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Yes, I know. I have not been posting very much lately. I guess I just have not really felt like it. I had to reinstall Windows on my laptop and I have been busy getting things sorted back out. So my huge hour or so of free time a night gets eaten up pretty quick.

Anyway they gave everyone at the job ipod nano's yesterday for breaking the 20,000,000 man hour mark. I would assume it is quite an expense to hand out 11,000 engraved ipods. I was a little shocked as I had no idea that they were doing it because PCL just gave out Sony mp3 players last week. And I hear that there is another safety award that we will be getting next week. Crazy isn't it? I still find this place a little unreal. It is hard to absorb the scope of it all here. And this is only one of many jobs like it going on around here.

I should be back in Ontario soon for a short 1 week visit. So if anyone wants to get together they should get a hold of me soon!

grrr

I am desperately trying to get to town this weekend. I have three days off, and I wanted to get a few things. The opportunity to get into town seems to be few and far between so to speak. As time passes I find myself needing a few more things and I have been patiently waiting on the opportunity to go, but I keep working. Now that I am off I am chomping at the bit to get going. I do not know if PCL has recreation buses scheduled for today or not. So I could sit here all day trying to figure a way to get to town. I do not wish to take a cab as it is over $100. I never thought I would be anxious to go into that shithole of a town, but it is the only civilization around. And there is nowhere else to do any shopping.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

For the life of me I still cannot get over the amount of money in this province. Suncor, one of the big players here is spending $160,000,000 building the camp to house the men in for its next big project 'Voyageur'. On top of that they are spending almost a billion dollars upgrading the highway and building an interchange in front of their plant to cut down on the fatal accidents. They will be handing this over to the province when they are done. Alberta just seems to be oozing at the seems with cash.

I thought that I would be off last weekend, but they asked me to work it. Now I will be off this weekend because I will have worked 18 days straight and that is all PCL will let you work on this job. But I am here to pick up that oozing cash, so I am okay with it all.

I heard today that PCL picked up the second phase of the project, so now they are scrambling trying to get more men. There was talk of layoffs starting in June, but now they are hiring again. Go figure.

To bike or not to bike?

I almost have myself convinced to go to town this weekend and buy a bicycle. Canadian Tire has a cheap one that will do the job for all I need around here. There are so many things that we drive by on the way to work that I would love to go and check out. But walking is a little to far, and buying or renting a car is a little too expensive. I would say that buying a bicycle is just right. The one thing that I would really like to go and get pictures of is the MacKay river. We pass over it daily. It is down in a fairly deep gorge that you can walk down. Hopefully if I go to town on Saturday, then I will ride out to the river on Sunday and take some pictures.

Update

I am getting fairly tired this week. It has been quite busy on site as they are scrambling to get things ready for the big commissioning. I can't complain though, the overtime is why I am here. I am sure that I will end up with a weekend off for rest.

I have purchased a new phone for myself out here. I figured that I should get an Alberta number if I plan on working out here for a while. It is hard to make contacts if your number is long distance and you never really know what camp you will be in. So in short I officially have an Alberta number and am settling in to the idea of making this province a temporary home. The phone is through a newer company called Koodo. They actually have a really good plan with decent rates and no bullshit.

Almost forgot

I almost forgot to mention how warm it was here today. So I thought a picture says a thousand words. This is for all you back home who were bragging about there warm weather last week!

Overtime

It seems lately as though the overtime is starting to slow down a bit on this job. But that is not preventing me from working this weekend. I found out today that I would be working. This will generate a cheque that we call a 'ringer'. I will earn 75 hours pay in four days, plus my regular 30 hours for the other three days. So my cheque will be worth 105 hours of pay. Of course this is only because of the holiday Monday, which is doubletime, so I will get three doubletime days in a row. It is a little bit crazy to think about the numbers, but that is what I came out here for is money.

So in short there will probably be no hiking this weekend. Therefore I will be getting a little short on pictures. Maybe next weekend.