Bruce the Great Had His First Battle

Good morning to you from sunny Telkwa.

This past week saw Bruce battling it out with a can of bear spray.  You read that correctly.  He snuck out on Wednesday night and was found later in the neighbors' backyard, in the rain, soaking, covered in bear spray, and was unrecognizable!  I didn't even know it was him.  The poor thing.

He got back into the house finally and couldn't open his eyes.  I thought he smelt funny and hadn't yet clued into the bear spray.  I started coughing out of control and then my eye started burning.  When I went to rinse my eye at the sink, some of the water ran down my face and onto my lips and then that whole path was BURNING!  That's when I realized what was covering the little guy.  Bear spray is oil based, so even if you try to rinse with water, it can actually just spread the nasty stuff!

Tom was away at camp and I had come home late from two days at camp, myself.  I was so tired and so upset.  Odin didn't know what to do and just followed Bruce and I around.  I bathed Bruce in Dawn and water (#1 recommendation according to Google) and tried drying him off as best as I could.  But both of us were coughing from the fumes and both had tearing, closed eyes.  It was horrible.

After talking to my dad last night, we decided to believe that Bruce was in a fight with a dog or coyote and it looked like he was going to be eaten, so someone sprayed them to break up the fight.  He has cuts all over this face. Bruce loves other cats and has never tried to hurt them.  But he hates dogs with a passion and has gone after them in the past.  So the story seems pretty likely.  Otherwise there is some low-life on my street who dislikes cats so much that they spray them with a deterrent made for 600lb animals.

Sigh.  So that was pretty much the excitement from last week.  Thankfully other than that we are all doing fine here in Telkwa.  Spring keeps trying to come around but we get little snowfalls every once in awhile.  The daytime highs have been around 6, with sun : )

I've given up on ski season coming back, so I'm ready for spring.

Last week, as I mentioned, I was in camp for two days (one night) where I got to see Tom and his crew! It was great to have a mid-week check in with Tom.  I was so tired after that, though.  The snow had turned to heavy, wet mush and my back was SO SORE by the end of the day.  Even my knees hurt - which has never happened before!  The snow just sticks to the snowshoes in huge clumps and gets so heavy.  So I made sure to ice and stretch and do some physio.  And now things seem to be back to normal.  Except for a pesky neck problem that won't seem to go away... I'm getting old haha

Snowshoe hare prints... and some snowshoes!

I'm heading back to camp this Wednesday-Thursday so hopefully the snow isn't as bad.... although it just seems to be getting warmer.  At least I'll be at camp for steak night on Wednesday night! Bonus.

After next week, all of the logging and hauling shuts down for "breakup".  The ground will be getting too soft and muddy and driving machines in that can really wreck the ecosystem (and leads to machines getting stuck).  Breakup can last around a month.

So during that time, camp and the barge to camp will be shut down -- meaning Tom will be at home!! hooray!!!  He will be working out of town and coming home every night.  PLUS Jill said she will probably send me out with his crew to work!  So we get to work together!  I can't wait.

One of Tom's views last week.

My sweater is coming along slowly still and I'm crossing my fingers that I'm following the pattern correctly... Oh dear.  In the meantime I finished a pair of socks for myself, and got some cool yarn to make Tom another pair.  I bought a book on yarn dying and can't wait to try my hand at it once the weather gets warm and I can do it in the backyard.  Still trying to figure out how to heat a pot outside... any ideas are welcome! I have a tiny camping element but would have to go through a lot of gas to boil a big pot, I think.

Things at work are still going well.  But still a little strange to think that I have more qualifications than the guy who supervises me (in my old position).  I try to remind myself that the pay is better than it was back home, I know what I'm doing, and I don't have responsibility for anyone but myself, which is a nice change from supervising others.  The new guy is pretty anal and can be a bit obsessively by the book.  I just try to do my own thing and keep everyone happy (recipe for disaster, I know haha).  I'm not sure if anything full time will be coming around.  Canfor and the whole forest industry is going through budget cuts thanks to Trump and his views on trade.  But that doesn't mean that someone who has a full time position at Houston won't transfer into another role or another office, opening a full time position here.  So I'll wait.  And in the meantime I'm in the glorious mountains, getting ready for hiking season and before that spring skiing season! So I'm happy : ) : )

Odin is pretty happy, too.

"I survived!" says Bruce.  You can see a cut on his nose.  Healing up, though!

Well, it's 11:00am and I'm still in my pj's... time to get outside and get some fresh air!

Talk to you all again soon,

xoxox

My First Week of Work: In the Bag!

Good afternoon everyone!

