Back home...for now

Warning! Long post ahead!

Got back from Halifax last Wednesday morning and took the day off. The trip was a HUGE success. I had a great time travelling around, meeting people, eating all the seafood I could stand (which is really saying something, as I hadn't been much of a seafood fan before this trip). The time spent in Yarmouth was enlightening, the weekend to myself was very enjoyable and the big meetings on Monday and Tuesday were very educational and very inspiring. I'm now officially one of the three "full-timers" on the special project.

Everything went off as planned, and as I outlined in my last post. The weather was shitty for the first week, as Hurricane Wilma was blowing through, making Nova Scotia seem like a constantly dark, blustery, very windy and rainy place. It was kind of an adventure though - I didn't mind it at all! At least when I needed to be on the road, the weather was quite good, so I was thankful for that. Apparently Ex-boss wasn't as lucky - when she drove down to Yarmouth the day after I did, she encountered what she called "white-outs of rain." Ugh! Been there, done that - don't wanna do it again!

My first night in Nova Scotia was spent at Ex-boss's house. Gorgeous place! She's only lived there since June or July, but it looks like she's been there years...completely decorated. Looks like something from Home and Garden magazine. She made us chicken curry for dinner - her hubby and son were there too, and we had a pleasant evening.

The next day, Bruce (ops manager) and I drove from New Minas and spent the afternoon at the office in Yarmouth. It was about a two and a half hour drive, and the weather was great. We got detoured at one point because of a major accident on the highway, which made us lose at least 45 minutes. The B&B was great, and I didn't at all mind the scheduled breakfasts. The food was phenomenal. The woman who runs the place, Twyla, is a gem. Her home is a HUGE 150-year old house that must be 2,000 square feet. Guess what she paid for it five years ago? $180,000! You can hardly buy a small condo for that much in Ottawa these days! It was so big, it wasn't till the last day I spent there before I was fairly sure where I was at any given time. It turned out I was never on my own for a meal anyway, and even if I had been, the B&B was an easy five-minute walk from the downtown strip. As it was, I had company for every meal.

The first day, Monday, I was only there in the afternoon, and spent most of it with one of the managers, a very soft-spoken lady in her late forties or early fifties. She explained how things work there, tried to get me to grasp their very complex schedule and generally just showed me around for the afternoon.

The first night, Bruce and I had dinner at a restaurant called The Five Corners. The next day, one of the staff who I was interviewing told me "you need to be careful about who's around you at all times in a small town like this, and be careful what you say." Turns out her daughter and her daughter's boyfriend were at the ONLY other occupied table in the restaurant, close enough to overhear some of our conversation! I was absolutely MORTIFIED! But Bruce and I couldn't think of anything we might have said that would have created a ruckus, so we just took it as a lesson learned. That night, I'd had a wonderful Seafood penne dish with a light tomato sauce that was really delicious. Bruce had the same.

Tuesday I started interviewing the other staff. I found them all to be very sincere, intelligent people who just want to do a good job.

For lunch that day, Bruce and I went to another restaurant called Bruno's. There were several items on the menu that I didn't recognize. One of them was called "Rapure Pie with Chow". The description from the waitress sounded yummy, so I got it. Turns out chow is green tomato relish - delicious! - and perfect with the Roppy pie, as it's affectionatly known. Finely grated potatoes with the water drained and replaced with chicken stock, chopped onions and bits of chicken added and seasonings, then baked, in this case in a single-serving dish, to a golden brown. The day was dark, blustery, cold and rainy and the Roppy pie was the most perfect meal to have on such a day...heartwarming, rib-sticking, delicious comfort food. That night for dinner, Bruce, Ex-boss and an HR person from Montreal went to Rudder's Pub for dinner. We had tried to go somewhere else, but it had closed early due to the bad weather. Rudders was right my speed though...a comfy harbour-side pub, very much like the place Phil worked at for so long on Salt Spring Island. I had fish-cakes, which were also served with chow, to my delight. They were delicious. Oh, and breakfast that morning had been fruit salad, quiche, home-made toast and muffins, orange juice and coffee. *urp*

The next day, I don't even remember what lunch was. Breakfast was bacon and eggs, plus the standard fruit salad, toast muffins and beverages. Dinner was at Rudder's again...a club sandwich served on a kaiser instead of the traditional triple-decker. It was probably the least interesting meal I had the entire trip. The day had been spent continuing the interviews with staff. I have to write a report as soon as possible, though I don't know how long it'll take to implement any of my suggestions.

