Trains in my journal? It's more likely than you think!

In other news, it's fangses' birthday! *waves tiny flags*

To mark this occasion, I bring cuddly kitties and mounties fighting pirates!. And yes. It is exactly as awesome as it sounds.

Anyway. It's been over four years (holy shit) since we met, and it's been awesome. Happy birthday, dude, and here's to more fandom pillaging, more eggrolls and moar win all around.

There's nothing in the world quite like the smell of spring. It's new leaves on the poplars, spring rain on the breeze, and all the other new plants coming up.

...Though it does mean we're starting to lose our view of the mountains, due to all those lovely new leaves. To the roof! Tomorrow.

Maybe.

But everything!bagel with cream cheese is nomworthy. Very nomworthy.

So we currently have two kittehs, Frank and Fuzzy. This is a happy state of affairs, which ironically only came about because we thought Fuzzy died back in January.

We let him out to go hunting, and, well, he never came back. We were sad, definitely, but it's also happened before, with all of our other cats, so we were also sort of prepared. After two weeks or so, we figured that hey, he wasn't coming back, and the house just doesn't feel right without a cat, so we headed down to the animal shelter to pick out a new kitteh.

Looked at quite a few, then encountered Comet, soon to be known as Frank. He was friendly and rather cuddly right from the get-go, so we brought him home. He got along great with Broom, right from the beginning. His manners needed a little work, but he's been improving. He's still pretty young, so it's all good.

And then, when I was still in Spain, about a week and a half away from returning home, the sister emailed me and said that Fuzzy had come back! I was naturally shocked, and more than a little skeptical. I mean, it'd been nearly three months since he disappeared, with some very mean weather in the meantime. But it was true, he was back.

I wasn't around to see the kittehs during their first week together, but by all accounts, they had some spectacular catfights. Fur everywhere, with some truly impressive growling for such tiny bodies. By the time I got back, they'd settled into a routine, of sorts.

Fuzzy also settled rapidly into his old routines, and now it's like he never left. ...Except for when him and Frank start thumping each other again, and running all around the house. Then it's better than before.

And wound up with some lovely pictures of the garden and the yard. It was very wet and rainy today, though oddly enough, sunny at the same time. I couldn't help but sing "Have You Ever Seen The Rain" ( ...coming down on a sunny day! )

...But nooo, I got sunburned again today. Granted, it's pretty minor, but still, the point remains. I was all smug about remembering to put on sunscreen before we went out to garden today, but in the seven hours that followed, I didn't think to reapply it even once. Major FAIL on my part.

On the bright side, we got the entire garden planted! I am massively proud of this, because I planted over half completely by myself. What makes that special is that we have a biiig garden. I'll take pictures tomorrow or something, just to illustrate.

We planted potatoes, which are easy, beans, peas, carrots and beets. Beans and peas are almost as easy as potatoes, 'cos they've got such big seeds. Carrots and beets, on the other hand... Let's just say that even as good as garden carrots are, I'm not sure they're worth how much effort has to go into planting and weeding the damn things.

For all my bitching, though, it's done. And in fairness, the set-up means it'll be pretty easy to maintain during the summer. Which is good, because I will be the one doing most of the work.

Also? There's nothing quite like wandering through a freshly tilled garden barefoot. ...Never mind that it took me five minutes to wash my feet.

Redesigned Ye Olde Blogge, as you may or may not have noticed. It is now predominately green-themed, in keeping with my mildly unsettling and probably (hopefully? We shall see!) temporary thing for the colour green.

Also did quite a bit of gardening today, which resulted in many, many more freckles for me, which is not a bad thing, and a rather pretty new look for the front flower garden. ...Which is also not a bad thing. I might have gotten a tiny sunburn, but I'll wait and see on that one.

The Big Trip was awesome, every part of it, and I fully intend on putting up selected pictures of the trip/taking pictures of the souvenirs I bought and that likely only I will find interesting. Pretty green skirt is pretty.

The dog is still a moron, but is a friendly moron, so we'll keep him around for now. Frank is like a little kid whenever he goes outside. He scrambles down the front steps and flails around in the grass, pretending to hunt. Fuzzy is back, and it's like he never left. He's decided to tolerate Frank, which apparently translates to happy play-fighting, and then teaming up with Frank to come and sleep on my bed, thus immobilizing my legs in the morning. He'd like to be mutually ignoring the dog, but the dog hasn't figured out the ignoring part yet. Broom tries to play, and winds up getting a swat on the nose. Most amusing.

Still haven't been called back yet, and I may end up getting another job in the meantime. ...Really not something I'm looking forward to, as I've been spoiled by the railroad.

