I loaded my first truck this morning at 7, and then they were down for the weather so I didn't see my second truck till 2 in the afternoon! Gave me some time to read and take some pictures and video.
I sure wish I could take my Nikon to work with the new lens (without wrecking it with coaldust) , then these pictures would really pop:

Even when the Eskimos aren't in it, the Grey Cup is still the best football game of the year, including even that league down in the south there, whatever it's called. I only got to see the first half and then had to leave for Hinton but listened to the rest on the radio- almost like being there! Did you see this guy in the stands waving his sign? HOw true it turned out to be, only not how he wanted!

Uber-geeky warning- this entry is so geeky it is not safe for work!



So, this collector's board I hang out in, Snowtroopers.ca, is having a diorama contest. My entry is called The Spice Mines of Kessel. Since I'm a miner I figured it would be fun to do a Star Wars mine. Only, it's mostly the surface part where it's all guards and armaments and stuff.
Well, it was fun, but I am pretty sure the winner will be either this one or this one. How cool are those? In the geeky sense of the word, of course.

I finished watching the first season of Deadwood. What a great show! Al Swearengen has become one of my all-time favorite characters, right alongside Edward James Olmos' Admiral Adama and Hugh Laurie's House. I even looked up IMDB to see who plays him- Ian McShane, who is a voice in Coraline! He plays the foul-mouthed saloon keeper who helps Coraline escape from Deadwood.
Anyways, I went and bought a new lens for my Nikon today:

Working shift work out in the mountains I see some pretty incredible sunrises and sunsets. Sometimes both in the same shift. Anyways this shot was taken in Hinton actually, just outside my grandparents' house.

Anyways, so glad to see Amanda Lindhout has been freed. I hope she is not completely shattered.

We need you to take care of pumps today.
Okay
Later: Can we have an operator at shovel 6 to test out the propel motor?
Okay
Later: Can you run the blaster's truck to the other end to switch out the deck with the other one?
Okay
Not much later: There's a flat tire on that truck, go to the tent and change it out.
Okay
Not much later: Turn that truck around- they lost power at 25 drill so we'll go get the cable reeler.
Okay
And later: We need you to come to the dry to fill out the incident report from that pickup truck hitting your reeler.
Okay
Later: Can we have that operator back at shovel 6?
Okay
And later: Hey Nathan can you go check the pump in Prospect?
Okay
At the end of the night: How did it go out there tonight?
Okay

According to George RR Martin's blog, Not A Blog, the shooting for the pilot of A Game Of Thrones has almost wrapped! Sweet! I wonder when it will air. Not that it matters since I don't have HBO and will have to wait an extra year for it to come out on DVD. Or I guess they got that newfangled internet I can check. I hear you can see videos on it and everything!
I'm just about to start my reread of A Feast For Crows. I went on a sort of GRRM revival when I got the books for Robin and also Michelle decided to read them. You know you have the best wife ever when you can discuss whether you'd rather be the Lord of Winterfell or the Eyrie and whether Lucius Vorenus (aka Kevin McKidd) would make a good Beric Dondarrion, maybe, or possibly the Blackfish.
I feel such warmth to HBO for doing this series. Band of Brothers, Sopranos, True Blood, Rome, Deadwood . . . is there anything they can't do?

So I've been trying to work my way through Pride and Prejudice and Zombies for our book club. Yes, I'm in a book club but really it is a drinking club with bookish discussions and Wii Bowling thrown in. Anyways. Having a minor in English I can tell you I adore Jane Austen in theory without actually liking any of her books. It's okay to not be into something and still recognize its brilliance. Not my thing.
Zombies are my thing, however. One of my things, anyways. Remember when Homie Bear met the zombear? Or the Cadaverous Cattle? Yup. So I thought P&P&Z would be pretty much a lot of fun. Only it's not. The zombies are mildly amusing but I can't help thinking about all the stories we wrote in grade 5 and 6 where we basically did the same thing only with aliens and spaceships.
I am thoroughly enjoying Season 1 of Deadwood, though. And not even any zombies in it!

Through photographic trickery I have cloned this clone! Have you been watching your Clone Wars DVD set? Because I sure have.
Other things that kick ten tons of a$$- roller derby! I even made a Flickr gallery of great roller derby photos from other users. There's even a shot of my close friend BB Sting in there, taken by another close friend name of Rustyangel. If you are in Edmonton tomorrow night you should go check out the E-Ville bout against Vancouver's Terminal City. Sadly I am in Hinton working or I would be there too.

