By Lucy

The drive out to Dryden was uneventful. It’s mostly flat, almost Saskatchewan levels of flat sometimes. The trees are evergreen and short, the rocks bare, very few fields. What flat areas that exist are usually marshes or ponds. The sun was relentless and I wondered if I’d have a burn from it constantly being on my arm. There were few other vehicles, including tractor trailers, and with the cruise control on I was doing little more than keeping an eyes out for passing squirrels.

The time change hits around 45 minutes outside of town, gaining an hour going west. You have to slow down through Upsala, Ignace, and Wabigoon First Nations, each about an hour apart. There are signs warning you to check your fuel level, but it’s about 80 clicks between them and I want to know who leaves town with a quarter tank of gas and somehow doesn’t realize it’s the better part of an hour to the next town. With the cruise control and the flatness, I got my fuel economy down to 6.2 L per 100 kilometres and made it to Dryden having burned a third of a tank to go 350 clicks.

Now that Brandon had pointed out the whining in my wheel, it was all I could hear. Every pot hole seized my heart as I waited for the axel to give out and dump me into a ditch. Fortunately no such thing happened.

The parking lot at the motel was absolutely empty when I got to town. I opened the notebook on my phone and noticed I had written down May 25.

I wasn’t… somehow.. a month early? No, I had to have written it down wrong.

I walked into the motel’s office. The guy asked for my name, and when I said the name of the company, he asked me to wait half an hour.

I walked back to my loyal steed, sat down on the hood and called Adrianne. She pointed out we had trouble last year with the motels and it all worked out. We talked for a few minutes before a new guy stuck his head out of the office and waved me back in.

They gave me a room key.

Yay!

I got lucky? Got a room on the end, ground floor, for better or worse. Means no walking up and down stairs with my boxes, but I do have to listen to the person above me. No coffee machine, oddly. The water closet is separate from the sink, which is some “fancy” waterfall type. I did the usual checks; are there bedbugs in the mattress? Garbage in the pail? Is the bathroom spotless? Getting sort of ruthlessly efficient about this. Everything checked out. The sink is kind of nonsense – sure, it looks pretty, but the basin isn’t deep enough and any amount of water flow causes splatter.

First things first; dinner. The clocks may have rolled back, but my body was still on Thunder Bay time and the sandwich from lunch hadn’t filled me up much. I went to Subway and grabbed a footlong; six inches for now, six inches for lunch tomorrow.

The laundromat closes at 6:30, so I ran over there next. I wasn’t sure which box had my change purse, so I had to pay 3 bucks to get some change. My work clothes were all clean, but I wanted to wash my civvies before I was busy with work, because I wasn’t going to shower after work and then sit outside in my work clothes.

Last time I was in Dryden, I had made a point of dressing down and looking androgynous. Not that I was trying to look like a bombshell this time around, but with a little more experience, some references in my pocket, and also the Vagabond kind of proved that I can never dress down enough to not attract male attention. There is no point in not being myself.

Final stop was Walmart. I grabbed a little kettle for fifteen bucks, a box of crackers, and some shower supplies.

There were more trucks in the motel parking lot when I got back, but still fairly empty and no one was sitting outside. I hopped in the shower quickly (shower quality is good), then went outside with my little tablet. Still no one.

I called K and talked to him for a bit while I messed around with the tablet. One of the motel staff had recently bought one of those one-wheel “hoverboards” and was taking it for laps around the parking lot. Eventually I conceded that no one was gonna be around to socialize with and went back inside, changed into pajamas and flopped onto the bed.

Just then a black truck pulled into the parking lot.

Huh. Tyler is here. I resisted the urge to stick my head out the door and yell at him, but I finally felt at ease now that I’d seen a familiar face.

I fell asleep ‘early’, since I was still on Tbay time, and ‘slept in’. I felt well rested; the bed is one of the comfiest beds I’ve ever had in a hotel/motel. Not that I want to complain about my landlord when he’s been kind to me, but he threw a mattress protector on the mattress and it’s not the comfiest thing. The black truck disappeared before 6:30, and even though it’s not even a ten minute drive to the mill I decided I should hop to it.

I’ve never bothered trying to park in the mill lot, although unlike Thunder Bay we can here. I always park in the farthest lot and walk up – less time wasted trying to find a good spot, less arguments trying to leave in a scrum at the end of the day. As I approached the gate, I noticed a company truck with some guys milling around parked outside and decided I ought to go there first.

