Being a Licensed Land Surveyor

Picking a vocation or career is a major step in life. You usually spend a major portion of your waking life devoted to work. For some, work is a means of making money, so that they can enjoy the other few hours of their life, for some it is merely a means of survival.

For a select few, work is not only their livelihood, but it encompasses all that they love and so becomes something bigger. It’s not just where you spend your time making your ducats, so that you can do something else…it is a place you would spend the fleeting moments of your brief time here on earth, even if the ducats came from someplace else.

I bumped into the career of surveying, by chance, in college…just a class I took as part of my geography major. After dubbing around for a few years at various survival-oriented jobs, I got a job surveying with a local company in Keene. That opened my eyes to a new world!

Land surveying encompasses so much of what I love! I enjoy history, historical research, mathematics, puzzles, treasure hunts, detective work, snowshoeing, hiking, forest biology, being outside, computers, working with hand tools, measuring and figuring out stuff, new technology, art and drawing, and having a respectable and respected position in the community. I enjoy helping people and solving problems. I get to do all of this as a surveyor.

What other job can you spend the day hiking around in the woods on snowshoes, searching for elusive treasures, like an iron pipe or stone in the middle of some 200 acre tract (in the middle of no-where); use an axe or machete and plumb-bob to set up a network or trail through the forest, employ the use of robots, lasers, prisms, satellites and powerful hand-held computers to measure and calculate the position of the things you find; and then bring all that data into a computer and try to resolve what you have accurately measured and located, to what has been documented through the last 200 years+ of local history. You employ mathematics and legal principals to determine the positions of property corners, location of improvements, elevations and contours and the existing conditions on a piece of land. Then you get to use the computer to draft a plan showing your work that accurately records the measurements you took in a format that is to scale and yet also reflects some artistic and aesthetically pleasing qualities. In the end, the plan might be recorded at the registry of deeds, so that 100 years from now, someone might use my work and remember what I have done. A mark on posterity and my own piece of immortality.

And when work is slow…you blog about it. Ha ha

And a great weekend was had by all

It felt like a pretty successful weekend! We did a lot of things, all crammed into two days.

Saturday we were up at 6:00 am for a parent/teacher conference at 8:30 in Keene. Afterwards we went skating at Robin hood for a minutes, got coffee, hit Blockbuster, went home, napped, got up and went to the Dump and an open house at Crockett Homes. We came back, I made Leo’s Tostadas and we watched Battlestar Galactica season 1, episode 1. I forgot that it was so long and a little higher tan PG rating. We started Motorcycle Diaries afterwards, but it was late and after the high test of BSG, it was a little slow, so we went to bed.

Sunday, I slept in, until around 7:30. I got up, read a bit, and had coffee by the fire. Once everyone was up, I made a big breakfast and we decided that, even though it was only 8º outside, we would go for a snowshoe hike on Grannies land. We had to run to Keene first to get Jeremiah some snowshoes. Apparently, everyone wants to Snowshoe lately, because there were not to be had at any store. That was almost a deal-breaker and would have set a bad tone for the rest of my weekend, but I remembered we had some pairs at the office, so we stopped there. Good call! We got Jem some snowshoes and headed off to Chesterfield.

What a fantastic afternoon. Tracy, Jeremiah, Grace and George hit the woods! We headed in near a little wetland but soon turned west and trudged up to the top of the hill, where we found a snowmobile corridor. I had surveyed this whole property a few years ago and found no such thing, but here was definitely a trail, maintained, and cleared. Que interesante! Gracy was feeling tired and hungry, so we turned back east down the big hill to the river at the bottom of the ravine. We found an excellent spot to set up camp and soon had a nice warm fire roaring. I got out the Coleman stove and boiled some water for tea, while we all cooked Chorizo and Cotija over the fire and ate it on bread. Eventually, we decided to hit the trail back to the truck, George’s paws were very cold, he kept holding them up, so going back was a good choice. There is nothing better than an afternoon snowshoeing in the winter woods with goodies to eat a nice fire and warm drinks.

We came home; the dog found his spot by the woodstove and sacked out. We all hit quite pursuits of reading, coloring and books on tape. I made a roast chicken with root veggies. After supper the Kids hit the sack and Tracy and I watched the rest of Motorcycle Diaries.

I’ve got to make more of an effort spending time outside with the Family! What a great weekend!

2009 is here!

So I haven’t blogged for a while. The office has been kind of a drag lately, with some people getting laid off and all our pay getting cut. Especially since my office and my surveyors are very busy, have plenty of backlogs (especially considering that it is winter with a lot of snow already) and we're making good profits. Why hamstring the one group that’s supporting itself AND contributing support to the rest of the company. Very frustrating. Anyway, my mood hasn’t been such that I felt like writing.

On a positive note:

For the last 3-4 years I’ve written a list of life-goals that I’d like to achieve over the coming year or years. Some are just habits to incorporate, whereas some have specific beginnings and endings. Last year, I stepped it up, and actually DID a great deal of the things on my list, and it felt so good, that I’m on the same path for this year. I made a few resolutions to add to my routines and better myself this year, some of which are well on their way.

1. I want to SPEAK Spanish with real people, to develop my language ability. So I signed up for a Conversational Spanish night class. I’m excited.
   
   
2. I want to re-discover/redevelop some my artistic abilities. I’ve begun sketching and painting again. I make a point to do something at least a couple times a week. I get so into watercolor painting, that time flies by at lighting speed and all of a sudden it’s midnight and I’m both exhausted and exhilarated. I need herbal tea just to calm down to get to bed.
   
   
3. I like to write, so I thought I would explore writing as a way of expressing myself. To add the artistic touch I bought some nice ink pens and a fountain pen. Tracy bought me a leather-bound journal of blank un-lined pages. I’ve been writing every day, using sienna colored ink. The same effect as with painting…exhausted exhilaration. It also hits another goal, which was to improve my handwriting. It’s downright illegible, or has been, which says something about a person. The care I take in writing now actually makes my handwriting look good, artistic. That also says something.
   
   
4. Publish some of my thoughts. So here I am publishing a blog, which I hope to keep updated every 1-2 weeks. (Now I just need some faithful readers. It would be fantastic to have a weekly or monthly article published in some magazine or paper. That’s the next step. I guess this is just practice. Of course, I need to have something worthwhile to say first…A topic to discuss and discourse on. That will come.
   
   
5. I want to write real letters on real paper, share news and thoughts with people that I’ve befriended internationally. I want to expand my world. Haven’t hit this one yet

There are a lot more things on my list, but these are the ones that I’ve already begun and are new…not the same old lose ten pounds, get in shape kind of things. There are more. I’ll let you know how they go.

More time for Spanish

I guess if were going to be slow this winter, at least I can put in some more time for learning Spanish.



These are the texts I have been using. I also subsbscribe to Spanishpod.com, which is an excellent site for learning Spanish. If I can scrape up the $100, I'm going to take an evening-Conversational Spanish- class this Spring

Well...That Sucks!!!

First day back from vacation and I'm greeted with a doom & gloom office meeting and a 10% pay cut....even though my gang is making big profits.