After a great week I'm back home where hardly anyone dresses as superheroes. Hard to believe I have less than 24 hours at home then I gotta head back to Hinton for work. The ole coal mine is gonna look especially dreary after a week in San Diego. Let's not even think about that.
Yesterday as we left the convention center for the last time I saw two ladies step out for a quick break, so I approached them and asked for a photo. One, dressed as an Imperial Officer (well, a sexy Imperial officer) had a nametag. When I saw it, I said,"You're Adrianne Curry, I'm sorry, I thought you were just a random cosplayer." But she was gracious and they posed for a photo. Unfortunately it set off a chain reaction and she was quickly swarmed. I felt kind of like a paparazzi, but the difference is those guys never ask. Right?

I need to take a moment of silence because Comic Con is over. Today we mostly just did a little bargain hunting and photo taking. No panels or anything to speak of. We had a sort of mini panel discussion with two steampunk cosplayers on the trolley to the convention center. Steampunk, said the guy, came about when goths discovered the color brown.
It warmed my heart to see Michelle have a moment of transcendent geekery when we scored 3 discs worth of Battlestar Galactica soundtrack featuring music by Bear McCreary.
Later, back at the hotel, we figured we would take a cab to the In N Out Burger since, having watched The Big Lebowski about 87 times, I was dying to eat there. That little cab ride turned out to be the misadventure of the trip. Every trip needs one right? This guy had no idea where to go. Nor did he really know how to drive. At one point he was driving in circles in a parking lot. He had a GPS he kept typing "In And Out Burger" in and I kept telling him it was In N Out. He wouldn't listen. I actually had to break out my stern voice which only ever comes out as a last resort,. "The letter 'N' sir, N! Just type N! Not 'and', N. Just N. It's right there below your G. No! Listen to what I am saying! Delete all the way, yes! Right there, type N. N! Not AND!" And so forth. He went to ask directions and left the meter running. Luckily he turned it off and said it would be a free ride or there would have been more sternness. But we still had to get there! He almost had an accident and he was making Michelle carsick from all his jerky stops. But the burgers sure were good!

A quieter day for us at Comic Con. But still ten tons of fun. China Mieville had his own spotlight session, basically he read a great short story and then answered questions, incuding one from Michelle. Later he signed our copy of Kraken and he made it out to Pallas. In a few years I am sure she will come to love his writing as much as we do.

Another highlight was meeting my online friend the Rebel Penguin! Sweet! That was fun. And we stopped by the Red-5 booth and talked with the guys there, they're supernice. Some of them are Canadians too. And of course any time you have a lull you can always go and take photos of cosplayers!

One thing you learn at Comic Con is you can't possibly do everything you'd like, so you pick and choose and some things get sacrificed to the Mighty Odin. Like Galactus. I wanted to get the special exclusive ten foot tall (19 inches actually) Galactus action figure. Sadly it is all sold out. Earlier today on my way to stand in line I saw a smallish woman struggling with a whole case of them, so I carried it for her. A very long ways. Although I did it altruistically I was also sorta hoping karma would kick in. Turns out she wasn't a Hasbro employee but the daughter of a retailer who bought 4 cases to resell at his store. Would he sell one to me? No way of course not silly bear! Ah well. The rest of the day made up for it. Umm, other than all the standing in line I had to do. Michelle was already in the big hall and got to see the Big Bang Theory panel with special guests the Barenaked Ladies!

Joss Whedon put on a great panel, and it was hilarious when an incognito Nathan Fillion asked him who his favorite actor was. And the highlight of the day was the True Blood panel, almost the entire cast (minus Eric Northman and Jason Stackhouse) was there. There was some exclusive footage that I can't tell you anything about. But Sookie dies. Sorry!

As always, got lots of photos.

So we decided to miss out on the Whedon/Abrams panel. All the big things take place in Hall H, Angelina Jolie was there for a panel, and if you want to get in you pretty much had to line up yesterday or the day before. So we did other things, and we had a great time. Tons of fun actually. SDCC is fantastic! The Battlestar panel was pretty great. China Mieville was in a panel we saw, he didn't get too much time but he was fascinating and passionate and I really hope to get into his own session tomorrow. What else? Tons of cosplayers:

SeaWorld was pretty fun, we fed a dolphin. To a polar bear! Nah just kidding.



