Ok So I know I said I would update this the next day, and I have received several comments to that effect. Unfortunately the next couple days I had some major issues with my body adjusting to functioning one organ shy of a full deck. So here is the next update better late than later......
So I was lying there in my morphine induced semi happiness waiting for my friends Cathy and Brian to show up to get me to take me to the Royal Alex Hospital DT. As the ER came to life, all the non church going sick people were filing into the waiting room, several more doctors and nurses had come on duty and the whole ER was bustling like a school bakery on a Monday morning. I was lying there enjoying the afterglow of my new best friend Mr. Morphine finally finding a comfortable position on the narrow hospital bed, and Cathy and Brian showed up. The nurse removed the IV but left the needle in me considering the time we had putting the needles in the first place. I prepared myself for the journey to the van and eventually to the Royal Alex Hospital. Brian jumped in my BMW and was taking that home for me as we didn’t want to leave it at the ER, which although is attached to a Police station, still brought a lot of people through the parking lot at all hours. No sense tempting fate.
Cathy and I headed to my place to pick up Brian as he dropped off my car and then headed to the DT core of Edmonton. It is amazing how out to lunch one can be while on morphine yet still be able to notice the 673 bumps in the road from my house to the Royal Alex.(but who’s counting).
Now haven’t experienced sitting around a waiting room for hours the night before and having being referred by the North East ER I figured I had paid my dues and was entitled to a bed right away as soon as I arrived at the Royal Alex. That was not the case. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even have a seat as we had to stand in a line to see the triage nurses. As i stood there in a hunched over pitiful looking stance, I realized as my morphine was wearing off I had something in common with the incredible hulk at that point, we both were around people with white coats, we both could not control the changes our bodies were about to go through from the pain and anger, and I was going to change to a nice green color as the morphine wore off.
As Cathy and I waited, my transfer paper in hand, I figured that I still should be able to jump the que, as I contemplated this, several more people joined the line up. I am thinking why do you not at least have a numbering system so people can sit down, as this thought passes through the fog in my head, the nurse comes out of the booth and asks us all in line to step back as we had encroached into the area where teh lucky patrons were being served, of course when you move a line back, and the first guy moves first, its inevitable that he will run into the second guy, so as the healthy looking guy in front on me stepped on my feet, it brought me back to the now. I am normally polite in situations like this but saying excuse me after being in pain for 20 hours straight was not on my mind, a slightly louder “Watch it” seem to work. I finally make it to the front and of course and ambulance arrives and my turn is stalled yet again. We were fast approaching the 11th hour of which my ultra sound was booked for. Cathy had mentioned this a couple times to the hard working emerge staff, but I guess in the emerge , time is but a number, of which the only two matter than is the start of the shift, and the end of their shift. Finally having made it to a nurse and handing off my envelope, she looked at me and said have a seat. It was at this time I fully realized there would be no queue jumping here, there would be no favouritism, or extra points for having sat at the other place. Here I was back to square one in the emerge. How I longed to be back in a skinny lil bed lying in a fetal position with an iv in my arm, those were the good old hours. I then had to see teh lady at the registration counter. She prepared a new wrist band and noticed my NE emerge one which now needed to come off. I was in the big leagues now.....the Hospital Emerge! She grabs my wrist band , slips her scissors under the band and promptly cuts off the old band, along with my live strong wrist band. As she realizes what she has done she starts to laugh not knowing that, in 6 years I have never taken off this wrist band it was special to me. Sometimes people don’t realize that the lil things sometimes do matter. I was not happy but in too much pain to really make an issue out of it.
