Base Camp

Why hello there, ladies and gentiles.
       Well I'm still in Calgary, and I have two jobs now. By day, I am working with a small company, playing sewer/stormwater cleaner's assistant. Basically I drive around in a truck, inspect manholes and walk/stand around. It's a pretty cruisy job and I don't mind it at all.
       By nights and on the weekends, I'm working at a Best Western doing some catering and bartending and whatnot for minimum wage. The pay is pretty lousy, but the hours are reasonable and the work pretty easy. Late nights though, considering I have to get out of bed at 5 every day. But it's money for jam, and as soon as I start getting these fortnightly pay cheques, I'll be on the way up good and proper. Plus I get to wear a bow-tie to work. Ridiculous how dapper I look at minimum wage.
       I have been through a pretty hectic period: breaking laptops, losing (and finding, thank Christ) passports, driver's license and banking fuckarounds, being broke, lounge-sleeping and worrying too much; but I have been killing it. Taking care of business and getting shit done. Constantly on the move, constantly busy. It's taking a bit of a toll no doubt, seeing as I'm always tired and cannot stop thinking, thinking, but I am taking some pretty good form into the Christmas period.
       The general plan I have right now is that I stay in Calgary until Christmas, stick it out with these jobs and pay off my car's rego and insurance and get it on the road. Still waiting on a license from QLD Transport, but I can't afford it yet, anyway -- I spent way too much money in Edmonton and BC. I should start getting decent cheques in a week's time, but until then I am still pretty skint. All the money in my Commonwealth account is now gone! Haha pretty standard Jimbo, but at least it has gotten me to the point where I am now making financial plans and budgeting myself and actually learning to watch my money. Valuable lessons here.
       After the New Year ticks over, I'm going back to Edmonton; I'm going to run around in a frenzy until I get an oil rig job and stick to that until April. This is where the big money is, and I'm really banking on it to work out if I'm to be a shot at the drive down south. Consequentially, it'll do me a bit of good to learn about the oil industry. There's some pretty tight parallels to the industry up here and coal in Queensland. All good knowledge for a journalist, eh.
       Back in Oz, Mikie is working like a bastard and looks like having a solid amount of money in the bank when he gets here at the end of february, so things are looking up for this trip. We are both going through all that unpleasant hard-working real-life shit that we have to to climb that metaphorical mountain and make this trip happen. We're going to make it. No doubt.
       Also I'm trying to fit in some snowboarding and San Francisco, but who knows when that will happen. Not before Christmas, but as far as I'm concerned still both definite. As far as the weather goes, it has been snowing from time to time, but it is an unusually warm start to winter. Minus 21 has come around a couple of times though (plus a bonus windchill to take it down to -28). Not really that fun. I don't mind the could though... acclimatising. So many layers and thermal pants. Huzzah. Snow is awesome.