Planning for Randomness

Greetings.

I have railed against my past jobs many a time here. Those complaints hold true for the reasons given.  My last job was the product of the singly clearest, and deliberate plan, I had. Yet it lead to me being bored and frustrated. That failure has continued to dig into my confidence.  At the beginning of my unemployment and periodically since this has cause doubt. While it is reassuring to know I can produce a logical and technically successful plan it's failure to provide satisfaction is disheartening. So despite the technical success of the plan serious doubts about my ability to produce a better one have developed.  In the end I am left with the question of how do I get from here to there, without a clear notion of what either point is.

The from here to there question has proven tough to answer.  That the There in this question is uncertain and this is a good thing.  The Here is uncertain and this has created stress.  It is more of a language problem than a lack of skills or education on my end. To clarify the mishmash of things I have done while trying to do geology into a resume that gets interviews for jobs far removed from it is not a easy task.  However, I have a new plan, and thankfully it is not too much of a plan.

In the last post Advanced Well Being, I bring up the trouble that I do too much solo, and my good health suffers for that. It is similar with work.  Being insulated from risk has also insulated me from opportunity.  Which is why I am throwing my lot in with Temp Agencies.  My work needs a random element, not because I want my jobs to be unpredictable, but because I can not think my way into an job I can sustain.  So it is time for experimentation, and a healthy dose of randomness.

Now I get to parallel set of thoughts that my Saturday pub night brought up.  I want my next job to by my day job.  It took ten years for me to learn that the ideas drifting in my head want written.  The cost of not writing has increased over time.  Now I don't have a working definition for a day job for writing yet.  I do know it should not eat all my brain power, and if it starts past 10am I could fit in a good morning writing session before.  It is unwise to focus on writing currently, it would eat up all my time and leave me with no money. A job that is not too much of a career could be the answer.  It is not that I wish to stagnate at a job, but that if I measure progress by writing more rather than making more I could still be satisfied.

This leaves me with the question of what to write.  Several fiction ideas populate my head, and I get regular non fiction rants.   The rants often remind me that I could have enjoyed an Arts degree, because I find my thoughts start to scrape the surface of named schools of thought and prove I don't know crap.

Thinking about fiction in a pub full of skeptics has lead me to a constructive train of thought.  Just as my science education combined with healthy skepticism, critical thinking, can be a bullshit detector. So could an understanding of narrative plot, character, and pacing provide the foundation for a fiction flaw detector.  What I need is are critical thinking tools for storytelling.  Tools that let me evaluate, do I have plot, do I have good pacing, are my characters people or place holders, does the audience know enough to understand the tale.  The question now asked quickly points to its own answers, as there are countless books, classes and other materials out there trying to teach that.  I have to learn some points and internalize the best of it.

In other news I bought a suit.  By accident, the consignment shop jumped right at me. A sweet grey affair, the jacket is a perfect fit, and is more than worth the price I paid own its own.  The trousers are being altered and the success of that operation is not 100% assured.  They will be ready for Wednesday.  Its shallow, its materialist but I am eagerly anticipating the results of that.  It is wonderful to anticipate something rather than dread it, that has been too rare an feeling in the past months.  Also I really need a new belt or two.
 

Great Summer Days

Greetings.
July was gloomy I was not happy.  August is turning out much better. Its gotten hot.  My tomatoes are doing great.  There is a aphid problem with some of my plants but nothing is dead yet.  At long last a beach day was had and it was good.

These days I have the tyranny of the produce.   I am growing more than I can realistically eat.  The other day I harvested some greens from the garden only to find more of a similar green sitting in one of my planter boxes.  Damn one more thing to eat.  There has been some concern for my mental health as I found my self willingly eating kale.  This out of normal behavior has since been rationalized as a reflection on my desire not to buy leafy greens as long as my garden can produce them for me.

Work is also going well.  You have to enjoy a job where an afternoon can be spent learning how to make your job easier.  Its not easy being inside with the bright sun and I have to admit that as long as I have my projects under control I am leaving the office quickly.  To be fair if when there is a bigger work load I stay in a little longer but high summer and a slow work flow will drive me outside.

The Accidentally Good Week Part 2

Greetings Bloggies.

When last I wrote, I had just spoken with some geologist and an HR person from an exploration company, with a couple other options on the table.  Last friday saw me take an interview with a larger company, one I had been in touch with for some time.