But Comic Con is here! Tonight was preview night, which basically means they want to start the party a little early. So we headed down and got our badges (which I have already lost twice but my wife always comes to the rescue! without I would have to go home). I was hoping to snag some exclusives but the lineups were already crazy. Oh well, got to meet Katie Cook and Travis Hanson. Meeting Travis was especially cool as we have several of his prints in our office and Pallas has one in her room, she kisses the polar bear in it goodnight and good morning every day. Here are some pics and don't forget where there's more!

We left Pallas at home with her grandparents, and this was definitely the wisest decision we could have made. But that doesn't mean it hasn't been hard. She would have loved the San Diego Zoo. A disproportionate amount of the words she knows are animals (dada means dad and duck and panda; she sorta says yia for lion, na means snake and daboo means puppy. Oddly she has no word for bear) and she sure loves them. Oh well, I took lots of photos for her.

Almost time to head to San Diego for Comic Con. There I will undoubtedly learn more info about Iron Man and maybe some of his Avenger friends. I've been busy reading some old comics from the library and my own personal stash. Remember the Micronauts? They were cool. The Defenders too. Sadly, the Shogun Warriors didn't really age too well.
You know who was really cool? Man-Thing! But when you say "I love the Man-Thing!"it conjures up meanings other than the one you might have intended. Even his tagline, which is pretty fierce, has an unfortunate double entendre: "Whatsoever knows fear burns at the touch of the Man-Thing!"

I hope I never have cause to regret saying this, but I honestly think I just survived the worst week I will ever have as a pumpman. It was beyond ridiculous. It strains my meager writing skills to describe it. Like, I wish there had been a camera crew following me around so I could just show you. Maybe I can break it down, give you the merest of snapshots.
Monday: Crazy. It snowed all day. Rivers of water were pouring into CC3 (and everywhere else) and we were in danger of losing it altogether. Our only defense? My poor tired pumps that have been chugging along 24-7 these past many months. It sure would suck if one of them broke down hey? Anyways, on the bus ride home I was dozing and someone saw a bear so I instantly woke up and looked out and was amazed to see a type of bear not normally native to these parts. "Panda!" I shouted excitedly. Except it was a grizzly with two-tone fur like all the other ones we have around there. Everyone was looking at me, the world renowned bear expert, so I recovered by saying, "Doesn't she look a lot like a panda? You know, sort of? A little bit you have to admit. Ah f*ck you guys."
Tuesday: Still snowing. Yes, it is July. At 10:30 or so we lost one of the booster pumps in CC3. And the electric ones were coming ever closer to drowning. Tic toc the party never stops. They order a new pump (because there's no sense in having a spare on site right?) and it would arrive at 2:00. Of course it didn't. 4:30 at the latest. Okay maybe 6. Hey Nathan can you work overtime so we can put this pump in? Thanks. 8:30 at night it shows up. 12:30 AM I leave the minesite, in bed by 1:20. Up in time to catch the bus to work at 5:10.
Wednesday: Good thing there's a safety meeting first thing in the morning, I'm so tired it will be nice to sit still for a minute- I haven't even had time for a coffee break yet this week. Oops there's my boss pulling me out of the meeting to fix the pipe that blew apart when the electric pump failed for the umpteenth time this week. I've never seen anyone pulled out of a safety meeting before. Oh well. It was not too bad of a fix, not like the pipe that burst later that day. Hey did I mention that shovel 10 up in Prospect has been drowning all week too? Yeah, gotta get up there to fuel that pump and pull the suction line to desilt it and on and on and on. Also the haulroad is more of a haulriver, and even worse, the actual river is getting contaminated. All my problem!
Today: Might not be a bad day today! I actually have time to head down to the other end to check on some pumps that I have been assuming on faith are running all this week. But at 6:45 (my shift starts at 6:30) I get the call- "260 Nathan, we need you to grab your biggest pump and get up here, the culvert above shovel 10 has failed and it's a waterfall!" Yeah okay, I'll just throw a thousand pound pump in the back of my truck and head right up there. Who's idea was it to buy the cheap, thin-walled culvert again? Pretty sure it wasn't mine.
Well, we were still pumping out of CC3 at the end of my shift. Shovel 10 might not be alive anymore when I go back on shift, but we didn't lose anything on my watch.
Anyways, now I'm on holidays. Sandy Eggo!
Oh yeah plus I had to kill a deer on the way home. With a hatchet. That wasn't fun.

