Memory Monday: Scanner Girl, Part 2

Wanna hear more memories about my current job?  Well, then, you're in luck! (My first post of memories is right here.)

The summer after my senior year I worked by myself.  And actually, I worked 10-hour days.  Sure, it could get boring, but I kept myself occupied.  And I was trying to save money for college. I went in right after showering, with my hair still wet.  And even though it was summer, that would make me get cold.  So I would crank up the heat in that room, and dry my hair in front of the vent.  I would bend at the waist, with my long long hair hanging almost to the floor. Then I usually would pull it up with this purple scrunchie that I had.  I loved that thing, and had it for a million billion years.

The summer before, I didn't pull in quite that many hours, but my sister and mom and I went to deep water aerobics early in the morning, which I LOVED.  Then we'd get ready and go over to work.  It was so awesome.  One of these days, I would love to do the deep water aerobics again.  I tried a couple of years ago, but it was at night, right when I was trying to get kids in bed, etc. etc.  Maybe in a few years when my kids are all at school.  There are a lot of things I want to do when my kids are all out of the house.  Like, read.  Go to the temple often.  Exercise.  Grocery shop.  Scrapbook.

When I was scanning in college, my sister Brianna started scanning with me. At the time, my dad's office had a client that wanted some of their stuff scanned.  It was a doctor's office of some sort.  Our scanning room had been moved again, this time upstairs at the end of the hall.  While scanning the doctor's office stuff, we discovered that they had pictures drawn in their files, about people's ailments.  It was to show where or what was wrong, but...some of them were really funny.  Like cartoons.  There would be a phrase written, like "jambed thumb", and a picture of a hand with a REALLY over-sized thumb. Or they would have funny phrases (well, funny taken out of context).  Like "Man says there is metal shrapnel in his head."  Whenever we came across crazy things like this, we would scan them, then cut them out and tape them to the wall above our scanner.  We taped other things up as well, like outsides of thank-you notes or whatever that would have flowers on it.  We had quite the collection.

Along with the crazy pictures, the same doctor's office had these files on REALLY big papers that were all linked together.  You know that old type of printer that had the rollers on the sides, and the paper would have holes on the edges that you would hook onto the rollers?  And each page was hooked to the next, so you'd have to pull it apart?  There were boxes and boxes of these kinds of files.  And the pages were too big to put into our scanner.  So we had to get creative.

Sometimes we would take the pages and photocopy them but reduce it so it would all fit onto a page, then scan that.  Other times we could cut the edges and bottoms of the pages to make them page-sized.  When they had the normal-sized paper that was hooked together, our scanner was able to grab the first page, and keep going, sucking in page after page in a big stream.  Brianna was really good at getting the machine to do that.  I wasn't very good at it-it gave me paper cuts, and would start scanning crooked, and then it would jam.  So, yeah, I had to tear the pages and scan them separately.

Scanning -and prepping- the big pages took FOREVER.  So my sister and I decided to come in at night a few times and just prep so that we could scan during the day.  We would take a couple of boxes into the conference room, where there was a TV and cable.  There was a TV movie on, called "Au Pair" (which means "nanny" in French).  It's kind of "The Sound of Music" meets...any makeover show like "Pretty Woman" or "She's All That".  And even though it was cheesy, it was strangely addicting.

At that time, Brianna was also into country music.  We'd sit and listen to Z103, but after a while I'd get SO sick of their rotation of songs, so much so that I agreed to listen to a country station with her instead.  Although I could only take so much of that before wanting to switch back, or just not listen to any music whatsoever.

This was also about the time that we met Jack on Crack.  One of my dad's colleagues had a son that..."worked" there as well.  I honestly don't know what he did there.  Shred?  Yardwork?  Or maybe he just hung out there or something.  We could never remember his real name, so we called him Jack on Crack.  Because he was a WEIR-DO!  Very spazzy, and weird. Sometimes he would try to hang out with us and talk to us.  We would keep our door closed in the hopes that he would leave us alone, but even that didn't work with Jack on Crack.  I really hope he grew up to become somewhat normal.

I also scanned with my sister Alexis, when I was pregnant with Troy.  We were more hit and miss, because it was during the school year.  I went in on Friday and Saturday mornings.  We were in a different room-again, and this time had cubicles.  At this time we were scanning pension files, which didn't have cool pictures like the other files.

And now I scan alone, at night.  I'm back in the room where I used to dry my hair.  Life tends to come full circle.  Or maybe it just seems like that because right now my kids are watching "The Lion King".