Ha Ha, I have taken over my wife's blog!

For any of you sorry suckers who got notified of a new post on "Beckie's Blog" and expected to read about a married mormon girl's feelings about no longer working and being a stay at home mom-SORRY! NO DICE!  All you get is Beckie's battle hardened husband! Get ready for unapologetic hard hitting rhetoric. Vicious rhetoric that very well might tear you to pieces......well, crap, there goes my tough guy facade with the Tad Hamilton quote. OK, I lied, I am not taking over the blog (even though i could because I know all of Beckie's passwords) I have just been added as an attempt to make the blog more interesting. Or possibly so I have other people to speak to from my soap box besides just my wife (who rarely is interested anyway).  So no, I am not going to hit Beckie's blog off into left field.  In fact, I am pretty much just like her, except I have a scruffy beard  and cross the double white line to enter the carpool lane.  That is pretty much as edgy as I get. I do not have anything earth shattering to say,  but I do have an opinion on pretty much everything, so a blog is a good place for to be, especially now that I have switched back to night shift. (Also, If you haven't given up on this post yet, I would like to point out that I, unlike my wife, did very poorly in English in high school, and do not have proper writing habits, and therefore you will have to suffer through run on sentences and badly split paragraphs. I just don't know where to start a new one.....this looks like a good place)

So yeah, night shift.  I am a process engineer at a semiconductor factory.  What do I do there?  I would tell you but I would have to kill myself.  The semiconductor industry is very niche. When I explain what I do to people not even other engineers understand me let alone common peasants. You may be thinking, It is your fault that you cannot simplify the explanation (I'm sure there are a thousand quotes about how truly smart people can make things understandable to the masses, whatev). But the truth is, when I do, and say something like I use super powerful cameras to take microscopic pictures of circuitry on a silicon wafer, I die a little inside, and that can't be healthy. Suffice it to say I am an engineer.  And I work at a factory that uses very expensive machines (ranging from $100,000 on the low end to $80,000,000). They are very expensive because they provide a lot of earning potential to the companies that possess them.  Every hour they run represents $200,000 in revenue.  It also represents a time period in which these machines must be paid for and therefore, utilized. The question I am trying to answer preemptively is why do I have to work night shift.  Or rather, why does anyone at my company work night shift.  The answer to the question is in the price of these machines.  Imagine owning an $80,000,000 home....OH...BABY...... Now stop being vain and come back to reality. So what would a 30 year mortgage be like on that home as compared to your $150,000 pittance of a house. You are correct, a whole lot more. In fact, it would be 300,000 a month.  Now lets say that your lending period was shortened to 5 years.  Yeah, your mortgage would be bad, but this one would be worse-$1,500,000 a month.  Considering how quickly technology changes and these machines become obsolete, I'm certain the lending period has got to be 5 years or less.  So the 1.5 mill a month per machine simplifies into around $2000/hour.  Now consider that my company has about 20 of these and forget about the 200 or so other "cheap" machines we have and you understand why the $200,000 per hour is wicked important. All this to explain why I am writing a blog at 2:30AM.

My Mondays are on Wednesdays.  I start the week by working Wednesday night.  Meaning, that if I didn't sleep during the day on Wednesday, I would be awake for 24 hours by the time my shift ended on Thursday morning.  So, I stay awake all night on Tuesday to facilitate my sleeping during the day on Wednesday.  I work 12 hour shifts from 6:30PM to 6:30AM alternating 4 and 3 days every other week. Every four months I rotate days/nights so I would be working AM to PM instead. If you don't understand how that works, it is ok, neither does anyone else unless you are married to someone who does it.  This may sound like a terrible schedule, but let me assure you, it is not.  I work only 3 or 4 days out of the week, leaving me with 3 and 4 day weekends every week.  I know a lot of people who would give their right foot for that kind of free time. Also, I get paid salary, but I only work an average of 42 hrs/week.  My shift ends, and I am outta there.  None of this 60-80 hrs/week stuff you get with other jobs. I think that requires a boo-yah!

The other half of the equation is being nocturnal.  People tell me that it must be awful to console me, and don't get me wrong, at first I thought the same thing.  But night shift where I work is actually very low stress and relaxing compared to day shift.  On day shift, when all non shifted employees are there as well, you get a lot of requests/demands that keep you constantly rushing around.  On nights, there is no one hovering over your shoulder telling you what they think is most important and you are free to use your own brain to prioritize.  Also, as you could imagine, I get a night shift differential, which is pretty hefty. Let's just say it covers tithing, fast offerings and random cravings of a nursing/starving wife.  This is a pretty sweet deal in my mind-relax and make more money.  But unfortunately my wife doesn't always agree.

Beckie doesn't by any means hate my job, and is always supportive of my weird schedule, but definitely mourns when I switch back to nights. She likewise does a little dance when I switch back to days. I am always a little confused at why she is celebrating us being poor again. Ok, so I guess I do understand the benefits of being a normal human being.  No one else is awake at night. No businesses or restaurants open. (If you haven't notices yet, I deal in absolutes.  I know that there are 24/7 Burger Kings and Walmarts, but I just don't like the word "most" and tend to leave it out quite often) You can't set up a get together or handle an errand on your lunch break. But I have decided that these things are of little importance to me in relation to $$$.  I guess the biggest drag is missing out on snuggle time with Beckie.  When I come home, she wakes up and I am working when she goes to sleep.  How much would you pay to cuddle with your spouse for 14 more days a month? $100? That would be $7 a snuggle. $200? $400 or $28 a snuggle.  Sometimes I feel like $28 is a bargain snuggle for the joy I get out of it.  Makes me think that I should start a snuggle business....that could get sketchy real fast.  Either way, I don't really have much of an alternative to a snuggle-less life as of now, so I guess that the calculations have been in vain (I'm an engineer, I can't help but calculate something!)

So I'm not really sure if this post had a main point, but I'm sure I have written enough to alienate 95% of readers thus far and should end quickly before the other 5% go back to watching Downton Abbey.  But before I do...........Cute baby!!!!!

Captain Adora-Bullen