I read two Joss Whedon comics in succession and promptly came down with a Jossession. Did you know he wrote the Toy Story screenplay? I didn't! I knew he wrote the Alien Resurrection screenplay but that the movie bears little resemblance to his script. Also he is directing the Avengers movie! But can you believe that I've never seen any Buffy or Angel? One of the comics I read of his was Fray, which is about a slayer in the future, but that's my only foray into the Buffyverse. Anyways. Big fan of Firefly, so I have some Whedon cred.
So then I was wondering if he was perchance coming to Comic-Con. Turns out he's directing a documentary about it! Also he will be in a panel discussion with someone by the name of um, who is it again, J.J. Abrams.

Michelle was just perusing the Comic Con schedule and there's some pretty interesting panel discussions and stuff like that. And she's only on Thursday!
Wuh? Upcoming BSG movie?? Sweet! We'll definitely try to get into that one. Bear McCreary!
I think I will put on my own little panel discussion in um, room BSG-12 (second floor by the water fountain) where we will discuss secret plans of forming a new real-life superhero group composed entirely of bears. So, don't tell anyone, other than any bears you know with superpowers.

Two posts today, since the one below is mostly just me feeling sorry for myself.
I bought some comics today! Thanks Jonny for your suggestions (I can't read the comments on my blog but they get emailed to me and sometimes make it past the spam filter) I wound up buying none of them! Well, not because I didn't want to I just got other ones. And you sent me Ultimates Volume 1 already anyways!
So what I got was that Joss Whedon X-Men series, Astonishing X-Men? The first volume anyways. A Green Lantern one on the rec of the comic book guy (little tip, buddy, when someone says to you "what's a good iron man book I could buy?" don't say "I don't like iron man" because that costs you a sale. Maybe that's why yer shop is closing down). I also got Ex Machina, I don't even know what it's about but I wanted to experiment. Plus a Deadpool collection since he was really funny back when his series first came out, hopefully he still is.
And some individual comics (imagine!) one of which was a random Iron Man. I like Iron Man even if snooty comic shop guys don't.

Somewhere along the way my brilliant plan went awry. Five months ago I made the choice to become the crew pumpman rather than be forced to become a shovel operator, possibly on another crew. I knew pumps could be a really shitty job at times but I also knew that it could be really really easy at other times, especially in the summer. Well here we are in summer and things just keep getting more ridiculous. Like yesterday, I was busy installing a pipeline for a deepwell pump as well as putting in an electric pump in this one pit, for which I had to scour the entire minesite for such things as nuts and bolts (I was short 5 nuts and 2 bolts so I robbed them off this one pipeline) and two 6 inch quick couplers (I robbed one off another line but never did find a second). Anyways, we made do like we always do, but in the meantime I have another pit that has a system of 7 pumps working furiously to keep the water from flooding over completely. Some of these pumps are diesel and have to be fueled by me with jerrycans since the service truck can't get into them. The sumps they are sitting in can dry out and have to be monitored pretty steadily to make sure that doesn't happen.
So, at 12:30 I shut off the interim pump back in that first pit I mentioned giving us about a half hour to move it to the new, bigger and better sump before the water starts flooding us out. Oh look, I am short of hardware! So I go to my pumpyard to grab some pieces (which ultimately I didn't have but wound up making do without) when I get a call from my buddy the hoe operator down in my other pit, he wants me to move one pump for him so he can dig me a deeper sump. Alright, since I have to go down there anyways to check it out and try to find parts. So we do that. At the same time an 8 inch pipe blows, water everywhere. Disaster! Except, that particular electric pump was down already for a blown cable and it can wait for a while. Off I go back to the other pit.
Water truck driver calls me and tells me my pump way at the other end of the minesite, about 25 kms from my current location, is down. I just laugh and say on the radio something like this: "Okay, well, what I can do is, maybe you can, um, let's see, okay I know just hold on, uh" and I just had to stop talking because really there was nothing I could say. On hot dusty days like yesterday the water trucks are pretty important. Luckily the electrician was heading that way already so I was able to get him to reset it for me. He was heading that way to go to another one of my pumps to rob some parts from a genset for this deepwell we put in. He asked me on the radio if that was okay and I said "I been rhyming and stealing all day you might as well too, welcome to the world of pumps."
Anyways I headed up to finish the job up top and it went pretty good, took a little longer than it had to but I am still new and inexperienced (and a little incompetent) so at least it got done. Maybe even time for a break right? Technically I have all these other pumps all over the site that I haven't had a chance to check but I'm union so I'm taking a gawdam coffe break right? Too bad the one pump in the other pit ran out of fuel.
It turns out the company changed their policy on forcing oilers to become operators and putting it back to how it should have been, as a bid process. So I could have stayed as the oiler. But whatever. I think I'm done with all that. We have some brand new rock trucks and I think I wouldn't mind driving one of those for a while. On those when they are missing a nut or a bolt or blow a line, they fix them right now, like magic.

