Not as Cute as Deirdre

The reason that I'm taking so long between posts is that I'm currently working away from my humble home, on the rugged sunshine coast. My mission: checking treeplanters. It was always my dream when small to grow up to be a treeplanter. The legends that surrounded this most noble of professions. The rugged individuality of its dreadlocked participants. The smell of the great unwashed. I was successful in pursuing my dream, and actually had quite the lucrative career planting trees all over the province...For 8 years it was my major source of income...And in those 8 years I did the majority of my traveling to date. I financed over a calendar year abroad off the avails of treeplanting. I still occasionally plant, but in a very limited capacity, although sometimes recreationaly (my friend just bought a 74 acre x-mas tree farm). Somewhere over the years the lusture of the grubbiness rubbed off (probably on any passersby that I brushed against) and a new dream formed in my head: better than planting the trees, how about I become the guy who checks the planters: the "checker". I have also realized this dream, although from my grungy hotel "kitchenette" (don't kitchens traditionally have ovens?) the lusture of this dream is also beginning to fade. This is the first time I'm checking this particular group of planters, but it is not the first time someone from the company I work for has. My former associate Deirdre had this gig last spring. She was very popular with the mostly male crew. Her popularity was confirmed by the comment I received from one planter whence introducing myself: "you're not as cute as Deirdre". How does one respond to such a comment. It was after all good natured and a light-hearted joking sort of banter. "No...I guess I'm not" says I to the grimy, chain-smoking man with the shaved head (dreadlocks sort of went out of style in the planting world around 1998...except for people from Quebec).
Well...I may not be as "cute" to the tree planting brotherhood as she, but if you take the time to carefully examine the above photo, I think you will agree that I am a better driver.