Long Time No See

Not really going to fill you in, but have gone on many great adventures since the last time there was a post on here. Have been positioned on 4 different jobs and have finally settled in Port McNeill, BC until April 2014 when this hydro project will be over.

Brendan and I are very happy to be on the same project and on the same shift. No longer are we ships passing in the night; Copper our dog I think is liking the move because there is a lot more Green Space here.

He tends to find the most uncomfortable places to sleep, book shelves, coffee tables, fire places...

He has also found a new love for the water.

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"

Tragic News

There was a plane accident yesterday on the charter flight that we take to get to our work site eight people were on that plane including the pilot, seven people died and one managed to crawl out of the plane before it caught on fire. I knew one of the guys quite well, he was a very young and talented engineer who created 3D drawings of our work site and showed us how it was going to look afterwards. The pilot was the man who flew me in on my first flight very friendly and knowledgeable. I pray that their families can find some sort of peace and the others who were lost in this tragic incident. Here is a news article on the story:

http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/story.html?id=171bbaf0-97c6-49d1-a155-23c54756cf68

When things like this happen it really make you realize that you should take nothing for granted and always tell your friends and family how much they mean to you. As for me I know I have the best ones out there.
Miss & LOVE all you guys. Wish I could be surrounded by you now.

XOXO - Mol

I love the mountains...

Just another rough day at the office… So I haven’t posted in a while due to my very busy schedule up here. I start work at about 6:30am and if you start at 7:00am you are considered a slacker. I try to be done by 6:00pm so I can have some time to unwind. Even though I am very busy, I have loved my job I get to get out of the office everyday and play around in mud and water and do manual labor. Then in the office I do a lot of permitting making sure that we are compliant with the government and the Klahoose (The First Nations tribe out here). Which really hasn’t been that bad.

All the people here are quite nice, but I have never worked on a construction site before and the language is quite colorful. You also have quite an array of people here from kitchen staff to craftsmen, all the way up to your lead engineers and staff.

Right now I am counting down the days until I get to leave for my turn around 5.5 days and I will be out for ten days. Over my break I plan on going to opening day at Whistler (the ski mountain up here), opening day is on Thanksgiving so if anybody wants to come and join me feel free! Everybody up here will be working because they do not celebrate Thanksgiving the same time we do. Tricia and I plan on having an American Thanksgiving on that Saturday the 29th so that will be a lot of fun!

The Picture that is up top is a view that I have from one of the intakes, not too bad.

The one on the left here is of me so happy to see the snow! Behind me is a lot of water I am standing in the old river bed and we had to divert the river to construct the intake at the top of the river. Which we will eventually end up diverting back once the intake is finished being built.

Well that’s all I have time for now, until next time.

XOXO - Mol

New work Picture

I just wanted to post a new picture of me at work this was my first day on the job and me being the dork that I am had to make a comment on the soil horizon so they took my picture by it. Seriously though the "O" Horizon which is the organic matter is taller than me!

Just Your Average Commute to Work

This is a picture from taking off in Vancouver. This is the Goose that I took for about an hour up to the Toba Inlet.
So on the 30 km road up to "camp" there was a grizzley bear with its catch of the day a little seal.

So the first day on the job was pretty good, but really have not gotten into the job quite yet. I got a tour of one side of the project it is 60 km long, and tomorrow I will probably visit the other side and work in the office.

I will keep you guys updated.

The Road Trip

So technicaly I started on Friday from Lake Leelanau, MI and drove to Traverse to get my cast cut off. From there I drove to Lake Zurich, IL (Holly Revords's House) to celebrate Dona's Bachelorrette weekend in Chicago. It was a blast and I had a little too much fun.

After the weekend of fun I met my friend Jason Gamm in Milwaukee, WI for a little bite to eat, and moved on to The Twin Cities, MN to stay with Jess Johnson. I had a quick breakfast with Jess on Monday morning then drove all the way to Billings, MT. I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express because I had so many points with that hotel from my work before.

From Billings, MT I drove to Spokane, WA. I stopped there because I did not want to cross the Cascades at night. On Wednesday I only drove to Seattle, WA/ Mount Vernon, WA and stayed with a couple of Tech grads (Kate & Matt) I then left from Mount Vernon, WA to go to Vancouver, BC. Crossing the boarder was no big deal at all. I thought they would want to search my car or atleast look in it but they didn't. I did have to sit at the border for about 45 min to wait to get my work visa.

After getting into Vancouver I got to meat my boss at the main office and some other people around the office as well. I will be hanging out with Tricia this weekend, then I have my orientation on Monday morning and I will be meeting with my boss for lunch to talk about the job and what is expected of me. Tuesday morning I will fly out via float plane to my project. I will then be there for 20 days. I will try and update as much as possible when I am at camp.

If you want to see pictures from my road trip here is the link.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2057328&l=4c97a&id=6602306

The Career Move

I am moving to Vancouver, British Columbia on October 19th! I was offered a job that I could not refuse (the 2nd time) with the Kiewit Corporation. Don't fret, I will still be a US citizen, I won't give that up. :) I have a friend from Tech Tricia Curmi (Civil Eng.) who also works for the same company.

The project that I will be working on is a hydro project here is the link to where I will be living 20 days out of the month and flown in by float plane.

If interested...
This is the "Camp": http://www.plutonic.ca/i/pdf/transformations-issue-4.pdf
This is the Project: http://www.easttoba.ca/s/Home.asp
The Company: http://www.kiewit.com/