Now that I think about it, I would like to go to bed.

Do me a favor.

Go download Prokofiev's "Montagues and Capulets". Right now. It's okay, Prokofiev's dead, he won't mind.

Got it? Don't read any further till you've got it.

Hit play.

It's minus sixteen celsius (three degrees fahrenheit). The wind, which yesterday picked up and blew on its side the shack where I usually work, is still so strong it makes the truck I'm now working in shudder. It's minus thirty with the wind chill. The truck's windows are frozen shut. I'm wearing so many layers my back aches. The sun won't rise for another hour, but I'm out here trying to hold everything together.

The dock, made of a series of gray 50cm squared plastic cubes all legoed together, is frozen drifting off at an angle where it is useless. It is my duty to stand on this incredibly slippery surface and bang away at the ice with a shovel until every bit of it I can reach is broken up. Then I pull on a rope I've tied off to the dredge's traverse cable and cinch up the dock as far as it will go. There are no rails on the dock against which to brace myself. All that's keeping me from pulling myself into the shit is my own sense of coordination, which given that every time I look up from the black waters beneath me I see something like this



is not too terribly much to speak of.

My job's kinda cool sometimes.

(Here's where I got the photo from. Hope he doesn't mind.)