The Goldfish's Logbook

It’s been awhile since my last update. Not much has been going on, but here’s a ( quick re-cap )

That brings us up to this week. Mmmm, kinda grumpy ATM, mostly due to work. I’ve just gotten to the point again where I’m fed up with it. Between working these out-of-town jobs, spending my free weekends in Dallas with Courtney, and a few rare days at home in Austin, I’m starting to really feel like none of those places are home. I simply don’t have the patience for this routine anymore. I haven’t made much/any progress on my job change; I’m rather stumped on what I might want to do besides this. I was going to go see a career counselor this weekend, but I’m stuck in Wichita Falls once again. I’ll be going soon.
Hobby-wise, I’ve been very irresponsible about cosplay since A-kon. I was making some serious progress right up to the con but in the month since then I’ve been dragging ass. It’s hard to buckle down and focus when I keep bouncing from place to place. (Or maybe that’s just an excuse.) In any case, I’m ordering myself to get back to work. Tokyo in Tulsa is just a week away and I can finish if I get serious about it. While I may or may not be able to attend due to my fickle work schedule, I’m going to work as if I CAN GO, until I know that I can’t. Even if I can’t go, at least my costumes will be that much more ready for Dragon*Con, which is for damned sure going to happen.
I feel like I’ve been missing out on friendships and other social fun due to my work commitments and personal choices of how I spend my time. That’s why I’m so intent on attending things like TnT and San Japan, conventions that I otherwise wouldn’t be concerned with. They’re rare opportunities of quality time with my peoples.

So, we’ll see how things go . . .

Ooo, it’s been a totally unplanned (but fun) weekend so far. It all started once upon a time . . . *cue twinkly SFX and wavy blur*
I needed to go back to Wichita Falls to do some reconnaissance for work. Overall it meant I’d be doing 12 hours of driving and 2 hours of hiking. That would’ve added up to one very long workday so I planned instead to drive partway there on Thursday, spend the night at my brother’s in Carrollton, and then knock out the rest of the job Friday so I could get back to Austin at a decent hour. Easy peasy, right?
It didn’t quite work out that way. On the drive up, I started seeing snow about Hillsboro and thought, "Is this what everyone is complaining about? This is nothing! There isn’t even enough ice to make a dirt raspa. These people are babies!" Then I hit the Dallas city limits and boom! Ice on the highway. My windshield soon got covered with mud and slush and of course I had no washer fluid to clear it away with. So I was driving blind, on ice, through the Dallas MixMaster. That was not fun. But I called upon all my training from Canada and amazing driving reflexes from my pizza delivery days and my knowledge of physics, biology, and engineering and I triumphed.
By the time I got to Cameron’s place I’d decided I wasn’t doing any more driving. I’d gotten in, but I wouldn’t be getting out. He and his wife had been home-bound for four days and in pajamas for nearly as long. (At least the cold kept the smell down.) I hadn’t brought any supplies with me so the big question was what to do for food?
Somehow or another we managed to make plans to go get dinner with Cat & Kevin. They were even worse off than us. Their apartment gate was literally frozen solid so they could only eat within walking distance of their apartment. At least we could drive, albeit very slowly. I wasn’t too sure how this would turn out, I’ve never mixed my family with cosplay friends before. But it turns out that nerds are nerds are nerds, just in different flavors. LOLcats was the perfect universally understood ice-breaker. I felt it was a fun dinner.
Overnight we got about 4 inches of new snow. It was pretty, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to try driving in it. Work would have to wait till the thaw. Katherine was actually "work" working from home so Cameron and I went outside to play around for awhile and buried her car in snow. Then we got bored enough to risk a drive to the supermarket for booze and steak. It was fun to watch people slipping and falling on their asses in the parking lot. Back at the apartment, we set up a little man camp on the balcony, set the beers in the snow, barbecued our meat, and had some quality bro time.
After steak and beers I exercised some poor judgment. I decided I’d accept Stephanie’s invitation to meet for drinks. Slightly tipsy + driving at night + on ice + in a COMPANY vehicle + with bad tires = not very smart. I fishtailed once and that sobered me up INSTANTLY. But even with my recovered stats, it was still a suck-ass drive. 80 minutes to drive 30 miles. Ridiculous. But I would not admit defeat!
Our mutual cosplay friends didn’t show, just a few of Stephanie’s law school buds. There was me, Steph, Lorraine/Lauren?, Amy, and Amy’s cleavage. I only mention the fifth guest because the groundhog had seen his shadow, meaning that there would be six more weeks of turtlenecks. So this unexpected, but welcome glimpse of bosom was telling me, "Yes Cody, Spring WILL come. Keep the faith!" "Okay boobs, I’ll stay strong." MMmmm, boobs . . .
The girls were cool. I learned a lot about Law, mostly that 1) I could never hack it in the law profession, and 2) I need to watch more Law & Order marathons if I’m going to go drinking with them again. Nah, we talked about all sorts of crap. Stephanie had kept her cosplay past a secret from them so when they asked how we knew each other, I had to make up some story about our days at the Austin soup kitchen. I thought it was a good story.
I was surprised that one of them actually knew what a civil engineer was. In my 6 years of being one, I’ve NEVER met a non-engineer who knew that. Furthermore, she was quite familiar with the client I was working for this very weekend. I was like, “Shit, you know my job better than me. Who are you?” Cool gals, we had fun. Next thing I knew it was one a.m. and time to depart. It was definitely worth the hassle of the being an ice-road trucker.
I slept in this morning, giving the sun plenty of time to melt the snow and clear the roads. I went up to the job site and slopped around in the meltwater mud for a couple hours then turned around and headed back to Austin. As I drove south, the snow disappeared from the landscape bit by bit until there wasn’t a speck of white to be seen. As if the snow and ice had just been an unpleasant dream. That was fine by me. I’d had my fill of the stuff.