They did a double take as I walked up. Buddy in the drivers seat shuffled through a stack of cards. He pulled out one with my legal name on it – I must be the only female this time. He said swipe as you go through the gate, wait next to the barrier for the truck.

Done. I took my card and waited a few moments, but no one was interested in chatting with me, so I headed off to the gate.

It took twenty minutes for the truck to show up. There was another woman, but she’s just a laborer. They drove us around back to the same place as last year. I hopped out of the truck and watched as the rest of them lit up smokes.

“You new here?” Someone asked.

“No, it’s my second year.”

He jerked his head towards the door. “You know where you’re going, then.”

Same lunchroom? Last year it had been a pressboard shanty town, rickety and macgyvered together from scaffolding gear. Barely lit by a string of work lights, it was in one of the decommissioned production floors. I wasn’t expecting it to still be up and our base of operations.

I was surprised. Someone had torn the old pressboard down and put up something new, properly framed with 2x4s and everything. The Vagabond’s work, perhaps? I’d never confirmed that he was here, but I was willing to bet this was where he had been working since at least the beginning of March.

Speaking of him…

I stopped outside the door, scanning the wall of lock-out locks for familiar names. A few guys from last year were here. Tyler walked up and said hi, and we were chatting as we walked into the lunchroom. I looked around – the freshly swept floor, the lights actually illuminating everything, the neat rows of tables and chairs, framed pressboard walls – and him. He was sitting at the back, surrounded by a group of guys, chatting. His black eyes met mine and lit up with something… panic? Surprise?

I let my eyes keep moving back to Tyler, glad to have something to focus on, a reason to be smiling. Why surprise? He could have checked the schedule, asked someone if I was going to be here. Maybe it was just the reality of it hitting him. Back where we started, the Dryden paper mill. Or maybe that I wasn’t going to quietly fade, or hide.

I had, however, already decided that I wasn’t going to bother trying to talk to him. And unlike other “will they, won’t they”, I know he won’t be “too nervous” to talk to me. If he wants to talk, he’ll just do it, consequences be damned.

To my dismay, Tyler told me to sit wherever instead of offering to sit with me. I figured that some of the guys talking to the Vagabond were from our crew from last year, but I wasn’t yet brave enough to strut up and join the conversation, or even look in his direction long enough to pick out faces. I also wasn’t willing to risk sitting facing him, so I grabbed the nearest seat that faced away. Once I had a crew I’d probably just move to sit with them anyway.

As people wandered in, I realized that not only was I the only girl, I was also the youngest by a long shot. This job was full of old hands, sitting down for reunions. I started to realize how lucky I was to drive up with Adrianne before, if only so that I wasn’t sitting alone at a table.

Fortunately, I was not alone for long. An indigenous man plopped himself down next to me and started a conversation. When it was clear that I was sociable, he introduced himself as Eli. He was good conversation, and he pulled some of the other guys in as well.

There was a perfect microcosm of why workplaces like this are hostile to women. No one has ever said to my face that they don’t think women should be here. But when one of the guys was telling a story, he said “they’re just like women, you know, they’re never happy”. Beat, glance at me. “No offence.”

Sure, how could I take offence to that? I shrugged, left with no other option.

To a certain extent, I’m not really a woman on the jobsite. Because to them, women are shrews, complaining they’re never home, spending all their money, etc etc. I am just another guy on the jobsite. But I’m also never just another guy. I’m some weird, third, other kind of person.

They posted the schedule and I went over to look at it. I got projects, day shift. 7AM til 5:30, ten hour days. This was a boiler shut down, and a mini digester shutdown, not the large one we had done last year. There was one crew for boiler dayshift, and one crew for boiler nightshift. The Vagabond is on nights. 12 hours, 6 to 6.

Well, lucky him. We can pass like ships in the night.

We sat through several hours of paperwork and orientations. Shortly before noon they let us go, as they had nothing else for us today.

I parked at the motel and walked down the road to KFC and ordered a bucket, and threw my uneaten sub back in the fridge for tomorrow. Once I’d had a bite to eat I stepped out with intent to run across the road and shop.

Eli hailed me as I stepped out. His room is just a few down from me. I told him I’d be back and ran across the road to Canadian Tire. I bought a new waterbottle, with a clip so I could hang it from my tool belt, and ran back across the road.

