So I have a friend on my crew who runs a tattoo studio on the side and he does really nice work. He lives in Hinton so it's been hard to find the time to go see him to get some ink done. I was able to sit for him a couple of days ago for a few hours, really just enough to get started.
Anyways, it's my daughter! You can tell by the scary eyes and deadly spear (her new favorite toy). You know, we named her after the Greek goddess Pallas Athena (we dropped the Athena) and the Roman goddess of the dawn, Aurora. There will be a sweet aurora borealis in the background. Here's a slightly blurry photo that shows how big it is:

Look- a two headed monster! Not really. It's actually a sasquatch in disguise. Sorta like a transformer.
Truthfully, it is a little sinister, but for reasons that involve unions and politics and stuff I don't get into here.

I've been neglecting quite a few things lately, and not least among them is sasquatches. I've been mildly obsessed with them my whole life but have hardly given them a thought since my daughter was born. Today when I was driving home from Hinton I saw two bipedal figures cutting across a farmer's field. They were farmers, of course. But it's entirely possible that they were also sasquatches. It's not often you see two sasquatches so close to the highway like that. Were they a mated pair? A mama and a child, like a bear sow and cub? It's hard to say for sure. And were they migrating back north after the winter? Not much is known about the migration patterns of bigfoots. All these mysteries. I guess I could have stopped and taken some pictures but I know sasquatches are way more fun with a little mystique. As soon as you capture one and give it a latin name it's all over. Well, that would still be cool. What should its latin name be? Sasquatch sasquatchus, probably. Homo horribilis would be cool too.

Here's an intriguing and slightly chilling quote from a National Geographic article on the Hubble Space Telescope (November 2007):

Are these [multiple] dimensions real, or . . . just a handy way of calculating? Increasingly, physicists suspect that they are real. If so, the perceived universe is but a glimmer on the surface of something much larger and more complex, and the known laws of nature are not bedrock but a kind of weather, like the clouds that form over mountain peaks.

-Timothy Ferris (italics mine)

So that's a pretty good sized tattoo, right? Imagine my surprise the other night when I looked down and it was gone. Well, not gone, but so completely covered by mud that you could no longer tell it was there. And of course the mud didn't stop there.
Mud, thy name is mud.
One of these:

got stuck in the mud the other night. As a pumpman it's certainly not my problem (though you could argue that the presence of so much mud and water in the pit is sort of my fault . . . ) but I like to help out in these situations. Anyways, to get him unstuck we had to attach a sling to an eye which is back behind the front tires. Since I wear rubber boots I volunteered to go in there, not realizing the water was actually waist-deep. It was a warm night so I was only wearing sweats instead of coveralls. The weight of the water and mud on my sweats was dragging them down. And I had to take off my boots every couple of minutes to drain the water out of them.
Anyways after all that I went to change my clothes and that''s when I discovered my tattoos had disappeared. Luckily they came back or I'd be really mad!

So we have this thing at the library we take Pallas to, sort of a program for little ones. Laugh Learn and Sing it's called, or something like that. 30 kids ranging from 5 months or so to about 3yo. Last week, the first, Pallas was kind of being the brave one, not surprising at all for my little Explorer Extraordinaire, but she was also a bit of a bully which was kind of shocking for my sweet little gentle boo. Sorry, that should be capitalized. Sweet Little Gentle Boo. Well, it was past her naptime so a little meltdown was to be expected.
Today she did better in some ways- she was too shy to leave my side, but she didn't bully anyone aside from shaking her head at all the babies who were staring at her. Actually it was fairly uneventful. I'm pretty sure the librarian guy who was doing the program doesn't have any kids of his own, otherwise he would know better than to bring empty boxes of cereal and crackers for show and tell. And please don't give my little girl a stuffed animal and then demand it back moments later. She is too little to understand the concept of borrowing. She was inconsolable and we had to leave right then and there.
Luckily a cup of whipped cream from Second Cup cures all wounds. All for the price of a wee bit of carnage.

Remember when The White Stripes did that crazy cross-Canada tour and hit every province and territory? Plus they played free impromptu shows at the strangest places? Yeah, me and Michelle tried to get tickets and failed. Luckily they made a kickass documentary about the tour, White Stripes Under Great White Northern Lights. If you like them you'll love the film. It's beautiful and full of great concert footage and all the little moments that make documentaries so fabulous. At one point Jack is playing a song on the piano, White Moon, and Meg is crying and you can't help but tear up a little too.
Anyways, a friend sent me a link to this YouTube video a friend of hers did. Wow. Check it out, and Jack White, if you're reading (and he of course reads Pooing in the Woods every day right?), give the kid a call!

Here's a companion piece to the other one, also a bit overstated and I even feel a little weird putting it up since it kind of makes me sound, well, not how I am. Obviously there are plenty of people with way more interesting and crazy jobs than me. But though this is not a true story per se it's definitely a synthesis of a surprising number of experiences I've had.

You all have the same boring ass jobs
in some office somewhere doing whatever
you invite me to your house
and whine about work all night
I listen politely and nod where appropriate
then when it's time to go
you ask
how's work for you?
fine I say
what do you do again?
well, I perform heroic deeds
beyond the scope of lesser men
have a good night

Well, that's the last pseudo-commie proletariat propaganda poetry you'll get out of me for a while, sorry!

Happy Easter! Here's a poem about Hell:

Preacher says
Hell is sulfur and brimstone
a lake of fire
the absence of god
but he's full of shit
because I know
hell is a pit
gouged from the side of a mountain
carved, torn and bombed from solid rock
where giant machines bigger than dinosaurs
spit diesel fumes and piss hydraulic fluid
the only devils are dust devils made of coal
from that goddamned wind that never stops
we curse it hard enough to make a demon blush
when you're out there all night
and you find yourself knocked to the ground
watching your own blood drip onto the mud
you think
that preacher was right about one thing
there ain't no god here
but hell isn't red
Hell is black