Hello Language learners!

I've recently come up with the theory that since one is able to remember better by taking notes, I will start to journal in order to attempt to better remember the happenings and goings on of my life. My wife and partner has a fantastic recollection of her childhood and adolescence and I feel that mine is lacking. I asked her if she thought that she had done anything to help her better remember and she had revealed to me that she kept a journal during those periods of life. It is my theory that these two experiences are no coincidence. So, in an attempt to remedy my memory, which is potentially facing a self imposed limitation on its capacity, I will be writing my journal as a way to keep these memories with me.

A little about myself. I am from the US and I live in Seattle, WA with my lovely wife and two beautiful dogs. I moved here in September of last year and I am loving this city so far. I work at a grocery store as a Produce Clerk and I enjoy what I do. Being around fruits and vegetables all day and working with kind people are two things I try to appreciate every day; I know not everyone is so fortunate in the coworkers department. I am a native English speaker and have studied English to the level of the Gen-Ed courses I took in order to get my Associate's Degree, although I will not say I don't make mistakes! I am putting a lot of time into learning Spanish right now and I am also enjoying that learning process. One day I hope to starting writing these journals in Spanish!

Today, being Tuesday March 9, was my final day in my work week. My job has a confusing culture of referring to the days of one's personal work week as the names of the days with which one's weekly schedule would coincide with had the days off fell on the weekend. For example, since Tuesday is the last day of my work week, I would refer to today as "my Friday," since I have "my weekend," coming up. Even though Saturday and Sunday are the days of the weekend, "my weekend," is considered Tuesday and Wednesday since I have both of those days off. So happy weekend everyone! Tonight is officially the start of mine.

Today's work day started at 9am and the produce delivery had already been dropped off. There were 5 pallets, taller than myself, and full of fruits and vegetables. Today, I was in charge of stocking the outside produce cooler. We have one behind the building because the existing building wasn't big enough to store the growing volume of fresh produce sold every day. My process for breaking down the load is this: First, I place the new items from the pallet onto one of the blue flatbed six-wheeler carts that we use. Then, once I have wheeled the cart to the cooler, I proceed to remove old items from the shelf, place the new items on the shelf, then place the old item on top of the new item. This process is called rotating for anyone who is unfamiliar with inventory management.

After about 2.5 hours the entire 5 pallets were broken down and I proceeded to stock the floor. The early morning team did a good job setting the sales floor up to be full of stock, but certain items were out of stock and were waiting to be pulled from the new load. This was my task for the next 1.5 hours. Then, I took my lunch break! I ate a "Vegan Hero" sandwich from our Deli that consisted of a slice of faux-meat, pickle, red onion, tomato and mayo on a hoagie roll. I also had some leftover butternut squash soup that my partner made the previous night. She is wonderful cook and very talented at vegan cooking. I listened to some of a Spanish podcast about Mexico City during my 30-min lunch break but I could understand very little. I need to find the transcript so I can read and study the material!

After lunch, I returned to work. My task for the rest of work was to fill in what the customers had bought. This is an all day task that will never be completed until the store closes down. I feel a sense of satisfaction in my work knowing that I contribute to enriching peoples' diets and providing a necessity to people. As we sometimes say when referring to the fact that you must work in order to buy food to continue to live, "Ya gotta eat!"

I had a nice chat on the phone with my youngest sister tonight who lives very far away with the rest of my family. I miss them a lot.

Thanks for reading my journal entry! Feel free to ask me about things that you don't understand or expressions that you aren't familiar with. I would love to lend a hand.

-J

jseattle

Journal Entry #1 - A Seattleite's Thoughts