The Dread Pirate Pallas



Our little girl would make a pretty ruthless pirate because she sure likes throwing things overboard. You always know when she's done her nap because you hear five thumps- the sound of each of her soothers being thrown out of her crib. Her little bunny and Walfred are too soft to make thumps but I'm sure in her mind they scream horribly as the little nursery sharks get them.
So that's pretty harmless. Unfortunately her wicked ways extend to her highchair, or as she would likely prefer to call it, her captain's chair. She's really good at eating solid food now, but lately when she doesn't like something she spits it out and then throws it overboard. If there's a whole tray of such untouchables, she picks them up one by one and tosses them. In an effort to get her to stop, Michelle and I say "Mmmmmmm!" every time we try and feed her a morsel.
Me: "Mmmmmmm!"
Michelle: "Mmmmmmmm!"
Pallas: "Mmmmmmmmm!" as she spits out the chunk of food and throws it on the floor.
Mmmmmmm! As Inigo Montoya would say- You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

People who know me in real life describe me in various ways- my buddy Robin sums me up pretty well- "Nathan is a man who enjoys his grapes." Griffyn just describes me as "Michelle's friend" even though he's known me all his life and Michelle is just a pretty blonde newcomer. Oh well. No bitterness.
In my whole life I don't think anyone has ever described me as "organized", "neat" or "totally NOT absent-minded". Which is why I occasionally get $230 tickets from the police. Like today. I wasn't speeding or really doing anything wrong so I was a little unsure why the RCMP cruiser started following me. I was coming home from nightshift though and it is weird how often the police pull me over just because I am kind of scruffy looking. They kind of poke around and when they see no evidence of guns or drugs they let me go on my way. A minor annoyance but I'm happy when they do catch guys smuggling the nogoods.
Anyways he pulls me over and says he ran my plates and I don't have a valid driver's license! What? I've had one for almost 20 years you silly officer! Then I remember my recent (well, two months ago actually) 35th birthday. Ah sh^t! You gotta renew it every five years. It never even crossed my mind. In my defense I didn't get a notice in the mail. But on the other hand, it is very possible the unopened notice is somewhere here on my desk as I type. Yeah so, I didn't argue with the cop who was actually really nice. Especially considering I couldn't produce proof of insurance, which is also likely on my desk somewhere. The constable pointed out that not having insurance is a $2500 fine but he gave me the benefit of the doubt that I did have insurance. He also said he could impound my car if he so chose but he cut me slack on that too. Considering it didn't start this morning like it does (or not does) every time it gets a little chilly I almost wisht he would impound it. Then they could just keep it and I'll hitch-hike everywhere from now on.
So anyways, he took my expired license and traded it for a $230 ticket. I guess we can call it my not paying attention tax.

The weather was so nice today it seemed a shame not to go to Hawrelak Park. So many geese! More than a few ducks. Only one bear cub (named Pallas) !



Oh yeah and one mischievous gnome:

So it turns out there's a new Battlestar Galactica DVD out- sort of new, anyways. It's called The Plan. And if you haven't seen it or seen all of Season 4 yet then I invite you to go check out these cool shots of a sperm whale munching on a giant squid instead because here there be spoilers, so be warned.

Okay then. The Plan was alright. It was a bonus BSG movie when you thought it was all over forever, right? So nothing to complain about there. In fact, thanks all you BSG guys! That was nice of you!
Most of the new footage was what the Cylon agents were up to in the early seasons. It kind of fleshes out why the Cylons abruptly changed their minds about completely wiping out every single human being at the end of Season 2.5. (There's been a change of plans . . . sorry about killing all those billions of people!) And then there's some new footage of Final Five guys, mostly Tyrol and Sam.
The trouble is, all that Final Five stuff felt like retconning to me. It felt like Ron Moore put all the characters into a hat and drew 5 out and those were the last Cylons. Whatshername I don't care about (Tory?), Sam I guess I can accept, Ellen I just don't buy and I refuse to accept Tigh and Tyrol as Cylons. That was just some hallucination like Baltar's Six. The trouble is, having them be Cylons ruins their character arcs up to that point, and Tigh's story in season 3 especially is absolutely wrenching. But not if he's a Cylon!
And don't even get me started on the whole Earth is a radioactive cinder except when it's not thing. The more I think about the last season, and specifically the finale, the less satisfied I am with it. In my mind BSG ended when they found Earth and it was dead. And there were no Final Five. So, I guess everyone dies or wanders space forever which is a downer but at least it's not completely baffling. I sort of hoped The Plan would explain some of that stuff better but oh well. Even though I voice these complaints I still consider BSG my favorite TV show ever and really miss those guys.