I did my best at that interview, I dressed well, I spoke well, I listened to how they described the job.  As I learned more about that job, I became reenforced in my conviction that the sleeper hit from earlier in the week was the better option.  The larger company was offering a job of narrower scope.  In an environment of few choices I could have taken it.  After all there is no doubt in my mind that I need the cash flow either way and the experience would have been good.  In the end I was honest.  I said, I had an other thing on the table and it was a better fit for me.

After a lunch I called the office of the company that was offering a job which included an office with a door and expressed my interest in taking the position. Then I waited.  After waiting some more and heading home I wrote an email reenforcing Yes Please I really would Like to Work Here.  And then I waited, some nerves throughout the weekend. The worst of them this morning, from 8am on ward, as I know the office day their starts at 8.
Thankfully I did not have to wait all day and the call came at quarter to ten and it was a firm YES.  So tomorrow I show up for work.  A grown up job at a desk.

In between these interviews, I did some research into the third player.  This was an engineering company looking for Geologists, work related to resource modeling, writing 43101 reports and all the trappings of a classic professional geologist career.  Not a bad thing, but divergent from my current interest/direction.  I wrote back and told the contact as much.

So now, I have to show up for work tomorrow.  Now I can see if this will work for me.  Now I can take the train to work and if the weather really sucks not step outside between my office and the train station.  I have wanted a job that allows for what passes as a normal life for some time.  I knew for a long time field work was not in my bones.  Now I will beable to think about having a cat.

Its a grown up job at an office.

Stuff.

Greetings Bloggies.

Its been a while since I have written. I am back in vancouver. I came back on the 5th. Its good to be back but thats a separate post. This is a post I thought up while at Rabbit lake. Stuff, we all have it especially the people who read blogs.

I would say I am not the most materialistic of folks living in industrialized consumer economy, but I have my share of stuff. What got me thinking as my aged steel toed work boots absorbed water through their partly delaminated soles was that how little of the stuff I own has really brought value or utility to my life. In this case value stemmed from devices that have helped me earn money. I could do a separate post on items of personal or sentimental value.

I'll start with the foundation. Boots. I have two pair of quality boots between the two of them nearly every dollar I have made was spent standing in them or walking in them. Acquired first were the Scarpa hikers, my third pair of proper hiking boots and the first not to fail on a poorly placed seam. They have been resoled once but the resoling left them tighter then they were originally. Many an afternoon or evening was spent tramping across naked metavolcanics in a greenstone belt. That 2.5 billion year old pressure cooked volcanic rock wore those soles out.

Boot number two the work boots. Heavy bricks of hard rubber and leather. Not much for walking but a great boot to stand in. Stand I did, looking at rock in boxes for days on end leads to standing. They had one weakness I did not know about till after I got to the north. It turns out the hard compound rubber in their sole gets piss poor traction on snow or ice, worse then nearly any shoe I have have ever owned. Despite that they have still managed to have a huge number of hours logged in them. I debate resoling them. They might be worth it but that would also be a symbolic admission that I believe I will return to the lines of work that those boots represent, something I am aiming to avoid.

Next up is the multi tool. The least used item on it is the can opener. The knife has most often been used to sharpen wax china markers. I once tried to one of the longer narrow, not knife parts to pry off a hubcap on a truck. The truck was stuck with a flat on Prosperous outside Yellow Knife. I was trying to change the tired and had never seen the arrangement that truck presented to me. There was a plastic hubcap which had on it plastic lug-nuts. In the kit was a second tire wrench sized for the plastic nuts. Never having seen a hubcap that did not just pop off I could not image an arrangement as insane as that. So I did what I thought made sense, try to lever off the cap. I failed and had to beat the tool back into shape to fit it back in the housing.

Of the items that make me money perhaps most iconic is the hand lens. When pressed I will answer that I am a geologist. This is a suitable answer to outsiders as I have not yet attained a standing in the related professional organization. After a rock hammer the hand lens is iconic of geology. The pair, a cheap 10X and a vertigo inducing 30X have often let me identify tiny specks of gold that would have other wise passed me by. The flip side is true, they have also removed false positives from my data collection.

The art to using the 30X one is to focus your eye on the target and then slip the lens between you and it, you will never find what you were looking for if you go at it half assed.

Camp life

Greetings Bloggies.

