we'll cry.  She even pointed to the one male in our class (an ex-military fellow) and promised that even he would cry.  I wonder.  I understand there is stress and the job is hard but I just don't believe that it can be more stressful or frustrating than it was to sit in the middle of a computer room floor at 5:00 in the morning with the main server in pieces around you, the clock ticking, having not slept in 22 hours, knowing that in a few more hours the first of 300 people are coming into the office expecting to turn on their computers and access their files... I cried then.  I think it's all perspective.

I still have a long way to go before I get to actually begin working.

Tomorrow I attend a 1/2 day of driver training on one of these:

I take a test in Seattle on Thursday.  Saturday I do a "ride-along".  Next week I have 3 days of  "Rural Academy" followed by several days of on the job training.  Somewhere around mid-November I get to actually go out on my own and the crying can commence.

Scramble!

Here in Northern Washington we had well over 3 months without rain.  Every glorious day was followed by an equally delightful glorious day.  The sun shone, the ground was warm and our grapes flourished.

Thursday of last week things changed.  Without warning (just because it was October was not warning enough!) the nights cooled and a hard frost hit our vines. 

It was time to pick.  NOW.  A second frost could easily ruin the grapes. Unfortunately the unexpected frost also hit our potatoes.  Although it would have been nice to leave them in the ground for a few more weeks the frost left their tops shriveled and dead.  It was time to pick those too.  Unfortunately we had to go out of town on Friday.  AAARRGGHH!

Peter started picking grapes and I tackled the potatoes.  Once the grapes were collected we started washing and plucking (that's removing the grapes from the stems), then we smashed them and got them in the barrel.  At 2:30 in the morning we still weren't done but exhaustion won and we called it a night.  The following day we rose early and continued washing and smashing until we got 'em done, finally leaving town at 4:30 p.m.   We have about 15 gallons of Pinot in the Pot.  Haha.. Maybe that's what we should name it!  Pinot in the Pot Wine.

My fingers were stained purple and I gleefully danced the happy dance at the idea that we were finally finished. Peter thought I was weird.  Oh well.

Of course, silly me, I had forgotten that we also have other grapes that were not hit by the frost - but WERE in danger from the threatening rain.  This week we scrambled to get the "barn grapes" picked.  The trellis they are on has collapsed from the weight of the grapes.  Peter picked high and I picked low, crawling around on my knees under the trellis.  I mingled with spiders and spider webs and horrid earwigs.  (I hate earwigs more than spiders and snakes and Jaywalkers and litterbugs.  Seriously.  Earwigs will make me crazy.  The other day one got on me and I screamed and jerked.  It fell to the floor where I stomped on it 6 or 7 times.  A bit overkill maybe but you can never be too sure when it comes to earwigs!)

But I digress.  We picked 6 bins full of grapes.

And the rain hit hard.  We had another marathon washing, plucking and smashing session.  We were up until well past midnight last night but managed to get them done!  We have about 30 gallons of this one.   I'm kind of afraid to do the happy dance again - but I'm doing it in my head. 

I was thinking that if you add in the hours spent weeding, and pruning and tending the grapes, plus the hours spent MAKING the wine, we would need to charge about $80.00 a bottle just to break even.  Luckily we aren't planning on selling it.