Okay. Merrie tagged me several weeks ago. Then my blog went off the air for a while. I spend a week getting it back, but hated it so much after that I couldn’t bring myself to look at it, let alone blog on the stupid thing.

I think I’ve gotten over my childish temper tantrum and am ready to start posting again. Time, of course, is still in short supply. But we’ll give it a try.

So, here is the meme:

1. Write about the Strangest Job I Ever Had and tell what I learned from it.

2. Link to other “Lessons from Odd Jobs” posts.

3. Tag my post “Lessons from Odd Jobs”.

4. Tag other bloggers, in or out of the HC network.

5. Link back to the Lessons from Odd Jobs page and and email this month’s host at “Marcus AT highcallingblogs DOT com”.

The real reason I’ve not blogged on this before now is that I’ve really never had any strange jobs. All my jobs have been quite normal, thank you very much. Normal jobs for a normal girl. Yep.
I guess one job might be considered strange if we use strange to mean that the job happened in an uncommon locale.

I worked for Anchorage Inventory Service and I traveled around Alaska (and sometimes to Hawaii) to take inventory of stores. Once I went to Barrow, Alaska in the dead of winter. It was 53 degrees below with a wind chill factor of -98.

We worked in the store all day and then walked across the street to the hotel. Wearing leather hiking boots, a long wool coat, snow machine gloves, a wool scarf wrapped around my face, and a wool hat, the only part of my body exposed was the strip across my eyes. Immediately upon stepping outside, the tears in my eyes froze, my breathing became shallow because the air was too cold to take in, and I got a severe headache behind the bridge of my nose.

We’d hurry over to the restaurant, Pepe’s North of the Border, and eat tacos and burritos, feeling quite happy to be indoors.

What did I learn from that job? Several things:

1) Viewing Alaska from the window of a small plane creates a hush in the soul.

2) Landing where the humans are, however, turns the hush to mush because igloos are prettier than reality.

For a closer view click here. It’s hard to believe anyone could live in such cold weather in these boxes on cinder blocks.

3) But…humans are amazing creatures who can live and thrive and be joyful even in harsh conditions and ugly villages (and with bad haircuts and unattractive clothing).

4) And at the end of the day the world is pretty great even in the desert places.


(Did you know that Alaska was desert in the north? It is. It gets very little precipitation.)

Of course that was all learned from traveling to and from work. What did I actually learn from my job as a bean counter? I’m a terrible manager–I’d much rather be told what to do, than have to tell others what to do. Not very profound but a nice thing to learn about yourself all the same.

OK let’s see, who can I link to?

Shalene was a magician’s assistant. I thought what she learned was pretty cool.

Becky had an exciting job. Not! But she made good, anyway.

And Otto the Popsicle guy wrote a great post. Made me wish I’d bought something when the ice cream man went by earlier.

Now who can I tag? I’ve been out of the blog scene for quite a while so I have no buddies to annoy with this. I think I’ll have to go with Noel De Vries though she’s not old enough to have had many jobs yet. She’s brilliant so I’m sure she’ll come up with something if she decides to play along.

And I have no idea if Michael Snyder will take the time, but I have to tag him because he has that quirky “Michael Snyder mind” thing going on. If he posts it will be funny and deep at the same time, I have no doubt.

I’d love to tag Chip MacGregor, because he’d be entertaining, but since his blog leans more toward professional I think I’ll leave him alone. Go read his blog, anyway. He’s funny and smart. A great combination.

And I don’t really read any other blogs right now, I don’t think (except ones belonging to people who have already played, I mean). So I guess I’ll have to just end this here.

Oh, for a full list of participants in this meme go to Marcus Goodyear’s site, goodwordediting.com.

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