This institutional life.
I am in an institution. I am sane, well on the average. The people around me seem generally normal but I can't shake the fact that I am in an institution, in this case Cameco's Rabbit Lake mine.

As a mine it has a mix of dangers and red tape. One of the first things I noticed is that almost no one walks any where and there is almost nowhere you can walk. This is a producing mine, an environment I have not worked in before, it also a Uranium mine. Add wolves and bears in the endless wilds around us, a no walking alone policy makes sense. This is not what I am here to say. I do not want to degrees into whining about the things I miss in Vancouver. The first draft of this when there and that paragraph died.

No I am here to try to describe, the character, as seen by a outsider of an institution. I have worked in exploration camps, 20 odd people or less. This camp is larger, but it has one thing overwhelmingly in common. These places are here to get work out of people. Every thing is rules. And that is how I think of an institution, a place with internal rules above and beyond the ones of society, hence no walking.

Out in the world, where people live, not just work and go into bed or the gym for maintenance, there are rules. Societies grow around rules, some rules die a well deserved death other new ones come into play and some stay the same for ages. As a law and generally rule following citizen, I follow the rules that keep me out of trouble and follow my own for there reasons or lack of. What separates institutions out here form the world out there seems to be extra rules.

No walking alone is a good example. Out here, that rule makes sense wolves and bears, haul trucks ( 500 tone), and Uranium all make going for a stroll a poor idea. I know I want to but rules, that and the fear of walking into a hot zone. Other rules, no drugs or alcohol, your here to work, and work safely. We the company want to get our 12 hours out of you and you will damn well play some other time. Also everything happens at a set time. On the other hand things are free. You can eat your fill, get your sweet tooth filled and come back for more later.

Other odd rules include no touques or hats of hoods in the dinning hall.

Signs, clutter the walls in places like this. I don't know what the lowest common denominator is but there is an assumption about it being fairly low, if the toilets have pleas flush after use signs.

Rabbit Lake

Greetings Bloggies.

So, this time I will return to my more positive tone after several whiney posts. It could not be be helped, I was down and not doing the right things for my self so I bitched over the internet, a truly modern past time.

So I am working in the north again. Norther Saskatewan. Things are different here on many levels. I am working for an engineering company not a exploration company. The site is a producing mine. In this case Camico's Rabbit lake, one of this countries oldest continuously producing Uranium mines. Thats right not gold, no the soft pretty metal people dig up to hide in vaults, but the 10th most abundant element in the crust and one of the best energy sources for the future, Uranium.

Though I like the fact that I am working in a support role for a uranium mine, I am glad that my work takes place away from sources of radiation.

The differences between Rabbit lake and exploration jobs, are large, for one thing at the small exploration camps, the geologist were king, the camp existed to make sure our drilling got done and the data came in. Here we are a small subset of a huge operation. This camp can hold up to 700 and might currently hold 300. What the exact number is don't mater, I have been used to camps of 10 to 40. Other things that are different. The job I don't know how to do it yet. I am learning and have a good teacher. I know the core of many of the tasks but not the specifics. It is refreshing to do new work.

What I know of the work is that I will be doing tests on the hydraulic nature of the rock and I have a fancy tool to do it with. The tool has an odd mix of simple tough elements and finer nearly delicate elements. As I said on facebook some times I feel more a plumber then a scientist, but tools get data and without data, there is no science.

The following sentences were written the day after the bulk of the post.

It should be said, after today that there is still no shortage of drudgery as part of the job. Today I was tired and hand to log my first hole for engineering purposes. It was fairly smooth, I need to pick up the pace and fight the strain that comes from too much of the same thing.

Somethings are the same. The food is industrial bland. Engineered to not offend any one and to provide calorie rich fair to those who need it and those who do.

The question I still can't answer is can I do $30,000 or hours of work of this and feel satisfied and have the life I want. Though I am slated to be here for three weeks I don't know when or what I might get called on to do again, if any thing. How often and for how long will I have to be away. It is a question of both. Three weeks is a sane amount of time away.

So I am unresolved. I still think that gaining work closer to the city I live in and coming home at night are my long term goals. The long term keeps getting interrupted by the short term demands of money. That stuff is like crack, every time you start to run low you or you bills just keep demanding more.

The importance of food and cooking.

Greetings Bloggies.

While sweeping the floor and scrubbing coffee stains off the tiles I did some thinking. Here is where my brain when in between brief distractions from Lady Gaga. I started thinking about food, something of a default for me. In this context I was thinking about cooking and my job search.

