22 Rebuttals to Cape Breton Tips for American Immigrants

It started as a joke by a local radio announcer, which turned into a full-fledged website, which then went viral as tons of people genuinely began to research how to move to Cape Breton should Trump win the US Presidency. It’s been an amusing thing to watch, no doubt about that, but one of my favorite bits so far has been this little article, entitled “21 Cape Breton Tips for American Immigrants“. Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that there are actually 22 tips on the list, I got a huge kick out the article because many of the tongue-in-cheek statements are quite true. So, I thought that I’d look into them a little deeper, give my opinions, and confirm or deny each individual bullet point.

(Big props to Rory Andrews, of course, for coming up with the list in the first place.)

1. Never make fun of a man in a kilt. The kilt-wearing type of man is also the face-punching type of man.

True; take this one to heart. Don’t go thinking that, just because this is at the top of the list, there are droves of men in kilts wandering around Cape Breton, but if you see one there’s a good chance that he’s damn tough enough to be wearing it. Just this past Remembrance Day, we had an outdoor ceremony on my work site in Alberta, and a good ol’ Cape Breton boy was there to play the bagpipes. He was wearing a kilt and a pair of knee-high socks. It was -15 degrees Celsius at the time. No one with half a brain cell would try to pick a fight with a man wearing a kilt in -15 degrees for almost a full hour.

2. Never take the last Timbit. The last Timbit is sacred.

I don’t know if it’s so much that it’s sacred, as much as we’re just too polite to be the one to take the last of anything. Generally, I’ve found that the last Timbit gets sneaked when no one is looking because no one wants anyone to know that they’re the one that took it.

3. Don’t complain about how much you miss Krispy Kreme. We’ll send you back to Trumpsylvania from whence you came. In Canadian, “Krispy Kreme” translates to “The lesser doughnut.”

Yeah…Canadians just don’t get Krispy Kreme. We love our sweets as much as the next person, but Krispy Kreme donuts seem to us like the creation of a three year old with a major sweet-tooth and no self-restraint.

4. Don’t try to impress us with your fancy sports car. Get a good price on a used backhoe, then we’ll talk.

We’ve got no use for fancy sports cars in Cape Breton; our roads are too bad to be bothered with that kind of nonsense. But farm equipment, four-wheelers, skidoos, golf carts, all those kind of things? Yeah, that’s how you’re going to impress us for sure.

5. In Cape Breton, houses are the price of a new Mercedes. Boats are the price of a new Honda. You can live like a retirement ad on a shoestring budget, but our booze prices will put you in the poorhouse.

Dear lord, yes. Other Canadians, never mind Americans, look at Nova Scotia and wonder how the hell we even manage to get drunk for those prices. In NS, 24 bottles of any average beer costs about $45, and other forms of alcohol are similarly outrageous. It’s no wonder there’s such a thriving moonshine underground.

6. If you’re the superficial type, and are leaving America because Donald Trump looks like toad covered in drainage hair, our Prime Minister is now quite attractive.

As a female member of the island, I can confirm this statement. He ain’t bad.

7. When a Cape Bretoner asks you “What do you play?” Scrabble, Xbox, and ultimate frisbee are unacceptable answers. Acceptable answers include every musical instrument ever invented.

Honestly, those first few answers probably wouldn’t even occur to a Cape Bretonner. Maybe, maybe, that question would cause us to think of answers such as “hockey” or “curling”, but 99 times out of 100 the average Cape Bretonner is going to know right away that they’re being asked which musical instrument they play. And make no mistake, the overwhelming majority of us play at LEAST one instrument, or at the very least, can play a mean set of kitchen spoons.

8. If you are having a hard time finding things to talk about with Cape Bretoners, ask them how they heat their house. They’ll talk for five hours.

Dear lord yes. I think this one stems from the fact that, at one point in time pretty much everyone in Cape Breton had electric baseboard heaters, and then slowly but surely our electricity prices became higher than almost anywhere else in the country. So, these days we’re known to talk at length about which non-electrical method we’ve been using for heat, how good it works, how much it costs, and how it’s so much better than what you’re using.

9. There are 3 religions on Cape Breton Island. The Church of Bruins, the Church of Canadiens, and the Masochistic Ministry of the Maple Leafs.

