Today is the 10th Anniversary of Amber’s death. 10 years… Every once in a while you need to sit back and look at things in perspective. I am very lucky – I am healthy, I am alive.

I know Amber looks over me and she will forever be in my memories.

What prompts these thoughts is turning 30. The good thing about it is that it is just a number. Don’t worry, I am still as cheeky as ever. One thing it does highlight is “what am I going to do when I grow up?”.

Anyone that knows me will know that I travel a lot for work. It isn’t the glamorous sort either where I am jetsetting between 5 star hotels and drinking cocktails by the pool. The part of the travel that makes it difficult is the unpredictability and the effect that has on planning things outside work. I have noticed that as I get older, I don’t tolerate this as well.

The hard thing is that as a whole I enjoy my job. I like the aspect that I am in different places so the job is never the same. I don’t get up at the same time every day, drive the same road, to go the same office.

The question is balance. How do you achieve it? New job? New career?

Yeah, the image is small. You might need your glasses

So how are you? I am a little tired but good. I am just back from a short project that took place up at Mount Isa. We were doing some fixed loop EM with our high powered transmitter. We got over 5 times the current into the loop than the last contractor that did EM work there. High current means hefty wire. We used 2 turns of double insulated 10 square mm wire. It is about the same thickness of a household power cable per strand! We had 10km of it out on the grid.

The year so far has been busy and dominated with work. After dodging the floods in Brisbane in January, I have been to a few jobs in places like Texas QLD, Jervois NT and near Cloncurry in QLD. All the work has helped me keep somewhat fit. I am 15kg lighter than I was in January 2010.

I am back in Brisbane for the Easter long weekend. It is also Ellen’s birthday and Ally is coming up which means all three of us kids are going to be up here in Brisbane for the break! I am not sure what we are going to get up to but it should be fun.

I am trying to settle into Queensland as a home state. I don’t think I will live here forever by any means but I am starting to collect possessions and furniture. Gone are the days of not owning anything and now I have a full bedroom suite, stools, tv, couches etc. Scary stuff as it makes it harder to pick up and move. I got away with furnishing my place in Hershey with a lot of hand me downs which I donated or handed down myself when I left.

I still miss the states on occasion. Today for example I was invited by a good friend to the second annual 100ft slip and slide. It was on last year when I was over and I had a ball. I have a rough plan to go back over in 2012 and catch up with everyone again. I don’t want that big part of my life to fade into nothing. The time I spent over there changed me, I like to think, for the better. I did get some sad news when I was making some Christmas calls. I found out that one of my friends from my apartment complex had died. It was a shock to find out. I am thankful that I did get over last year to say hello.

So what is on the cards for the next few months? Who knows. I want to take some of the time off. I would like to fit a trip back to tassie in there to visit some friends who have had babies since Christmas.

Ta ta for now

It is officially less than one month until Christmas. Looking back the year has gone by so quickly. I feel like I need to apply the brakes a little. Geo work certainly makes it go quickly as you spend a week somewhere, a month somewhere else, a few weeks home and then away again and suddenly a few months have passed by. It is good to be busy but I am looking forward to the Christmas break. I have a few weeks off that I will be spending down in Tas. I haven’t been back since March (I think) so it will be good to see family and friends and catch up on all the news.

So I managed to lose another phone! Actually, I think it got lost without it being my fault this time. It was left in a vehicle and it was used by some people we were working with and when the vehicle was returned at the end of the day, it was gone. The good news is that it was my Telstra T100. With a retail price of $49, I can cope with replacing it. For the money, it is has an exceptional feature set. The only reason I am online right now is that the phone has an external antenna socket and allows you to dial in to the net using a Bluetooth connection. My dedicated USB NextG card doesn’t have enough reception to work at all but the blue tick phone does.

Back at the start of the month saw the 9th anniversary of Amber’s death. It is unbelievable that it has been that long. In a few days it will be the second anniversary of Brad’s death which happened at GTMO. It is always such a shame when young people are taken when in their prime.

The rain is still falling here. I probably should change my shirt as the dampness is starting to feel uncomfortable. The clouds alternate between light and a mid grey. I do find the sound of the rain on the steel roof relaxing.

It is now 8:01am AEST. Time to take a look at some data.

Enjoy your weekend!

I feel like every time I sit down and blog that I need to make excuses about how long it has been or why I haven’t written anything for so long.

It looks like old habbits die hard as the same start is applicable here. Last time we spoke it was back in February. Lets see, what has happened since then..

Since Feburary things have been cruising along with work. I have been involved in a few different jobs using different geophysical techniques. Most of the jobs last at least a few weeks which means that I am still travelling a fair bit. We do a LOT of driving. So far this year I have clocked up a several thousand miles. Some of the longer ones include driving from Kalgoorlie to Port Headland and back was around 2900 km (1800 miles), a one way trip from Brisbane to Mount Isa was around 1850 km (1150 miles) and a drive from North of Meekatharra to Kalgoorlie of 750 km (465 miles). To a truck driver or alike, this wouldn’t sound like much as they would reach these sort of KM in a week but for someone from Tassie where driving 2 hours to Launceston felt like driving to the end of the earth, it is a decent amount.

I took 3 weeks off work in June and headed over to the US to visit. It was a great trip. I had such a ball seeing everyone and I have no idea how it went by so quickly. I spent most of the time in PA as that was home for the longest time but I did head up to Portland, Maine. It was lovely! It is an old city and I loved the fact that you could see cobblestones through holes in the pavement.

The main reason for the timing of the trip was to catch up with Brian and Holly who got married the weekend before on the west coast. There was a second, more casual gathering on the east coast which I went along to. The day was nice and Holly’s love of lego was evident in a few places, including the lego bride and groom on top of the cupcake tower. It was quite sad to return home after the trip. I have some many wonderful friends on the other side of the pacific ocean but hopefully I can plan another trip in 2011 or 2012.