I’ve been meaning to write an LJ entry all week but every evening when I get in, I’m too tired to care. I’ve got a fistful of half-formed entries and I figure if I roll them all up together like gum taken from underneath many tables, they’ll form one awesome, delicious gumball. Dare you try it?

Do vegetarians even have friends? (TMI?)
This is a little town we’re working in. Five “restaurants” total and one grocery store. It’s hard to eat well here. I can’t even shop at the grocery store because the town’s high school students work there and they won’t let you take your own bags to your car, they carry it for you and expect a tip. The first time I went there I was all, “Wait, you mean this cute high school girl is going to follow me back to my truck in the middle of a dark parking lot so she can make an easy few bucks? . . . Is this some kind of trap? Am I on hidden camera?” But I digress. As I was saying, it’s hard to eat properly. Breakfast = gas station breakfast tacos and Lunch is brown bag; no time to drive back into town for fast food. Trying to eat responsibly, I’ve been bringing tons of dried fruits and granola bars and eating that for lunch. I’ve never eaten nothing but fruit for an entire day. By the afternoon I’m Jupiter, the gas giant. I cannot stop breaking wind. Thank goodness we’re out in the middle of nowhere and I stay downwind of the drillers. But man I felt like I was gonna explode, that first day of the extra-fruity diet. If this is what you girls mean when you say you feel ‘bloated,’ I think I’m beginning to understand. I just wanted someone to stab me so I could deflate. How do vegetarians do this? If mega-gas and quintupled bowel movements are the price to pay for a healthier and longer lifestyle, I think I’ll remain a carnivore.

Waiting for the drillers to show up
Sure, it was fun playing on a swingset for the first time in years, but the abandoned elementary school (off-camera) was a bit depressing.

The episode where Cody remembers he likes dogs
Today while we were working, three dogs came out of nowhere and joined our crew. No barking or running around to herald their arrival; they just appeared. It was a bit scary, having a pack of dogs appear out of nowhere like that. Andrew was especially startled, but that may have been because this one was SO white.
The dogs seemed quite interested in what we were doing and who we were. They seemed to be saying, “Hey, we just met, but let’s be friends!” Joe the driller grumbled half-heartedly about them being in the way, but within a few minutes he’d given his lunch to the dogs. That might’ve been a bad idea because now they didn’t seem in any hurry to leave. They lounged around like this was their place, not at all noticing that we were trying to work. (Get out of my truck! You can't have my Lunchables!)
That’s when it hit me; Dogs are so much awesomer than cats. Whereas these random dogs had instantly given us their friendship without any prompting or coaxing, I cannot imagine a cat warming up to a human so readily. Cats are so temperamental and inscrutable, kinda like women. You never know what they’re thinking. But these dogs obviously wanted to be our buddies.
After an hour or so they moved on and I was a little sad to see them go. Adios boys. Have a fun adventure out there!

Adventure time gender swap
When I wore Finn at Ikki-con, Beauty didn’t know what it was. She looked some images up online and asked me if this was what I was cosplaying. No! That’s not Adventure Time! But then I started investigating and found out that Fiona and Cake are fan-art drawn by one of the series’ artists, so they’re legitimate characters, TECHNICALLY. Her mirror-universe is pretty cool, the more I look into it. And then I found out today that these spin-off characters are so popular that they’re actually gonna get their own episode sometime in the near future. Weird, huh? And I also found out that Thurop (the creator of Flapjack) is a writer on AT. Now I don’t feel like watching AT is such a betrayal of my Flapjack fandom. Phew! What a relief.
I didn’t really have a significant reason to write about Adventure Time. I’ve just been cruising the fan sites this evening so I had in on my mind I guess. Here, have a Fiona comic!