"Whaddya mean, I can't wear my coveralls or my boots? And...you're *not* going to call me when you need me, I have to follow a schedule? What kind of job is this, anyway?"

Ah well. I'll live. Somehow.

Lord, it's going to be a busy two days from here on in. I've got appointments to schedule, last minute details to take care of, packing to finish, rooms to clean, (bleah), and a whole host of other tasks. But you know, it's gonna be totally worth it.

My first big solo trip, and I get to visit friends around the world? How cool is that? Plus I've been wanting to visit England ever since I can remember, so that's gonna be pretty damn awesome.

I'm a little nervous, certainly, but mostly just excited. The sister enjoyed her two big trips just fine, so I think I'll be okay. And really, the only time I'll potentially be staying at a hostel is in England, and then only if I can't swing staying with an Irish relative.

'Sides, I'll have Yamamocchan here to help keep me connected, and hopefully I'll remember to do a little blogging while I'm gone.

Sort of related to all that, I really do miss work. Sure, it's nice an' all to be able to go traveling like this, but...I love my job. I love going to work, I love hearing all the wild stories from the old timers, and I love taking trains to Field and Red Deer. I don't even mind that most of this seems to occur at three in the morning, at roughly minus a million degrees Celsius.

I never thought I'd be able to find a job that I loved so much, one that lets me work outside, and stay far, far away from anything resembling 'business casual'. The fact that I can go to work, throw on the coveralls, (with the one leg being all grease-stained from the leg down from kneeling on the rails to do up air hoses), and stomp around in steel-toed boots is just so damn cool.

I know I'll be called back soon enough, and I'm (mostly) prepared for getting laid off again, because hey, it happens. And it's happened to plenty of the guys I've talked to, ones who've been there for thirty years. It's certainly not like I'm the first conductor to be laid off, ever.

...I dunno, I guess the point of all that is I'm really, really looking forward to going away, but that I do miss my job. The big lesson here is not to blog at two in the freaking morning, obviously.



Also! New!kitty is Frank. We decided this when we realized that new!kitty eats like a pig, but since he is in fact a male, Miss Piggy just didn't quite suit him. Frank, however, after Frank Oz, who did such a wonderful job of voicing Miss Piggy, suits him to a tee. The fact that he could also be referring to TV's Frank from MST3K is an added bonus.

I was not expecting a road trip, I'll tell you that. Unfortunately, it's not a west trip, which sucks. Going north, on what sounds like a grain train. On the one hand, it's a nice simple train. On the other, it's a really long, heavy train. That has the potential to be bad.

Ah well, I need the money, and since I'm done in a few days, this'll be a nice little chunk of change.

...Also, I totally need a train icon. Gonna have to find/make one eventually.

...So this day kind of took a turn for the worse. I mean, I was expecting it and everything, but it still stings.

Just got the phonecall today, to expect my layoff notice in the mail. Fuck. And you know, you just *know* they're going to be calling us back by June, and they'll be absolutely frantic because half of the people they laid off will just say "Fuck you", and never come back. And that means I'll be screwed on the spareboard. ...On the other hand, if the people who don't come back are ahead of me, this means more turns, which means my seniority goes up, which means I can hold the road that much sooner. Still, this is not the way I wanted to go into spring.

And you know, it really doesn't make much sense. Vacation is going to be gearing up, which means they'll be short of men, again. Oh well, when they want me back, I'll sure as hell be taking my two weeks. Sod 'em.

I suppose it does help that ill-mannered new!kitty is snoozing in my lap. Sure, he's sleep-groping me, but that's a small price to pay for lap!kitty.

Well, the room's been cleaned, prepped, and now primed. And it took a day and a half to get to this point, which is longer than I had expected.

Course, the bookcase probably didn't help. It was a mess, and by this time, it's now full. I need more shelving.

Anyway, next step, the actual paint!

So the teaser trailer for Mass Effect 2 debuted yesterday. It's going to be another year, at least, before it's released, and Shepard is presumed KIA.

Nevertheless.

....Waaaaaaaant. I want this game with the fire of a thousand nuns.


...There's gotta be some way to fall asleep, not get into trouble at work, and wake up just in time for the release of ME2. Seriously.

Before I embark upon, yet again, another bitch-fest, a bit of terminology.

Sometimes, the Operations Manager, or OM, will call a crew on a road trip, and ask them if they want to protect a certain train at, say, Red Deer. To protect the train means that once they reach Red Deer, if that train is there, they'll hop right back on and head home, with little to no delay. The downside is that instead of a twelve hour clock, you're working on an eighteen hour clock, and if the timing is off, you'll end up working a very long shift with little sleep. The upside is that you don't rot in the bunkhouse for twelve hours, but instead are headed home right away.

