Fitness and Jazz

So for all of you that really know me, you know that I have to work out. It's kind of an addiction (can you really call an addiction to fitness a bad thing). Now while my trip of a lifetime to Europe was amaaazing it also put a 7-week long kink in my usual fitness routine. Also added about 10 more pounds to my permanent fitness goal. Boo. This is the look I was rocking at the beginning of my career during training:

Upon my arrival in Lafayette I'd had enough of this and made a commitment to get back on track. So I joined Anytime Fitness between work and home (no excuses to pass it by on my way home). I went it alone for about a month and a half, wasn't really seeing results so I made two big changes: a solid eating plan (stolen from a magazine which I'll speak about in a later post) and bootcamp style classes sometimes twice a day to get everything started. HUGE fitness improvements for sure (at the beginning I wanted to die).

The next level was to keep it going with bootcamp classes from Alli, the best motivator, TRX classes and... wait for it... ZUMBA! I jumped on the band wagon. I'm so sad I didn't do it before then too because I know how much my Hali friends loved it.

So after putting in a pretty solid effort I have a progress update:

Minus 12 pounds and still going. I've hit a bit of a lull right now but haven't gone up, so that's progress right? Anyway it's ironically time for lunch, so get out there and sweat your butt off!

Massive Update

Alright so unlike one of my besties, Kaylee Shannon, I am probably the worst blogger in the world. So I'm going to try and catch everyone up on what everything has been like since I've moved down stateside and have been really bad sometimes about keeping in touch with people (I try and do my best). With that being said, this is gonna be a long one...

Apparently this is the only non-ridiculous pic of my apartment I've taken.

So right off the bat, once I arrived in Lafayette (yes I live in Louisiana and ALSO in a place named after a True Blood character), I got my new (read: free/company-provided) apartment. Furnished and all. I also was roommate-less for the first month! How could I lose really?

After my first week at work, I showed up to being told that I was going to work in a bulk plant for a week (read: 2.5 weeks) on my birthday. Slightly depressing birthday present but this is the life I chose right? Anyway it's literally a port in the middle of nowhere that you have to travel 30 minutes to get to a Wal-Mart. But there were two saving graces:
1. Dolphins

and 2. Kitties

They were feral and lived under where we stayed; of course I fed them :)

There was nothing else that really happened there of importance except for unloading a few trucks and loading a few vessels full of bulk dry cement. Fun times.

I also decided that I wanted to volunteer at an animal shelter because I missed my poor little Fernando (read: spoiled) who is being boarded by my parents back in Newfoundland. They have officially turned him into an outdoor cat (unimpressed as this will not be accommodated very well when I live in an apt/condo and am reunited with him). I had my orientation and got to go there once. Hopefully once I work the schedule I'm supposed to (3 weeks on, 1 off) I'll make it back to visit the kittehs more.

Another work adventure took me to a chemical storage/dry blending facility in Raceland. Which was nicely downwind of the sugar mill during harvest season. How can something that makes things taste so delicious smell so foul when they're processing it? There was also a kitty here (beginning to see a trend? I think it's the universe's way of replacing Ferd while I can't have him down here with me). My roomie was there as well and we named her Butters.

The week after we also visited the lab facility in New Orleans. It was def within walking distance of Bourbon Street and we actually went there on Halloween night (unfortunately not dressed up though). But thankfully we left in time before some sketchy stuff went down that showed up all over the news the next day.

The next exciting thing that happened was probably my first Black Friday experience. I desperately wanted a Christmas tree because: 1. everyone leaves during Thanksgiving and I wanted something to do and 2. I LOOOOOOOOVE CHRISTMAS! So brilliant Erin went to Wal-Mart to buy a tree Thanksgiving Day at 8 pm-ish (Black Friday sales weren't supposed to start until 10 pm so I thought I'd be ok). Silly naive Canadian. This was the line-up after being there for 2 hours:

Buuuuuut it resulted in this:

It seems at no point did I take a fully decorated pic; my colours were lime green and purple :)

Then came pre-school to learn lots of things about swinging hammers, running pumps and maintenance. It was actually pretty fun to do some hands-on stuff finally. This is me helping replace a centrifugal pump:

And this is a butterfly valve I built:

I was pretty proud of myself

Then my awesome manager let me have a legit block of time off to go home for Christmas. It was kind of a crazy time, between the travel taking about 24 hours total between delays and prolonged layovers, making it home just in time for some Tibb's Eve festivities, and a lot of family time. Sadly over the holiday we said goodbye to my Poppy John after his battle with cancer. But there's always a silver lining: I made it home to see him, he knew who I was, and we had some great visits those last few days. I also would've been heartbroken if I had missed his funeral, so as sad it was to attend I'm so glad that I got to. I also have to say thank you to Diane who gave my dad some home movies of a Thanksgiving we spent at the camp in Grand Falls when I was only five. Watching it was a pretty great (read: still sad) way to spend my New Year's Eve while fitting in a last bit of time with the fam.