Eli offered me a mug of instant coffee with no sugar, and we sat outside, watching the cars go by and chatting for a couple of hours. At one point another company truck pulled up and spilled out another female laborer, the same one as last year. I waved and said hi and she barely glanced in my direction.

I love watching the cars go by on the highway. You see some truly strange things sometimes, like a helicopter on a flatbed truck. Also, a lot of tractor trailers hoping they can blow through town having to crank on the engine break as they hit a red light. This motel was either closer to the tracks, or less fortified against them, because the trains going by makes the building shake. I’m used to falling asleep next to trains, so it’s no big deal to me.

Eventually I decided I should get some writing done for you lot, so I said goodbye to Eli and headed in.

At one point it started raining and I stuck my head outside. For a brain break, and to see if anyone new had materialized. Another guy from the mill stopped to introduce himself, already knowing my name and face cuz I stand out like nobody’s business! I decided it was too chilly to sit outside and chat anymore.

It was a chilly, drizzly day the next day. But Saturday, double time, so who’s complaining? They keep you working every day on travel cards, cuz they have to pay your hotel and food regardless and they want to ring every drop of blood from that stone. I got divvied up on a crew with Kevin, Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Kevin is good people. I was concerned at first cuz he talks a lot and reminded me of Mushroom Boy. He also mentioned that he’d been here for a couple of months, which made me worry how buddy-buddy him and the Vagabond might be (or the opposite, how much they had pissed each other off). But as the day went on and he got his head back in the game, we were a good team. He has a funny tick of regularly cawing like a crow. He says it’s from his apprentice days, when they’d caw to each other if the foreman was coming so they could hurriedly pretend to be doing everything by the book. I started cawing back quickly, and it makes us both smile.

Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as you can tell from their nicknames, royally pissed me off. Tweedledee was the guy who had complained that women are always complaining, so he had a head start at the races. He hadn’t put his harness or tools on all day – clearly in no hurry to actually earn his paycheck.

Tweedledum, I don’t even know. He had a bunch of stickers on his hard hat, so in theory he has experience doing something, but it ain’t scaffolding. He didn’t even know what the hand signal for a right angle is, which is the one you learn fastest cuz it’s used the most.

Our first job was busywork. We went into a part of recaust that had a leak in a white liquor pipe. White liquor is strongly alkaline, so the first aluminum scaffold they put up had basically melted. Someone put up a steel one instead, and we were just double-checking that it hadn’t also gone the way of ice cream in the sun. It all looked good, and by the time we were done there was a real job for us.

This one was a black liquor leak. Right next to fresh black liquor, the broccoli part of the smell gets a little sweeter, like cabbage. They wanted a platform under it and a beam lift overhead, in case they decided to take the entire pipe off.

Kevin built the first part quickly enough by himself. Either because he was bored, or because I was quicker than Tweedledum with handing him gear, he started trying to teach me the basics of scaffolding. I was on the fence – I knew everyone was assuming I was some 18 year old lightweight who would struggle to lift a 2 metre standard. I could coast, but did I want to?

“Hey, Kevin, you worked at the mill in Thunder Bay, right? You know Stu?”

“Oh yeah, I used to work with Stu all the time! He’s a strange guy, but I don’t mind him.”

Be ambitious. There was time here, there were options here. They liked Kevin enough to have him for pre-shut. If I impressed him, maybe I could get post-shut. Tyler would vouch for me, and I was willing to bet the Vagabond would as well. He wouldn’t screw me over unless I gave him a reason to.

“I’ve worked with Stu for three months. I’ve done lots of building.”

“Wanna help me build then?”

“F*ck yeah.”

So we built the rest of it together in a couple of hours while Tweedledee and Tweedledum gossiped. I found that heights don’t bother me as much as they used to. It’s been gradual – the more 15 foot scaffolds I work on, the less 20 feet bothers me. I still think confined spaces are my place to shine – I fit in the smallest places and I don’t have claustrophobia.

We took a long lunch – some wires got crossed and no one was sure which job was whose. We finally got a job under one of the pulp machines, crossing this large trench under the machine itself. We had to haul out some really long beams and use them to span the gap, then build a platform on it. Kevin set me and Tweedledum about putting cleats on about 30 planks, at one end and then the other 11 and a half inches in from the end. After we had finished a few, Kevin called him over to hand the planks into the trench after him, and I kept hammering the cleats while Tweedledee cut fresh cleats from a 2×6.

