Rainy Day Energy

Today is the sort of day I associate with November.  It's gray, chilly, rainy, soggy dead leaves are everywhere, and I barely have the energy to even write this post.

I could use some bland grapefruit-flavored energy water with zero sugar.  How about some dull orange coloring to liven up the white and gray can? 

Someone gave this to me a few weeks ago.  They had bought a few of them and didn't like it, so I inherited one for my can collection.  It's unopened, but I just might try it today to see if it tastes as bad as they say.  

I'll consider it after I take a nap.

Fishing for Mr. Brown

My post last week was about being called back to work from being on furlough... to permanently close the building.  Yesterday, on Friday the 13th, the job was completed.  The building is closed and I have returned to furlough.

As the building was emptied, it became harder to do certain things without having all the "stuff" that used to be lying around.  So when I looked and saw a can standing upright at the bottom of the the 40-yard container where old furniture was being tossed, I looked for a ladder to climb down into the container to see if it was a can I needed for my collection.  

But all the ladders had already been sent away.  It's hard for me to accept something as impossible when one wants it bad enough, so I started scrounging the empty building for anything useful to reach down and get the can.  We had nothing long enough to reach that far down.  Since it was standing upright, could I fish it out?

The first thing I needed to make that possible was a "hook" and "line."  A discarded metal rod and an old microphone cable would work.  I taped the bent rod to the cable.

Now how could I extend the cable out far enough to drop down to reach the can?  A broom I had used to sweep the floor earlier could be the "pole."  I taped a roll of duct tape to the end of the broom handle and fed the cable/hook through it.  Now I could extend the hook out over the can and feed the cable through the roll of tape, slowly lowering the hook to the can.

It was a windy day, so aiming that lightweight hook into the mouth of the can was a bit of a challenge, but once it went in it caught the can and I was able to slowly pull the cable and raise the can from the bottom of the dumspter.

Once the can was high enough, I carefully pulled the broom handle in and brought the can to me.

Not only was I proud that I scraped together the parts to make a can fishing pole from a nearly-empty building, I was also able to take pics to document the process so I could write about it today.

Once the can was safely in my hand, I saw it was indeed a can I didn't have.  In fact, I've never heard of it before.  The can is strange also, the bottom is the same as a steel soup can.  And it's a non-standard 8.12 oz sized can.  This can of iced coffee was the last I would get from that building.  But what a last can it was.  Not only is it a very interesting can, but it also made for one of my most interesting can-collecting stories.

And I may have just found a new hobby for this next phase of my furlough... fishing.

A Positive End to an Era

My job is in the public service industry.  And back in March everyone in my building was put on furlough because due to COVID there was no longer a public to service.  The days turned into weeks, the weeks turned into months, and in September I received a call asking if I wanted to go back to work in the building... to permanently shut it down.  "Sure'', I said.  I needed a paycheck.

After two months of distributing equipment to our other locations, taking down shelving, taking apart furniture, filling multiple dumpsters with trash, making many recycling runs, etc. next Friday will be my last day there.  We will all remain on furlough so hopefully if/when the business picks back up they will call us back.  Not to our old jobs, but somewhere else within the company. 

During one of our tips to the dumpster this week, I glanced in before we started filling it and saw two lonely cans.

Yes, I hopped down into the empty container and discovered it was a can I didn't have yet in my collection.

These were Adrenaline Shoc cans, an energy drink I've never heard of.  They were both the same, so I chose the one with the least amount of dents and rescued it.

Back in what's left of my office, I took this somewhat blurry picture of the can.  I've scored many cans from work over the years.  In fact, my collection blog started at work 9.5 years and two buildings ago with this post.

It's certainly the end of an era for me.  And I'll wait as long as I can to be called back, but unemployment benefits only last so long.  

But for now, I suppose I'll have more time to dumpster dive for cans for my collection.