According to what I've heard, today is the closest thing Canada has to an Independence Day. I think it's called Canada Day (I don't know for sure, I'm trying to keep my Canadian trivia knowledge to a minimum). So our field bosses decided that it would be a good morale boost to celebrate with a lunchtime barbecue for all our guys. Of course that required a good bit of organizing, such as a four hour drive to town to get groceries (pretty much one supervisor paid for it all out of his own pocket), then filing for a permit to have an open flame outdoors, and requesting supervision from the environmental office in case a bear shows up for the picnic.
When I heard about this, my first question was, "Are Americans invited?" The answer, yes. My hopes rose and my next question was, "What about nightshift?" The answer was, "We'll save a lot of food for you." Awesome! This was very good news.
I don't think I've talked too much about the camp food up here, so I'll digress for a bit. For camp food standards, it's pretty good. But the menu is small and repeats often and I've been eating it for 4 months now. Therefore I have it memorized. The taste of this camp food is burned in my brain. Even when I'm on break back in Austin, I can still taste the food. Next time you see me, quiz me on any food item. I can describe it in excruciating detail. To put it simply, I'm so tired of the camp food that I skip meals rather than eat the same stuff over and over again.
So when I heard about this barbecue, I was excited. Even if it's just mediocre hamburgers and hot dogs, I'll still be happy. Just so long as it's not camp food. I even mentioned this aloud as me and the nightshift were driving back to camp this morning. "Is it sad that I'm really excited about this barbecue?" Yes, came the answer, amidst the laughter. But I'm sure they were looking forward to it too.

As soon as I got into the office today, I sniffed around, hunting for the aroma of brisket or sloppy joes or chicken, even. I asked the first engineer I saw how the barbecue went. He said it had been a success. An early morning thunderstorm had shut down work just about noon, which allowed all of the technicians to come into the office just in time for the barbecue. They'd grilled burgers and hot dogs and had all the fixings, with potato salad and coleslaw and cake and soda.
Then he told me about the thieves. Our engineers had set aside a big portion of everything for us in the office fridge. Sometime during the afternoon, other people in the trailer raided the fridge and ate almost everything. By the time our guys figured out what was happening, only two burgers and three hot dogs were left. The surviving food went into 24-hour lock-down.
My boss told me to distribute the food among the field guys. No barbecue for us office personnel.

D:

Well, there is a bucket of coleslaw left.

X[

Yesterday was hectic. My brother had come into town Friday, leaving Dallas immediately after his last final. We hung out for awhile at my place before meeting up with my sister and her guy to go watch the new Robin Hood movie at the Drafthouse. Even with the aid of the bucket of beer I was pretty underwhelmed by the movie. I kept waiting, wondering, "When is he going to start stealing from the rich and giving to the poor?" I did like the whole 'stolen identity' idea, but that was the only aspect that caught my interest. I guess I still prefer the Bryan Adams/Kevin Costner version. After the movie we tried to find Robin Hood: Men in Tights for rent, but had no success. Both my brother and sister say I've lost weight (not a compliment I was fishing for, but appreciated all the same); according to my sister I'm "less puffy than normal." Ha ha ha.
My brother and I spent most of Saturday waiting for my mom to show up. We farted around at Best Buy, Dragon's Lair, GameStop, and we were just about to go to that steampunk event (Green Steam Circus) when we finally received word from my mom that she was in Austin. By then it was 4 pm.
I'd assumed that the whole reason for her drive up was to make some serious plans with us and essentially begin to circle the wagons, just in case things took a turn for the worst. But it was just like any other time she visits; no real agenda other than to sit around and talk and eat. Took them to EZ's and Amy's for fun Austin-ish foods and then we went to go see Iron Man 2. I was only half present, mostly I was thinking of all the packing and reservations and other crap I had to do. And yeah, I was also selfishly thinking of all the other ways I'd like to be spending my last evening in town. I guess it was good to see everyone, but the poor timing just kept me from relaxing and enjoying their company.
Everyone finally left around midnight, giving me just four hours to pack and prepare before my airport shuttle arrived. And boy, it took every minute to get it all done. But I did pilfer a few moments for me and my brother to crack open the fancy Canadian whiskie I'd bought on my flight down. And I even swung by Jenny's and Beauty's to drop some stuff off and to receive my hamster war-name.

