Okay so this is an important addition: as you read this, it's not pronounced "new-Finland" or "new-found-land", it's pronounced "noof-ind-land". This is an important detail. You haven't been yelled at by enough drunk Newfies, so I'm gonna spare you that.

"Wait...what the fuck are you even talking about?"

Okay so my job brings me to a lot of different places. I work—effectively—as a contractor installing healthcare software systems and this particular contract was, well, the entire province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

My job entails a lot of travel to coordinate such a large undertaking so I basically ended up spending 25% of my life living and working in St. John's, Newfoundland in order to help coordinate bringing this healthcare system online. It was a really awesome time and the city is great, and I do miss working there (I don't miss getting there, but that's another story for another time). But this isn't about that.

The Puffin Patrol

Okay so there's a time of the year where puffins...well, they get lost. They're used to using the moon and the stars to figure out where they're going like endoskeletal moths that are...a little dumb. Anyway, the puffins get stuck in places they're not supposed to be because of light pollution. They'll be wandering around schools, convenience stores, sometimes even a family pool. So someone has to go...retrieve the puffins. That's the Puffin Patrol.

Basically you can sign up with the conservation authority to go around finding lost puffins and putting them back where they're supposed to be. You show up at this dock and they hand you a high-vis vest, a net, a box (for puffin holding), and an armband that says "Puffin Patrol" on it.

So anyway I was out with some coworkers one night, you know, looking for puffins as one does and there was a moment we were all wandering around an old cemetery looking to see if we could retrieve a puffin or two. We all kinda looked around at each other and all had a collective "how the fuck did we get here?" moment. I mean, we work at a tech company, we went to school for computer science, information systems, biomedical engineering, etc. and somehow, we're in the middle of godfucking nowhere, Newfoundland of all places looking for puffins.

Anyway, we never found a puffin that night (well...we never found one that was...not roadkill), but it's one of my favorite memories from working on that project.