I was proud of how quickly I could drive a nail in compared to last year, although I withered quickly in the face of the journeyman hammering one in, three quick whacks. Trying to speed up, I lost control and hit my index finger.

Ouch!

The usual joke on the jobsite is not to take your glove off and look at it, or it’ll just hurt more. I had to, though.

It started swelling quickly, too.

I knew what I should do. Ice, or a cold compress. Rest, elevate.

None of which I would do. Swear and walk it off.

I was a little less gung-ho about hammering in cleats after that, though. Fortunately for me, Dee and Dum gave me the perfect excuse to give up. Dee came up with a jig he had made to measure the one end of the cleat to ten and a half inches on the plank. The problem with his brilliant plan is that none of the cleats are the same size, because we don’t measure before cutting them. He said it wouldn’t matter and I decided that since he could put a nail in in three whacks, he didn’t need my help. Tweedledum was handing gear to Kevin, but since the gap was something around 20 feet wide, it meant he was having to shuffle back and forth to grab gear. So I threw on a lanyard and joined him in the pit, so that he could focus on building.

We got the build finished pretty quickly after that, but it was still an hour overtime. We went back to the breakroom shortly after 6 – night shift hadn’t rolled out yet, so the Vagabond was still at his spot. I had to walk past him twice to gear down, determinedly not even glancing in his direction.

On the way home, I stopped at Walmart for some sandwich making supplies. I was already tired of take-out. As I pulled in to the parking lot, I realized Tweedledee is in the hotel room next to me, as he has a vanity plate to go with the name sticker on his hard hat.

Great. Hopefully he keeps to himself. I had enough of his misogynistic self in a single ten hour shift to last a lifetime.

Shot glasses are good for holding ketchup, if you are desperate!

Sunday dawned cloudy and chilly. Hard to believe it had been 16 above when I drove up two days ago, and now it was flirting with freezing! I threw on a long-sleeved shirt and dragged myself in to work. I hadn’t slept well. I felt like I was waiting for another shoe to drop.

Sunday morning was a lot of “hurry up and wait”. We got shown one job and hauled some gear up to it, only to be pulled for another job. We ended up waiting a couple of hours for a millwright to come sign off on something.

Someone said we were the most expensive trade, and the truth is it’s all the downtime. Ignoring how long it actually takes to build a scaffold, say you only need a scaffold for 5 hours. If you don’t pay us to wait around, we’re going home and we ain’t coming back. They try to stagger the jobs, but obviously in a large operation like this, it’s next to impossible. The boiler was delayed – one of the other contractors, who has to go in before us, didn’t make any progress for two days, so now they were scrambling to get another contractor last minute.

Money money money.

Eli didn’t sit next to me yesterday. As I settled into my ‘usual’ spot, he called me over from the back of lunchroom. As I walked over, my heart sank.

He was sitting across from the Vagabond’s spot, gesturing for me to sit in it.

His high-vis jacket was still there – apparently he doesn’t take it home at night. My mind spun. If I had never met the guy who sat there, I’d sit there without a concern. I didn’t like the optics of sitting in my ex’s chair; only to my ex, since no one else would know, and I was lost for a way to tell Eli I didn’t want to sit there.

From my hesitation or maybe a look on my face, Eli popped up. “Here, I’ll sit there. You take my seat.”

I badly wanted to ask Eli how well he knows him. They were either pretty close, or Eli has nerves of steel. I couldn’t even fathom why he wanted to sit here unless he was close to the Vagabond. It’s not the best seat in the house – it’s centered, not close to any of the walls – and his stuff is strewn all about the table, in the way. But I am always nervous of mentioning him to anyone, lest I give myself away.

I was distracted from my anxiety by some other guys staggering in, absolutely reeking of rotten eggs. The S2 monitors hadn’t gone off, but there was some sort of gas settling in a vessel so they had been sent out while it was ventilated. Rotten eggs – sulfur – that’s natural gas, right? Some of the boilers run on it. Good thing they got out before people started passing out.

After lunch, we got given a job in a pulp storage tank that couldn’t be drained properly, so there was a couple inches of water and pulp in the bottom. The foreman’s boots are old and have holes in them, so I hopped in the hole to build until he could stand on the ledgers. He didn’t even want to let me, but I told him I’ve worked in the broke chest before and I’m used to it.