Happy Halloween! I took an extra couple of days off since as far as I'm concerned Halloween should be a week-long holiday for everyone. We started the festivities with some pumpkin carving- I did a Cylon Centurion (new style, with a bit of help from this guy who did an oldskool one) and Michelle carved her first pumpkin ever! Then we added some vomitous pumpkin guts because that automatically makes pretty much any jack-o-lantern better. Hers was a big hit, but only one guy (a dad) recognized the Cylon.



And of course the highlight was dressing Pallas up in her costume. Not being crafty or anything we just ordered one off the internet. She was an elephant! We went trick or treating just on our block, got some candy for me. She's too little so I get them all! Hahaha my evil plan has finally come to fruition.



Yay for Halloween! Here are some spooky eyes before we say good-bye to the best day of the year. Plus I made a Flickr set out of the day. But don't forget tomorrow is Day of the Dead!

Here's my annual Halloween poem, kind of inspired by the huge spiders we had living on our veranda all summer. We had an uneasy truce with them.

The spiders on the porch are banging on the door
I know better than to answer but what can I do?
I open the door
Ugh! They're even bigger than before
Listen you guys, you know the deal
you can weave your webs and eat whatever you catch out there
but you leave us alone in here
Those clusters of eyes stare at me
and those mouthpieces
drumming and drooling
disgusting
"Hungry!" they cry in those dessicated arachnovoices
Too bad. You know the deal
"We change the deal! Hungry!"
Sigh
Fine
Wait here
I stomp downstairs and turn on the lights
manage to grab two goblins before the rest scurry away
"Where are you taking them? My babies!"
The spiders are hungry. Sorry
"But we had a deal!"
Yeah well
Deals change

It was time to do up the front yard for Halloween. I dug out last year's stuff, and set it up and it was a little underwhelming. So a quick trip to the store and now it;s a little better:

Some of my deviantArt acquaintances have been doing zombie Star Wars art for Halloween, the full gallery has been posted at Star Wars' Official Flickr page. My favorite is Grant Gould's, who posts more about it at his own blog.
As for us, we are going on a Halloweenish date tonight, to see Marty Chan's The Bone House.

I had a miserable day last week when I went to work sick. I woke up with a mild cough and thought it was just from coal dust. But by 9:00 I was feeling all kinds of rotten. I even thought about going home but I was just running shovel 6 which doesn't require much more than not falling asleep. Plus it was the last day before days off so I toughed it out. Then I wound up staying in Hinton an extra night and sleeping for 13 hours.
Anyways, I was sick for a few days. Now they say that 99.9% of the people who are getting sick right now are getting H1N1. So the odds are I had it. Therefore I don't need to get the vaccine. The tricky part comes in figuring out what to do with the youngling. I strongly believe the seriousness of the Swine Flu is being exaggerated by the media (quite unusual for them, since they certainly didn't get carried away over the Y2K bug or Michael Jackson's death or little boys and their balloons).
I also am a little leery of believing all the things you here about vaccines. I've noticed that the same people talking about autism and adjuvants tend to be the same people that, when you follow their agendas back, are anti-evolution and anti-science. NOT the people I want informing me about decisions I make regarding my daughter's health. On the other hand, the people saying we should all go get the vaccine early and often aren't exactly agenda-free themselves. Just how much money are the pharmaceutical companies making on the vaccine, anyways? You know those guys would never bias data to cover up side-effects.
So. What to do. Maybe my daughter will get H1N1 and need to be hopsitalized. But maybe she's already fought it off and won, assuming she was exposed to it through me. Maybe if we get the vaccine her immune system will react and she will have to be hospitalized. All these maybes. Might as well roll the dice.
Here's something that's not a maybe or a myth, though- the vaccine contains thimerosol which is a mercury compound. This is used as a preservative to prevent micro-organisms from growing in the vaccine (presumably it works because it is poisonous to microbes). Thimerosol has been discontinued in the US in children's vaccines except in multi-dose flu vaccines such as the H1N1 and the seasonal flu shot. Do I really want to give my 9-month-old daughter a shot of mercury, regardless of how little there might be per dose? It's free!
Ummm . . .

Seven years of Pooing in the Woods!

In the history of cinema, can you believe that there have only ever been two films titled The Crab? The first came out in 1917 and not much is really known about it, at least on IMDB. The other is in post-production and will hopefully come out soon to an arthouse near you. And doubly hopefully to an arthouse near me because my good friend Jonathan Wilde is in it. I can use his whole name because the official Crab movie website does. Jon plays the nice guy, so it will be cool to see him have to actually do some acting!
Congratulations Jon! I hope the movie comes out soon but on the other hand, I hope it takes a while so that a movie theater can be built in Hinton so they can show it in time!