There will be times where photo’s wont be uploaded due to being out of range due but I will take those images and upload them when I get back into an area with service.

My first photo is of me I figured it was a good start as I get to see what I look like Jan-1. There will be more pictures of me every couple of weeks (sorry!) to see how my apperance changes through the year. The rest of the photo’s will be of everyday things that I come across. I hope you follow along:

Picasa | Page

If you do the twitter thing, a link to my daily image will be posted there each day.

There will be a bit of a speed bump to get things going in 2011. After my last stint, I moved my stuff out of my room at the share house on the Gold Coast and my belongings are currently at the office. This means my first order of business will be finding somewhere new to live. I am not sure what I am looking for. After doing a long commute, I am looking for something somewhat closer to Brisbane. It is in the back of my mind that it might be worth buying something. I have a deposit and the idea of paying stupid amounts of rent for a place near work, but only being there less than half the time, does not sit well with me. I think initially some sort of share house accommodation would be suitable and then I can go and see what the market has to offer.

So currently I am down in Tassie for Christmas. It has been nice to have a week off so far. Being able to sleep past 5-6am has been wonderful! I have another week to go until the return to Brisbane and the accommodation hunt begins. So far I have caught up with some of the regular partners in crime but there are still people to see before I head off again.

I hope everyone out there has a wonderful 2011!

How are you? I am good. It has been a while since I last wrote. Things have been pretty good. I am currently in WA looking for gold. As you probably remember, I left my job in the US and have taken a job working for a Brisbane based company which employs a lot of the same people I worked with back in 2004 when I left uni.

I am currently on my second stint. This one is going pretty well. We have finished up one grid and the data was pretty good. It shows some interesting formations which the client is pretty happy with. The last day and a half we have been rained out but the weather seems to have settled down now. I have to say that you probably wouldn’t be impressed with the wet mess here on site as they don’t have any Cascade beers. I am happy to say that what they do stock is very reasonably priced with a stubby costing less than $3. Much better than a $9 pint at Salamanca.

Next time I am in town I will pop by for a visit. If I can put a request in for a nice sunny day with no wind, that would be wonderful. Hope all is well on your end.

Love Chris.

I had it done in Tassie so it was a little bit of a challenge to make the physical match what I used to get done in Hershey. Everything went fine and I am happy to say that I am still awesome at the spirometry test performing at 115%

Naturally come the pee test I always have trouble providing a sample when called upon. I totally forgot about the need to perform until I was walking down to the medical place. I stopped off at a store and bought a 750ml bottle of water and drank that. Upon arrival I drank another 2 cups in the waiting room. After another 4 cups in the secondary waiting room and doctors office, I was ready to attempt. After a few minutes I had enough for the test – woohoo!

Now naturally, after drinking over a litre of water and only providing 50ml for a test, I had a bit of a backlog. A few minutes into the walk home, my bladder informed me that it was time to go again. I was just at the loo dammit.

Anyway, next stop was the blood place. The doctor ordered tests to match the results from the ones I used to get in PA. For some reason the US tests give results for Carbon Dioxide. This threw everyone as no one had seen it. Books were searched and databases queried but no one was sure about how to do it. The nice office ladies ended up ringing the lab and it looks like they will have to figure it out when my half a dozen blood samples arrive.

I was really happy when I saw the finished result. The ornaments are so very grandma. They look like something she would wear as a brooch / pendant on a jacket or shirt. We had a nice chat and I promised next time I will bring her a beer

They provided me with this new schedule:

I review it and still see I am flying on the same day. I then pull up the old schedule:

I logged into united.com and my seats were exactly the same… so the question still remains unanswered.. what changed?

http://cp.id.au/social/

I flew back to the US in early October just as ARM started mobilizing to Cuba for a project we have at Guantanamo Bay. I flew down there on October 19 to join the crew. At the project peak, we had five single coil teams and one towed array operating.

As a group we celebrated Thanksgiving down there. We spent around $400 on food and drinks and had a really good evening.

A few days later the mood down in Cuba was totally different. On December-1 one of our guys dropped in the grid and died. He was only 26 and left behind his family, siblings and his fiancee. As a team we got through the tragedy although it is something we will never forget. The project team de-mobed on December-20 for a 2 week break. 

This year was also the first year that i forgot about Amber’s accident. It hit me a week later that the date has passed….

Christmas this year was fairly low key. I spent Christmas Eve and Day with my friends up on the hill. Chuck and Lori were very kind and invited me into their home on a day which meant a lot to me. We sat down to a lovely traditional meal of ham, baked potatoes, sweet potatoes, brussel spouts and cherry pie.. I certainly ate well! When I visited Digger and Marty on Christmas Eve my jaw dropped in amazement. Anyone that knows Digger will tell you he is absolutely crazy about his grand kids. Digger is also crazy about Christmas. The combination was phenomenal. He has his house lit up lit up with a crazy amount of Christmas lights. Inside he had more Christmas ornaments and singing Santa’s than Walmart. Absolutely amazing!

So 2009 is just around the corner. It is going to be an interesting year as I have recently told work that I am done with the US and that I plan to return home within a few months. What lies ahead is uncertain but hey, it will work out

Happy 2009!

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