I had just looked at a post for a GIS specialist for a geology company, a job I could do and do well. I day dreamed about the interview I would like to get. I thought about the currently empty slot of hobbies and interests on my resume. Of the thing I do the one I most likely would put on there would be Cooking/Baking.

People I know have compared cooking to working in a lab setting or working on code to those people this is old hat. I am going to explain why I think that hobby is a quality that is desirable to employers.

Firstly it simply shows initiative, to take control of a problem and solve it for your self rather then out sourcing it to boston pizza or #1 smiling noodle house.

Secondly, creativity. If you cook beyond the point by point break down of a recipe you start to explore play and come up with new things.

Problem solving, job posting always part of a job posting. A little redundant, if you did not have the problem of needed food and a house you would not need the solution of a job. But that aside, cooking represents a day to day example of that. On a nearly daily basis I balance nutrition with flavor and an constantly changing set of ingredients to keep my self happy and filled. To create food out of stuff, translates over to a workspace where the limits of the firms of departments resources constrain what can be done, and there for you have to improvise with in those bounds. Cooking saves money by not outsourcing to consultants.

I did not think of this when I started this post but the social element plays a role. Through food and entertaining, you can shape your space in a group cooking and sharing food with others shows that you play well with others. It says I may have some quirks but overall I am a mostly sane person with friends.

Food it may not say I can do the job from a standing start but it shows damn it I can try and I wont burn the water I promise.

Some Times A Great Notion

I managed to keep my self awake last night, both as I was going to sleep, my mind went in to over drive and some where between 3 and 4 in the morning. I got stuck on the usual point of contention for myself. Where I am how I got here and the big question how do I get from here to there. So now I shall try to reconstruct the thought process had at 3am.

Firstly where I am and how I got there. It is pretty much common knowledge that I got laid off at no fault of my own in October last year when the finances of the company I was with took a hit, making me an early adopter of the global economic melt down. At that time I was happy to be laid off, I has been there for nearly 2 and half years of work with the same firm. My rotations were nearly always 6 weeks long and my breaks a brief two weeks off. That lack of balance and the broken social life that comes from that left me tired. The work, though partly my own fault for not challenging the job enough and asking for more, had grown too routine and was only adding to the strain. So when I got the notice I was going home early I was happy, a chance to catch up on living. I chose to do this living based out of Nakusp where the cost of at least the housing could be minimized.

I had made a choice at the start of this lay off that I would not search for work right away. I had my fill I wanted to relax, I had made money and had healthy savings, there was no rush for me to head back into the world. I told my self two months and then I would start looking for work in earnest, well the two months stretched out a little to fit in the Christmas season, so it came in at closer to three months. The first chunk of this time was well spent. I had picked up a chain saw and went about securing my fire wood stash. That kept me feeling satisfied. As the stash grew and the weather got colder I dabbled at winterizing the cabin. This was moderately successful, ultimately to bring that place up to a truly livable space is beyond my skill and the amount of cash I am willing to sink into things.

I had promised myself that during this time off prior to my job search that I would take the time to truly think about who I am and what I want to do, and from there how to get there. I did not. I dabbled at things, never once did I sit down with a pad of paper and get my thoughts together. I did as the new year came along get my resume together, and have altered it slightly along the way since. I was briefly slightly hampered by the temporary brake down of my computer. So by the time I had my first resumes hitting the internets it was nearly the middle of January. I followed a hap hazard method of googling firms in an area of interest, sending slightly altered versions of a boiler plate resume and cover letter to these firms, with less then consistent follow up calls. This pattern has remained largely consistent, broken up with a few trips out of town in hopes of making connections through the visiting of trade shows and offices.

Non of this would have been possible if we did not get the high speed connection installed in the first week of January. It is alternately one of the best or worst things to have happened here. For all parties involved it is a good thing, every one staying here is addicted to information and we were all relieved to be rid of the painfully slow one computer at time dial up connection. It was this connection that convinced me I could conduct my job search for Nakusp. Without it the rate at which I could gather information and send out my own information would be too low and the demand on the main computer was too high to allow me to spend the needed time on it. But it also reenforced the sheltering bubble that living outside of Nakusp on a nice plot of land full of outdoor recreation options gives.

