Sunday, October 30, 2016

Bereft of News

10-29-2016
Saturday, and a whole day off, though I work tomorrow at the winery.

And I am bereft of news as I haven't been keeping daily jottings that get later expanded into the daily news listing. So here are some thematic rambles that cover the week.

But starting with the context, of working at a winery as a temporary harvest hand. Most days of the M-F work week there has been grapes coming in, some low volume days, some more, 20 bins (30" deep) at most. The fall weather has been atrocious by past years that I have lived in the Okanagan Valley; on-off rain that is much more characteristic of Vancouver or Victoria. Which makes for picking difficulties. And the winemaker tells me, the tannins are much reduced in these Bordeaux blend varietals.

So anyhow, the grapes come in bins and then get tipped into a hopper with an integral conveyor that lifts them up in discrete amounts into the destemmer, and then through the crusher below, and then into the hopper of a must pump that lifts up the must (mash like) into the tank opening some 12' higher through a 9" hose. Believe me, it takes a while to get this all set up as we move tanks each day, sometimes within the day.

And why is it that my work colleague's behavior on the conveyor line is near identical to those of past years, and as mentioned, for other agricultural products? That is, picking up the very item I was going to pick up, even if my hand was obviously poised to do so. Add it picking right in front of me where they could be picking their own "turf", that is, in front of them. Fucking bizarre.

10-30-2016
Sunday, and I worked five hours to attend to barrel ferments; punch-downs (punching down the floating skins from the fermentation to ensure more extraction of flavors), and taking measurements. The perps just love to harass the hell out me when taking measurements, not to mention having wine spillage. And too, enraging me with forced "forgets" and inattentions, often leading to more mess. They even screwed my head around when I was siphoning a wine sample by having me remove the hose from the bucket and point it at the floor (to make a mess). Like WTF; I had been regularly removing the hose end from the source and stopping the siphoning like I had been doing, and have done for eons, but "somehow", I forgot? Total mind control and psychopathic torture.
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Still savoring last week's music outing; 2/3 of Blackie and the Rodeo Kings at the Dream Cafe here in Penticton. I have two CD's that I purchased there that have been in high rotation all this week.

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I bought a carpet runner two weeks ago to cover the high traffic route between the entry door and the kitchen as it just seems ridiculous to go from linoleum, over carpet, then then over linoleum again. But as the perps are totally fixated on floor coverings, this no doubt serves their purpose in some way. After 3.5 years of living here I am finally allowed to figure it out and "think" about getting a carpet runner to span the two linoleum surfaces where the intervening carpet area is. That was four months ago, and after driving past the carpeting shop every week on my way to the laundromat, I was finally allowed to stop by and get some carpet runner. It was 8' and lo, I "forgot" about the perp's carpet moving tricks. The runner moves by itself, slowly, but over a few days until I move it back. This "happened" back in 2003 a whole lot, and I eventually threw out the carpets as I was so pissed with this stunt (along with a whole lot more harassment). So here we go again, and this time I date-time stamped the locations you see in the pictures below. That is, the carpet runner moved 4" at one end in a day and a half. Don't ask me why I cannot put two pic side by side in this here Blogspot. Enough for a post I figure.



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