Today finds me once again in Calgary, en-route to the work camp. Just before I'd left my boss had told me that when I came back, I'd be a supervisor rather than a field engineer. Technically that's a step up the food chain, but in reality it just adds the stress of being middle management for the same pay of the field hands. I've often voiced in this journal my reluctance to accept greater engineering responsibilities. I'm not a really confident guy, nor am I enough of a hard-ass to wrangle these young punks they've contracted to do the work. So . . . . it's probably going to be a bit rough, at least at the start. *shrug* I don't know.
Either way, here I go again!

The puddle-jumper plane left Calgary, bounced through Edmonton, and then took us north of the Fort. As we flew further and further north, the landscape turned from brown ( Calgary ) and became whiter and whiter ( Edmonton ). We landed at an airstrip with a small trailer as the 'terminal'. I got the feeling I was the only newbie in the group, so I just followed the group as it made a beeline for the bus waiting near the edge of the tarmac. But a nagging voice in my head asked, "But . . . what about our luggage?"
It was a forty-minute drive down a long dirt road. Our bus and all the vehicles I saw were all covered in the same brown mud we were driving over. I was kinda disappointed by the scenery. I guess I'd been expecting lush, green wilderness like what I'd seen in "The Journey of Natty Gann" (oddly, that's the first Canadian-ish movie that first came to mind, either that or the Homeward Bound with the talking pets, but I don't know where that was filmed). Anyways, everything was brown and dead. Even though everything's blooming back in Austin, it's still winter here. I was sort of pleased to see that I'm back in the land of my favorite tree, but for now the aspens are just white tree trunks. Hopefully things will green up around here soon.
We arrived at the lodge and when I saw it I thought I'd been duped once again by the project manager. Back in Austin, I didn't really know what to expect to find up here. Would the accommodations be a dormitory, a work camp (as in cabins), or tents, or what? He told me that it was like an extended stay hotel. I found that hard to believe as there was no city or even permanent road on the map I'd been looking at. When the bus pulled up at the 'lodge', I was reminded of that documentary I'd seen about the Antarctic science station, which is pretty much made entirely out of cargo containers. Great. It looked like this was going to be a barracks-style camp, complete with bunkbeds and communal showers.
Although the exterior looked spartan, the inside could've been a hotel. Front desk, a store, gym, cafeteria, even a bar; it was decked out. There were tons of people hanging out, the atmosphere vaguely reminded me of a college dorm, except that everyone here was an adult. And it was a mix unlike any I'd seen on any job in five years. Men, women (OMG), young and old. Wow.
I got signed in and went to my room. It was cozy, but well-appointed. A room all to myself with a leather recliner, flat-screen, and fridge? And totally free? This sure beat the hell out of the primitive camp I'd been fearing. It was obvious that a lot of money had gone into this facility. Once I got settled in I called my contact. He was out in the field so he told me to just get dinner and relax and he'd see me in the morning.
I hadn't eaten before the flight because I didn't want a repeat of last time so I was famished at this point. That cafeteria was AWESOME! Friggin' prime rib and shrimp for dinner! I skipped the shrimp, considering I'm 500-some miles from sea, but otherwise I totally stuffed myself. Free, GOOD food? Man, it's going to take some real willpower to not turn into a total butterball while I'm here. I guess I'll be stopping by the gym in the evenings. This is a dry camp, so there ain't much else to do in the evenings. Might as well work out, eh?
After stuffing myself, I lugged myself up to my room and flopped into bed. I gotta say, I think I might enjoy my time up here.

Yesterday I hung out with my brother and sister. I took them to the conveyor-belt sushi place on Airport to (mildly) dazzle them. But we got there at 3 in the afternoon and we were the only ones there so the sushi had been doing quite a few laps by that time. Room temperature maki? Bleh. They still enjoyed it though. After that we went to go see "Shutter Island," which turned out to be much better than I expected (I had my doubts since Leonardo DiCaprio was in it). The first half of the movie I was thinking, "This is how the Silent Hill movie should've been. All it needs is fog!" The second half I was thinking, "This is Memento! We're going down the rabbit hole!" Yup, I was quite pleased with it.
After the movie was dinner, then idle chatting time. Everyone headed out at the end of the night.
Oh yeah, I managed to get a comparable laptop yesterday morning. I sprung for one about $100 more than my target, because I impulsively decided I wanted one with webcam capabilities. (Maybe I want to be a camwhore too!) I've been transferring my big computer onto the satellite laptop; it's been taking hours. And that's not even including the mega-database of porn. I'll be leaving most of that behind, I ain't got the patience to do all that downloading. Ha ha ha. Just the basics: anime, music, and cosplay stuff.
( random tangent )
Today I've got to do tons of laundry and pack. Right now I'm pretty hungry but I've successfully emptied my pantry, so I don't have anything to eat here. I guess I've got to go eat take-out. Bleh. I'm kinda tired of that stuff. But I need fuel to get everything ready TODAY!