almost done

The end of my 3 week hitch up in Northern BC is almost over, only 4 more days to go. This is good. The part that is a little sad about it though, is that the 4 days of work that I have left include Christmas Eve & Christmas. Now I know that Jesus isn't going to be too upset that I will be celebrating his birth away from home, or that I will be re-celebrating with family a couple days late. I'm pretty sure that the 25th isn't his actual b-day anyway, it's just the day that was chosen by a bunch of dudes a long time ago.

The other exciting part of it all, is that work here in camp is only part one of this trip. After I am done work I get to visit some family in Surrey before heading down to Washington State to visit some friends that we haven't seen for a while. In the middle of visiting them, Vanessa and I will be taking a brief 3 day trip to Tulsa. Not quite ready to share what we will be doing there, but we will be leaving the kids to visit the Messengers while we are away.

As exciting as all the travelling is, I am looking forward to getting home. I don't really have a job lined up yet, which is adding a bit of stress, but I do believe that things will work out and fall in to place as needed. There are a few opportunities that I am pursuing right now, and hope to have something sorted before getting home.

For now, I will spend the next couple days listening to the wind blow ferociously. I will eat a lot of camp food, which is pretty decent (and I hear rumors of lobster on Christmas day?). I will visit the gym and get my sweat on. There will be some resume sending, and probably some napping.

Where will you be for Christmas?

Next to the middle.

Today I have officially been in camp for a week. It is located right beside the middle of nowhere, up in Northern BC. Business is pretty quiet, which in most ways is good, considering that means that there are few people getting injured. Doesn't do much for the experience or keeping the practical skills sharp, but that is ok.

A month or two ago I read on the blog of an experienced EMT his story of first starting out, and how he was always anticipating his chance to get "the big call" so he could have a good story to share with the other vets. It finally came, that call that was very intense, very serious, and extremely unpleasant. He finally had a call to share when sitting around the proverbial campfire (read: coffee shop or ambulance bay at the hospital) with the other medics...but wished he hadn't.

I am anxious to do some calls, but I am cautious about wishing for something major. If all I do up here is treat a minor slip and fall, a sore back, or headache, I am perfectly ok with that. There will be plenty of calls that come along in my career that will stand out as major incidents, and I am confident that there will be a good many of them that will result in being something I wish I had never seen. In fact, I already have one of those from my practicum days. You know, the kind that becomes material for when someone asks "what's the worst thing you have ever seen" question. Funny thing is, I don't often share that story with people. Even though they ask, I don't think they want to know. They might think they do, but on the rare occasion that I answer the question truthfully about the worst thing I have seen, I can tell that they wished they hadn't asked. And I don't blame them...I wish I didn't know it either.

I can wait for the big call. I know they are out there and I am in no rush to get them, even if it will give me a good "guess what happened this one time" story.

Back again

Hey, did I tell you I was going to take a vacation from blogging? No? Well sorry about that. See, this thing called "facebook" crossed my radar (maybe you have heard of it?) and with all the hubub of moving, starting a church, working and the such, I found that I just didn't have the interest in writing posts on fb as well as the blog.
Now I am in Dawson Creek (that's in BC, somewhere up north) and will be working as a medic in a camp for the next 3 weeks. What better time to regale the populous with some tales of the goings on in the life of the Greenhows. Or at least my life. Or the lives of people I come across that make me want to vent in a blog.
Cheers!