Anyway. I was about thirteenth up on the spareboard yesterday afternoon, and figured I wouldn't work until at least tonight. Ha. Ha ha. I get the call at quarter to four, telling me I'm called for 103-06 at 1710. Good thing? It's a hotshot, so everyone gets out of my way. Bad thing? It's a late call, which means I'll be scrambling like mad to get to work somewhere on time.

So I head to work, and I find the brownhouse absolutely packed with train crews. Apparently there'd been an avalanche on the Mountain Sub, which is the Subdivision west of the Laggan, which is the one I really like, so there was no west traffic going that night. At all. There had to have been at least four west crews, another four north crews, and for some reason, a yard crew that apparently just wanted to hang out with us.

Of course, being railroaders, we took immediate advantage of the wonderful opportunity afforded to us to gossip like mad. It was great! The chatter mostly revolved around the avalanche, and if/when the west crews were going to be canceled. Ultimately, the Train Yard Coordinator gave us a call after I'd been there an hour anna half, and he started canceling crews right left and centre.

"Okay, where's the conductor for 199? Hey there, you're canceled, have a good night. Grab the guy for 403, would you?" And so on, and so forth. I believe I watched four crews get canceled in the space of ten minutes. It was oddly amusing.

Regardless, a very long story short, we eventually caught up with our train and headed north. Along the way, the OM rang us up on the radio and asked us if we'd like to protect 260-09 up at Red Deer. 260 is a big money train, and we were making great time, so we said sure, why not.

And...it wasn't a bad decision, per se. It was just that our eighteen hour clock ran out at eleven this morning, we tied up at ten am, and out of that seventeen hours, about fourteen of them were spent on a train. The rest of it was at the Red Deer bunkhouse, the brownhouse and me, outside, wading through knee-deep snow. That was good, 'cos it kept me awake.

So I had a long night, but I made a pile of money. All in all, a good day.

Yeah, it's late. Not my fault, though!

On a related note, there are many uniquely vile things about working for the railroad. Getting a phone call for a road trip ten minutes after going to bed is one of them. A very special one of them. On the bright side, it appears to be a relief trip, so I think we'll be coming straight back to Alyth. Thank God, because I've been up since fucking four am.

...Good lord, 33 hours round trip to Field and back. That's a long fucking trip. Of course, that does include 15 hours sitting at the Field bunkhouse, but still. Ten hours on a train west, and then ten back out east to Alyth. ...Man, I think I'm so tired now I'm not actually tired anymore. Also, it's like minus 40. I like the cold and all, but YUCK.

( Be warned: it's lots of chattering about railroads. )
Anyway, that's kind of an average west pool train trip in a nutshell. And even though it sounds like a lousy trip...I can't wait till I can go west all the time. I'd forgotten how much I missed it.

...But there was a major derailment early this morning in Alyth Yard. There was a potash train coming into P3, which is one of the very long tracks, used to store the trains that are one hundred cars or more, and apparently a wheel on one of the cars caught a switch point, the switch opened beneath the cars as they were moving, (REALLY Not Good), and poof, eight cars all over the ground. No one was hurt, but boy, was the yard manager ever having a shitty night.

The job I got called for actually ended up being the one to put the pieces of the train back together, which basically meant pulling something like the first 110 cars out of P3, then going next door to P4 to pick up the last ten or so cars that another job had removed from the end of the train, behind the derailed cars, and then taking the whole shebang uptown to the Depot.

To be honest, it was actually the most work we'd done all night, and it ended up being our last move, which meant we got to go home an hour anna half early. Hell, I even got to drive the train for a mile or so. It was ver' cool.


Railroading factoid of the day: Potash trains are often over 120 cars long, (over 6000 feet), and usually weigh upwards of twenty thousand tons. They are long, heavy fuckers.

Just a short post today, on something interesting I've noticed about railroaders.

They're weird. Also, they kind of remind me of Discworld dwarves.

...Yes, I realize that doesn't make any sense. Let me explain.

Right now, it's a slow period for the railway. There's not a lot of freight moving, so things are slow. According to the older guys, it's the same way every year, but things start to pick up in November, December-ish. Now, the thing that really caught my attention was the way they talked about it.

Without exception, every single conductor and engineer I talked to said, "When the grain starts flowing, and when the snow flies." In fairness, they didn't all say it exactly the same way, but they still used those phrases. It struck me as almost being a religious thing, the way they talked about it. It sounded almost like a ritual or a prayer, but the interesting thing was, I'm not sure if any of them think of it that way. To them, it's just something they say, along with all the other little things that make perfect sense to them and no sense at all to someone who hasn't been part of the railroad for twenty years. (Yes, it's taking me a while to pick up the language, why do you ask?)

