I think I am psychic.

So today I hung out with a friend for the last time before he goes back to college. With his holidays over, the final, final vestiges of Christmas have been swept away. No more carols (I have mixed feelings about this), all my Lego I got for Christmas is built (except for the set that I already own and have no desire to build a second one, not at this point anyway), the parent's house's decorations are down (I never put any up at my apartment, since I spend all my free holiday time at the parents), and the world has become cold and miserable.

All my co-workers are back at work, and even though business is still slow, things are back to normal, which means, I have will probably have to shovel snow. Sigh.

It is very interesting to note though, that in the two weeks or so in and around Christmas, I didn't have to do much snow shovelling, and I was pretty much the only guy working the yard that time (in other words, the only one in the entire store who would shovel). Being alone isn't really that bad, since business is slower than Canadian mail. It also gives me more opportunities to not shovel.

Which in all honesty, I hate. But even more so than shovelling, I hate the thing that must be done along with it, ploughing. See, in the lumber yard that I work at, whenever it snows, all the lifts of wood have to be shovelled off, and all the snow pushed at least two feet away from all the lifts. This amounts to a huge amount of shovelling, but said shovelling can only be done if the snow will be removed fairly soon after. If it isn't, then it gets in the way of customers, gets packed down and causes huge ruts, etc. So if any shovelling is to be done, ploughing must soon follow.

As I said, I hate, hate ploughing. The reason being is that all we have for a plough is a poorly designed scoop mounted on the front of a forklift. Dumb! Forklifts have completely bald tires, completely open cabs, are not designed at all for pushing, and get stuck so, so easily. What is more, if you are ploughing, a slow and mind numbing job, you are liable to get really, really, really cold. With the cab open to the oh-so lovely winter elements, and with your body just sitting there, you get cold. At least when shovelling you stay mostly warm. Every time I can, I let one of the other co-workers plough while I shovel. I'd rather stay warm and active, and get a free workout in. And boy what a workout! It takes two of us two days to get the yard clear, assuming we have a relatively uninterrupted day.

So, like I said, I managed to avoid this over the Christmasish holiday time. The main reason of course being that we haven't had any major snow dumps since before the 20th. But we have still had a couple small ones, and even if there is only an inch or two fallen, we have to shovel it up. However, at the start of the holidays, Christmas Eve, I am alone for the first time and do a bit of ploughing, on a remarkably warm day, and since we closed early, not much time was spent doing it. Come Boxing Day, I get back on the plough, and work away for an hour or so. Whilst doing so, I am thinking to myself how miserable the next week is going to be by myself, with nothing to do but shovel and plough. Well not long after, as I am dumping a load, I see that a bracket that holds a wheel that feeds a hydraulic pipe is bent under the forks. This being way beyond my mechanical expertise, I bring the forklift inside and leave it alone until it can be looked at next week. By the time it is fixed, four days have passed!

So we have the forklift running for a day, do a bit of snow removal, but nothing major. The next day, New Year's Eve, my last day of work before my three day holiday, I get up out of bed, see how really cold it is outside, and get real depressed at the thought of all the ploughing that needs to be done at work. I go to work and sure enough, first thing I am on the plough. As I am ploughing, I think to myself how much I wish the forklift would break again so I wouldn't have to freeze my fingers off using it.

Wonder of wonders, not half an hour later, it just suddenly stops working. I thought it ran out of propane, but even with a new canister, it still won't go. So we haul it inside and send it away to be fixed. Yay! It only got back the other day and I have yet to plough or shovel snow this month. Here's hoping for more shovel free days.

The lesson to be drawn from all of this? Clearly, I am psychic.