I went back and sat in the waiting room, looking around and seeing a couple familiar faces; The Mexican fellow sitting under the no cell phone sign talking a mile minute on his cell phone, the girl with sore foot, just to name a couple. After what seemed like hours (and was only 7 minutes, I heard my name being called between labour pains along with 3 other members of the Royal Society of the Waiting Room Patrons. The porter lead the way as we all fell in behind him, heading to the ultra sound area of the hospital. My next observation was the people on front of me were not in as much pain as me, or they were hiding it better. Within the first 100 meters I had fell behind the pack by a good 20-25 feet. As we rounded teh next corner they were totally out of sight at this point. Cathy trudge along with me and I kind of looked like an old china man the way I was walking, you know short lil quick steps. One more hallway, and one more turn and we were now in the ultra sound waiting room. I realized at this point that this hospital had more waiting room chairs than hospital beds! Although coming in last in the amazing race to the ultra sound area, I was called first to have the ultra sound. I went in and removed my shirt and trie to get comfortable on this ultra sound bed. The technician started her procedure and put the cool jell and warm instrument on my belly and started. For the most part the ultra sound felt more like a massage of my abdomen area with a couple sharp pains every time pressure was applied to my gall bladder. The ultra sound took about 20 minutes and several hundred beeps later, the tech announced that the doctor would come in and review it with me in a couple minutes. She then ran off to another room to perform the next one. Again I wa amazed how to me the whole emergency room and hospital looked like organized chaos, yet these people were maximizing their time and equipment to meet the needs of the hundreds of patients flowing through their doors daily. Dr Doogie Howzer then shower up...ok...really..I am not being funny, I thought I was in the children’s ward when this kid sat down and started to do a couple checks on my belly and introduced himself as a doctor. He looked like he was 17. Ok back to me, so the doc explained that I did have gall stones but my gall bladder did not look all that bad. He said he would give the pictures to the emerge doctor and they would decide what to do. I was not sure whether I was relieved or pissed off. If my gall bladder was looking good, why was it being so mean to me! So I left the ultra sound place and shuffled my way back down to the emergency room with Cathy to my right. Once in the emergency room it didn’t seem very long before again my name was called and was brought back to another little waiting room in the observation area where several doctors and nurses were located. Cathy and Brian were no where’s to be seen at this point, having stayed out in the main waiting room finally, back in bee hive! I sat there for all of 2 minutes and in the distance i heard the Attending doctor talking about me, he knew everything about me, he was updated by the NE emerge doctor, and was waiting for me. Here, I thought I was just another new face when I arrived at the Royal Alex. My level of confidence and admiration for the emergency services of our hospital system was surging at every step of my adventure. As I sat and waited for my next interaction, after only about 3 minutes, I was promptly moved to a bed in the corner. They did my vitals and hooked me up to an IV. The first nurse chatted me up a bit and then the emerge doctor chatted to me about my gall bladder, and some options they may consider. Suddenly Cathy and Brian reappeared having paid someone off I am sure to sneak back where I was. I must admit at this point again many things were foggy and the pain I was in was occupying quite a bit of my waking thought processes . A new doctor appeared and he was from the surgical department. He started asking me questions and prodding me and poking me, and at point decided it was time for a prostate exam. Now I was in no mood at this point to have someone’s finger in my bum however my second thought was the pain I was in at that moment was pretty intense and this was probably the right time as I probably wouldn’t even feel it........I was wrong...anyways. Again he mentioned that the ultra sound showed my gall bladder being ok, and it might just be a stone and they may treat me and release me and have me come back...or they may operate. He would let his bosses decide that. In the meantime, they were going to admit me to the hospital. With that being said, they moved me three doors down, in front of the nurses station to keep an eye on me, and to wait for a bed. AT this point, it had now been 24 hours since the pain started. The good thing with my new status was I was now given some more morphine and my life was going to get better again for a couple more hours. At this point I was mentally and physically exhausted. As I settled in Brian and Cathy headed home for a couple hours before going to my house and grabbing me some stuff, and I sat back and relaxed and tried to sleep a lil bit while the morphine was doing its job.