As for the way they remind me of the dwarves, well, they talk about the grain flowing in the same way the dwarves talk about the dark. (The Fifth Elephant, I believe.) They don't see it as being religious at all, but to outsiders, it is.

Anyway, I apologize if that makes little to no sense, but it's something I've been thinking about for a few weeks now, and I wanted to get it written down. Hell, with all the stories I've heard from some of the guys, I should start writing more of them down. They've got some amazing things to tell, and when they retire, that's a huge chunk of railroad history that's going to be lost. Basically, don't be surprised if this turns into a railway-focused journal, with the occasional personal entry on the side.

...But my crew and I derailed a locomotive today. No one was hurt, and there was only a bit of damage to the rail, so I can laugh about it now. And it was rather amusing, so that helps too.

( Click for train....stuff. )

...And yeah, so that was my day. That was also probably more railroading terms than any of you wanted to know. And I had to force myself not to use more. It's practically another language...

...Yeah, header pretty much says it all. Also, skip this entry if work-related whining is too much. Trust me, I won't mind.


Right. I really do enjoy my job. It's interesting, (seriously, trains!), pays really damn well, and most of the people I work with are awesome. ...Although that TVTropes website keeps messing with my mind, because when railroaders "fuck the dog", they're wasting time. But when I hear it, I keep thinking they're trying to prove how evil and villainous they truly are. I also could be too damn tired, so that could be part of it.

Regardless! I'm on the spareboard right now, which means that once I'm done a shift, I can book up to ten hours maximum rest before I can be called again. There also happens to be another...oh, nine people, I think, on the spareboard with me. Normally, this would give me up to a day, day anna half if I'm lucky, between calls. Problem is, the yard is hopping right now, so that means I got home at two this morning, and I was on rest until eleven-thirty. And now it looks like I'll be called out again at thirteen o'clock.

To be honest, even that wouldn't be so bad, except that it looks like I'll be called as a foreman again, same as I've been called out for the past two shifts. And...I'm not ready to be a foreman, not yet. I'm qualified as a yard helper, and I'm pretty good at it. I'm not great, but as long as I pay attention and make sure to keep in touch with the foreman and the engineer, I can keep up and throw the switches that need to be thrown, make joints, tie on handbrakes, etc. Not a foreman, dammit! God, I just need maybe another twelve hours or so off, and another helper job. Let someone else be the foreman and deal with the paperwork and all the stress.


...Gah. The point of all that teal deer was basically I'm tired, whiney, and maybe a little stressed.

Also x-posted to JF.

So I have a question for, well, anyone who reads this. (Also, watch out for language. This was not written in a sunshine and kisses mood.)

Say that you're driving at night, it's getting pretty late, and it's raining. Not ideal driving conditions by any stretch of the term. Anyway, you're driving through an industrial area, (and trust me, it's obviously industrial), and you come up to a railway crossing. Now, I do understand that you might not be familiar with this area, and thus you might not know that the entire area is criss-crossed with tracks, and that there's about three crossings in a row down the one stretch of road. That sort of begs the question of if you're not familiar with this area, then what the hell are you doing driving around it late at night, though. As unlikely as it seems, though, you might really be unfamiliar with the area and might just be lost, so I'll give you that.

So you're driving along, and up ahead you see this crossing. There's no bells or whistles or gates, just two X-ing signs on posts, one on each side. There does, however, happen to be two red flares burning, again, one on each side. There are also two guys, both with neon orange vests on, and with lit flashlights, standing at the crossing. That's four lights, for those keeping track. These lights are all very bright, and they basically form a line across the road.

There's also a train backing up. That's right, there is a big honking grain car just entering the crossing.

Now, my question is simple. Why the FUCK would you decide to fucking accelerate into the goddamned crossing?! We were blocking it, and you decided that you just couldn't wait two fucking minutes, and you hit our train! AND THEN you tried to drive away! Your stupid minivan was hung up on the tail end of our train, and you tried to drive away! Sorry buddy, but you deserve every single damn penny of that fine, and you're going to get it. The CP Police and the Calgary Police will make damn sure of that.

...God, we had two firetrucks, an ambulance, at least one police car, the CP Police, and a yard manager. What a frakking gong show. They weren't hurt, though. And I wasn't on the ground, thankfully, I was on the head locomotive. But my coach told me that after he jumped out of the way, he actually banged on the window of the van as the guy tried to drive past him. Into a crossing that was halfway occupied by a train. What a maroon.

Man, I'm still mad, and I'm not really sure why.