Mark Souza's Blog - Posts Tagged "weather-fun"
A Feculent Squat-thrust of a Day
When my first daughter was born, my life changed. It meant I had responsibilities I could no longer ignore. I, like so many before and since, was quietly going into soul-sucking debt trying to get my engineering degree. Fatherhood meant this had to stop and I needed to find a job. I sent a resume off to my dream employer, a local engineering firm known around the world, as well as papering practically every other company offering an open position.
I wound up employed in the warehouse of a residential lighting retailer.
My foreman was a real character who I suspect, like me, had had his dreams temporarily crushed. I started the new job in the middle of winter, which for the Seattle area is part of our eight-month-long monsoon season. We had three bays fitted with roll-up style doors that could be raised to allow semis to back up for offloading new stock, or contractors to pull in to be loaded with their orders. The doors each had a row of windows inset so we could see out. Each morning, first thing, my foreman would stand at the windows, look out at the clouds, puddles and falling rain, and pronounce, “What a feculent squat-thrust of a day.”
I didn’t know what feculent meant, but I’d done my fair share of squat-thrusts, and knew what the weather looked like. I surmised feculent wasn’t a positive description. Still, I was curious to know the true definition and went scrambling for my dictionary at home. My paperback Webster New Collegiate Dictionary didn’t have it. No feculent in my three-inch thick hardback American Heritage either. I had to go to the library, to their copy of the Oxford English Dictionary – you know, the one so thick you could prop it up with a stick, scatter bread crumbs underneath, and use to squash hapless critters if you were marooned and in need of a meal – that dictionary.
I won’t rob you of the pleasure of finding the definition for yourself and adding it to your vocabulary. Suffice it to say that my old foreman was dead-on nuts accurate with his assessment. And as I look out my window, I am reminded that once again here in the Pacific Northwest, we have reached the feculent squat-thrust part of our year. That description will likely remain accurate until July. Until then, it’s time for GORETEX or hibernation I think.
I wound up employed in the warehouse of a residential lighting retailer.
My foreman was a real character who I suspect, like me, had had his dreams temporarily crushed. I started the new job in the middle of winter, which for the Seattle area is part of our eight-month-long monsoon season. We had three bays fitted with roll-up style doors that could be raised to allow semis to back up for offloading new stock, or contractors to pull in to be loaded with their orders. The doors each had a row of windows inset so we could see out. Each morning, first thing, my foreman would stand at the windows, look out at the clouds, puddles and falling rain, and pronounce, “What a feculent squat-thrust of a day.”
I didn’t know what feculent meant, but I’d done my fair share of squat-thrusts, and knew what the weather looked like. I surmised feculent wasn’t a positive description. Still, I was curious to know the true definition and went scrambling for my dictionary at home. My paperback Webster New Collegiate Dictionary didn’t have it. No feculent in my three-inch thick hardback American Heritage either. I had to go to the library, to their copy of the Oxford English Dictionary – you know, the one so thick you could prop it up with a stick, scatter bread crumbs underneath, and use to squash hapless critters if you were marooned and in need of a meal – that dictionary.
I won’t rob you of the pleasure of finding the definition for yourself and adding it to your vocabulary. Suffice it to say that my old foreman was dead-on nuts accurate with his assessment. And as I look out my window, I am reminded that once again here in the Pacific Northwest, we have reached the feculent squat-thrust part of our year. That description will likely remain accurate until July. Until then, it’s time for GORETEX or hibernation I think.