There are a lot fewer of the Bruins members than the Canadiens or Leafs, but yeah, this pretty much holds true. Effectively everyone on the island roots for one of these three teams, and the Leafs fans are harder on themselves than anyone else. Even if an official NHL team was created in Nova Scotia tomorrow, I’d be willing to say that 99% of people here would keep right on rooting for these three particular teams.

10. You’re not a true Cape Bretoner until you can say “yeah” three times while inhaling.

Agreed, and I’ll explain a little further. You know how Newfies talk so fast and with such a strong accent that nearly no one else in the country can ever figure out what they’re saying? Well, that’s because they try their damnedest to get their entire train of thought out in one breath. Cape Bretoners, on the other hand, prefer breathing, so we talk a little slower but neglect to stop talking even while taking a breath. It’s a phenomenon that apparently only really occurs in Cape Breton specifically. Similarly, the more musical of us are able to whistle while breathing in, so as to not have to interrupt the song in order to avoid passing out.

11. In Cape Breton, you never know if you’re talking to the president of a multi-million dollar company or your local garbageman. We all dress the same here. It’s kind of like a nudist colony.

Truth. You will very rarely see someone walking around in a suit, but it’s the exception rather than the rule. Jeans and t-shirts are the uniform of choice for everyone from surgeons to farmhands in Cape Breton.

12. If you’re invited to a potluck and don’t know what to bring, the correct answer is egg salad finger sandwiches.

Yes. And if you’re not a fan of egg salad, you can also go with ham and Cheeze Whiz.

13. Cape Bretoners will ask you where you’re from. When you say America, and we don’t immediately respond, it’s not because we don’t trust you. It’s because we honestly don’t know how to react to the situation.

And the reason that we don’t know how to react is because we can talk about pretty much any answer that you could give if it’s a location within Canada. As long as we’ve cracked the general geographical location we can get a conversation going based on whatever we happen to know about the area because we know at least a little bit about every possible area. But the US? It’s not that we’re ignorant, we just don’t pay as much attention. Ya’ll have way too many states. It gets too confusing trying to remember which ones are where and known for what.

14. Don’t be surprised when the midget hockey 50/50 clears $50,000. All the best fundraisers on the island are thinly veiled forms of gambling.

Thinly-veiled may be overstating it. Completely transparent sounds closer to the truth. Also, $50,000? Psh…that’s nuthin’.

15. If you’re sober when The Mull River Shuffle starts, you’re doing it wrong.

SO wrong. An alternative of this is that if the Mull River Shuffle starts and multiple people are sober, that particular DJ may never work in the business again.

16. We don’t drink Bloody Marys here. We drink Caesars, which is a Bloody Mary made with clam juice. Trust me, the clams make it better.

I can neither confirm nor deny this particular statement because I don’t think I’ve ever had either version, but that’s because I’m not a fan of drinking tomato juice. Bleck.

17. If you come here and want Mexican food, you’re going to have to make it yourself… and invite me over. Margaritas would be nice too.

Yeah, the closest thing we have to Mexican food is Taco Bell, and I think we all know that there’s nothing even remotely Mexican about Taco Bell. We’ve got some damn good cooks on the island though, so give us a recipe and I guarantee we’ll be able to whip it up in a jiffy.

18. A Cape Breton Standoff is when two people hold the door for each other at Tim Horton’s. It’s way better than a Mexican standoff, where everyone gets shot.

Addendum: if we hold a door for you and you pass through it without saying “thank you”, you’ve been judged and found wanting and no witness of the event will ever properly forgive you for as long as you live.

19. Take your shoes off when you when you come into the house. This isn’t a barn.

Do people in other parts of the world actually wear shoes in the house? And if so, what the hell is wrong with you people? Do you not realize that I have to vacuum and mop up after you and your inconsiderate loafers? If your feet are cold there are at least half a dozen pairs of slippers in every Cape Breton house.

20. We have parties in the kitchen because it’s closer to the fridge.

True facts. You know what’s in the fridge? Beer and food, which are the only two 100% necessary components of any Cape Breton Kitchen Party.

21. Cape Breton goodbyes last at least an hour. Plan accordingly.

Yes. Saying, “Well, I must be off,” is code for, “Okay, I’ve only got about 60-70 minutes before I absolutely need to be out of here, so get out any stories that you’ve been keeping in until the last minute because I’m starting the slow backward shuffle toward the door now.”

22. We’re all cousins here. Please come. We need a bigger gene pool.

This one sounds worse than it really is, but there’s definitely a grain of truth in there. For comparison purposes, there are approximately 145,000 people living on the island right now, and I alone have something like 40 cousins. That’s one hell of a ratio.

