come on, take'em off

Wow. I have no excuse for three weeks of silence, except that I was digging a lot, and now I'm done. Yup, done done done, goodbye Minto, au revoir trowel cramp (which has proved fatal to both typing skillz and knitting progress). I can't even express how nice it is to look forward to healing up and resting and seeing people again, though I am a little concerned about resolving the return of unemployment.
In the end, after six weeks of digging, there were

• four wasp nests,
• three mice,
  
• three thunderstorms that were bad enough to prompt emergency evactuation to Tim Hortons,
• one snake,
• one moose track,
• one deer print in my backdirt pile,
• lots of bear scat (but no bears),
• two small red newts,
• one large black newt with white spots,
• 54 hours of listening to timeshifted BBC Radio One to and from work,
• 16 cans of cold Alpha-ghetti after I tired of making lunch in the morning,
• and absolutely zero artifacts or even possible artifacts.

Also, unforunately, zero paychecks, as the client has been dragging their collective feet on the paycheck issue, which is pretty annoying.
The low point of the project (for me, anyway - definitely the high point for anyone not me) was when Ellis and I were faced with crossing a very cold, flood-swollen river with no rubber boots and no desire to spend the rest of a fairly chilly day in cold wet clothes. Solution? Strip down to panties and wade through barefoot.
I can hear you laughing from here, Mom.

Other news in the world of me: Angus arrived one week ago today, while Sean and I were at my cousin Aurora's baptism, and has been crashing with us and generally being a wonderful addition to the household. Now that I'm finally done with my ten hour days of digging, we're going to spend some time looking for a place and sorting out his sitch with the school, etc.

Also, one of my random fishing expeditions has paid off unexpectedly. A Fredericton social media company (click here for a video of the CEO explaining what they do, it's pretty cool to say the least) was advertising for a sales position a month ago and I dropped a resume on the off chance that they might look past my lack of marketing degree; imagine my surprise when I got an email from them about a completely different position that they were thinking of creating! So I talked it over with one of their (very pleasant) executives, and she gave me a homework assignment for the weekend, which is completely blowing me out of the water right now. I'm hoping that what I'm coming up with is sufficient for now, but I'm honestly not 100% sure that I know what they are looking for... let's hope?
Still, I'm learning tons, and even if this doesn't work out, this has really restored some of my faith in this job hunting business. Apparently my resume resonated with them (her words). And I mean, a company that will set a practical test as a stage of interviewing, instead of some stupid typing test or personality quiz (I'm looking at you, Cendant and Irving) - pretty solid.