After a couple more hours, I was chatting to the nurse there and really was impressed with him and how he handled this irate daughter of a patient. She was a nurse at the hospital and was pissed off because of the process and how beds got assigned ect. He stick handled here all the way out the door and up to the ward. I mentioned to him, that I was very impressed. Suddenly the word came; they had a bed for me upstairs! I was wheeled upstairs to my new residence for the next 24-48 hours. I can’t remember at this point if my buddy Marv was with me in emerge or had come by upstairs to see me. I do know that he was visiting me there and brought me some magazines to read. He was very worried and I must say it was great to see him. Without Cathy and Brian and Marv, I am not sure I would have been able to make it through this ordeal. I was happy that I had some close friends, that took the time to make me feel better and to fill the gap of not being alone during this ordeal. I know I was visiting with Marv when they brought me some more happy juice and as I sat in the foggy afterglow, Marv had left and Cathy and Brian had showed up with some things for me. They didn’t stay long as I drifted in and out of consciousness. I figured it was going to be a rough night.
Day 3 coming soon!
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
What a Weekend.......
I am now updating my blog within a week of the last one, pretty good eh. I have had at least 3 people bug me about my blog and why it is not updated so I have at least 3 readers. I guess all famous writers had to start somewhere.
The other reason I am able to update this is I am lying here in a hospital bed after having emergency surgery on my gallbladder. It is about 4am and I awoke with a pain in my hip from sleeping on it all night and a slight pain in the stomach is where they did the operation. Now most people reading this blog know my sad story on how I ended up here but I will recap for the one or two that doesn’t. Saturday I had just finishing mowing the lawn at my house and was relaxing having a nice golf Gatorade G2, Red I think...two much details? Ok sorry.....and I started feeling some throbbing pain my back. Being the athlete that I am (no laughing!) I figured the pain was from the 7 mile walk I just did mowing my lawn. After about 30 minutes the pain encircled my whole lower chest are, but it was a weird pain, one I never felt before. I knew something wasn’t right. So I started to use the Google and see if I could find out what this pain might be. I really couldn’t get a definitive answer on this weird pain, and by this time it was approaching 6pm. I was chatting to Mother #2 (CATHY) and she suggested going to the medicenter, so I had a shower and put on clean underwear as mother #1 always suggested in case you get in an accident and have to go to the hospital. Apparently they can decipher between clean underwear and dirty underwear even if it is full of poop from an accident. Anyways, the medicenter #2 sent me to was closed so I texted #2 and asked for options, at the same time plugging the data in my GPS, as I started to drive to the nearest hospital #2 confirmed I was heading in the right direction. On arrival at the North East Emergency clinic, I see the triage nurse and gave her my story of pain and whoa, and she said....because of my age they would like to do an ECG first to rule out heart problems. Well I was not sure to be happy to be going in right away or insulted. None the less, this did concern me as I thought I had ruled out my heart with my 60 minute Google medical training. I must say at this point I was a little nervous that it may be my heart. As luck would have it, the ECG came back negative. I was then thrown back out into the pit affectionately known as the waiting room where moaning man and crying babies were the norm. What I noticed while sitting in the pit was most people there didn’t look sick or hurt. The odd baby crying and the odd limp, but no show stoppers it seems.
Just as my pain started to ramp up they called me in to the back part where all the experts and action happens. I realized that they had a door there to the back, not to keep the patience out, but to keep the doctors in! I am sure they had these electronic dog collars that would zap them if they tried to escape the insanity of an emergency ward. Seriously though, they were moving from patient to patient computer to station, stealth like, not taking a break. It was amazing to see these people work, being able to diagnose a colic baby, to a stroke victim to a whiney lawn mowing athlete.
Once the doctor visited with me, we assessed my pain and he felt it most likely was something to do with my gallbladder. They ordered up IV with some muscle relaxing drugs in it. It seemed to help and after a couple of short hours of being there my pain seemed to have subsided. The doctor confirmed that he thought it might be gallstones and booked an ultra sound for me on the Monday back at this North East Emerge clinic. So I thanked the wonderful staff and jumped in my car and feeling a lot better, headed home. By this time it was 12:30am Sunday morning. I had been in the emergency center for just over 4 hours.
After getting home, I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I threw some leftover KFC in the oven and heated that up. My Friend Danni popped in on his way home to see how I was doing as #2 had informed him of my crisis. We chatted some and he left around 1am as he had a flight to catch Sunday around 7am. After he left I took my chicken and a glass of milk and ate, and satisfied my hunger and thirst.