Though the reward for success in my job search will indeed be high, I find my self faced with the lack of a cost of failure. I was asked more then once why Nakusp, I did not have a solid logical answer, because I can, because its cheap, but realistically because there was no risk. Though moving to Nelson or Castlegar would have placed me in location both central to the region and to people in my life I choose instead the least risky path. Now this made sense when I was in the play phase right after I was let go and did not want to think seriously about life nor take action towards any goals but is it the right thing to do when I am looking for the next opportunity.

I have had a handful of small success in this search, one telephone interview, a handful of contacts, one or two notices that I am considered for a post but nothing that has moved me forward. As my frustration grew I started to look at other options and added plan B to my coarse of action. School, a return too. Right now I am aiming for a Geographic Information Systems Advanced Diploma, it should take a year, it could open things up and give me more access to jobs that let me have the work life balance I want. In considering what plans to follow I reached out and spoke to a career advisor from UBC-Okanagan, my old school, it was the morning prior to that conversation, in the act of preparing for that conversation that for the first time since October or even farther back, but certainly since the lay off that I stopped and thought and wrote about my options.


Stimulus response Stimulus Response, Don't You Ever Think

Up until that time it was all stimulus response, I had ignored my own desires and just jumped with little pattern from one dead end to another. Getting discouraged by the continued response of dropping resumes into the void. This is bringing me back to the question of Nakusp. and a few questions I have asked my self. Did I move to Nakusp so that if I the job search took too long I would not run out of money or did I stay in Nakusp so I could take my time with a job search? Or as I was thinking in the wee hours of the morning, am I just disorganized or am I shooting myself in the foot sub-consciencely. Perhaps both is the only fair answer.

More then once this month I have entertained the notion of packing a back and leaving town for an extended time. Time enough to land me a stop gap job and a stop gap place to live. I have not committed to that coarse of action. I think perhaps I should give it stronger consideration. I have had no risk and the results have been monumentally bland. There is the secondary reasons for leaving Nakusp, I can not predict what will happen when I live in a large town, but I know that the likely-hood of profitable chance encounters increases. Out here I am confined to creativity I can put in to search terms and the email addresses I can dig up, but how much am I missing. What could I come across in person. The answer is I don't know.

I do know that I have been told by professionals that my resume is fine, and that I have employable skills, some specialized some much more transferable, I also know that historically I have only gotten jobs, thought either, luck, having walked in the right door on the right day, or through connections having gotten contact information through colleges. My current methods nearly exclude that first path and the second path is hampered by the fact that the contacts I do have are in an industry that is suffering badly from the current economy. All of this leaves me unhappy and unfulfilled. I want the process over so I can start living again. Perhaps that is the appeal of school, I have more control over my success, I can get into a program and feel that something is happening. Now I have to ask what can I do before then to keep interested and busy.




Captain I am not a Merry Man.

We're back

At long last my computer is back up and running. After close to a month of its being either non operation or at a shop I as of 2 days ago I got it back. The keyboard is replaced and I have gotten rid of the crappy old mouse botten. To add to the replaced keyboard I replaced the nearly full 60 gig hard drive with a spacious 250 gig drive, at last room to extand. Now if only I had my camera back then I could start to flood it with new photos.

In other news, now that I have my computer back and a high speed internet connection I can start getting things moving forward seriously. Its time for my era of lessure to pass and for me to use the tools I have prepared for my self and get my self a interesting new job.

The Long weeks

Post 100

As of today I have less the two weeks remaining in this rotation up north. Because this rotation is the first full six week one since april. Between then and now I had a 4 week rotation and a 5 week one to fit in my three weeks of summer break. The pairing of shorter rotations with a longer break leaves me with a better perspective on the nature of the work rhythm. I have to say that from that sampling of different work cycles the 4 and 2 pattern is best for my sanity. However I have not been given that as long term choice nor have I yet attempted to demand that.

With a mind freshened by a long an satisfying break which marked the hight of my longest break i routine since landing up here May 26 2006, I feel it is time to go over just how time passes out here. Its tough to say if I should start my chronogy of my routine with the first week of my vacation or the first week of work. I will spilt the difference.



I have a two day commute to work. I make that commute northward once every two months. The first day of the commute is the hardest, it is that day that I have to leave behind what ever life I am leading at that moment and drag my self off to the Kelowna airport. That is the day where I occasionally flirt with the idea of not leaving my life behind for work. It is also the only day I that choice. That is a long day, usually a several hour drive from Nakusp to get me to town, the killing the day with some last minuet shopping. By the time I am at the airport I am tired, my meals were disjointed or poor, and I still have some time before my flight, which is usually at 8pm. Once I am on that plane I am set, there is no going back. I fly to Edmonton.