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So what do you guys think? Does that clarify things a bit for you? Anything else you’d like to know? I’m more than happy to share, because if there’s one thing all Cape Bretonners have in common, it’s that we’re more than happy to talk about Cape Breton.

Live Your (Imaginary) Life

The first week of The Artist’s Way is all about recovering a sense of “safety”. Miss Cameron fully admits that this week will probably feel silly, even stupid, but that you should push through it anyway because it’s important. The exercises involve writing affirmations (basically sentences that you say to yourself to tell yourself how great you really are), acknowledging your “blurts” (negative thoughts that spring to mind, such as “I’m such a terrible writer”), and facing the demons in your past that have caused you to think negatively. The whole idea, overall, is to face the fact that we all have an internal voice (a “Censor”, she calls it) that shouts negative comments at us all the time, even (and especially) when we don’t deserve it. And generally this Censor is a culmination of all the negativity we’ve had to endure from our peers and elders throughout our lives.

But the exercises aren’t all about facing negativity. One in particular was actually quite amusing, I thought. Basically, imagine that you have five alternative lives to live; who would you be and what would you do? The point isn’t to be serious, it’s to give life to the you that your inner child imagined you might become.

For myself, the answers were immediately clear, because there are five things I’ve wanted to do for as long as I can remember. Hey, I know, why don’t I share them here? 😀

Imaginary Life #1
I’d be a (successful) writer, as if that weren’t entirely obvious. I would write fiction novels and occasionally publish a book of short stories. I would have a room in my house specifically for writing, with shelves of books on every wall, and a beautiful desk in front of a large, bright window. The desk would house my laptop, and a stack of notebooks and pens, and I would write there all day while sipping hot tea and cafe mochas.

Imaginary Life #2
I’d be a singer/songwriter who specialized in the guitar. I’d write and compose all my own songs and travel the world playing shows and festivals. I’d be on the road most of the time, but when I wanted to rest I’d come back to Cape Breton and play around a campfire with my friends and family.

Imaginary Life #3
I’d be a famous artist. I’d delve into all the different mediums; drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. I would have a room in my house dedicated to art where I would store all kinds of different supplies from around the world, and I’d draw and paint on the walls to chart my inspiration.

Imaginary Life #4
This one might surprise even my closest friends and family, but I would be an actress. I’d do all kinds of things, from movies and TV shows, to cheesy horror movies and voice acting. In particular I would regularly audition for parts in action-adventure movies as the damsel-in-distress who is actually pretty kick-ass all on her own.

Imaginary Life #5
I’d design video games. I would do a little bit of everything, from concept art and character design, to programming and beta-testing. I would want to be a part of every aspect of the process, and I would help to create characters and storylines that draw in the gamer, as well as controls and gameplay that keep the gamer hooked.

#1 is pretty obvious if you’ve read at least one of my other blog posts or have known me for more than five minutes, but the others may be a bit surprising, especially to those who don’t know me personally, so let me explain a little.

#2 comes about because I’ve always been a bit musical, like much of my family, and in fact much of Cape Breton in general. We’re a musical region. I took several years of piano lessons when I was young, and then moved on to guitar, which I mostly taught myself. Though I haven’t had time for it in recent years, I’ve always loved playing and singing, and it’s one of the few things I feel like I can do in front of a crowd.

#3 dates back to much younger years, stemming back as far as grade school. I loved to draw, and I’d paper my walls with drawings of my favorite TV show and video-game characters. I was never really any good at the other mediums like painting, but I always used to think that if I just kept practicing and practicing, someday I’d be a great artist. Sadly, art in general is something that went by the wayside for me, as I focused more and more on writing instead. The only thing I’ve drawn in years are tiny sketches of the Ninja Turtles at my daughter’s bequest.

#4 is my little inner guilty pleasure secret. I don’t think I’ve ever, at any time, voiced a desire to be an actress, but I seriously started thinking about it in high school as a result of a Drama course. For one assignment we had to do a monologue, and I picked this really dramatic piece where a girl talks about a death in her family. After I performed it the whole class applauded and told me how awesome I was, so for a while after that I convinced myself that I had real talent and would somehow get discovered someday (despite a lack of any kind of effort on my part to actually pursue acting).