I watched a bit of TV and after about an hour I noticed a lot of the same pain coming back, but a lot stronger. I went back to the Google to enhance my previous medical experience and looked up gallbladder stones and attacks to see what I could do. Now Attack to me indicates painful incident that has a start and an end. Now for the most part all the sites said the attacks normally last anywhere’s from 30minutes to 6hours. I looked at the clock and it was now 3am, and it had been almost 12 hours at this point but being the optimist, I decided to ride it out for another hour or so and it should go away, and I should be going back to the clinic during drunk season (2am-4am after the bars close). I then went and had another shower and crawled into bed. By this time the pain had almost doubled again. I was trying to explain the pain to a friend and this is probably my best explanation; ever get winded, you know either punched in the solar plex or fall and get the wind knocked out of you, and just as your starting to catch your breath, you have that sharp pain at the bottom of your lungs, well that’s what I felt like someone constantly punching my solar plexus except the pain encircled my body. I tossed and turned and try to get comfortable, and got out of bed and sat in the living room, and then back to bed etc. This went on for about 2 hours until finally I had tears in my eyes from the pain. I made the command decision to head back to the NE Emergency center as it was now 5:30 am and most of the drunks should be gone and none of the new patience should start showing up for a while. I went to the clinic and this time I sat in the waiting room for at least an hour, I cannot explain the pain and how uncomfortable I was. I never thought that “hey great good time to show up at the emergency clinic, no patients”, problem was there were also fewer doctors and nurses.
They then moved me into the back room and allowed me to lie down on the bed where I waited another hour, I was in so much pain at this point again, I had tears in my eyes. Finally a doctor seen me and ordered another IV with the get better juice. I figured the last time it took about 20 minutes and I was feeling fine so this should be about the same. On top of that they gave me a couple percasets, which I had never had before but had heard about through this intervention TV shows where someone was addicted to pain killers. I figured I should have this pain licked. After about 20 minutes of lying there, the nurse showed up and was preparing my IV. Unfortunately I have a hard time with needles, at least my veins do. This poor nurse was at the end of her 12 hour shift at 7am and after three attempts could not get the needle into my arm. Another Nurse then came in and after 2 attempts was successful with a smaller needle in a smaller vein. The poking of the needles did distract me a bit from the excruciating pain in my stomach, perhaps this was a ploy or some new acupuncture ...I know...just kidding....Anyways, with needle in arm, and happy juice flowing , my Percocet’s were given to me and I had swallowed them up, I figured I had a 20 minute rough time left until things got better. After about 45 minutes of no improvements, and actually having the pain increase yet again, one of the nurses that had come on recently had heard my whimpering while lying there, and was able to get the doctor to authorize giving me some morphine. So they gave me a morphine and Gravol mix so I wouldn’t get sick from the morphine alone. Needless to say that it worked and took about 85% of the pain away. The doctor then scheduled a ultra sound for me that morning at the Royal Alexander hospital in DT Edmonton. I contacted Cathy and she said they would pick up my car and take me to te Royal Alex for the appointment.
DAY 2 I will write this in tomorrow .
