Employment!

I really love New Mexico, and I really love being in the field.  Lucky me, I found a job which incorporates both!

After almost a month of unsuccessfully trying to find work around the Tucson/Phoenix area, I finally decided to start inquiring about work in other areas.  A friend in Albuquerque suggested that I get in touch with SRI, a large cultural resource company that has offices in both ABQ and Tucson (among other places), because he knew that they had a large-scale highway project in the works.  A few emails and 24 hours later, I had a job!

Back in the summer of 2008, after my first year of grad school here in Tucson, I was supposed to return to Albuquerque to work on a large highway project with OCA, the company I had previously worked for before moving to Arizona.  The project got put on indefinite hold due to bureaucratic issues and I instead got a job with the Forest Service for the summer.  As it turns out, the project I was just hired to join is the same project, now under the contract of a different company.  Funny how things work out.

I leave for Gallup on Monday morning, and will be working a new schedule of eight 10-hour workdays on, followed by six days off.  Chances are, this schedule will continue for at least a few months.  It will be hard only being home every other week, but if I've got to be working in a different state, this sort of schedule is pretty ideal (definitely better than being gone for a month at a time, anyway!).  I'll be living out of a hotel in Gallup, and working just north of town along the highway to Shiprock.

This is an area of New Mexico that I love, in terms of the archaeology, and as the season changes (in New Mexico, unlike Tucson, there are actually seasonal changes!) I know the weather and scenery will be beautiful.  The hours will be tough, and I will probably complain of exhaustion at times, but I'm excited about it.  Fieldwork = Happy.  Pretty simple equation.