This story would be so much better with pictures. Then I could just say, "So, this happened:" and show you a photo and leave it at that. But I was unable to get photos of the incident in question because my camera was in my backpack, which was in a pickup truck, which was in a sump. Also in the backpack:
 -Cellphone. Normally I don't carry my phone with me at work since there's no coverage out there anyways. Not sure why I had it that night.
-iPhone. This is my Mom's old iPhone which she gave me to replace the iPod which died on me a few months ago. I just use it as an iPod, for music and podcasts, though only in my Kress truck, and the night in question I was fuelling pumps in a pickup truck and had no need for it.
-National Geographic, June issue. Fun fact, I've read every page of every issue of National Geographic since at least 2006, when my mother-in-law started buying me a membership each year for xmas. Streak ended!
-The Mastermind of Mars, half-read. Apparently it's still floating away down there.
-A Fighting Man of Mars, unread. In case I finished Mastermind.
-aforementioned Olympus digital camera. Waterproof and unharmed!
-foodstuffs of varying composition but uniform deliciousness, ruined. Though I ate the $3 protein bar after it was recovered, dagnabbit, them things are expensive!
-sundry other items of lesser value
 Anyways, the iPhone may not come back to life, though it was previously thought killed when Pallas dunked it a mug of coffee, so you never know. My cellphone is probably ruined, but good news- the SIM card was alright so I transferred it to Michelle's old phone of the same model which she no longer needs ever since I got her an iPhone 4S.
All that happened is I backed the truck down parallel to a pump to throw some fuel in it, and I stepped out to open the fuelcap on the pump when it kind of went thunk and slipped from park into reverse, whereupon it accelerated surprisingly quickly into the sump. There was no berm around the sump so it flew right in. Earlier I had noticed the transmission not going into park so I took it down to the washbay to wash out the linkage, after which it was working fine. Or seemed to be, anyways.
 So now I'm looking at my pickup truck which is sort of propped up on an angle, lights shining, over half-submerged and not accessible at all. My first thought was for my backpack. Then I realized the radio was in there and no one else knew I was down there, in the bottom of this very deep pit, with walls that are so bad they actually brought in a radar dish to monitor it, and so I would have to walk out. At midnight with no light because, though I had just asked for batteries for my headlamp not a half hour previous, I was told there are no batteries for peons such as myself. Did I mention all the grizzly bears that have been hanging around? Not that I was too worried about them, grizzlies are waaay too smart to be down in that pit by themselves at night.
What really pissed me off about the whole thing is they piss-tested me for that! On my incident report I'd written a fairly straightforward narrative of the events, highlighting facts I felt were relevant, such as that fuelling pumps is not my job. Then when I found out they wanted to drug test me, I wrote an addendum as follows, word for word inasmuch as my memory serves:
On the advice of my shop steward I am assenting to a drug test but I would like to register my extreme displeasure at the unjustness of this decision. NOT my job. NOT my fault. NOT my problem.

I wish I'd thought to write, "Furthermore, you owe me a new iPhone!" Anyways, I didn't get to be there for the funnest part, which is recovering the truck, since I was busy peeing into a cup. But I was told it was a lot of fun, and as an interesting aside, apparently my backpack floats.
There are some photos so it's possible someone will smuggle me a file or two, it's kind of funny.

Over at the John Janzen Nature Centre they had a Fairy Forest Midsummer Eve thing, and the whole place was completely overrun by fairy princesses. It was a fun daddy/daughter date to do, Pallas loved it. There was singing (she wanted to suggest bimoceros as her favourite animal for one song but nothing really rhymes with bimoceros). And then when one of the group leaders asked what fairies do, well the answer is obviously that they go to Pixie Hollow. And then Disney's trademark lawyers came and ceased and desisted the place down.

 

It was definitely Bear Week at work. Every day I saw at least 1, usually 4, and I think I saw 8 different grizzlies, possibly 9 though of course it's hard to tell which are the same ones twice. A friend was  driving to work when his truck was charged by a very angry boar, whom we saw a few minutes later but by then he was running into the bush with a sow. Hopefully to relax a bit. If we're going to see bears, it's always this time of year and then after Canada Day or so we don't see them anymore, so I think they are after the relatively easy protein to be found in all the baby elk, sheep and moose hanging around.
This picture here was of a mama I saw on the way to work one morning- which is why I was able to use the Nikon. Of course, early morning so the light wasn't amazing. Her cub was with her too and I got some photos of them both- nothing magazine quality, but better than nothing.
But the best was yesterday, just as I was driving my haultruck, crossing a bridge I saw that blonde sow that had been hanging out all week, running down a road full tilt, then going up on her hind legs and generally acting fairly aggressive. Then I saw the mama moose and her baby. Mama moose actually chased the grizzly into the bush. From my vantage point it was so obvious that the grizz just had to scooch around mama moose and she woulda had a tasty little mooseburger to share with her cub, but it was not to be. This time.

Finally saw my first grizzlies of the year!  I took some photos but they didn't turn out too good, but got a good long look at a blonde mama and her cute lil cub. They were up on a ridge and then came down just like they was mountain goats. Earlier this year I saw a cougar and a bobcat, so it's been a good year.

Pallas is maturing into a perfect little comic book geek like her daddy. A couple weeks ago, I was giving her a lecture about something, how important it is to listen to daddy and all that, and she pointed at my shirt which features various Marvel heroes such as Wolverine and Thor, and interrupted me with, "Is that Hook?"
"Why yes, that IS Hulk."
"Hook is my favorite!"
"Yeah me too! I love the Hulk."
And she skipped away happy as can be, lecture forgotten by both parties.
Also she is learning about secret identities, and knows that Peter Parker is Spider-man, and that Batman and Hook are both named Bruce, though they have different last names.
And then today at lunch, she asked me about the Green Lantern animated series she likes to watch.
"Daddy, why when Green Lantern is lying down and having a moment and Red Lantern fights him?"
"Uh, well, I guess Red Lanterns don't really respect moments." In our family, when we need to decompress and get away from the craziness, we say "I just need a moment."
"But Green Lantern was having a moment!"
"Yup. Well, that's how you can tell that Red Lanterns are really good bad guys. They fight you even when you need a moment."

Watch this in high def on the biggest screen you have:

The transit of Venus is today, and the next one is not for a long long time. NASA has some pretty amazing photos:

I was listening to the Radiolab podcast on Colors the other day and thought I came up with the most important scientific epiphany of all time. See, us humans have three color receptors in our eyes, red, green and blue (or yellow, I forget exactly), and those working in concert allow us to see the millions and millions of shades we see. Seems like lots, right? But other animals have more, some have 6, and mantis shrimp even have some crazy number like 18 of them. Well, listen to the podcast because obviously I am garbling some of the details. But here's what I immediately realized:

The reason why we've never seen a sasquatch is their fur is in the colors we can not perceive! Obviously!

I was composing my Nobel acceptance speech in my head when I realized the flaw in my reasoning. Okay, there's probably more than one, but right away you can see that even if their fur was colored something we can't see, the light reaching us would still be blocking out the background behind them, so they would still appear as some other color. Brown, maybe. Dogs can still see us, even though they are colorblind (though not completely, as they have two color-rods in their eyes, rather than our three). So yeah. Oh well.