The other reason I am able to update this is I am lying here in a hospital bed after having emergency surgery on my gallbladder. It is about 4am and I awoke with a pain in my hip from sleeping on it all night and a slight pain in the stomach is where they did the operation. Now most people reading this blog know my sad story on how I ended up here but I will recap for the one or two that doesn’t. Saturday I had just finishing mowing the lawn at my house and was relaxing having a nice golf Gatorade G2, Red I think...two much details? Ok sorry.....and I started feeling some throbbing pain my back. Being the athlete that I am (no laughing!) I figured the pain was from the 7 mile walk I just did mowing my lawn. After about 30 minutes the pain encircled my whole lower chest are, but it was a weird pain, one I never felt before. I knew something wasn’t right. So I started to use the Google and see if I could find out what this pain might be. I really couldn’t get a definitive answer on this weird pain, and by this time it was approaching 6pm. I was chatting to Mother #2 (CATHY) and she suggested going to the medicenter, so I had a shower and put on clean underwear as mother #1 always suggested in case you get in an accident and have to go to the hospital. Apparently they can decipher between clean underwear and dirty underwear even if it is full of poop from an accident. Anyways, the medicenter #2 sent me to was closed so I texted #2 and asked for options, at the same time plugging the data in my GPS, as I started to drive to the nearest hospital #2 confirmed I was heading in the right direction. On arrival at the North East Emergency clinic, I see the triage nurse and gave her my story of pain and whoa, and she said....because of my age they would like to do an ECG first to rule out heart problems. Well I was not sure to be happy to be going in right away or insulted. None the less, this did concern me as I thought I had ruled out my heart with my 60 minute Google medical training. I must say at this point I was a little nervous that it may be my heart. As luck would have it, the ECG came back negative. I was then thrown back out into the pit affectionately known as the waiting room where moaning man and crying babies were the norm. What I noticed while sitting in the pit was most people there didn’t look sick or hurt. The odd baby crying and the odd limp, but no show stoppers it seems.
Just as my pain started to ramp up they called me in to the back part where all the experts and action happens. I realized that they had a door there to the back, not to keep the patience out, but to keep the doctors in! I am sure they had these electronic dog collars that would zap them if they tried to escape the insanity of an emergency ward. Seriously though, they were moving from patient to patient computer to station, stealth like, not taking a break. It was amazing to see these people work, being able to diagnose a colic baby, to a stroke victim to a whiney lawn mowing athlete.
Once the doctor visited with me, we assessed my pain and he felt it most likely was something to do with my gallbladder. They ordered up IV with some muscle relaxing drugs in it. It seemed to help and after a couple of short hours of being there my pain seemed to have subsided. The doctor confirmed that he thought it might be gallstones and booked an ultra sound for me on the Monday back at this North East Emerge clinic. So I thanked the wonderful staff and jumped in my car and feeling a lot better, headed home. By this time it was 12:30am Sunday morning. I had been in the emergency center for just over 4 hours.
After getting home, I realized I hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I threw some leftover KFC in the oven and heated that up. My Friend Danni popped in on his way home to see how I was doing as #2 had informed him of my crisis. We chatted some and he left around 1am as he had a flight to catch Sunday around 7am. After he left I took my chicken and a glass of milk and ate, and satisfied my hunger and thirst.
I watched a bit of TV and after about an hour I noticed a lot of the same pain coming back, but a lot stronger. I went back to the Google to enhance my previous medical experience and looked up gallbladder stones and attacks to see what I could do. Now Attack to me indicates painful incident that has a start and an end. Now for the most part all the sites said the attacks normally last anywhere’s from 30minutes to 6hours. I looked at the clock and it was now 3am, and it had been almost 12 hours at this point but being the optimist, I decided to ride it out for another hour or so and it should go away, and I should be going back to the clinic during drunk season (2am-4am after the bars close). I then went and had another shower and crawled into bed. By this time the pain had almost doubled again. I was trying to explain the pain to a friend and this is probably my best explanation; ever get winded, you know either punched in the solar plex or fall and get the wind knocked out of you, and just as your starting to catch your breath, you have that sharp pain at the bottom of your lungs, well that’s what I felt like someone constantly punching my solar plexus except the pain encircled my body. I tossed and turned and try to get comfortable, and got out of bed and sat in the living room, and then back to bed etc. This went on for about 2 hours until finally I had tears in my eyes from the pain. I made the command decision to head back to the NE Emergency center as it was now 5:30 am and most of the drunks should be gone and none of the new patience should start showing up for a while. I went to the clinic and this time I sat in the waiting room for at least an hour, I cannot explain the pain and how uncomfortable I was. I never thought that “hey great good time to show up at the emergency clinic, no patients”, problem was there were also fewer doctors and nurses.