Edmonton, is the worst part of the trip, by the time I have my bags and find the shuttle bus I am happy to get into my room by 11:pm, and happy to be sleeping by 1am. The next day is a haze. I drag my self to the airport by way of the same shuttle and on autopilot to gate 49. Often stopping at the books store near the gate just in case I did not pick up enough books along the way. This flight takes me to Yellow Knife.

Once I am in YK, I am nearly at work, its a simple matter of finding my others of my cohort, and taking a cab to terminal for our chartered plane. Before lunch time that day I am back at work moved back into my room and wandering just what the fuck is going on.



The need to find out wtf is going on makes the first few days up here a string of Mondays. In this first week I am a mix of cheerful to be back with some people I call friends when they are not being in charge of me and irritation for being up here and leaving muck behind.

With in a day or two I am back in my core shack looking at rock, building up momentum, remembering the how to do my job and I will have caught up with the state of the program. So for the first week I get my footing.

The second week is easy, I will have regained my focus, what little my ADD addled brain has, and I will be in steady routine, rock in make notes rock out repeat. As week two draws to a close I start to see how long I will be away from my life and I start to become less happy.

Week three adds not only the element of how my thinking about how long I will be away form my life, but also I start thinking about how long I have already been away from it. This rotation week three saw the increase in distractions from my real work.

I am currently at the start of week four, with 13 days and some change still on the books, I start to look forward to leaving and things get a little easier. A little, for it is also at this time that the cost of the daily cycle of 10 hour work days non stop for weeks starts to catch up with me. I had planned to write this yesterday but I hit a wall, I had no brains left at the end of the day to write this with.

The trouble with being out here for six weeks is passing, a few nights short of sleep a long day, a day with too much labour and I find my self running dry. The last week to week and an half are a drain, I work because I have to, I am tired and have a harder and harder time putting full length productive days. It makes six weeks too long.

The last half week is spent coasting on the prospect of freedom and time off rather then any real energy. So by the time I am on my flight heading south to Calgary I can not help but sleep the whole flight. I spend the first few days of my break at once trying to catch up on my sleep and fighting the urge to be as busy as was at work. These goals are mutually exclusive. The result I wake up at 5am most days of my brake and talk my self back to sleep till 7am. Because I am still recovering my energy I take afternoon naps. Naturally by the time I have regained the ability to sleep in its time to go back to work.

Repeat as longs greed dominates over personal life and sanity.

Homeless: Discontent Part III

Homeless: Discontent Part III

I am homeless. Clearly I am not broken down living on the street. I could rent a place to live if I choose to. I have not made that choice in the last two years.
For two years less two months I have been working out here at Discovery in the North West Territory. I have been staying in a camp for six weeks at a time with two weeks off. Maintaining a place, through paying rent is clearly a waste of money. As a result I can not call any place mine. To fill the need of a place to be I have returned to a place that was always partly mine, I have started to say withe my parents during my time off something of a default.

So I returned to a default, one seldom used for the long term but, logical for now. The arrangement is economical for me, I pay in to the food bill, and once or twice my labour has been used as well. This set up is made favourable by the log cabin on the property. The old house, gives me the privacy I want with the added bonus of good acoustics and a wood stove. But it is not mine, it will never be mine. It will always be the families, there will always be a mix of stuff; Mine mixed in with the stuff left behind by the sister and the stuff that has always been there. It is also located near Nakusp a town that I can not call home even though I grew up there. I get cabin fever too quickly out there.

My Homeless state is something of a function of the taking this job and the time leading up to that choice. During the spring of 2006, I was finishing up my degree and having a rough time of it. My interest in schooling was waning again, I have a meta cycle in my life that brings me in and out of school periodically, but that is for its own post. Because of my fading interest in school my interest and efforts to apply to grad school were falling short. I had ordered up a few info packages and application forms but I had not really done the proper research needed to do that seriously. So I defaulted to taking the first good job that came along.

