New Camera

My blog has been decidely lacking in pictures since our camera died (before Christmas).  This weekend, we finally replaced it with a Flip handheld video camera.  This is not your father's camcorder!  Thank goodness!  

Prepare to be inundated with Hedgehog Dog pictures and vidoes.  Beginning now.

And finally me in the kitchen last night doing dishes and cooking...  Hedgehog Guy said it was my "natural" environment, which earned him the evil eye.

Last weekend

Hedgehog Guy says it has been a long time since I posted, so...

Last weekend we put work aside and spent some time outside the house.  We finally have had some good weather which makes exploring easier and lots more fun.  I think we have realized that everything here is just beautiful. It is so different for us to live somewhere with mountains and water for a background rather than rolling prairie lands. 

On Saturday, we all (even the dog) went for a picnic lunch and a hike at Lighthouse Park in North Vancouver.  The views of the shoreline were really impressive. You can climb out on big granite rocks about 30ft above the bay and see kelp fronds and tide pools.  The trails run through an old-growth forest of Douglas firs, some of which had trunks that Hedgehog Guy and I together couldn't reach around.  Hedgehog Dog loved it - rocks and slopes to climb on.  It was a first time for us on a trail like that with him.  We are so sheltered!  

Sunday afternoon we drove south to Langley and tried out a local winery - Domaine de Chaberton.  Along the way, Hedgehog Guy remarked that the country looked just like southern Pennslyvania where we became first enamored of local wines.  The scenery to the south is almost the opposite of that in the north - low rolling hills, rich black delta soil, fields, and farm animals.  The winery was ok.  The wines were good, and all had the "finished" qualty that we have found lacking in several store bought wines lately.  But they are not Va La.  Sigh.

We drove home a different way, hoping to encounter another winery.  But all we got was lost, honked at, and almost side-swiped.  So much for an idyllic weekend ending!

Happy Mother's Day!

My mom is pretty amazing.  She is hundreds of miles away, yet she always seem to be there for us.  Here's just one example.

Last week we had some yummy maple sugar biscuits.  Hedgehog Guy commented that they were perfectly shaped circles, which is a rarity for my biscuits.  I responded that yes, I had used a biscuit cutter this time.  Hedgehog Guy said, "Oh, we have one of those?".  "Yes, four of them, of different sizes, my mom gave them to us."  Hedgehog Guy gives the thumbs up sign.  Yeah, she is a supermom, always looking out for us.

Emma's Wedding in Victoria

Yeah, so I have a new group of friends in my labmates. They are pretty awesome - somewhere between crazy and hilarious most days.  This weekend we all (6 labmates + 1 department co-worker) traveled on the ferry over to Victoria Island for the wedding of our youngest lab member, Emma.  Below is a picture of Renat, Jessica, myself, and Caro on the ferry.

The ferry ride was a bit surreal, the Prius on a boat is a bit hard to imagine, but the wedding was gorgeous and a lot of fun.  We rented a hotel room for the night (7 of us in one room...) so that we could stay for the entire reception.  I knew that Emma had us pegged when we were the closest table to the bar AND the dance floor.  The ceremony was based on Saxon traditions with Angelican overtones.  Emma and Stephen "rang" us out of the church by ringing the church bell as we exited.  It was lovely.  This is the group before the wedding and then at the reception with Emma.

The reception took a bit to get started since we had to wait for the couple and bridal party to complete the pictures.  But, that just gave us time to drink all the champagne punch.  The buffet was amazing.  I started to load up my plate on salad and then realized there was veggie lasagna!  Very yummy, even the roast beef with horseradish smelled great.  The brides' mom made everything - the bridesmaids dresses, the cake, the invitations, the chair covers, the tablecloths- and did a wonderful job.  She is definately a super mom.  

We started dancing about 9pm when the band arrived.  Lots of swing and classic rock.  We were sorry they left at midnight!  Here's a funny picture of me teaching Kristina to swing (I was not a very good teacher...)  Can't wait to go back with Hedgehog Guy and Dog for a vacation day.

Mr. Post-doc

Hedgehog Guy officially began his post-doc at UBC last Friday, May 1st.  He has really been working throughout his "vacation" on various grant proposals with his new advisor, but he started going in full time on Friday, rather than sporadic visits.  

Starting a new job is rarely very fun, perhaps especially in science where most of your co-workers are deeply engrossed in projects that they understand intimately and efficiently proceed with.  As a new person you are lost and feel like a failure immediately because you are not getting any results and it appears everyone else is.  You don't know the jargon, you don't know what you are supposed to be doing (usually), and you don't know where anything is.  You are really dependent on the benevolant pity of your labmates for a couple weeks.  Hedgehog Guy's comment summed it up pretty well Friday afternoon.  Something like, "It is like trying to jump on a moving train only you don't know where the door or handholds are, but you know people are inside who can help you."  He got a lab bench and pipettors of his very own and is now waiting on a desk in the group office.  