#5 is the most childish of the bunch, in my opinion, because it’s based on a childhood assumption that video games were really easy to make. I figured I just had to learn a bit of programming and off I would go. Obviously I’ve learned a lot since then and know that it takes huge crews to make (most) video games, but I still think it would be an awesome profession to be a part of, if only to see the end result of all your hard work enjoyed by millions.

So there you have it! The five imaginary lives of Tracey Lynn Tobin.

If you had five imaginary lives, what would you be? I’d love to hear about your choices!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 31

Have you ever experienced a thunder storm without the rain? Maybe that’s common in other parts of the world, but up here in Cape Breton it’s not the norm. We usually have torrents of rain coming down for hours before the thunder and lightning starts, but yesterday we had hours of thunder (and possibly lightning, but it was too light out to tell) for hours before the rain started. It seemed odd and unique to me, which is why I bring it up.

Alrighty, let’s get on with it, shall we?

Health and Body Image Goal

Still thinking about striking this goal from the list, but at the same time I’ve been thinking about how to resuscitate it. I do want to be healthier and lose some body fat while I’m at it, but I’ve been expelling some much of my energy on everything else that I can’t figure out how to work this back into my lifestyle. I’m amazed that I somehow have less time and energy while unemployed at home than when I was working 12-hour shifts out West. How does that even work? It doesn’t matter. The point is that what I want to do (once I tie up a few loose ends) is start a three-times-a-week exercise program that I will interweave with three days a week of doing my Zombies! Run! program (which I will have to start over since I’ve negated everything I did before). Currently I’m trying to decide what the exercise program will be. I’m considering taking Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution and just replacing the cardio days with my running days, but if anyone else has any suggestions for a good three-day-a-week program for women, please share!

Editing Goal

I’m happy to report my best editing week yet since I made these goals. My supernatural romance (tentatively called Moonlight) is complete! I just have to do one more read-through to make sure I didn’t make any glaring errors and then it should be ready for submission. I don’t have high hopes for it, but being able to say that I finally submitted a manuscript to a publisher will be a big deal for me. Plus, now that I’ll finally have that story out of my hair, I can move back on to my zombie apocalypse novel, which is the one I really care about. This one is much longer, so it’s obviously going to take longer to edit, but I’m setting myself a mini-goal to have it done by November, because I fully intend on participating in NaNoWriMo this year and I don’t want to have the last chapters of a zombie apocalypse on my mind while I’m doing it.

1,000,000 Word Goal

Good news! My mini-goal was a success! I wrote my ass off last week, and between blog posts, writing exercises, morning pages, and new-or-changed scenes in Moonlight, I wrote a total of 20194 words! That brings me up to a year-long total of 201938! When I originally made this goal I had hoped to be a lot further along by now, but this is still so many more words that I likely would have written had I not made the goal in the first place. That’s like four NaNoWriMo‘s! In one year! I really hope to be able to keep up this pace. It’s become very unlikely that I’ll hit the 1,000,000 words by the end of the year, but if I’m able to hit 500,000 I will still be very impressed with myself and will mark the goal a success.

As a closing note, I want to mention that I’ve begun The Artist’s Way this week, and over the next couple of days I will be trying to complete as many of the Chapter 1 tasks as I can. I’ve accidentally timed my start such that I’ll finish one week before NaNoWriMo starts, so aside from sharing updates as I go, once I complete the program I’ll do a quick review and let you all know whether it helped me in any way toward writing a new book. Look forward to it!

Jobs I’ve Had (and Headaches I’ve Endured)

After stumbling across this post from lazylauramaisey I started thinking about all the jobs I’ve had over the years and I thought, hey…why not share?

Papergirl for the Cape Breton Post
This was the first job I ever had and believe it or not I think it was one the longest ones I ever had. If I’m remembering correctly, I started the route in the eighth grade and didn’t quit it until I went to college. Sometimes my mother would drive me because the route was a few streets away from where we lived, but a lot of the time I walked as well. It wasn’t a bad job for the most part, and at Christmas I got some pretty nice tips, but there was this one family I spent five years wanting to strangle. They were as rich as any family can be in Cape Breton, and it was like pulling a crocodile’s teeth trying to get my payment out of them. They would actually look out the window – right at me – and then not answer the door. My first “customers are idiots” experience.

