Sun river census

The sun came out Friday.  I didn't get to enjoy it until late Saturday afternoon.  That is because there was a push from the main office to get the final census questionnaires finished for my area (my district plus 7 other districts) and the area west of ours (another 7 districts).  It was a scramble as we learned on Friday we needed to get this done by Monday.

Because next month I will be going to work on another unrelated census operation, when he left Wednesday my boss didn't select me to replace him as operations supervisor.  He selected as his replacement his second choice, as Michelle likes to tell me and others.  She jokes about it but I wonder if she has some hurt feelings.  It would only be natural.

The area to our west had their operations supervisor suddenly quit Monday so Robert was brought in to finish that area.

When I arrived at the meeting area at the mall Friday afternoon Michelle and Robert were scrambling to get stuff ready for people to go get the information about the final households.  Other people were arriving, as the call had gone out to have each district call in their best people to handle these last questionnaires.   Then it was sit and wait a long time as the bosses scrambled around in preparation.

Michelle had to leave so I stepped in for her and by the end of the night Robert and I were running the show, with Jim, another crew leader, helping us as people went out and came back with information.  We did not leave until 11:30 pm.   Robert got a hotel room and crashed instead of making the 2 plus hour drive home.  Jim went home.  I also went home but I then organized and got my head around the remaining items we had to complete.  I went to bed just before 3 am.

Before 7 am one of my enumerators came by my house to give me a completed questionnaire.  Her arrival woke me out a  dream.  On the way to the 9 am meeting with the others I stopped and completed a questionnaire with a household.

Robert had returned to Missoula, and even though Michelle had arrived, she had been out of the loop so she deferred to me and I ran the show Saturday to completion.  I stepped on a few toes and one guy was publicly embarrassed as when he presented his results to us I wouldn't accept his excuses and poor quality work.  I took his work away and gave it to another census worker to complete.

We didn't finish our work until 3 pm.  Coming home after I finished work, I ate a late lunch and then checked the pocket gopher traps out in the hayfield and pastures.  I had caught two more gophers.  I noticed more dirt mounds.  I think the pocket gopher couples are breaking up and one member of the pairs are moving out to new locations, hence the new dirt mounds.

James, the neighbor across the road, was out working on corner fence posts.  He and a friend are fencing his property and James will let the friend keep cattle and/or horses on the property to eat the grass down.