Soda Craze

On Friday, I ate lunch with a dude who did his utmost to convince me to join the reclamation team at an as-yet unbuilt oilsands project in the wild wild north, even more north than Fort MacMurray.  A glowing picture formed over my veal and leeks: become a world-class expert in a tiny field!  Make $200,000 a year before I’m thirty!  Rebuild ecosystems, make a difference, save the world, feed the abadiginals!

I thanked him for his interest, and lunch, and the tour of his department’s floor, and the numerous contacts he insisted swap business cards with me on said floor (lots of clammy handshakes and intense interest), and the presentation, and the posters, and for complimenting me on my personality and brains and verve.  It was good to get out of the office for a four-hour lunch, and it was good to have my ego stroked, despite it always feeling deeply weird and suspicious. 

However, we have some issues.

Item 1: That I dislike camping and hiking and many other things that come with ‘living’ in the very far north.

Item 2: That the mosquitoes up there are the size of swallows.

Item 3: That I just started my new job like ten weeks ago.  And if I leave it, how’s that gonna look?

Item 4: That there are way too many men up there.

Item 5: That there’s nowhere to wear my cocktail dresses to.

Item 6: That I could really definitely die in a tailings pond.

Item 7: That if I drag myself out of the tailings pond and set off across the impenetrable forest, I will get eaten by a bear.  Or an abadiginal.

Item 8: But that it would be a damn sight better than cleaning up contaminated downstream sites in Manitoba.  8a: That all those contaminated sites are located in civilization.

Item 9: And it would be a brilliant opportunity that would make the most of, and squeeze every last drop from, my second degree.

Item 10: That I’d be on the research team and would even be able to make the most of my first degree.  10a: That I would be a war journalist for the battle between sulfate-reducing bacteria and methanogenic bacteria at the bottom of the ponds.

Item 11: That I will be even more squillions of miles away from the people I love and miss loads already.

Item 12: That no one will come visit me.  Not that anyone visits me right now except for Vulcan Pipeline Dude.  12a: That even he won’t visit if I live up there.  12b: But my parents won’t visit either, so that’ll be nice.

Item 13: That I’ll be living in an apartment the size of a refrigerator box.  Or a trailer or a tent… or a cave.

He just e-mailed me saying he liked my ideas and asking my opinion on the job.  What should I do?  God I’m so bad at decisions.

My route to wurk takes me past a graphics store that recently put up a ‘Things to Do Now That Stampede is Over’ poster:

• Apologize to anyone you’ve met in the last ten days
• Try to recall, as best you can, where you work.
• Your clothes have absorbed a lot of alcohol.  Until you remove and bury them – you are a fire hazard.
• Avoid mirrors for a couple of days.
• Stay downwind from friends for about a week.
• Begin a methodical search for your wife.
• Forget your car.  You drove it into Lake Bonavista for a few laughs.
• Begin to prepare your body for next year.

Heh.  The only thing about Stampede worthy of a chuckle is the aftermath.

I’ve got a mild throat infection and was up till 3 a.m. last night swigging icewater to stay hydrated and bring my fever down, so the last thing I needed was to be woken this morning by a marching band.  (Naturally, of course, the last thing you need is almost always the first thing you get.  It’s practically an axiom.)  I’m pretty far up, but it’s still damn loud, so I gave up on sleep, wrapped up in a blanket, got a bowl of Jell-O, and just watched the damn Stampede Parade from the balcony.

It was fun, I guess.  I mean it would have been more fun if I’d been about six, but still.  I have significant soft spots for classic cars, horsies, and Chinese dragon dancers.  And the Ukranian dancers were good, and it was fun playing ‘Guess the Float’ from 350 feet up – hey, if it looks like a green UFO stuffed with bananas wearing cowboy hats, which group is that?  Although I admit that some of the marching bands sent me scurrying back inside screeching “Help!  Scotsmen!”  There was also one marching band that I think was actually a jazz band – they had a piano – and they were on the back of a flatbed truck, which is actually pretty amusing.  I guess they didn’t want to discriminate against the piano player by actually marching.  (Piano guy:  “Hey guys, wait up!  Nnnnnnnghhh!”)

One thing, though – I’m not so far up that I can’t hear the cheering, and there was conspicuous silence from the crowds for some groups – I mean, insulting, loud silence.  The Muslim group, the solar car group, the windfarm group, both First Nations groups, and a couple other predictable groups were just totally shunned.  Kids didn’t wave, nobody clapped, everything.  Lousy, stupid Calgary.  It’s so bigoted and it’s so phony and just aarghh.