Pinch me

Today is my second day on my REAL job.  It's so good to be done with orientation and training and be IN my hangar.  This job has so many firsts already.  It's obviously the first blue collar/manufacturing type job I've ever had in my life, it's also the first job I've ever had when I wasn't expected to hit the ground running, it's the first job that I've ever had that on day one, I already knew three people in there and it's absolutely the first job I've ever had to walk a half mile to get to!!  

I LOVE it.

It's loud, it's dusty, it's hot and it's amazing.  Yesterday, I got to actually DO something.  I shadowed one of the ladies who's been there a while and knows her stuff and she let me strip a bundle of wires and then solder them together with a heat gun.  That was pretty cool!  Today, I got a tour of the aircraft from tip to tail, I was assigned my tool box (a big old red eight-drawer Snap-On) and I had to inventory the tools, make sure they were all there and identified by my specific number.  Thank goodness I have some really good fellas on my crew.  I didn't know what half those tools were!  They have been so sweet and have helped me so much already.  They've taken me under their wings, literally!  Ha! I went to school to be an electronics technician.  I worked on circuit boards, built circuits on bread boards and troubleshot those circuits.  I am being trained to be an aircraft electrician.  So I'm green as a garden hose.

Two of those guys on my crew know me from the pediatrician's office.  They take their kids there!  And I met one girl who works in our building at Central one weekend when I was with Larry.  Small, small world this is.

My supervisor and work leader are both easygoing, good-natured guys and I'm thankful for that.  Our work is not work that can be rushed.  Lives depend on what we do so that's good, too.  I'll have plenty of time to go slow and learn everything I need to learn.  I'll be there until January and then work part-time while I'll go back to school and finish the program.  After I graduate, I'll go back to working full-time making ze BIG $$$$$$$.  :)

Speaking of going slow, them boots are in my locker in the hangar as I type this.  They showed their butt so bad yesterday that they can't even set foot in this house again.  Walking a half mile in steel-toe boots is misery this chick ain't having none of.  I'll walk in my tennis shoes and change when I get to work.  Most of the women there do that, though.

Yesterday at lunch, I watched an F-15 accelerate as it ascended.  They're cool like that.  :)  When it broke the sound barrier, I 'bout had to take cover.  It was SO loud.  I'm so glad that thing ain't never gonna come looking for ME.

And I'm so glad that I'm gonna be able to look after it.