Cashier at Zellers
For those who might not know, Zellers was a Canadian department store, much like Walmart. When I was in high school I got a job there for the Christmas season, working cash. I absolutely hated it for two main reasons. One, I was still pretty shy in high school and the job forced me to talk to people all day. Two, there weren’t enough support staff. A major flaw at Zellers was that sales were rarely properly programed into the registers, which resulted in a lot of customers loudly proclaiming, “That’s not the right price!” as I scanned. The thing is, people would do this all the time whether the item was on sale or not to try and cheat the system, and the only way to combat it was to call a “floor-walker” to go find the item in the store and prove what the actual price was. During the holidays calling a “floor-walker” was tantamount to insanity…it was so busy that chances were they would never get to you. So when my line-ups started getting super-long and all the customers started getting super-agitated I just stopped calling for help all together and overrode any price the customer’s told me was wrong. I probably cost Zellers a lot of money that holiday season, but in my defense, they should have hired more damn people.

“Waitress” at the Marine Atlantic Ferry Terminal
I put quotation marks around waitress because I didn’t really serve the food, but I did sometimes serve ice cream. It wasn’t a bad job, but I had an idiot boss who would rather us wash down the same tables fifty times than stand still and do nothing for five minutes when there were no customers. I offset my annoyance by constantly filching Rice Krispie Square treats.
Also, once, my boss demanded that I stay late, even though legally I couldn’t drive that late (I was still a new driver with a restricted license). It was my first run-in with opposing an employer. I told her that I’d happily stay late if she paid my fine when I got it. She ended up sending me home.

“IT Specialist” at the Coast Guard College
This was a work term for my university program, and I can honestly say I didn’t learn a damn thing. The job mostly consisted of things like replacing the batteries in the TV remotes in the residents’ rooms. The one challenge I had was when the speaker at a meeting was having issues getting his computer to work with the overhead projector…that was the first time I’d ever seen a Mac computer, but damn it, I got it working.

“IT Specialist” at Cape Breton University
Another work term, and twice as useless as the first. This is the university that I actually attended, and they created the job just to have something available because they were having absolutely no luck finding work terms for the students in my program. I had almost nothing to do for this entire term. I spent most of my time transposing a huge map via this huge electronic drafting board, which wasn’t part of my job…it was just to pass the time.

“Floor Walker” at a different Zellers
This was the first job I got after my future husband and I moved in together, and I hated it so much worse than the first Zellers. I mostly wandered around replacing merchandise that people had moved, or straightening up clothes that people had unfolded, but those were the “good” parts. The bad parts were dealing with customers, who at this particular store seemed to be twice as idiotic as others I’d dealt with in the past. I remember this one particular lady brought in a flyer the day before the sales were to start, and absolutely demanded that we give her the sales prices that day because one of the graphics on the flyer said, “Come in and enjoy our great sales today!”

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at a Nova Scotia Liquor Store
As far as customer service goes, this was one of the better ones. Everyone in the store did a bit of everything, so I’d be on cash one day and replacing stock another day, unloading new stock the day after that. But the best part was the drive-thru. Yes. I worked at a liquor store with a drive-thru. It was completely idiotic because legally the customer had to receive their liquor, pull forward, get out, and put the liquor in the trunk. It was just…foolish, honestly. But whatever. I enjoyed working the drive-thru. I particularly liked working it with this one other girl about my age. We would trade off on working the window/cash and actually running for the order. I enjoyed running for the order. It was also quite humorous because you can’t imagine how many customers we got who drove up to the drive-thru speaker with no idea as to what they actually wanted. I’ve gotten orders such as “uh…some kinda rum?” and “this thing in a blue bottle…I have no idea what kind of liquor it is”. I also had more than one traveler from another province beg me to let them take a picture of me handing their order out the drive-thru window. I don’t blame them. Leave it to Nova Scotia to have drive-thru liquor stores.

A-Little-Bit-of-Everything at Walmart
Yes, I did eventually end up at a Walmart, only because the liquor store just kinda…stopped scheduling me in. Anyway, I started in an actual store, doing more floor work, but what I was really hired for was a large group that was set to “build” the new Walmart that was going up. We put the shelving together and arranged it properly, pieced the cash register area together, put up all the signage, and eventually stocked all the shelves. It wasn’t a bad gig for brain-dead work that you could zone out during, but I hated it for one reason: the manager. Never have a met such a stone-cold witch. The best example I have against her is when she refused to let my young coworker have the afternoon off to go to her cousin’s funeral. Apparently “a cousin isn’t a close enough relative”. I was so disgusted that when I got the girl alone I told her to take off and I’d cover for her. She didn’t because she needed the job to pay for school and was scared she’d lose it, which just made me that much more disgusted. When I finally left that job it was all I could do to keep myself from slugging that manager in the face on my way out.