Hedgehog Guy's time off was largely spent playing WoW where he now has 3 characters over level 70 (Jod, Wapner, and Alchux).  I think he finally began to relax a bit since he was able to sleep past 8am without waking up by the end of it.  I think he secretly enjoyed being home with the dog.   

Hedgehog Guy works in the building next to mine, so we even get to eat lunch together like in the old days at DBI.  Funny how things circle around again.

Dishes, Taxes, and Spiders

Three things I hate:

Dirty dishes
I really hate washing dishes. It has even fallen below grocery shopping for me. I suppose I just think of it as repetitive - it is always the same dishes to be washed - and a waste of time - the dishes will just get dirty again! I don't mind the dirty dishwater (unless it has gotten cold). I have some amazing skills at building towers of drying dishes. But I still loathe this one chore. Ok, it is not as bad as dusting. I asked Hedgehog Guy what we did before dishes, he said "used big leaves and sticks". Sounds like the prefect disposable, biodegradable solution to me.

Taxes
I do not mind paying taxes. I am happy to fund our public works and government. I mind filling out the forms. I make Hedgehog Guy do the US ones, and he hates it too. This year we are filing in the US and Canada. Since it is the first year I am filing in Canada, I cannot file on-line, but must fill out the forms. Which is impossible because I have US and Canadian income, but have already paid taxes on the US income, so I shouldn't have to pay them again in Canada but have no idea how to put this on the forms correctly or calculate anything with the worksheets provided. And, oh yes, I didn't live in Canada all year, so a pro-rate must apply. Today will be my second trip to a tax professional here.

Spiders
The weather is finally gorgeous. So we leave the patio door open and let the dog wander in and out at his little heart's content. The spiders wander in and out at their leisure too. Hedgehog Guy gets to "save" the big ones, but I've been murdering the littler ones. So many new types that I don't know what they eat (maybe me) or where they live (maybe in my bedsheets).

Kidd Creek Mining Expedition

My first sampling trip with the new lab was to an alien environment for me - a deep sub-surface mine. Specifically, I spent a week in Timmins, Ontario where the Kidd Creek mine managed by the Xstrata mining company is located. I got to go "underground" on two days - Wednesday and Thursday. This was a very unusual experience for me since most of our sampling is done not on land as this was, but at sea. But it all boils down to the same tubing and carboy and filtering problems no matter where you are.

I have to credit our guide, Alex, a geologist at Kidd Creek with making this trip seem normal and not dangerous. She was just matter-of-fact about everything. "Stay with me at all times." "No, you can not go to the bathroom unless we all go." "Can I see you there? Then don't go there." This gives you some idea of the safety info we got before hand - the answers to literally 7 of the 8 questions on the safety quiz were some variation of "do not leave your guide".

You wouldn't want to leave your guide because the mine is very much like a giant rabbit warren with no light, water, and the constant danger of rock "burst" or rock explosions from the releasing of pressure/stress built up in some portion of the mine. I'm pretty sure I would have gotten lost in 2 minutes down there without Alex. It all looks the same - dark, rocks, dust, metal scraps, re-bar rock nets, and the occasionally grime covered human in a large vehicle.

We were able to use a truck each day instead of riding the cages down. This was a lot like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. Each day starts with the opening of two steel garage doors leading to a dark tunnel coated in some type of cement with pipes running along the ceiling, some of them dripping water, with the only light coming from a truck's headlights. We would follow this ramp that slopes and spirals downward at about a 17degree incline until we reached the levels we would sample from. Every hundred feet deeper marked a new level. The first day I was down we sampled on the 7850 ft and 9000ft levels - so 9000 feet underground. The second day we went to the deepest portion of the current large-scale mining operation - 9200ft and got to sample on a working drilling platform. I believe this is one of the three deepest mines in the world. It was amazing to see the drilling equipment, like giant iron oxen with lots of pneumatic pistons. The mine currently is doing mostly copper and zinc work, but I think other parts of the mine (it has 4 shafts) mine other things. After about 6 hours of work, we'd have to make the drive back up the ramp - an hour of roller-coaster like turns in a speeding 4x4. Definitely worth it.

We were sampling the water and gases that filled some of the exploration boreholes that the company used to map the location of its ore veins. This wasn't too physically difficult - the truck meant that we did not have to carry our gear very far and the ventilation shaft was actually windy, so it didn't get very hot (heat and pressure increase underground). But it did smell (imagine a little rotten eggs, lots of stinky gym socks), and the water was acidic (so your skin would feel soapy as the acid dissolved away your dead skin cells). My lab manager and I had prepared for the heat with steam room visits for the two weeks before the trip, but it was never worse than a Florida summer afternoon.

Yeah, so it was pretty amazing. Just completely different from anywhere else I have ever been. I could regale you with stories I heard from the other researchers from mines in Africa and from Alex about being a woman in this environment... It really seemed like visiting a different planet.