Where Have You Gone, Joe DiMaggio?

The move is going well. I've been shipping boxes all week and dropping them off at the new place after work. My folks are coming up on Sunday, and by late afternoon everything should be over there, at which point I begin my new life in a real apartment down in Newport. That means at some point I'll have to disconnect this thing, and that'll probably happen on Saturday. I'm not yet sure how long it'll take me to reconnect, but I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, the social scene is starting to heat up. Our gun line has been down the past week due to bolt issues and firing pin problems, so most of us have been farmed out to other areas. I did some time in the machine shop, but the past few days I've been working for Accessories, which is comprised of a bunch of nice ladies who build the magazines and whatnot for the various cells. That's where Sherry works. You may recall I've mentioned her before, but in case not, she's the woman who I've been flirting with since day one at Rugers.

Anyway, I was over in one corner of the building working on some screws for Kimmie. Apparently, the whole box that came in is slightly too big for where she needs them, so I've been drilling them into a fixture and then back out to make them just a hair smaller. I spent most of yesterday doing that, and since there's 1500 of those damn screws in a box that isn't hard to imagine. When I finished with those ... I got a second box, which ran over to today.

While over in my corner, Sherry walked by and stopped to talk to me. I'd mentioned earlier in the week that I'd started moving, when we "just happened" to be walking across the parking lot at the same time in the morning. So she was asking follow up questions. She asked if I had any kids first, and then if I was married. Yeah, she was going fishing. So I answered that it was "just me". I made sure to underline that point, just to cement my potential availablity in case I was reading this correctly, and I think I am. Then she said she'd have to make me dinner sometime, since we're going to be neighbors and all, and I said that would be great.

A little while later, she stopped to fish out what kind of things I liked to eat, and we flirted and conversed some more. Today we flirted more. After I finished the screws, I took them down to get them washed out in the machine shop, and brought them back to Accessories. Some of the other ladies seem to think I'm a pretty good fella, seeing as I went to that trouble all on my own without anybody telling me to do so, and they said I was a "keeper". Then they started giving Sherry a hard time (in a good-natured way) about me ... kinda ... while I pretended not to notice, and then walked away smiling to myself.

It's getting interesting there.

Meanwhile, there are big plans for the Mini-14 line, assuming we ever fix the aforementioned problems. We're being moved to another part of the floor. That isn't new; they've been talking about that for months. The new rumor, however, is that we're being split up. That's how Eric put it when we were talking about it today: "They're splitting up the family". After the move, the powers-that-be want more guns, faster, and so they think the magical number they're looking for can be attained with not one Mini-14 line, not two Mini-14 lines, but *three* Mini-14 lines. Three cells? Wow.

We aren't the only line that this is supposed to happen to, but this is a rather dramatic change. There's nine of us, just barely enough to run one line when we do it with two people bolt-fitting (that's how they want us to do it, but it hardly ever happens). How are we going to run three? I guess we're hiring new people, and the nine of us are going to be divided throughout the cells. It's kind of exciting to think about, really.

I have to imagine they'll divide us starting with the hardest spots first. The toughest is final build, which Fred does now. Jim and Brad can also do it, and seeing as the three of them are the most experienced people, I would bet they land on different lines. Next hardest is bolt-fit, which I've recently learned, and I'm pretty darn good at it. I did the machine shop version of it late last week, and the guy in charge of that area stopped to watch me for a minute: "Wow. He's pretty fast." Oh yeah.

After those three, I'm kind of in the second tier right now. I'm hoping that I'll land as the bolt-fitter in one of those lines. In the second tier, only Cooter and I actually know how to do it, and I'm way better at it than he is (nice kid, but a little high strung, and doesn't have a lot of stick-to-it-ive-ness). I bet Eric could learn it well enough, too. They might bring in Mark or Jordan from customer service to help out during the transition, too. But I'm going to grab one of those bolt-fit spots if there's anything I can do about it.

And that's the news.