Record Cold / Job News (We Have Them!)

We are at record low temperatures this morning. They are saying that the last time that it was this cold was in 1957. The house seems to have come through it just fine - no frozen pipes or anything like that. The TV news warned us that expansion and contraction would probably cause the house to make popping/snapping/crunching noises during the night. It did (glad we were warned).

We usually get out and walk every morning. This morning will be an exception. With the windchill down to about -50°, the exposure time for frostbite is about 5 minutes. It's supposed to get up to 10° later today so we'll probably wait until then to walk.

That's -17° on our thermometer.

AccuWeather only shows -15° but I include it because of the RealFeel of -48°.

On other fronts, we have jobs for the summer!

As we've traveled around the country with the trailer the past few years, we've often thought that it looked like it might be fun to join the staff of one of the RV Resorts. We've talked to a lot of people about how they went about getting their positions. Many of them lived in their RV's full time, wintering in the South and hiring on in the summer time. A major part of their pay was a site to park their RV and, often, in the case of the larger operators, they had to build up some seniority before they even got a choice of where they were going. Not ideal.

When we arrived in Massachusetts last June, we spent the first month at an RV Resort called Pine Acres. We'd never heard of Oakham before we got there but, as things ended up, it's only a couple of minutes down the road from our house. Pine Acres is a very nice park and is a vacation destination for people from all over the Northeast. Many people keep their rigs there year round so they'll always have their favorite spot.

While we were there, we noticed that quite a few of the employees are older, many living in their rigs onsite. A lot of college students and foreign students also were working there. At any rate, a couple of weeks ago, it occured to us that Pine Acres would be perfect. We could live at home and still get the RV Resort experience that we were after.

We completed our applications and submitted them via email on Sunday evening. First thing Monday, we received a call and set up a time to interview. It ends up that the older people are pretty much their most desirable employees. The hire as many as they can, then they start filling the gaps with college kids. Anything that's left goes out to a company that provides the foreign students.

They like the Seniors because they get a bit more respect from the campers and they easily fit into supervisory and team leadership roles over the younger people.

Our "interview" was pretty much a chance to go through all of the job descriptions and decide on what we'd like to do. Kristen is going to be working in the front office and I'll be doing some maintenance and rangering. We'll start on April 1 and work through mid-October. Scheduling is done monthly so we'll be able to adjust our hours and time off as needed. Our job offer letters even stated that our Grandchildren will have use of the facilities.

-JC-