Boy, howdy! Look who finally made their way into the world of buuuuh-logging! I'm always a little behind the curve in matters of science and technology (math, politics, socio-economic issues, geo-physics, HDTV...), so this is just par for the course that I should make my debut 8 years too late. Maybe more. Whatever. I guess it only takes 3 months of solitary confinement in a cabin out in the thick woods of a witness protection area in buttf*ck Alaska to motivate me to commence the oversharing of my personal triumphs and defeats as I take this one-woman shit-show on the road to the only other state with enough room to handle it.
As a brief introductory obligation, I feel it is my duty to bring those of you who mustered enough energy to click the link and read this surly, literary turd (had a bad day, work has been a real whore lately, and I'm not going to lie when I say that I've made it to the 9th line of my 1st blog and I'm already 3/4 of the way through a large bottle of the goofy juice. Calculate THAT, EPA. Cocksuckers.)...
*blah, blah, blah, wherewasiwherewasi*
Oh, yes! Why am I even in Alaska and just what, exactly, am I doing. The abridged version goes a little something like-a-this: Summer of 2010 I said "ttyl" to gainful employment in Bozeman, MT, packed up my little man (The Chanch) and sauntered back into the belly of the beast, i.e. hello, Wyoming, and the attic of my dad's 100yr old ranch house. "The penthouse", if you will, and I say that in a very, very not-hot kind of way. There I spent the better part of the next 7 months bartending and being awesome (standard), and then for some reason decided I was sick of that, so I decided to start my little Biznass. For which I needed steady-er income..and more of it. Enter stage left, Arcadis! An environmental consulting firm that seemed so unassuming at the time but would prove to change my life (on what scale, the jury is still out). I started on as a project assistant (read: office bitch) doing odd jobs like moving tires and bags of cement around to the "right side...no, now move them to that side" of the warehouse and, true to form, quickly bulldozed my way into field work- archaeology and water sampling for various projects; mainly oil and gas companies. This brought me my first opportunity to visit Alaska, a water sampling project for a company looking to build a gas pipeline through a nature reserve. I jumped on it. Flew around in a helicopter, punched a couple holes in somebody else's chest waders (sorry!), saw some cool country, made some friends, and then back I went! All in a day's work, see ya never, Alaska!
Not so fast...
Great. So, I'm off to Alaska again. For what? Who knows. WHO CARES! I'm going to live in Alaska for 2 months and it's going to be fuckin' rad. Only after I had partied my way to my 6:30a.m. departure out of Logan Int'l in Billings, MT did it remotely cross my mind that maybe I should have put my pants on before I tried flying to the arctic circle by the seat of them...? No time for rational thoughts, I had to sober up to get through fun-hating TSA.
So, here I am. January 25th. Still...in...Alaska. Looking back at those times through my rose-colored glasses that Alaska has all but ripped from my face and stomped into a pile of pink shards while John Conlee croons softly in the distance...now a battle hardened Greenhouse Gas and Air Compliance Professional (whatever that means...) who puts on her sauciest lesbian lumberjack-meets lollapalooza circa 1996 outfit- 800 fill down parka, steel toe boots, and flannel lined carhartts- to trot down to the local gin palace to swill some brews and maybe catch a hockey game with all the "slopers" who work on "mashines"- and no, I won't go out "n a d8 w u". But I can't complain. i'm getting a completely, 105%, new and authentic experience that I tell myself few are priveleged to. It's goddamn gorgeous here, I can't swing a dead-bald eagle without hitting a moose, and I've met some stellar (colorful) individuals who are willing to bitch and drink with me when my job drives me into the arms of another bottle...
And I'd like to quasi-end on a sappy note (Whole bottle of wine, down the hatch. It happens.) by saying don't be afraid to say "fuck it, let's do this." because you don't know what you don't know until you put yourself out there. Some of my favorite people foster that mentality (Justin Vander Werff, honorable mention) and I just respect the shit out of somebody with that kind of chutzpah.
Tune in next time for "Eskimos love basketball and the day it was -27 degrees and my landlord let my propane run-out and then the house got kind of cold and my pipes froze and exploded"...