The final day breakfast was sausages and eggs plus this phenomenal baked french toast which I would have been happy with as the entire meal and the standard other stuff as on previous mornings. I wasn't that hungry but I scoffed the french toast and tasted everything else. After that we were off to begin our drive up the southeast coast to visit the offices along that route. We also stopped in Liverpool, a very pretty little town.

Back in New Minas on Thursday afternoon, I found an unoccupied computer and started writing my report. It's still nowhere near finished. I just hope I can get it done over the next week or so. Friday was in New Minas also. I was supposed to interview the one of the people there, but she was way too busy with a deadline so I continued to work on the report, and spent some time with the sales manager there, getting his impressions of the workflow. He's a super guy and I'm just sorry he's not going to be working full time on this big project with me too. He did however promise to help me with my apartment hunting when I go back to Halifax next month for a few days.

On Friday afternoon, I was taken to the car rental place and given a car for my very own use! I drove it to Halifax on my own, and drove straight to the hotel without a hitch, using Caroline's directions. Beautiful drive! The weather was gorgeous. At the hotel, I parked the car, checked in and just hung out for the rest of the day - relishing the solitude, which I had had NONE of for the past five days. Saturday I walked along the Halifax boardwalk for a while and took a few pictures. Bought myself a red fleece jacket with a sailboat and "Nova Scotia" embroidered on the left breast. Then wandered around the farmers market at the Keith's Brewery building for a couple of hours...great spot! Judging from the people there, and the posters up on all the bulletin boards, Halifax is a very witchy city! Lots of back-to-the-earthers, tree-hugging types etc. Reminds me of Salt Spring that way.

Saturday evening was uneventful...rented a movie (Batman Begins) in my room and savoured the solitude. Sunday I went for a drive in the rental. Halifax is either a very small place, or I was subconsciously trying not to go too far afield, as I kept going past the same landmarks and finding myself at the same intersections! At least I know I won't be able to get too lost there! LOL.

Sunday evening, Caroline and a bunch of other people arrived, so we went out to dinner at a really, really nice Italian restaurant across the street from the Hotel. There must have been 20 of us! I got to meet my team leader, a really nice Newfie from St. John's who's also a production manager, but his definition of production manager is universes different from mine! I felt rather pip-squeakish compared to him. Didn't get much opportunity to chat with him that evening though. I ordered the special of the day, which was a halibut fillet with a beautiful sauce, served with a chunk of pineapple, four scrumptious shrimps and a side of rice. Ohh...mustn't forget the mussels I shared with ex-boss for an appetizer - oh man, I thought I didn't like mussels. Was I wrong! I had some ginger thing for dessert which was good, but ex-boss didn't like it (she was supposed to have shared it with me).

So finally the big meetings started on Monday in one of the ballrooms at the Westin. We had most of the day a talk by an expert from an institute in the States explaining the state of our industry and how we can turn things around. Lunch was make-your-own sandwiches in the meeting room. The closing speech of the day was by one of the big guns from the Atlantic region who showed us some slides illustrating the slow decline of our product and how bad it was going to get by 2010 if we don't do something NOW, and how we all needed to be "scared shitless" about the situation because if it doesn't turn around, we could all be out of a job in a few years.

Dinner that night was at the hotel, with the entire contingent - around 50 of the 65-70 of the folks attending the conference. We had a piece each of atlantic salmon and chicken, with veggies and rice and some apple thing for dessert. Tasty.

Tuesday was the best day of all, as we finally got down to business and started to find out why we were all there, and what we were going to do about this downward slide we're in. In the afternoon, we broke into our four teams - circulation, editorial, graphics and internet. Of course, I'm on the graphics team with Scott. We were supposed to brainstorm about what we planned to do. It was terribly rushed, but later on we found out we were to come back in a month and do some more, so that was good.

That night, a bunch of us went to a nice restaurnt downtown called The Five Fishermen. I had a dish called the Seafood Medley, which had four shrimps, four clams, four scallops, a fish cake and a potato square. It was all very delicious, though I must say I'm less partial to scallops than to any of the other stuff.

The last part of this story is that I spoke with the VP on Friday. He told me they would be willing to send me home 3 or 4 times through the year (which I'd hoped for, but hadn't asked for), there might be some other perks, they'd pay all reasonable relocation fees, of course.

So now I have a lot of planning and preparing to do. My energy levels being what they are, this may be a rather arduous 7 weeks. I'm feeling quite overwhelmed at the moment, but I figure things will come together as time wears on. I've been through this before. So...away we go!