Customer Service Rep for Sirius Satellite Radio
…which is a nicer way of saying, “call center punching bag”. I activated people’s radios, took payments, resolved issues with accounts, and helped them troubleshoot issues with their radios. By way of explaining what this job was like, I beg everyone this: if you ever get a Sirius Satellite Radio, listen to the rep who is activating it for you. I lost track of the number of times I asked, “Does your radio have a clear view of the sky?” and received a “Yes!” only to find out later when the radio wouldn’t work that they were really in a parking garage or in the middle of their apartment building. It was all I could do not to scream bloody murder at some people.
Also, occasionally, the Sirius system would screw up and double- or triple-charge people. This made for some very interesting conversations. One man with a trucking company had purchased three radios with lifetime subscriptions (approximately $500 each) and been triple-charged, making his bill jump from $1500 to $4500. He was extremely calm and polite while I fixed the issue. Meanwhile a few years later I got a customer who had been double-charged his $15 monthly bill and he completely lost his mind. I actually hung up on him three times because he wouldn’t stop swearing and calling me every name under the sun. Pleasant!

Instrumentation Maintenance Tech at the Paper Mill
My first “career” job, which is what I trained at university for. This job taught me first and foremost that I knew nothing. I may have spent four years and a crap-ton of money becoming a technologist, but my first few months at that mill taught me that school means absolutely bupkiss without experience. I really had no idea what I was doing, and my older and much-more-experienced coworkers didn’t let me forget it. Within my first six months I burned myself on several steam pipes and once managed to spray myself with hot condensate. It’s really quite amazing that I have any skin left. Oh yes, and lots and lots of 120 volt shocks. You’d think I would have learned to wear my gloves, but…no.
Maintenance is an interesting beast. You learn a lot – because you have to – but it can be very stressful because you have to keep the plant running. When the plant is down it’s losing money every minute, and that’s directly correlated to how fast you can fix something. I didn’t really realize just how stressed out this job made me until long after I’d lost it (when the mill shut down and was sold).

Commissioning Technician on the Kearl Lake Project
My first (and so far only) job out West turned out to be an excellent one. I had a good contract, good coworkers, good (for the most part) bosses, and good work. Sometimes it was hard work – particularly in the middle of winter when you’re outside in minus 40 degrees Celsius – but it was interesting work with very little stress. Since we were still building the plant there was no big scary rush to get things going like right goddamn now!!! I also got to experience the job both from the field and from the control room, which I think taught me a lot. All in all I can’t complain about this one. It was a good job with good people and I made a lot of money to pay off lots of debts and bills. Yes, after ten other jobs, I finally hit one that didn’t make me want to murder the world.

Writer!Okay, so it can’t really be considered a job until you’ve been paid for it, but it sounds better to say that I’m currently working as a writer than to say that I’m currently unemployed. 😛

My eighth grade English teacher told us once that by the time we were thirty-five we would have had up to ten different “jobs” and possibly one or two different “careers”. I didn’t believe him at the time, but there you have it: I’ve had 11 different jobs, only two of them part of my career as a technologist, and one unpaid “job” as a writer. Amazing. Has anyone else had a varied string of jobs like mine? Please share!

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 26

Two things to mention before I get to the heart of the matter today. First of all, it’s week number 26! That means I’m halfway through the year! And while I’m nowhere near where I would need to be to be on track with my million word goal, I’ve written more in the past six months than in the previous 2 years combined! But more on that later.

The other thing I want to mention is that as you are reading this I am packing up my last couple of bits and bobbles from the control room at work, chucking it all in a backpack, and awaiting the bus that will return me to camp where I’ll giddily await my plane home. My last plane home. That’s not to say that I won’t end up back out in Alberta for work in a few months or so, but for now I’m heading home with nothing on the horizon except spending quality time with my family and maybe enjoying a number of alcoholic beverages from the comfort of my back deck. Look upon me and be in awe, for I am officially ON VACATION!

