Lands Far Far Away: Where to begin?

It has been a very busy week filled with ups and downs. On one hand, the camp that I was transferred to was "to little - to late" and I could not save the contract. On the other hand, my efforts were acknowledged and I am well liked by the customer, they relayed this to my bosses. Also, my birthday was yesterday, the operators and engineers took me out to a local restaurant and we had a great time. I have been moved to a new project working for a major and the camp is very nice. The rooms are big, and there is a shared bathroom between two. The only downside is that the food is just ok - it makes you say meh.

When I got transferred to the 2nd camp to try and save our work from an angry customer I had a meeting with many people in charge. I guess that they have been yelling and screaming for 2 weeks and no one had listened until I got there, and the phrase hell hath no fury can apply to customers too as well as women. =) The work that I had done at the camp over the next 5 days was making a big difference. The geologist and superintendent were happy with our company again and they say things were making a "complete 180." When our salesman came to meet with them, they told him this and he gave me high praise. However, one day I was out on a job and had just finished when another engineer had called me and asked if I had heard the new??? He told me that we were to gather all of our things and get out of camp, our biggest competitor was was there to take the work. Come to find out, the customer had this up there sleeves for days and never told anyone. So we left and met at a big superstore in the big city close by, from there we regrouped and some people went back to Edmonton and others moved to another camp - I was one of the lucky people that got to move to the new camp.

We had to drive on a highway locally named "the highway of death" which 19 people so far this year have died on. In our field the most dangerous thing that we do is drive and when you through fatigue, road conditions, distractions, and other influences into the scenario its like a ticking time bomb. This road is very similar to a road back in California called highway 46. It is a two lane (one in each direction) highway that often has the shoulders filled with snow so there is no escaping a stupid driver. On top of that, this time of year when things continually get warm then cold makes the roads icy. Long story short, I never drive I know I would be incompetent and I have great operators so there is nothing to fear.

We arrived at our camp at 8 that night and I got my room. I familiar Scottish face was there, a guy that I had been to training school with. When I opened my door I was shocked! The rooms were HUGE and luxurious in comparison to the first two camps that I had been to. Also there was flat screen TVs and a big desk that I can put all my paperwork, personal and work computers, and more! Also there is a common bathroom that I have to share with a chic - there is of course a locking door in the bathroom. (See photos) Its nice because everything always smells good, but makes me really self conscious when I have to do my business. =)

So far I have been on two jobs at this camp. They come about every other day - and since I did one yesterday there shouldn't be another job until tomorrow - SCORE! The tools that they run up here are specialty tools and will be good to get more experience running them for the future. Also the files that you have to generate after the job are ridiculous! There is about an hour or two worth of work to do it after the job.

A recent jewel that we found in the city (even better than the casino!) close to our project is a gym! No ordinary gym at all. This gym has a water park with slides, three pools, a large workout area, 5 curling courts (yes they really do that up here I guess), a hockey rink, a 3 basketball courts, 4 racquetball courts, and a food court!!! It is like a small city. I have attached pictures but I dont feel like they do it justice, its HUGE! We went on Friday of last week and became members for a month. When the receptionist handed us the papers to fill out I looked through, it wanted to know if you were registering as a single, couple, married, etc. I turned to my buddy and asked, hey how much do you think we could save if we said we were a couple. Before we said another word he said, does my partner have to fill one of these out also? HAHA - so according to the gym I am a gay man - it saved us 5 bucks. LOL

Yesterday it snowed 14 inches in 4 hours! Thats crazy!

My birthday was really fun last night, we went to restaurant about 20 minutes away from our camp. They had a half rack of ribs for $3.50! So of course I got 2 racks for 14 bucks! I was a pure carnivore - no sides needed. They also had drinks so we found comfortable chairs and all played cards. Unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures last night, partly for plausible deniability

That's about all that has happened the last 10 days or so, I will try to be better about this now that things have calmed down.