My first week of work is all done and I. Am. So. Tired. I must have been a BEAST to have done this job day in and out! Give me a few weeks and hopefully I'll be back up to speed.  It's felt good to be back out in the bush with the whiskey jacks (those are birds...not drinks!) and snowy trees.  I was thrown right back into things after only one day of paperwork on Monday.  Tuesday saw snowmobile training all day... I blacked out as soon as my head hit the pillow that night Zzzz! Then Wednesday it was off on a long drive towards Moricetown (to the West of Smithers) to flag out CMT's in the bush.

A CMT is a culturally modified tree and has been "modified" by the first nations in the past.  Some trees have a strip of bark missing from a hatchet strike: these are known as Blazes, and usually mark a significant trail.  Another form of CMT is a pine tree with bark stripped/pulled up from the bottom; the inside of the bark (cambium) would have been eaten for it's nutritional value.  In the field, after an archaeologist has deemed the trees to be CMT's but not super old (pre-1848, I believe), we can wrap ribbon around the trunk so that the harvesters don't cut them, and leave them for cultural significance.

Then Thursday and Friday I was out snowshoeing north of Smithers checking on our contractor's timber cruising (basically inventory) of a few blocks.  I was out with Maciej (the guy who has my old job.. and a Polish name that is pronounced matche) and thought it may be awkward working from the bottom of the totem pole with someone who has my old work truck and my old job... but it really wasn't that bad.  He seems eager to talk about just about anything and is good with my peppering of questions as I try to remember my old processes and ways of doing things.  He's also from Ontario - Guelph.  So we've connected on a few topics from the 'homeland'.

Jill just got back from New Zealand, so I'll be able to catch up with her tomorrow at work.  Thankfully I have an office day tomorrow, so I'll be able to rest the old muscles a bit more and see what she has in store for me this upcoming field season.

Both Jill and I are worried about my back - the last time I did this job, my back gave me some grief and has been sore this week.  So I've promised her that I'll do my physio exercises and stretches daily... something that I'm not very good at keeping up with... which is probably why my back bothers me in the first place! hah!

It was almost spring here... then got very cold... just last night it snowed for the first time in a while, and now the forecast says we will be around plus 6 degrees into the foreseeable future! All over the place!  On Thursday and Friday we were working in -20 degree weather.

Everyone is happy when Tom comes home!

Tom seems to be liking camp more and more.  It's hard having him away for most of the work week, but he's loving having Fridays off, and he gets paid for So.Much.Overtime!  This past week he was paid for a total of 52 hours in four days! That's more than I did in a week, back home!  The other good thing about his set up is that he isn't sweating through the bush that whole time - they spend a good chunk of the day driving to and from the bush.  And then when they get back after work to camp his food is already waiting for him!  Lucky guy.  Breakfast is made as well as bring-along-lunches.  He's got it made.

Tom's Office

Out for a hike up the ski hill

Which brings us to your favorite baker-and-definitely-not-a-chef... me.  This past week was a bit of a failure for having food organized for the week.  I get up around 5:30 am and am not home until 5:30pm... so I REALLY don't want to go grocery shopping or cook anything complicated.  SO today I have already made some quinoa balls (like meatballs but meatless), Tom made me some energy balls, and I've prepped some veggies for stir-fries throughout the week.  Let's hope the food and motivation to stay organized, persists!

Enchiladas from last week - they completely fell apart haha! But hey were s good.  The cilantro avocado sauce on the top was AMAZING.

I'm still working away on my sweater and am loving it.  I've made a silly mistake in the cabling that I hope you won't notice... but it's pretty obvious haha . By the time I noticed I had knit far enough past that I didn't want to rip back to fix it.  So I'm going with it.  It makes it even more one of a kind.  Now that I'm back at work, the sweater may become more of a weekend project... slowly but surely I will get there.  I've been knitting socks as well just to have something mindless to knit if we are watching a movie or TV show.

"Brigid" sweater

First sock in a pair complete

It was International Women's Day this past week!  So a shout out to all of the lovely ladies reading this.  Gotta love the girl power!

And finally, I have started learning German!  My dad is German and I have always wanted to learn but never have... until I found the free and fun app called DuoLingo!  SO far I am just learning the basics, but the app promises that I'm already 14% fluent. Hee hee hee.  It's set up similar to a game.  Once I've passed a certain level, I can do more with the app, like have actual conversations with others, through the app (not sure if these are other people or a computer...), learn phrases and compete with others. It's fun and quick and I've been trying to practice on Tom all the time; "Er trinkt Bier" or He drinks beer! : )



Well, time to sign off and do some knitting!  Enjoy the rest of your Sunday! xoxox

Crater Lake on top of Hudson Bay Mountain

Went touring up the ski hill last week, to get some much needed vitamin D

The view out the kitchen window... with the upcoming spring weather, this view is sure to change soon!