A collection of things on my mind, in no particular order

It's been a few weeks now and I've forgotten to blog. Apologies to anyone who may have been anxiously awaiting my next post... *cough*...

Let's see... what's new? I seem to be taking on a lot more work and responsibility at work, which I see as a positive thing. I think my original job description only really included a few things, but I quickly found out that these tasks only take a few hours in my day. It turns out I can be slightly more useful than anticipated.

The project in Fort Mac will likely continue into mid-November, and then I'll be reassessed. If they like my progress to date, they'll probably hire me full time. There have been hints already that this will be the case. Now I just have to decide what I want to do! I have a very vague idea about the sorts of things I'd like my next position to include.  Ideally, I'd like the following: to live at home (i.e. a project in the lower mainland), to work long days like I am now with lots of overtime, to learn more of the technical aspects of the project(s), to spend a few hours a day on site, and to work with awesome people like I am now.  Well that feels nice to put in writing.  I still have no idea what sort of position I might want though.

I'm on my time off right now. This weekend, Brandon and I went to Saltspring for a little overnighter trip, which was really nice. We spend time pedal-boating around, swimming, lounging on the rocks and hot-tubbing at night. It's sad to say, but I feel like that was my entire summer - wrapped up neatly in one weekend and bow-tied with a red ribbon. Perhaps I'll have to go somewhere hot and sunny this winter. People do that, right?

My last day-and-a-half off will be spent packing to move. When I get back, we'll be in our new apartment, just a few blocks down the road from where we are now. I can't remember whether or not I mentioned this in a previous blog post, but I'll say it now anyways. The apartment is perfect. It's on the ground floor of an apartment building in the Kits Beach area. It has a nice sliding-glass door that opens onto a little patio area, which will be perfect for Molly to come and go. It's a good sized one-bedroom apartment with lots of other young professional-type folks living in the building. You'll all have to come over for a house warming in September! I'll be back September 10th-ish to see it myself.

On another note, I saw aurora borealis for the first time a few weeks ago. I guess I forgot to mention it in my last blog. I was in town with a few coworkers, enjoying some bluegrass music, and there it was - a green, wavy streak across the sky. It looked like a green, wispy curtain blowing in the wind. Even with the city lights, it was bright and gorgeous. The one streak lasted about 30 seconds and there were other smaller ones that lasted a few minutes after that. I'm definitely looking forward to a whole lot more of that now that the nights are getting longer and the skies clearer.

Well, I better go pack up the old apartment and get going on my day if I want to get everything done. I've been told that I need to start packing warm clothes for this rotation. I shouldn't need snow pants or anything until after the middle of September, but I think some gloves and sweaters are in order.

Fuzzy bear bums and big machines



Bear eating clovers

 We have had a few bears around our work site and around our camp.  Here is a picture of a young black bear eating clovers.  I think that must be a particularly delicious patch of clovers because this bear is around the area all the time.  He's pretty cute and doesn't seem to be causing any trouble.  We had another bear on site today (maybe his mum?) who was much bigger and was getting in to all our garbage cans.  I think she (I'm only guessing that this bear was a she) has been around for a while because even though we didn't have any food in our garbage cans, she still recognized the cans and went rooting through.  I caught her this morning with her head and front paws buried in our recycling can, fuzzy round bum sticking out.  She's adorable.  She's been hanging around our site all day today, and she even left us a little "gift" (well it was rather large, actually) in our tool crib. 



Bucketwheel

 Yesterday we had the day off and a few of us decided to visit the Oil Sands Discovery Centre.  It's a sort of museum dedicated to the evolution of technology, as well as some more recent research topics in the oil sands industry. They've got some stuff for kids (training the little ones to one day become oil sands workers, I assume) and lots of stuff that's educational.  They also have an outdoor "garden" of some old equipment like this one you see above.  This is an old bucketwheel.  It basically rolls that wheel and scoops up dirt (or whatever you want it to scoop), then dumps it onto a conveyor belt which goes wherever you want it to go.  Bucketwheels are still used today, but today they are of course a more refined (less wooden) technology. 

 

Bucketwheel detail

 Here is a closer view of the bucketwheel from the other side.  You can see a bit of human scale here with a few of my coworkers (they're rock truck drivers, by the way).

I bought some terribly tacky souvenirs (tacky in the best way possible), such as a fleece vest with an embroidered Cat 797 truck on it, as well as some other things that will be gifts and will not be discussed here as to avoid ruining the surprise!


 

Me next to a Cat 797 tire

 If you're wondering what a Cat 797 is, I believe it's the biggest rock truck in the world.  It can hold up to about 400 tons and are seriously impressive machines.  Just to put that in perspective, the rock trucks we drive on site hold about 25-30 tons, though we've had as big as 40-ton trucks.  Here is an idea of what ours look like:



A Linkbelt 350 excavator and 25-ton rock truck