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Tuesday, Aug. 27, 2002 - 9:18 p.m. Today was the long-awaited Official State of North Dakota Audit Of My Toolroom. I survived without much damage. The first bit of good news I received came in the form of a phone call from Donna from the headquarters. She phoned me early this morning, and she told me that I wouldn�t be the first storage that the auditors would visit today. That worked to my advantage is several different ways. The first place they would be stopping by has almost no filing or inventory system set up. They just unpack whatever gets sent to them by headquarters (or a contract vendor, etc.), and that�s the end of it. No inventory whatsoever. They would also be showing up about 2 hours before closing time. That meant that they couldn�t choose boxes of nuts and bolts, or any other time-intensive item to count or we would all be staying over. It was pretty hot today, so I knew they wouldn�t want to stay at our storage any longer than necessary. The two women who did the bean counting were both very pleasant to work with. That hasn�t always been the case. One group of auditors who stopped by when Peeps was still in the toolroom were mean and surly to him, making him feel like he was a criminal over any miscounts. So the fact that the people who showed up today were actual humans was a good sign. What happened next caught me by surprise: I had to sit through a 30-minute interview. They asked me several questions about how I keep inventory, what I do with any paperwork I receive from vendors. Basically, they wanted to SEE a complete paper trail from order to delivery, and what I do with things after that until it ends up at another storage or on one of our trucks. All that was missing was a bright spotlight on my face and smoke from cheap cigarettes. But then again, I may have watched too many 1940�s film noir movies, eh? They seemed happy with my paperwork. They also told me stories about other districts and how some don�t have any inventory, or couldn�t show them any paperwork from past purchases. So, up to this point I was cruising along in 5th gear. Then it was time to check my counting ability. Like the title says: I blame my inability to count past 10 to my public school edumacation. Wait, it wasn�t that bad. Stop snickering at me! Of the 30 commodities they selected from my card files, I was off on 9 of them. Not badly off, mind you. Just by a little bit, which would matter more if I were handling weapons-grade uranium or something like that. But the fact that my count said I had 76 big-head summer orange hats and I actually had 77? Big. Whoppie. They told me as much, anyway. Of the 9 miscounts, 8 were undercounts. To have more than you think is always better than to have less. They told me that I would receive a good review overall, but would probably have some paperwork sent to our headquarters stating that I need to take another complete inventory. Hey, at least I HAVE an inventory, right? Even if I miscounted the big-head hats�� After work, I continued my work projects around the house. After getting a long-overdue oil change on the Hillbilly truck (last oil change: October of 2001, 3026 miles ago), I mowed the jungle-like growth of our lawn. I dug my long-handled pruners and my stepladder out of the bottom garage storage area, and I gave the two Ash trees in the front yard a badly needed trim. These trees shed dead branches all the time, and they grow new branches at an alarming rate for such old trees. I filled the back of Hillbilly truck with branches and waited for Codeman to come home from work. I needed his help loading up the big extension ladder that I had to pick up from Mikey�s house. I need the ladder to paint the second floor of our house, which I plan of doing starting after work tomorrow night. Since I needed to drive to his house out in the country, and since I use his burn pile to get rid of my brush, I managed to kill two tasks with one Hillbilly truck�� I miss my wife, folks. Only three more nights, and she will be back home. She is getting a little homesick, too. All work and no play�� I am on day #3 without my Lease. I woke up about 5 times last night, reaching over to her side of the bed. I think I subconsciously (how�s that for a pretentious big word?) knew something was amiss while I was asleep, and it woke me up to check on her whereabouts. That, or I just couldn�t figure out why I had so much of the covers�.. The one bad thing about having a cable Internet connection? If your cable is down, YOU HAVE NO ITERENT CONNECTION! The Cableco (my wife�s employer, btw) is in the process of rewiring the old parts of Mohall and replacing all the old power nodes. One node might feed a few blocks, or one apartment building. Ours is one of the oldest. So we are the first customers to get the repair work done. Funny, I didn�t think the cable was in need of repair? They aren�t doing the actual work. They contracted it out to the low bidder. Since I work for the government, I know what you get when you take the low bid. We haven�t had any cable since early this morning. The contractor promised that they wouldn�t have any outages for more than a few minutes, and none after 6 p.m. Um, wrong! Do you know what it is like to have a teenaged Internet junkie living in your house, and have no Internet connection? It�s ugly, folks. I went ahead and typed this anyway, even though I might not get to post it until tomorrow. Or later���. (Alright, it's now 9:18 p.m Tuesday night, and the Internet has finally reset. The cable t.v. has been back on for about an hour, but it took a bunch of re-setting, turning everthing off and on, and cursing by the boy to get back online. Anyway, for that reason the last two paragraphs no longer apply. I think I will just leave them there anyway...) Still missing my Lease���.
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