I'm currently in Kellyville, OK for Operational School aka learning how to run a cement unit... ish. Won't lie; the first time I did it, it was terrifying. But it's getting easier as we get more practise (funny thing that is, practise). Final evaluation on cement mixing is coming up this week, then some more classroom stuff, then VACAY!!! On the schedule: Calgary, Orlando, Miami and cruise with the rents. Some definite motivation to get through the second half of this school :). 

Sorry for the ridiculous post; I promise I'll stay more on top of it from now on so this doesn't happen again.

The Drive - Days 1 & 2

So y'all (fact: I say "y'all" in regular speech now. It's completely impossible to avoid) I've been slacking yet again on the posting and I can't blame it on my faja this time since he did send me our pictures over two weeks ago. I'll blame it on trying to prep for cementing operational school in January (which is almost as daunting as the drive down here was).

I've also decided to include fun facts I've determined/discovered since moving here; one for each post: Louisiana has drive-through daiquiri shops. Figure that one out...

I didn't bother to even come up with a more creative title than this because, well, the drive was just so daunting as I already said. This was our planned route:

According to Google maps, it covered a total of 4661 km. Gah! So naturally the first step was for us to get off of the island, which was only a quick trip to Argentia (thankfully), followed by an absolutely TERRIBLE ferry ride. Remember this storm? Ok so I intended the word "storm" to be a hyperlink to an article about the storm but I couldn't be bothered to search for >2 minutes. The point of my fruitless search was that a terrible tropical storm/hurricane that hit the northeastern US kindly had its tail end swinging through the Gulf (not the Gulf of Mexico ;)) the night faj and I crossed on the ferry. Result: two rather nauseated passengers that got terribly unrestful sleeps. Not a great way to start a MEGA trip.

We powered through like the champs we are and to be quite honest, the trip from North Sydney, NS to Saint John, NB (our stop for the second night) was pretty uneventful. Not even a stop into Hali unfortunately. Buuuuuuut, the purpose for stopping into Saint John was to visit the one and only Jenna Hazelton! Yay! Had some delicious Thai food (now I want some Thai food) and caught up. I think the night ended with some Big Brother and some visit promises (I'm holding you to those girl!).

Once I arrived back at the hotel, I discovered a pooped faja and decided to turn in myself for the night (there are some more exciting days that come up I promise).

Total kilometres travelled: 1056/4461

Going to Amurica (Part 1)

Alright, so I kind of messed up the order of my blog entries. Mostly because I wrote the one about passing through immigration when I was at the bulk plant in Port Fourchon (yup it's really as in the middle of nowhere as it looks; but more on that place at a later date) and I wasn't a super keener blogger, therefore I hadn't taken a picture of my new SUV yet. SOOOO this is a really long-winded way of saying switch those two entries in your mind.

I had the pleasure of travelling to Houston on August 21 (my god that was a long time ago, yet it feels like it just happened). Much to my chagrin I arrived in the middle of a dry spell/heat wave/sbj I feel like I'm melting. But THANK YOU for not being humid, so it was marginally more bearable. The way this whole thing works is I have to go to Houston for a week with all the other new employees for something called OFS-1 (what does OFS stand for? Your guess is as good as mine; mine is Oilfield Services) where you're pretty much given the rundown on the basic DON'T DO THIS OR YOU WILL GET FIRED rules, sorry TERMINATED (doesn't "terminated"sound so much worse??) Best part of this trip? Getting and AMEX with an eating allowance on it. Awww yeahhh!!

Also got to experience a dry lightning storm (I refer you back to the heat wavedness there). I apologize in advance for this video: I haven't watched it since I took it and likely have ridiculous commentary because that's how I roll.

Other fun things in Houston I got to do:
Turtle racing: no false advertising here folks. You place your bet for free on one of the nine turtles (I picked Snooki of course) and the winning turtle tickets get beer. HOW CAN YOU LOSE??!! The thing is you can't. Found this gem on Youtube to give a better version of the effect. If it's a Thursday, and you're looking for a time in Houston, I recommend definitely.

Aquarium restaurant: you actually get to eat in the middle of fishies swimming around you. Totally loved it! Food was pretty good too!

Stolen from their website (I'm not that old man)

From there we went to Kellyville, OK to learn how to drive. Or try to at least....

