super flier

A long time ago, I did a series of posts on being a road warrior, starting with this discussion of receiving super-elite status with my favored hotel chain.

I fly relatively often - once or twice a month, on average. However, before I started working at this "temporary" gig, I hardly flew at all. And most of my flying is regional rather than cross-country, so I didn't exactly rack up the miles.

So it took me a long-ass time, but I am officially a frequent flyer, having reached the lowest level of elite status at the airline I use the most often. I must admit that the perks are nice...

1. Free checked bags (ok, not really a big deal when the checked bags would be paid by my employer)

2. Upgrades to 1st class

and most exciting...

3. You get to use the "priority" line and save a half hour of standing in line on a Monday morning!

I don't want to dilute my hotel points-based credit card by getting an airline card solely to get more miles, but when the flight crew is waving around all sorts of fancy deals for signing up for their credit card, it is tempting...

never too old

Or too experienced to do something stupid.

Like, you're watching a drill rig do its thing and it's a beautiful day and you idly notice a little piece of something or other fall on the ground, so you mosey over. It's a strange piece of metal. You pick it up...

and get a high 2nd degree burn on your fingers because what you tried to grab was actually a tortured, red-hot chunk of the engine that had just been spat out of the exhaust.

what I wore

In case you were wondering, I did have that big meeting that I talked about here. I tried on about five different outfits in the morning and ended up with a nice pair of dark blue jeans, a fancy button-down shirt, and my steel-toe boots.

As it turned out, none of the bigwigs at the meeting were terribly dressed up. I should have guessed that anybody in the environmental biz, in any technical capacity, would avoid wearing a suit. Or a tie. Or shiny shoes.

Also, I was the only person who wore steel-toe boots. We ended up doing more of a drive-by of the site and nobody got their shoes dirty.

I'm still figuring out this management stuff, I guess.

personal geography

It's funny that I ended up in the contaminated dirt business, because I grew up in the town next to (and downstream of - lucky us!) a massive, famous superfund site.

The center of town is a glacial u-shaped valley with a misfit stream running through, although you wouldn't know this by simply walking around - it just has a flattish lower part with a bunch of steep hills in the outskirts. The stream is called "the xxx river", but like a lot of features in this area, the name is hyperbolic. Where it's allowed to flow naturally, the xxx river is about a foot deep and 20 feet wide and pretty sluggish, although it's been dammed in a couple places and culverted in others.

I grew up in an era of burgeoning environmental consciousness, and knew about the superfund site for as long as I can remember, but nobody ever brought it up, and certainly not in school. I certainly didn't know about the extent of heavy industry in the 1800s and early 1900s, or that the flat areas in town were used for industrial disposal and then grassed over and turned into playing fields and parks (which they remain to this day) in the 1930s. I didn't know that the sediment in the lake on the far side of town (created by a dam installed under the WPA program) that I swam in was contaminated with eye-popping levels of heavy metals. I found all this out much later, when I picked up a fancy volume of the town's history and started filling in the blanks.

People still fish in the lake. The "beach", a couple of dump trucks of sand on the edge of the lake, is still as busy as ever in the summer. My connections tell me that the local paper (which still exists!) has yet to publish anything on environmental issues. The superfund site has been rendered uninteresting by time, although they still hold the required local meetings to update the populace on the ongoing cleanup efforts.

This is a wealthy, ridiculously educated town. I just looked up current demographics, and about 1/3 of the adult population has a graduate degree, and about 3/4 have at least a bachelor's degree. The number of scientists, lawyers, and professors is especially striking. It makes me wonder - how many other environmental messes are lurking elsewhere in places where nobody remembers or cares?

what to wear

In the near future, I will be attending a meeting to start off a big project. We'll meet the various bigwigs and the local contacts and their bosses. An agenda has been circulated. There will be several separate meetings. Formal introductions. And a site walk.

So what should I wear?

The whole "meeting with the big bosses" suggests I should wear nice business attire. The "site walk" suggests something more...practical.

I'm not a big fashionista - I tend to buy and wear only what I really need. My work wardrobe has been segmented into the following separate tiers by default:

Level 1: Interview/presentation suit. This is only for super formal occasions and is relatively fancy (nice fabric, tailored-looking). I suppose I could dress down the pants with a blouse and use the outfit as a fancy "regular" work outfit, but I'm afraid of getting the pants stained or something and having to start over with a new matching coat/pants pair.

Level 2: Standard office attire. Nice pants in a neutral color that can go with lots of stuff, a blouse or button-down shirt that's not transparent or super low-cut or a hideous color (quite a tall order, I know), nice shoes that I can wear all day.

Level 3: Business casual: jeans or non-damaged field pants. A t-shirt (long or short sleeved) that's not too tight, transparent, low cut, etc. Probably the same shoes as level 2.

Level 4: Field gear. Steel-toe boots.

So, the site walk would indicate steel-toe boots, right? But there's really no way for my steel-toe boots (seriously broken in, humungous) to work with any other level of businesswear. If I were a guy, it would be easy - steel toe boots, jeans or khakis, and a button-down shirt. Maybe I should do the same? I'm concerned that it's not quite formal enough for the bigwigs.

Any suggestions?

dear recruiter

When you called me out of the blue, I was flattered. Someone in another company had heard that I was a kick-ass geologist and wanted me to have a phone interview? Sounds awesome! Unfortunately, I was not in a position to discuss future prospects, so you promised an e-mail.

I was less flattered when I discovered that you had contacted every technical person in this organization with the same story (just so you know, we do talk about these things). But still, I was willing to hear you out.

Then I got your e-mail, with no indication of your company's name, no details about this supposedly awesome position, and the only thing in your representative's signature was a name and a glamor shot of the rep (I presume). Also, you spelled "geologist" wrong.

I used some google-foo and found what appears to be the position you mentioned in your phone call. Too bad it's more than 6 hours away and in the wrong industry. Thanks but no thanks, recruiter. Chuck's suggestion that I move to Australia is about as useful.

Yes, parts of my job are annoying. And there was a period about a year ago where I was just desperate to escape. But things have been getting better - I'm able to do more technical stuff, and management has changed, and the pay has increased as I've managed to work my way out of a dead-end position. But it's a job in my field, and one that is mostly relevant to my education and experience. So I'm not about to head out to the middle of nowhere to start over at the bottom.

hand model?

I use statcounter to keep track of this blog in a really half-assed way. That is, I just checked it out for the first time in about six months. And what is the most linked-to, most searched blog post?

This one, with a nasty picture of an especially miserable case of poison ivy.

Out of curiosity I did a google image search for poison ivy between fingers, and there I am, #3.

I was hoping that I would be famous for my incisive wit and brilliant commentary on Geology, the Environment, and Life. I guess I'll settle for being famous for being really, really sensitive to poison ivy.