Since the trip not a a huge amount has been happening. Work plods along with a variety of different tasks. One good thing is that I have had to buy new pants! I went shopping and bought 3 pairs of pants in February but they are now about 3 sizes too big!

This month saw the second anniversary of Grandma’s death. I know she is still looking out for me.

On the geek front, I am the proud owner of 2 (yes 2!) Android phones. I managed to lose my old faithful Nokia E51 in the bush near Kuridala. On my trip over to the US I splurged on a Nexus One. Great phone! I got my second Android phone this week. I got rolled onto the work mobile phone plan (bye bye prepaid) and it worked out cheaper due to a special deal to get a phone with my plan which welcomed the HTC Desire into my collection of gadgets. I have decided I am not a fan of HTC Sense but I have loaded Launcher Pro which hides a lot of it. Anyway, enough geek!

Today is Friday and I am taking the day off work. I am onto load 3 of laundry and have so far enjoyed a quiet day.

Cya!

Some of it comes down to me not being able to talk openly about some things and feelings that are floating around my head and once it is here, it is open for all to see. I guess I am growing up (scary thought).

So, what has been going on… let’s see, where to start. How about a jump back to March.

March saw me frantically pack up my apartment in Hummelstown PA, throw a cubic metre (or meter) worth of stuff onto a boat and fly back to Australia. My plan to move back to Australia was in motion but it was not all smooth sailing. It was much harder than I thought to shut down such a big side of my life and switch it back for a life back in Australia. I have so many good friends state side who I miss and will continue to miss. One thing I don’t miss is the BS associated with working as a UXO geo for a company that refuses to learn from its mistakes. I still believe I did my job well and the people I worked with were fantastic but the group made to many mistakes on some projects which meant we were always working to try and fix them.

I do believe I made the right decision to move back and I am happy that I have but I now need to settle into a new position. I have been working “part time” (full time with light weeks being subsidised from a huge band of comp and holiday time) from home on select projects that lended themselves to having split roles. Working remotely is great when the data is collected during the day US time and then I grab it in my morning so that by the time the field teams are awake and ready to go again, I have done my stuff and they have maps of they did yesterday and are aware of any issues. Working from home (for me) has its disadvantages though. I miss the social aspect of work greatly. As I said, I worked with some fantastic people and I was spoilt. So I have started looking for work and I have some applications in and I have fingers crossed that everything works out nicely.

In April Ally, Ellen and I jetted off to Hawaii for our Hawaii 2009 reunion tour. Corny name but our one major family holiday was in 1989 where we all came to the US via Hawaii for a few weeks and did the touristy things in LA like Disney Land and Universal Studios. It was the first time we had all ‘hung out’ in our adult lives and it was a great trip. The wedding was beautiful.

May, June, July, August were pretty routine. Working some, thinking some, working some more, thinking some more. I had a few things floating around my noggin and it took me a long time to work some things out for myself. I never knew some things would be so hard.

My birthday came and went in September. I actually had my second birthday in a row in Australia which was awesome. Our standard trip to the Indian Restaurant occurred and the food was good as usual. September also saw the first anniversary of Grandma’s death. It was a good day but a sad day. I still miss her so much but no one lives forever.

October saw more jetting around. Work came up in Hawaii and I was asked to go and help with. I stopped by Queensland on the way to catch up with family. The job took 3 days and was pretty smooth. I had a couple of days to myself to soak up the sun but my tan is still non-existent as I learnt from my mistakes in April and I applied ample sunscreen.

And now it is November. I am currently sitting on the couch in my aunt’s house back in Queensland. Outside the sun is shining and the trees are softly swaying in the breeze. The second trip was not really planned but
became a good option when I discovered that it was very difficult to get a flight back to Hobart after arriving on an International flight into Sydney at 4PM.

So what will the rest of November bring? Who knows? I am hoping to hear back about a position in a couple of week’s time and I will go from there. Any Geo related job around that I am interested in does require me to move. I think once this all happens I will feel much more settled as I will have a clear path forward and will have goals to work towards.

If anyone out there is still reading, thanks for listening

I walked to town and on the way noticed that there was a LOT of police cars about. Not just police cars, saw a couple of pretty nice police 4×4′s and a police boat!

Upon arriving at Customs I picked up the phone on the counter and dialled 1222 for service. A nice lady came out and went through my forms and took my ID (Passport, 2x driver licenses). After coping some relevant info and signing my life away, I was directed to go and visit quarantine a few blocks away so they could assess whether or not they would want to inspect my items or not. Another nice lady helped me and went through my stuff. After making a joke that I might have swine flu (ha ha!), she said they will release my shipment in the system today saving me time and money! woohoo!

Since I was in town I popped into the Harris Scarfe department store. I saw a nice 7.5L cast iron pot on the front page of their catalogue for $99 (down from $399 but I bet no one ever pays that much) which I was interested in. Surprisingly enough they had some in stock! On my way up the stairs to homewares I noticed a sign that said if you spend over $150 on homewares, we will deliver your order FREE to your home next day. Beauty I thought as I was not sure if I was going to buy one or not if I had to lug it 2-3 km up the hill. So I bought two of the buggers, one for me and one for Dad.

Once I arrived home I paid my Melbourne port fees and rang the Cargo company. They gave me an update that my stuff left Melbourne yesterday and is due to Hobart on a truck on the 10th. If all goes well I should have my stuff on the 11th or 12th!

The form went on to tell me that I was born on a Friday and I am 10078 days old. Why?

I know also feel ripped off as I didn’t do anything to celebrate my 10,000 day milestone!

(and yes, obviously you can work out my DOB even though it is obscured)