They then moved me into the back room and allowed me to lie down on the bed where I waited another hour, I was in so much pain at this point again, I had tears in my eyes. Finally a doctor seen me and ordered another IV with the get better juice. I figured the last time it took about 20 minutes and I was feeling fine so this should be about the same. On top of that they gave me a couple percasets, which I had never had before but had heard about through this intervention TV shows where someone was addicted to pain killers. I figured I should have this pain licked. After about 20 minutes of lying there, the nurse showed up and was preparing my IV. Unfortunately I have a hard time with needles, at least my veins do. This poor nurse was at the end of her 12 hour shift at 7am and after three attempts could not get the needle into my arm. Another Nurse then came in and after 2 attempts was successful with a smaller needle in a smaller vein. The poking of the needles did distract me a bit from the excruciating pain in my stomach, perhaps this was a ploy or some new acupuncture ...I know...just kidding....Anyways, with needle in arm, and happy juice flowing , my Percocet’s were given to me and I had swallowed them up, I figured I had a 20 minute rough time left until things got better. After about 45 minutes of no improvements, and actually having the pain increase yet again, one of the nurses that had come on recently had heard my whimpering while lying there, and was able to get the doctor to authorize giving me some morphine. So they gave me a morphine and Gravol mix so I wouldn’t get sick from the morphine alone. Needless to say that it worked and took about 85% of the pain away. The doctor then scheduled a ultra sound for me that morning at the Royal Alexander hospital in DT Edmonton. I contacted Cathy and she said they would pick up my car and take me to te Royal Alex for the appointment.
DAY 2 I will write this in tomorrow .
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Better Late as always
Well I have been taking a lot of heat for not updating my blog for the last couple months and rightfully so. I have been in a state of flux the last while trying to find a place to work and live within TransCanada. My original project I joined TCPL for has been put on hold awaiting permits, which could take up to 18 months. They then shuttled me over to the first Phase of our Keystone project which was competed. My role there was to assist on the claims litigation against some contractors. Anyone that knows me professionally knows that this is not my type of work to be doing. With this role, it required me to move to Calgary. That’s not so bad except I am trying to sell my house in a very flat market right now. So I do not plan on taking a big hit on the house I built. Anyways, after working on Phase 1 for ohhh about a week, I decided that I did not want to do that., I basically have resigned myself to the fact I will be leaving TCPL. My bosses caught wind of this(because I told them) and I had a meeting with 3 of my managers and director. They all convinced me to stay and gave me a new opportunity working on Phase 2-4 on the Keystone project. I would be based out of Houston TX. I liked that so I accepted the role, in the meantime I had 4 calls in two days on jobs I had applied to. It is a good indication that he market is coming back. I was tempted by at least 1 of the jobs but decided since TCPL had shown me the love that I decide to stay.
This has created a whole different bunch of stresses for me. I now am not sure what will happen with e selling my house, and whether I need to or not before I move to Ontario ;if OGS (Oakville Generating Station)does get cancelled they will want me to move to Houston to work which means selling my house there and buying here. If it doesn’t et cancelled then I will sell my house and move to Ontario when it happens. The other problem I have with all these plans is I am not sure how my move will work as it is suppose to be complete within 1 year of my hire. So If I move after a year, is it now an employee transfer vs a move? Will they pay for it now that it is over a year? I haven’t received these answers yet, as well as the questions I have for my Houston assignment, like LOA or Per Diem, Travel, Uplift, Project bonus ect. So you can see what the turmoil has created.
On a personal note, things have been ok. With all the travel between Calgary and Houston I haven’[t seen my house much, I have completed the back yard as far as the fence and sod goes. That cos me $10k of which I will not see back in the house sale. I just got tired of not having a back yard. Now that I do I hate it as I have to mow it every week and it takes a lot to mow this Par 3 back yard.
I have been out golfing a lot this year and have been having a blast. I think I am even getting better although some days my score doesn’t show it.I think I have been out 23 times already this year. That is one thing that I think I will like about Houston is Golfing all year round. After this week though, I am not sure I want to golf during August in Houston as it is so damn hot! This upcoming week I have 3 days of golf Monday through Saturday and maybe even squeeze in Sunday.