That was my last job last year, actually. They asked me and Stu to stay overtime. Duff declined, and they sent this absolutely useless laborer to help us. The broke chest had just enough water that if I stayed still, my boots were waterproof, but when I had to walk, the water sloshed over the top and into my boots. There was paper pulp in it as well, which coated everything like dish soap and made it slick. When my boots were finally dry, they were coated in a thick layer of dried pulp that I had to peel off (which was admittedly satisfying). Stu tore down the scaffold and I had to throw stuff at the laborer to get him to pay attention and take the gear I was trying to hand up to him. It took about two hours and when we were done, absolutely soaked to the bone and covered in fluffy wet pulp and exhausted, I got back to the yard and they told me they were driving me to the gate cuz I was laid off. A nice “how do you do” when I just stayed over doing a dirty job no one else wanted to do!

Shortly before last break, we were given a job at the top of recaust, up six flights of stairs. The crane was broken, so we had to build a scaffold up so the millwrights could fix it. And, ironically, because the crane was broken, we’d have to carry the gear up said six flights of stairs, because we couldn’t use said crane.

Excellent.

We would technically get another break, but we voted to work straight through. By the time we’ve walked all the way down all the stairs, geared down, had break, and walked all the way back, we’d have burned the better part of an hour and added another 12 flights of stairs to the step counter.

The place was infested with pigeons. One of the doors was permanently propped open and none of us wanted to close it. Every surface was coated with what we suspected was quicklime, and you want some ventilation in that case. Quicklime is harmless as long as it isn’t wet, which means the moment you start sweating, it starts literally burning. And God help you if you get any in your eyes or mouth.

The pigeons were mating – literally, those fucking pigeons! They were stupid with hormones, flying into us and the scaffold, dropping feathers everywhere, and being noisy. I was half-waiting for one of them to decide to try to mate with one of our hard hats, like that poor bastard and the wild parrot.

Tweedledee continued to be the most annoying thing that ever did exist. He still refused to put his tools or harness on, despite being a journeyman with 30 years of experience, so again I was the one up on the scaffold with Kevin. Tweedledum, at least, was starting to get into the grove of things and making me think I should switch these nicknames around. Tweedledee made a few misogynistic comments I remembered specifically – when I made a comment about us being in and out all the time, he said “like a good whore”, which I couldn’t think of a good comeback for. When Kevin mentioned his back was hurting, he suggested telling the higher ups it was “that time of the month”.

We worked right through til 8 and then we ran out of gear, with half a lift left.

Tweedledee decided he wanted to leave. Kevin turned to me. “Are you going home too?” Before I could answer, he said, “Yes, you are.”

How tired did I looked? I debated arguing that I wanted to stay and decided against it. I was being offered an uncle, I might as well take it for once.

Tiredly, we schlepped back into the lunchroom. The general foreman called on the radio for someone to come down and help Kevin and the other guy finish the job, because it had to be done ASAP for reasons. I geared down and went back to my spot for my lunchbag.

My water bottle was crooked in my bag, lid askew and leaking water. My bag was in a puddle of water, the bottom and everything in it soaked.

What the frack? I didn’t put my water bottle back like that. Did I leave it on the table, and the laborer who cleans the lunchroom put it in there to wipe down the tables? No, because she would have moved other things on the table as well. Did I…

My blood turned to ice. Did I leave it in the Vagabond’s spot?

Did he… put it there like that?

No. He’d know the bag was mine, cuz I used it last year, but the bottle was new. This was literally my first day bringing it in, which is why I might have forgotten elsewhere, so no one would even know it was mine. Unless he just guessed that the bottle left at his spot was mine, correctly, for reasons…

No, no, no. Probably Eli grabbed it at the end of the day and threw it in my bag for me. He’s half-baked most of the time, he probably wouldn’t notice the lid wasn’t on right. I’d ask him tomorrow and he’d say yes.

When I got back to the motel, I jumped in the shower quickly, took some sleeping pills, and finished off my leftover KFC before immediately crawling into bed.

It was dawn far too early.

Today was calling for below zero temperatures and snow, so I threw on a sweater.

