hi! hi hi hi. what's new? i see my traffic has damn near disappeared, so i think the only ones still visiting are my actual friends. which is pretty cool, because now i can commence talking shit about people i don't know again.

but not before i post photos. there are many.


welcome to placentia, newfoundland - a small fishing town with a population around 200. out of a 12 day trip, there was about 9 composite hours of sunshine.



this weather was pretty standard. the environment was a bit of a shock for me, because it looked like the foothills of the rocky mountains here, but you're at sea level. and that's just too much for my noggin.

i never claimed to be the brightest star in the sky.



this was my place of business, an old naval base that's now used as our contracted fabrication shop. it served its purpose quite well - especially since i wasn't told until after we left that some workers discovered asbestos. seriously, hang out with me now because i might croak soon.



inside the shop. safety first, yo.



this is a smelting furnace, with which one can smelt things. i don't know what smelting means. yay college.

if i were smarter, i'da gotten a photo of what someone had written on the side of the smelting furnace in chalk, that i initially had mistaken for a serial number.

it said:

B 4 I (picture of a screw) U R U 1 8 Q T (pi symbol)

...it was pretty awesome.


the office. my hub. when i wasn't out trying not to break shit or violating safety codes, i was here. runnin' things. 'cause that's how i roll.



i was told by more than one iron worker that my steel-toed boots were somehow fashionable. thanks, superKmart on broadway and alameda!



hotel. we were usually on site by 7 a.m., leave at 7 p.m., eat dinner, and get back to the hotel around 9:30 p.m., so the days were long and redundant. work, eat, home, work, eat, home, work, eat, home.



...which left little time for surfing. this is the kitchenette in my efficiency unit.



in placentia, there's one restaurant, in the lobby of the hotel. you have your choice of cod, cod fish, more cod, cod tongues (seriously), a turkey dinner or a club sandwich. i opted to starve myself mostly, but the cod was quite enjoyable.

everything's in french there, but everyone sounds irish. canada is a smorgasbord of anglo-saxon influence. now ya know.



inside that restaurant, just off to the right there, is four digital casino machines, which were manned day and night by morbidly obese senior citizens. here, marge's son tears her away from the electronic slot machine to use the ladie's room.



i was up earlier than everyone else every day, because i was still submitting my denver post features. it was always clear very early, and then the fog would come. being from denver, and being confused in general about the concept of humidity, i found this fascinating. the clouds would literally drop out of the sky and melt down the mountains.



see? weird.



placentia did have a mall, though i'm not sure why. all the stores in it were closed. the teenaged canadian hooligans would go hang out there anyway. they love the smell of commerce in the morning.



this is the back of my coworker's head, with whom i had to spend every waking minute. i haven't seen him in the office yet today, and that's fucking fine by me.



since newfoundland is so far north, the sun doesn't go down til about 9:45 at night. during the sunny hours i would take some black horse and go sit by my lonesome on the little dock behind our hotel and listen to music (i didn't have a phone, so i couldn't call anyone, and i didn't have cable, and IMing seemed like too much work).

one day i was listening to arcade fire's wake up, and the line about having to adjust seemed so appropriate at the time, as i was adjusting to the trip, and to being a grown up, so i took a picture of my feet.

then i kicked my own ass for being so corny. and shut up - i bet you do stupid shit when you're alone for long periods of time, too.



'twas, at times, indeed a pretty sight. naaaaaaaature is all around me.



coming home, denver was cold and rainy. natch. but laura picked me up from the aeropuerto and had just crossed the 100,000 mile mark on her car. somehow, this made up for the weather.

the end.

...eh?