I spent the week before in Sydney Nova Scotia visiting my brother and family. It was a lot of fun and I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in years, some I hadn’t met yet! The weather was perfect all week with one day of rain(not on my golf days either) I managed to get out 3 times golfing and even got to see my friends Dave and Linda Bennett from Ottawa. We managed to squeeze in a couple dinners and a night out at the Cape Breton Summertime Revue show. I took my brother Bill and his gal and they loved it as well. A good time had by all! The week went by way to fast though and I regret not booking two weeks now. I think next year will be a 2 week stay down there.
My next trip will be from Houston to Charlotte North Carolina on the September long weekend to visit my Buddy Mike Sandford and Family. It has been over a year since I had seen them. Mike and I have ben friends now going on 8 years and he even worked for me during 4 of them. We have a great relationship and I am excited to get down seeing them!
The trip after that will be Panama in October and I am going with my friend Dave and Linda from Ottawa. I will also have at least one visit to Ontario during that two month time frame to visit family as well. So I do have more plans coming so stayed tuned for more travel updates. My travel schedule for the next month is going to be busy traveling between Edmonton, Calgary and Houston with a side trip to Cold Lake for Golf.
Ok, that’s enough for today, I will endeavor again(as I always say) to update this minimum on a weekly basis. If not keep bugging me and I will eventually get around to it!
This has created a whole different bunch of stresses for me. I now am not sure what will happen with e selling my house, and whether I need to or not before I move to Ontario ;if OGS (Oakville Generating Station)does get cancelled they will want me to move to Houston to work which means selling my house there and buying here. If it doesn’t et cancelled then I will sell my house and move to Ontario when it happens. The other problem I have with all these plans is I am not sure how my move will work as it is suppose to be complete within 1 year of my hire. So If I move after a year, is it now an employee transfer vs a move? Will they pay for it now that it is over a year? I haven’t received these answers yet, as well as the questions I have for my Houston assignment, like LOA or Per Diem, Travel, Uplift, Project bonus ect. So you can see what the turmoil has created.
On a personal note, things have been ok. With all the travel between Calgary and Houston I haven’[t seen my house much, I have completed the back yard as far as the fence and sod goes. That cos me $10k of which I will not see back in the house sale. I just got tired of not having a back yard. Now that I do I hate it as I have to mow it every week and it takes a lot to mow this Par 3 back yard.
I have been out golfing a lot this year and have been having a blast. I think I am even getting better although some days my score doesn’t show it.I think I have been out 23 times already this year. That is one thing that I think I will like about Houston is Golfing all year round. After this week though, I am not sure I want to golf during August in Houston as it is so damn hot! This upcoming week I have 3 days of golf Monday through Saturday and maybe even squeeze in Sunday.
I spent the week before in Sydney Nova Scotia visiting my brother and family. It was a lot of fun and I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in years, some I hadn’t met yet! The weather was perfect all week with one day of rain(not on my golf days either) I managed to get out 3 times golfing and even got to see my friends Dave and Linda Bennett from Ottawa. We managed to squeeze in a couple dinners and a night out at the Cape Breton Summertime Revue show. I took my brother Bill and his gal and they loved it as well. A good time had by all! The week went by way to fast though and I regret not booking two weeks now. I think next year will be a 2 week stay down there.
My next trip will be from Houston to Charlotte North Carolina on the September long weekend to visit my Buddy Mike Sandford and Family. It has been over a year since I had seen them. Mike and I have ben friends now going on 8 years and he even worked for me during 4 of them. We have a great relationship and I am excited to get down seeing them!
The trip after that will be Panama in October and I am going with my friend Dave and Linda from Ottawa. I will also have at least one visit to Ontario during that two month time frame to visit family as well. So I do have more plans coming so stayed tuned for more travel updates. My travel schedule for the next month is going to be busy traveling between Edmonton, Calgary and Houston with a side trip to Cold Lake for Golf.
Ok, that’s enough for today, I will endeavor again(as I always say) to update this minimum on a weekly basis. If not keep bugging me and I will eventually get around to it!
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