I Work in Vending Services

I had just typed out my whole blog and then I accidentally pushed something that deleted it. I'm pretty frustrated but I'll start over.

First of all, I'll pick up where I left off last night. Sara and I ended up eating dinner all by ourselves after work because everyone else was in AE training until really late again last night. It was a little sad, the two of us being the only ones at the 2 whole tables set up for the interns. But I enjoy Sara's company and we had a nice meal.

After dinner, we headed up the hill to Angela and Andrew's for the game. They were watching the OU/Texas game that they had recorded earlier and a bunch of the other young staff people were there hanging out and watching as well. Besides Angela, Andrew, Sara and I, there was Jay who is on Landscaping, John from Maintenance, Dina the teacher and her husband Bill, Sarah and Meg the kitchen girls and Kacie who has worked everywhere, helps us in the store, and is moving to Thailand to work in an orphanage or something.

It was a really fun night made only better by the romping my Tigers gave Nebraska. It was so nice to be sitting in a real home, watching football, chatting, laughing. It was just really comfortable and nice. Andrew and I have already had some talks about next weeks game between Mizzou and OU. He's a little worried because our defense finally dominated. I told him he should be.

Everyone here is also really excited about Stanford's defeat of USC because a lot of us know the 2nd string quarterback who led them to the victory, Tavita Pritchard. His father, David, is on staff in Washington and was my Camp Director when I was at Malibu. There family is really cool and of course a lot of people around here know them, so that was definitely the talk of the camp today.

Angela and I ended up having to leave during halftime of the Mizzou game in order to open the Sassy back up. The late shift was also fun. Angela ran the cash register so that I could practice making drinks and filling food orders and stuff. It went pretty smoothly and I continued to enjoy Mary and Judy. We finished up and I was back at my condo by 11:15. When I got back, everyone was dead asleep and Kristen had left me a note in my room saying she was sad she hadn't seen me all day. It was really sweet and I continue to enjoy her a lot.

Sleeping in late had messed me up a little and I had some trouble getting to sleep. I didn't end up getting to bed until like 1:00 and I had to be up early. I reported to Geronimo this morning to help with checkout which I don't think I will normally be doing but everyone who is normally on housekeeping was busy with AE training. So it was just Jen and Erin (the housekeeping staff), Andrew (Angela's husband who is with Guest Services) and myself. We basically just gave each cabin a bucket with instructions on how to strip the beds, fold the blankets and empty the trash. Once they were done and ready to be out of their rooms completely, one of us would go check it over and then cross it off. It was a pretty simple process, but you have to wait around a while for people to get their ish together.

I got done there around 10:00 and headed to the Sass. The Sassy isn't open on Sundays, but I will have to do vending. Angela went with me today and it is quite the process. First we drove around to all the vending machines on property and opened them up, took the money out, counted how many of each drink we would need to restock, and counted the "clicks" which shows us how many drinks were purchased.

After we were done with that, we headed back to the retail office and went through the whole process to deposit the money from the vending machines. From there, we went back out and checked all the places that have 5-gallon jugs of water for water dispensers. After we figured out how many of those we needed, we went up to the water warehouse and loaded them into the truck. Those suckers are heavy and we drink a lot of water around here.

P.S., the vending trucks a stick and I have to learn how to drive it. Intense.

After the water warehouse, we headed up to the Coke warehouse to count out the specific number of sodas needed for each machine and load them into the truck. Then we went and loaded them all. We started this whole process at 10:00 and finished at 4:00 with an hour and a half break when the store was open but also with 2 of us.

While the store was open, I went through our stock to see what needs to be ordered for next week and practiced making espresso drinks. It was fun.

After we got back from vending, we learned the whole process of how to close out the register and make deposits. It ended up taking us a really long time but we only have to do it at the end of the weekends during the off-season. During the summer we'll do it every night.

After work, Sara and I headed over to dinner and found all of our fellow interns working on the written tests they had to pass in order to become AE certified. Once they were done, we had dinner (steak) and then we realized that for the first time, we had an evening free. First we headed back to the condos and then Julie, the AE trainer showed up.

Julie gets flown in to do this training and she's awesome. We helped her grade their tests because everyone was very anxious to see if they passed. Everyone passed and is now AE certified to save lives and such. It was a little bit of a bummer to miss out on the training with everyone these past few days so I'm glad it's over.

After we were finished grading, Shea decided we should all go see Maize Reservoir because none of us had seen it before. It's about 3 miles outside camp and we were told we shouldn't go there right now for fear of being shot by the hunters. So we decided it would be a great idea.

Side Note: Shea is quickly becoming one of my favorite people. He's 6'6, played basketball for Montana and in Amsterdam, never stops talking and everything he say is sarcastic and hilarious. While being constantly hilarious, he is answers every question you ask him honestly and earnestly. He's very warm and welcoming and makes you feel comfortable. I like him a lot.

So Kristen, Lacey, Mandi, Drew, Becca and I all climbed in the car with Shea and the boys hopped in with Julie. All we knew was that Maize was on the road past the stables so we took off driving down a winding mountain road that have cows wandering freely across it. We had no clue where we going and ended up driving forever and never finding it. Still, we laughed a lot in the car and sang loudly to songs such as Indian Outlaw and that KC and Jo-Jo song.

After we got back from that, all the girls in my condo, Becca, Mike, Nick, Shea and I played ImagineIff. I was winning until the very end when Shea overtook me. It was a rough loss but it was a lot of fun. I know that it takes a while to really settle in here, but today was the first day I felt a real twinge of lonliness. It was great to just sit around in a group and try to feel comfortable and laugh and play a game.

Tomorrow's All Clean and I'm both excited and not. It'll be fun to all be together but housekeeping is definitely not my fave so far. But still, it'll be fun and after it's over, we'll have made it to our first days off. We're planning on heading into Bend to hang out, get all the stuff we forgot for our condos, grocery shop and have a generally good time.

I feel like I'm settling in here, but it's definitely not home yet. I miss you guys a lot and I can't wait to talk to you all soon. I love you!