Okay, that’s enough of that. 🙂

Health and Body Image Goal

I’ve been a bit on the ins and outs with this goal, unfortunately, but I’m still not doing too badly. As I mentioned last week I did, in fact, drag myself to the gym and try running on the treadmill. It wasn’t ideal, but acceptable. I figured that’s what I’d do until my stomach felt better. But then my stomach felt worse. I don’t know if it’s the actual physical exertion that’s bothering me, or if it’s the camp food (which, thank god, I won’t be enjoying any more of any time soon), or if I’ve been suffering from some as-yet-diagnosed condition inherited from my sickly parents (love you guys, really :P), but I’ve hardly been able to stand leaving my room in the morning and suffering through the bus ride to work, never mind exercising on top of that. Luckily, about two days ago, my symptoms seemed to subside and I’ve felt halfway decent since then, so here’s hoping all will be well when I get home and try to run around my neighborhood again.

All that said, I’ve still been managing to eat pretty well. I’ve had a cookie here, some pop there, but for the most part I’ve been eating decent food (or as decent as it gets on camp) and not too much of it. I haven’t weighed or measured myself recently because I doubt I’ve lost anything during my refusal-to-exercise days, but I’ve recently had an unusual number of coworkers tell me that I look like I’ve lost weight, so I’m just going to go ahead and say, “Woohoo! I look like I’ve lost weight!”

Editing Goal

I have a stupid, STUPID confession to make. I did try to get some editing done this week, I swear, I really did. But when I finally took out my tablet and opened up the files I transferred there for editing purposes, I discovered something idiotic. Of the four different word-processor-ish apps I have on my tablet, none of them open rtf files. Guess what format all my files are in? After two days of searching for an Android program that DOES open rtf files (for free, because screw that, I’m not paying for an app that I only need for a week) I gave up and admitted defeat. Apparently the world of tablets and smartphones does not believe in the existence of rtf files. So the editing will have to wait for this coming week. Grr.

1,000,000 Word Goal

I have been writing like a maniac this week, mostly due to my rediscovery of 750Words.com. I don’t know what it is, but I love just typing and typing and typing and watching the word counter go up. It’s addictive. Over the course of the week I’ve written blog posts, typed out a few scenes for Returning Hope, did a couple of writing exercises, and did a little bit of free-writing (i.e. writing whatever came to my head as it came to my head). Through all of this combined I managed to once again beat my best week score with a total word count of 16556. In addition to that, I’m happy to announce that I’ve reached a yearly total so far of over 165,000. Again, it’s nowhere near where I need to be for my goal, but it’s a heck of a lot more than I normally would have written, so I’m proud. Revel in my pride! Only six months to go to try and boost that total up as high as I can!

And with that said, I plan to spend the next several hours in the lounge at camp, with my feet up, reading A Dance With Dragons, and waiting for my final flight home. See you soon, Cape Breton!

Launch of My Dreams

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

24. Describe your dream launch party

Unlike the previous post, I can actually answer this one because it’s my “dream” launch party and thus does not have to make sense if I’m totally off on what a launch party is supposed to be like.

Obviously my family and friends would be there, especially my daughter because I love any excuse to show off how adorable she is. 🙂 There would be lots to drink, and even more to eat – I would want tons of treats, finger foods, sweets, everything you’ve got! There would definitely be some excellent music (stick to stuff that was produced before the turn of the millennium…I don’t care how old and un-hip that makes me sound), and I would strongly encourage dancing.

Basically what I’m describing here is a Cape Breton wedding reception, but hey…a party! 😀

Countdown…

In less than 24 hours I’ll be on my first airplane, just about to land in Toronto, where I’ve never been. I’ll then get on my second airplane, heading out on a 4 hour flight to Fort McMurray, where I’ve never been. I’ll be bused to the first work camp I’ve ever been to, and in the morning I’ll start a new job, working out on the oil sands.

All that might not seem like a big deal to some people, but as I’ve never even left Cape Breton for work before, it’s a big deal for me.

I’ve got my luggage almost packed, and I’m going to run out a little later to pick up some Gravol for the plane (I’m not taking any chances). I’m prepared to get up (very) early tomorrow morning for the drive to the Halifax airport. It’s going to be hard to walk away from the baby when it’s time to board, but I know her father will take good care of her, and I’ll be back in only two weeks to hug and kiss and snuggle her to pieces.

I won’t have a lot of time to myself while I’m out to work (12 hour days and a 30 minute bus drive to and from the work site), but I’m going to be trying to sneak in some time for writing each night before bed, so keep an eye out for updates.

I’ll be sure to let you all know if I make it through the plane rides without hurling. 😐