In a nutshell, there's definitely some good news. I got a job here at Jasper National Park, the landscaping job that I was told about by the campground attendant (it was his second job, both of which he was quitting to go back to school in Montreal, and so he's the guy that trained me the past couple of days). I got the job Monday, moved into employee housing the next day and then yesterday was my first day. It's full-time, doing landscaping and groundskeeping for Mountain Park Lodges here in Jasper (click on the subject line above to go to their web page). I'm the only guy doing it and it involves keeping track of four different hotels here in town. But it's not quite as much work as it sounds, since all the actual landscaping and planting, etc. was done in the spring already, so mostly it's just maintaining things, i.e. mowing, weedwacking, weeding, watering, etc.
It's actually pretty much perfect because I'm on my own, the boss is really cool and basically lets you work whatever hours you want as long as you're getting 40 hours in and getting the job done. And I get to use the company truck (which is really beat-up and starts without even putting the key in). The pay isn't spectacular, but it isn't too bad either, and the super good thing is that the housing is dirt cheap, $150/month, so I'll definitely be saving some money. It's a 4-story employee housing building, with bathrooms and kitchens on each floor, and you have a roommate. But two good things with the roommate situation. First, he works the front desk in the evenings, whereas I work during the day, so I have the room to myself all evening. Second, he's from India. So that's super cool, he was really surprised to hear that I had spent 11 months there, so we've talked about India quite a bit. Oh yeah and another thing, he has a laptop and said I can use it whenever I want in the room (but there's no internet there), so that I can hopefully get some writing done in the evening.
So, onto the bigger news. My book, "Kundalini and the Art of Being", was apparently published several months ago! How typical, that they finally got around to it, but then didn't bother mentioning it to me. I'd emailed them back in May to find out what was going on and they assurred me, once again, that it was around the corner, once they got some proofs back. So I emailed them a couple of days ago asking what the heck was going on, reminding them that this month marks seven years since it was accepted for publication and that it was really taking a long time. The person who wrote me back was an office manager who had worked there several years ago, but just come back, and was pretty sympathetic, saying it was overdue when she'd last worked there so it was indeed pretty ridiculous, but at least it's now out. The book can be purchased through the publisher's website at StationHill.org
...or else there's a few copies, both new and used on Amazon.com
As for other news, I saw my second (and third) bear a couple of days ago. I forgot to mention it before, but I saw a black bear cub on the road when I was camping near Nelson a couple of weeks ago. Then, the day before I started work up here I drove up to Medicine Lake, about twenty minutes from the town of Jasper, and did a nice hike along the lake. On the way driving back, I saw another black bear, full-grown, with a bear cub alongside. They were feeding right along the road. The adult bear sure wasn't very big though, nothing like a grizzly. But that was pretty lucky to see bears twice, both from my car so that I didn't have to worry about them.
The only bummer news is that I got 4 rolls of photos back today, and most of them were ruined by a scratch on the negatives (this is the camera that I dropped at Annapurna Base Camp, so that's probably what caused the scratches, as it's been acting weird lately). But fortunately, I brought along my dad's old 1971 Canon, which I also got one roll developed from and those pictures came out good. But it's definitely time to get a digital camera sometime soon, after spending almost $50 for mostly messed up photos. Oh yeah, and the other bummer is that it seems I'm unable to send text messages from here in Jasper (although I do get cell phone reception), which means I can't upload about 10 photos I'd taken along the way here that I wanted to put on my blog. But maybe I'll drive somewhere else outside the park at some point, and be able to text them to my email at another time and then be able to post them.
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