New Title = New Responsibilities

The picture above is me on August 24th in front of the ice bridge at one of our intakes.

So I have now been “Environmental Manager” for over a month now and every day I tend to ask myself “what am I doing here?” Being environmental manager has its highs and lows; I really haven’t found the highs yet. I am supposed to be working a schedule of 10/4 which means 10 days on and 4 days off. This schedule would not be so bad if I was able to actually stick to it.

I came into camp on the 9th of September and have not left yet. It looks like I may have a window of opportunity to leave on October 8th, so I would be here for a total of 30 days. No big deal right? Well usually when I work 30 days I get 12 days off. But with my new job I only can be gone for 4 days at a time. Did I mention that I can’t leave during “sensitive works”? Definition of “sensitive works”: Any works that is done in or about water or has a negative impact to the environment. I don’t know if you knew or not but I am working on a hydro project and so we are usually always working next to water.

I am hoping that with these sacrifices that I am making for the company that it will be rewarded in the end. On a positive note this does mean that I will be banking a lot of days and maybe in the winter time I will be able to take a couple of extra days off. Or just at the end of the project I will be cut a fat check to pay off my banked days.

Now that the vent is over; don’t get me wrong I really like what I do I just wish I could have a little more of a work to life balance. I am hoping that we get another shutdown over Christmas so I can have 2-3 weeks off again; but there are rumors of only having 4 days off in which case I might question even coming home…

ONE YEAR DOWN, ONE TO GO!
Then who knows what? Yukon? Ontario? Michigan…

I think I might of found a new career, this is me welding (please note: my weld was better then the field engineer's weld).

Staying in Toba

So come to find out after bouncing back and forth between going to Alberta and not going; it looks like I am staying in Toba a little while longer with a raise and a new title I am now the Environmental Manager (quite the big deal). Work has been going really well although very busy and will be getting busier with the new title comes new responsibilities. I will no longer have a partner in crime and I will be all by myself a little nervous about that. I just found out recently that the general superintendent at my project is moving on to another project. I am a little upset with this because we have a good relationship and he always had my back on decisions that I would make. So might have a little bit of a challenge when it comes to working with the other superintendents now. Tim (the general superintendent) was one of the people that fought for me to stay in Toba too because he said I was an asset to this job, that they would be foolish to send me over to another job and now he is leaving :-/

As for my personal life, it is good one week a month (hahahaha) I will be heading to Michigan at the end of this month for my friend Holly’s wedding I am very excited about this! I will be a greeter in this wedding. She is having her wedding in Iron Mountain, MI (her home town) so I will be spending most of my time in the UP when I am home.

Hope this finds everybody in good spirits.

I'm a pretty big deal hip waiters and all, I even have signs for me. :)

Wow, so a lot has happened since I last posted on here. I think that I am just really bad at this stuff. It was a fantastic winter filled of snowboarding and hanging out with friends. This spring I went home for two weddings that I was in and they were a blast!

Work has been going really good I have been in helicopters and have been able to see some beautiful British Columbia weather. I just found out recently that I will be transferred to Kearl Lake; which is in northern Alberta working on an oil sands project. In some ways I feel like I am selling my soul to the devil by working on an oil project, but then somebody said to me I will be actually going up there for the right reasons by trying to make a cleaner project versus one of my engineering friends who is also very environmentally conscious who he would be going up there for pure production.

This project is a much larger construction site it is another camp job but has 3,000 people at it versus 300 that I am used to. There are a couple of different activities going on up at Kearl Lake, AB; earth works, river water intake, structures, and deep underground. Believe it or no I will be heading to the deep underground section. This move will be an excellent career move; both with Kiewit and for any future employment that I may have, but I think it might be a little hard on the soul. After going through so much with the people at this camp they become your very close knit family and now I have to leave them.

I am very excited for this new opportunity and I am ready for any challenges that may come from it. On the bright side; it brings me that much closer to the Midwest.

Yay I got my stuff

So I am just coming back from a very busy turn around. I received all of my stuff on the 4th of February and then I attended our district meeting which was the 4th-6th. The weekend was made for recovering and iceskating. On Wednesday I went up to Whistler to go snowboarding it was a lot of fun and I ran into some old Michigan Tech friends it was grand!

Now I am back at camp and working hard for the money, but still loving it!

Here is a parting shot for you to until I get motivated and post pictures. It is of Chris and I doing a spill response training.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

Terms I think of when it comes to moving.



So after making more phone calls to my moving company, I finaly got somewhere... My stuff is being picked up tomorrow from Traverse City, after sitting with that moving company since the 29th of December. If it is picked up in the morning and they start drving right away (which I doubt) The earliest it could be here would be Sunday :-P



But I did say good too... Because Kiewit has been in buisiness with United for so long (over 20 years) They have a killer contract with them and for every day you are passed your "window" (Jan 6-14) I get $125 (USD) so if it doesn't come for 4 days, I will get $500 not to shabby of a deal. Maybe this will pay for ticket for a trip somewhere :)



Anyways back to work I go just thought I would update you on the progress.



By the way my new address is:

467 E. 22nd

Vancouver, BC V5V 1T9

My digits are still the same: 517-420-2783

Work Number(Camp): 604-629-9080 ex.102

Email: mecypher@gmail.com

Back to Life Back to Reality...

I realize that it has been a long time since I have updated this page; bare with me. My average day at work is at least 12hrs long, usually the last thing that I want to do be on a computer, but I do understand that this might be some people’s only way of knowing what is going on in my life so I will do my best at least updating on the blog once per week. So here we go:
After the accident the moral was really low, but if you can find a silver lining in such a tragic incident; it would be that it did bring our worksite close together. All in all people seem to be getting a long although a day does not go by without thinking about it. I would also like to take the time to say “thank you” to all the kind words that I received from all my friends and family.
Work as a whole is going really well, I truly do like my job a lot. The people at the site are great and I am starting to make friends. Right now I am in a coffee shop down from my house in search of internet, no such luck so I decided to blog on MS Word instead and post it later. I am very anxious to get back to camp and fall into a routine again, so I can feel like I have a purpose in life once again; instead of being a slacker. As of today I have had three weeks off and I don’t go back until Thursday the 14th.
This was not by choice; I got a phone call yesterday saying that my spot on the plane to go up to camp was going to be taken by another person. This was in lew of all the snow that the Pacific Northwest got. Apparently there is four feet of snow at camp and we were not ready to handle that, so there is no work being done until we get people up there that can take care of the snow and my seat got given to one of those people. Yes this does mean that I get another week off, but now all of these days that I have had off have been coming out of my “banked” days. Banked are earned for every 5 days you work you earn 2 banked days. Now I am in the negative, so I have to earn all these days back :-P I am hoping to get a hold of my boss today and see if I can work out of the head office so I stop going into the negative (we’ll see). Or I might just say “F” it and try and enjoy the time I have off, even though I don’t have my stuff here from Michigan yet.
This is a whole new story in itself. My stuff that was in storage got picked up on the 29th of December and today is the 8th of January and it is still not here yet. Come to find out it has not even left Michigan yet, so I am not quite sure when it will get here. It’s a bummer because I can’t really “settle” into my house yet.

xo mol

p.s. I am going to a hockey game tonight on the company's tab, oh some times it is nice working for "the man"