Taking this job has lead to a from of mental homelessness. When I did not pursue grad school and therefore did not get accepted I was left with no where to go. Grad school would have given me a place to live, because the school that would accept me would make its city my home. Choosing where to live for me. Instead my work makes it possible for me to live any where not too far from an airport. But my work also makes living any were seem pointless. As long as I am renting not buying and as long as I am out here for six weeks I have no solid motive to hunt for a place.

I have traveled too little even with in Canada to have enough of a base line to know which towns I want to live in. But I want to live some where I can call mine. I am too much of a homebody to want to live this disconnected life forever.

Right now I partly live out my car, keeping a chest of useful things in it for when I land. Its a good thing too, I always have a change of civilian cloths for when I come out of the bush. It lets me head of to visit friends with out hesitation, but my car is not home. It has helped me survey a few towns. I have taken a liking to Penticton, but I remain unconvinced of the long term appeal of that town.



Vancouver has many charms but I would not want to do it two weeks at a time I would want it full time or not at all. All in all I don't know where I want to live just yet. I suspect that when I get my ass in gear I will start to seriously apply to grad schools, I will eventually get accepted and that will bring my original plan to completion. Leaving me with a life style that lets me sleep in my own bed more nights then not.

Landing News

Landing News





Northern Lites has returned to its natural habitat, Discovery, the one time mine and its now burned down town site. I am behind with Northern Lites in Exile III, it is though post to fit together. So a short up date on being back in the north will fill in for it.

I miss the South. In the Okanagan 30 degree weather was enjoyed in the presences of mountains with real trees and nights with darkness. In the Kootenays I spent time living the slow life and afternoon naps. I did not full adjust to the heat or the short days. Failure to adapt to those features of climate and latitude is a sign latitude shock.




Jet lag is not an issue with where I fly to and from as there is only an hour difference between Yellow Knife and Kelowna, but there is latitude shock. Jet upsets the body by creating a large difference between the time your body things it is and what it is where you have ended up at the end of your trip. Jet lag has a strong association with travel from West to East or East to West flights.

Latitude shock is well more of a mental hick up, or feels that way to me at least. In traveling between 51N and 63N, I bearly move out of my native time zone but the dynamic geometry between the tilted Earth and the sun conspire to have its own effects. It comes down to the expectation of day length. The north swings between extremes and we are currently at the bright phase with the sun shining well past bed time and even thought I am too far south for true 24 hour day light it might as well be so for me as I do not see it rise or set. The south on the other hand, even though 51N still has strong variations during the year lacks the never ending brightness. As a result as I spend time off I am surprised to see the sun set and almost fail to plan for the idea of darkness.



Ironically my first latitude shock came from a visit to Hawaii. Though I understood that the tropics have nearly perfect 12 hour day night cycles all year long the application was still a shock. Hawaii has a beautiful tropical climate and to my Canadian mind warm temperatures come with long days. It really came home on our marathon hike in to the crater, we that is 9 of the 12 of us on that trip had added a new leg to the hike down into the crater. This was not planed for and brought the out bound leg of the hike to close to three hours. It was 2:30 by the time we were at the fumerals and looking through binoculars at the sky light on Pu o' o'. Leaving us with 3 hours to hike back with no twilight to stretch the evening, for not only does the tropical sun set quickly and early it darkens just as fast.

Back up north I had a fine and pleasant first full day back. I have returned to logging on the porch which today happened to be cold and windy with the days temp being close to 10 in the sun, it was a fine misery.

The Seasons of a Geologist

It is winter



It has been winter for a rather long time and will be winterish for some time more. Every thing is still white; the lakes are all covered in ice, with the occasional traffic. There is a lot of traffic in and out of camp as we host crews for the winter road and others. The newest development is the hauling of the 20 year old core form the neighboring camp of Nicolas Lake to here so it can be relogged and all sorts of other fun stuff. 900 down 3 or 4 thousand to go.



It is the core hauling that is the origin of this posting, the work it self is hard and dull, dig out boxes, label, wait for truck, warm up in truck and repeat. I had my camera with me that first day which I used to produce a self-portrait of a geologist in winter. Which is best compared with the other season out here Bugs, or as the optimist would have it summer.







The geologist of winter, note the thick beard, and emerging glacier from the sinus cavity. The ice extends much of the way up to the brain.







The geologist of the other time of year and the frequently found cloud of mosquito’s black flies and occasional orbit of horse flies. Missing from this photo is the less then frequent enough fighter escort of Dragonflies.



I will return with word on my adventures on night shift, and the joys of crushed rock