Also would like to apologize for my excessive use of caps in this post :)

Gots me a new car

Alright so I am apparently the WORST blogger in the world (I actually blame it on my dad since I was waiting FOR-ever for him to give me the pictures of our road trip down here. But that's a story for another blog entry... or two...), but I'll try and catch you up on the things I've been doing since I moved down south:

On the exact same day that I was chopping all the hair off my head (ok my hairdresser did it but that sounds way less dramatic), I got a nice little email from my recruiter that was forwarded correspondence from my manager. It read a little like this: "soooo where should I book Erin's plane ticket to after her training in Houston? Maurice? (side note: this is Maurice. Imagine my horror when I got my job offer, Googled it and realized what the population was! I live in Lafayette; much more manageable)" Manager's response: "No; Erin is going to be driving to Maurice." I had to read that again. Like four more times... drive?! From Harbour Grace? (point of reference: this happened on a Tuesday and I was leaving to start training Sunday that same week) I don't even have a car?!

Solution: buy a car. If only everything in life could be solved that easily right? I had my heart set on an SUV. I know, I know; typical oilfield employee polluting the environment. Get over it. I really wanted a Ford Escape but my one afternoon of SUV shopping didn't yield any reasonable results for that particular model. BUT I found this gem (don't judge the colour):

Also had to get it an awesome magnet for the back:

Not bad for a 2007!! Also have discovered I'm never going to be able to sell this car in Louisiana (due to the whole km/h speedometer so I guess they're just going to have to move me back so when I want to get rid of it ;).

p.s. it's a Suzuki Grand Vitara

IMMIGRANTS! P.s. That's Russell peters reference. I'm not bashing immigrants

So to legit work in the US and not be an illegal alien, I had to apply for a work visa. I'll treat this as an educational moment if by any chance anyone who reads my blog ever has to go through such a process.

Step 1: fill out some ridiculous survey that asks me such questions as "were you ever a perpetrator on a genocide?" and "are you a member of a terrorist organization on the United States black list?" obviously my answer was no to both of these. But in all honesty, are people engage in those sorts of activities that stupid or honest? I thought it was odd.

Step 2: thankfully I was given an immigration coordinator that helped me talk to my immigration lawyer. However apparently it was ok to leave sending my visa documents until the last possible moment to add to the tension of the situation. Aka they were mailed Tuesday from the US to Newfoundland. Since they didn't require a signature they wound up stuffed in our neighbour's front door since for some reason they insist on having a number 8 on their house as well :l.

Step 3: docs in hand along with your ORIGINAL degree (a bit much imo) you hold your breath as you step up to the customs desk and say you're going to the US to work and want a TN visa. I entered the immigration area with one hour before my flight and six people in front of me. Those six people took about an hour and fifteen minutes to be served. They were killing themselves to work that fast. NOT. Then I got asked "why do you want to come here and take our jobs?" how do you even answer a question like that?! At customs, where any sort of emotion is seen as suspicious. And I was at immigration so I assume it's exponentially worse if you laugh at a question there. Anyway I got let through eventually only to find my flight had been delayed an hour so I had twenty minutes to board (p.s. 1.5 hours between flights is nooooot enough regardless what anyone says)

Step 4: legally enter the US for le job. P.s. Now you have to enter Canada as a visitor. That's kind of sad.

My New Haircut

So I've majorly failed at posting in this blog but now my plan is to just post regularly and catch you up on what the whole adventure has been like (the word roller coaster comes to mind). So for this post (paying homage in the title to this little youtube tidbit. And in rewatching this for the first time in about two years I realize the guy in the bar looks like Pauly D muahahaha!), I'll do a little reveal of my new haircut.

So for those of you that knew me before the cut (aka most), you'll remember that my long hair looked a little like this:

And for those of you didn't know me before "the cut" and haven't creeped through my pics on Facebook, that's what I chopped off.

So why did I decide to do this? A couple of reasons:
1. The last chicky that cut my hair at Kara's in Halifax mangled the ends of it and made it thin and straggly. That coupled with being in Europe for seven weeks and wearing my hair up about 97% of the time in some sort of messy bun kind of destroyed it.
and 2. Louisiana is FREAKING HOT AND HUMID!!! Aka long hair + Newfoundlander + 35 degrees on the humidex in September = need for short hair

So in an arduous Google search I decided on this as a template:

And I think my fave part of the whole process was the reaction from my hairdresser once she saw this picture along with the words "are you sure???!!!"; and yes I heard that punctuation in her voice. *side note: Leanne, my hairdresser at home is by far the best I've ever gone to. If you're ever around Harbour Grace, head up to Radiance and see Leanne!! end plug*

Three hours and some highlights later, this was the result:

NO HAIRS LEFT!! But I love it, and even if I didn't, at least it's functional and hair grows back so whatever.