There was an absolute scrum at the gate. A bunch of contractors had shown up for the shutdown to begin in earnest, and they were all trying to get their swipe cards and figure out where they were going. The mill had a few employees at tables handing out stuff. I shoved my way through everyone and walked quickly for the safety of the building. When I got to the lunchroom, I learned that they had been handing out cookies and stickers, which made me regret my choice to shove through, but Sunday had been rough. I found Eli and asked him if he had moved my water bottle. He said he hadn’t, before making a joke about no one spiking my drink that did not help settle my nerves in any way.

I’ve noticed a curious tendency. Both bikers and tradesmen refer to their romantic partner as their ‘old lady’. Both also tend to refer to their father as their ‘old man’, but their mother isn’t their old lady. So, is my old man my dad or my partner?

More hurry up and wait. We went down to see one job before being sent to another. But we got told we had to wait for the boilermaker to come stick his head in, so we didn’t get it started before first break.

We went outside to walk back to the lunchroom and it was sleeting! Hail and rain at the same time, and then it was supposed to warm up to above 10 in the next few days!

We were freezing our butts off in the lunchroom. It’s a big concrete and steel production floor – no pressboard ceiling – and one of the bay doors is always open cuz they also store the train engines in there. That kind of cold is the worst – the kind that sinks into your bones, because it’s unrelenting.

Eli invited me over again. Every time he calls me over, I debate telling him “the guy who sits there is mad at me”. But then he’ll ask why, and I have no good answer. I’ve been making sure Kevin always notices. At least the foreman can vouch for me – nothing malicious here. Eli offered me a pastry and a smile cookie and I accepted them, glad for his kindness.

When we went back out, it was snowing! Will wonders never cease? By the time we finished our new job and stomped back in for lunch, there was a couple inches of white stuff on the ground. Then when we came back for last break it was raining and the snow was all gone.

After lunch, Tweedledee tried to wind me up again. He started complaining about Eli being a drug addict – he’s missing almost all of his teeth and a lot of people think it is meth mouth – and said he isn’t long for this world, and he doesn’t understand why I sit with him every day. I can’t remember how it progressed, but he went on to say that at a distance, I look like a boy. Probably he was trying to offend the sense of femininity I don’t have. I grinned ear to ear and chirped “thanks! I’ve been trying, putting my hair up and tucking it under my hard hat.”

“Yeah I noticed that. Just like [the Vagabond]. You take all these pills at lunch like him, too.”

Fortunately we were interrupted at that moment, because I couldn’t think of a response to that, that was glib and not offended. Presumably he had noticed me taking my Metamucil, which is 5 pills at a time, and decided I was downing a handful of pills like the Vagabond does. The hair I admit was a conscious emulation. There are few enough people with long hair on the jobsite – both Adrianne and one of the other females here have short hair – so I just copied his way of tucking his ponytail away. It makes sense, it’s practical.

We geared down and headed out at 5. I was somewhat relieved to be out the door before the Vagabond showed up, although I was just as anxious that I’d run into him on the way out.

I repeat this a lot; my mother used to say, “you always like the broken ones”. I liked it so much, it’s my bio on Discord; “Queen of the Island of Misfit Toys”. Eli was strange, but he was nice and personable.

It’s an interesting distinction, asking people what they think of someone. If I ask anyone about my landlord, they say, “He’s weird, but he’s a nice guy”, and then they usually have a story (or ten) about him doing something wacky. If I ask anyone about the Vagabond, they say, “He’s strange” and then change the subject.

You know what’s really annoying? The new Mulan vs the old Mulan, and I don’t even like Mulan. In the new one, she’s already this born fighter, chafing against men keeping her from realizing her destiny. It’s very bland and boring.

In the old Mulan, she’s just a regular girl who didn’t know where she belonged. She was just trying to save her dad from dying in military service when she joined up, almost as a death-seeker. But she discovers herself there and thrives!

That’s what Dryden is to me. Where I remade, where I found myself. I never really knew this was what I wanted until I did it, and now I can’t imagine how I forced myself to live any other way.

I found this article about a man in the UK, who dug himself a bunker to live in on public property, because the housing system just doesn’t work for him. A year ago I would have thought that he should have just tried to rent a flat. Now I’m envious of him having the ways and mean to live off the grid like that. I feel a lot better now that I’m out of town and staying in a motel, and I’m resenting the knowledge that I’ll eventually be laid off, and go back to Thunder Bay. I’m half debating asking Duff if I can crash at his place, and checking out Winnipeg a bit. I’m not sure when my next opportunity to leave town will be and I want to make the most of it.

More Canadian music for ya!