Field daze....

Okay, life is slowly starting to revert to normal. *dramatic exhale* Man, much as I’ve enjoyed all the jet-setting, I really am a homebody. A nice, quiet weekend at home with my lovely husband sounds just dreamy right now. (Huh? It’s only Tuesday? Aww, rats.)

As for field work, things are starting to slow down there. Only a couple more days of electrofishing left to do here in Cape Breton, which my aching bones are thankful for. It’s been really cool--one of the first projects I can really call my own, as I’m both managing it and doing most of the field work. However, carrying around the 35 pound backpack electrofishing unit is murder on the back muscles, and coworkers I have out with me are: 1. the pregnant gal who can’t fish for obvious reasons, and 2.the guy who complains of a bad back--he can do it for an hour, and then I have to wear the unit the rest of the day. Frankly, I think he’s a little bit of a whiner. Okay, I’m hard on him; he’s a sweet guy, but I’m tired and cranky and in pain these days, so I reserve the right to bitch, dammit. Anyway, I do enjoy the fact that I can out-muscle the boy by a long shot.

Oh, I managed to shock myself pretty good yesterday thanks to a little teensy leak in my waders. That was fun. Well, maybe not fun, but kind of funny! It’s set to stun fish, so it really doesn’t pack enough punch to seriously hurt a gal. Just enough to make her whole lower leg feel all tingly (ooh, I shuddered just thinking about it right now!).

So, yes. Field season is coming to a close, and I will soon be in my happy little cubicle working on reports. And then, after a couple of months of that, I’ll be bored and wishing it was field season. I like my job.

What the....I'm stressed?!! That almost never happens!

Argh, dammit, dammit, dammit!

I'm getting a free trip to St. John's, Newfoundland. Home of the famous George Street, with its fifty zillion bars open 'til the wee hours. It's where I went to grad school, and I still have lots of friends there. It's all paid for, because I'm needed to attend a meeting Thursday afternoon. Awesome, right? Right???

But no, no...it kind of sucks. I have two reports for work that are due this week. I have a field program starting tomorrow (more fish stuff, this time here in Cape Breton), which I was really looking forward to. In order to minimize the amount of time I need to get someone to sub in my field work for me, I will be shucking off my chest waders to leave here tomorrow at 6 (arriving at midnight in Newfoundland)....and returning Friday at 5:30 in the morning, to arrive back here at 8:30 to get back into my waders.

Why do I have to go there? Haven't these people ever heard of teleconferencing?!! Oh, and when did I find out about this little trip? Two o'clock this afternoon. Argh! No warning!

Ah, well. I'm sure it won't suck entirely, and maybe-just-maybe I can meet up with a buddy there (I just put out the word on good ol' Facebook that I'm heading that way). Hey, on the bright side, because it's so last-minute, everything in town is booked up except for a $250/night spot called the Ryan Mansion. Sweet, eh?! Hey, maybe I'll pull an all-nighter on George Street and go straight from there to the airport. I've done that before.

Of course, last time I did that, I wasn't expected to strap on an electrofishing unit and head in to a stream......huh, maybe I'll have to pass on George Street.

Rats.

Lost In The Barrens

OK, a little about my trip north. I was asked to go to with three of my co-workers from other offices to the remotest wilds of Labrador. Ever heard of Goose Bay? Labrador City? Yeah, it's...nowhere near those. Look up, look wayyy up...

The town of Schefferville is actually on the Quebec side of the border, though our work kind of skirted the two provinces. It's largely Innu and francophone, but luckily for me, most people spoke better English that I did French; one member of our group had pretty good French skills, too. There are no roads to the town, so we were brought there by a charter flight. We had so much gear, they had to take out a seat and one of us got to sit in the co-pilot chair. We all took turns--it was awesome!

We stayed in a rented house with a bunch of drillers and an intimidating French cook lady with crazy hair. We stayed up late on the night we arrived, talking and having a few beers....only to be sternly reprimanded by the cook and again by the site foreman the next day for "partying"! Yikes!! I think the cook held a grudge against us for the rest of our stay, because she seemed far less cranky toward the drillers....

So, the work part was great. We did a little bit of boating, a little bit of fishing...neat stuff. I lucked out and was working with a great bunch of guys. The rugged terrain was amazing, and there were blueberries, partridgeberries AND wild currants all in season--yummy. There was lots of great wildlife--spruce grouse, ptarmigan...we didn't see any caribou, but there were bears in the town dump, and we had an amazing look at a lone wolf.

At the insistence of our Innu guide, we made a point of going out to the Caribou Bar. We didn't take him up on all that he offered ("You like weet? Da bartender, he sell goot weet. I ulwayss buy weet from him. You should try it. Is goot weet."), although when the generous native dude was passing his around at the end of the night, well, who were we to say no? (man, I hadn't done that since university!) One painful side effect of being in such a remote area, though, is the prices are a leeetle inflated. Our first round--two double rye&gingers and a double Scotch for the lads, and a double G&T for me--came to "cinquant dollars." I was praying that my memories of high school french were wrong, and "cinquant" meant "fifteen" and not "fifty"...sadly, I was right. Ouch! We stuck with the $6 beer after that (ugh, and NO good beers. I was stuck drinking Blue.)

Anyway, that's enough chatter for now, I'll leave you with a photo of the town's most famous landmark: Iron Man. (sigh, I can only dream that RDJ is this well-hung....)

Ummm...hello, I guess....

Okay, let's see if I can get in to this whole blogging thing. I'm getting to know some of my online buddies so well that I'm starting to feel like I'm holding out on them. No promises that I'll be a terribly regular poster; it's one of those things I never thought I would bother with.

Then again, I also thought I'd never be the sort who would go to a gym, but I did that and found it surprisingly therapeutic, so who knows?

First off, a big ol' thank you to the folks who inspired me to start this crazy thing: my cousin Berna, who has been faithfully blogging about her family life for a while now, and my online buddies like Jeremy and Che Grovera, whose fantastically witty, wise, charming and poignant styles remind me that you don't have to be a professional writer to be damned fun to read.

Yeah, you guys rock!

Okay, just to set the stage and give you all a little context, let me introduce myself. I`m a born-and-raised country girl. Not in the sense that I grew up on a farm with my dear ol`grandpappy or anything like that; rather, I grew up in the `suburbs` of a village of 2500. Had no close neighbours, and my best friend lived 15 mins away by car. For the most part, I was a very quiet, shy and sheltered little girl...daughter of a hardcore Catholic who knows everyone in the comunity, so my chances for badassery were very limited.

Went away for university, where I was still pretty introverted, but enjoyed my freedom (thought I didn`t go too nuts with it). Started dating my now-husband within a week of starting university (he was a high school friend, so we had a little head start in that respect). Majored in biology, as I was always a nature geek and it came naturally. Went on to a masters, strictly because I didn`t know what to do after graduation except continue school. Loved my masters work, but came to the conclusion that I had too little curiosity and too much common sense to make it in academia.

So, upon graduating with an M. Sc. in the eminently unemployable field of seabird reproductive behaviour (i.e., I watched puffins do the nasty), I moved back to Cape Breton (this time to the more populous side of the island) and attempted to find work. Lucked out and found myself working for an environmental consulting firm, where I enjoy a lovely mix of indoor and outdoor work, occasionally sprinkled with a dose of travel for far-away jobs.

Okay, enough about me for now. I`ll be back when I come up with something interesting to say. At least, I hope it`s interesting...we`ll see, I guess.