San Diego Comic Con is less than a month away! I'm getting pretty excited. I haven't been out of Canada since I got back from New Zealand. Now I just gotta catch up on the last few years worth of comics. Any suggestions?
Here are some cute pictures of my daughter to help you think:

I had a good idea today, I think I will found a new institution, called the Odrer of Canada. And you can join for a very nominal fee, say ten bucks. Why? Just think how it will look on your resume. "Member of the Odrer of Canada." Prospective employers will assume you made a typo, normally bad news on resumes, but will overlook it to land such a lauded and decorated individual. It has to be official though, so when they google your name they will see that you are indeed an officer of the Odrer of Canada. Hopefully it gets big enough so that when people type in Order of Canada Google will just assume that you meant to type Odrer of Canada and redirect your search.

Iron Man 2 was a lot of fun. Michelle and I dropped Pallas off at a friend's and went on a date, something we don't get to do as often as before, obviously. We both really enjoyed the movie, I'd heard quite a few bad things about it but we both had a blast.
I want to be excited for The Last Airbender but I have some concerns. The cartoon (Avatar: The Last Airbender) is so much fun with some truly witty humor and amazing 2D animated action. It has non-annoying child characters!! Well Sokka can be annoying sometimes. Anyways. From the trailers, it seems like the kid who plays Aang is a good martial artist, but not a good Aang. Too serious. Plus his tattoo is all wrong. Well, we'll give it a chance right?
HBO just released a teaser trailer for Game of Thrones. I called Michelle up from downstairs to watch it because I was so excited but it turns out the 20 second footage shows hardly anything at all. Still, if you want to see it.

Bear City
They must have gotten the memo. Now that they're officially listed as threatened in Alberta, the grizzly bears are out in force at the minesite. Maybe they feel much safer now that they're threatened. So far this spring I've seen 9 grizzlies. That's a personal best and I feel very proud of this accomplishment, I will probably be nominated for all sorts of Oscars and Nobels and Pullitzers very shortly. Usually it's from a distance, but the other day I was doing my rounds in my pumptruck and crested a hill to discover two furry cannonballs go shooting past my truck at a truly astonishing speed. When I recovered from my surprise I followed them slowly, doing 20 kph and they easily outdistanced me. I didn't want to go any faster because they were already spooked and I certainly don't want to cause distress to my bear brothers and sisters. "It's okay I'm your friend" I told them but they must not have heard me. Anyways they ran up this ridge and one of them hid in the trees, I could hear him making a sort of crying sound, while the other one kind of did some bluff charges at me, and she made some woofing sort of sounds at me. This brings me to
Extremely valuable lesson about grizzly bears #1: Never ever (not ever!) try to outrun a grizzly bear. I'm serious. Get it tattooed on your hand so next time you are tempted to try, you can look down at your palm and remember that this is a Bad Idea.

Yesterday I was making my rounds and discovered a bear trap that hadn't been there the day before. Not only that, but it was apparently tripped. Unless they didn't bother to trigger it when they set it up? But that makes no sense! Not being able to resist, I went up to the trap to see if there was anyone inside. Helloooo?? There's a camera there so you have to be careful about not getting your photo taken. Anyways I was eventually able to ascertain that there was a bear inside. I tapped on the trap and heard a heavy breathing sound in return- remember the velociraptors in Jurassic park when they breathed on the window? It sounded exactly like that. I peeked in the air hole and saw a gleaming eye staring back at me.
I met the U of A researcher and the park warden who set the traps the other day, they are doing research on the effects of mining on grizzly bears. Anyone who studies bears is someone I want to get to know so I gave the researcher a ride in my truck to scout out locations for his traps. Unfortunately this was not the bonding experience I had hoped for as he locked himself out of his Tundra and was more preoccupied with that than answering my questions.
Anyways when they arrived at the tripped trap they were able to determine that the bear inside was a 250 lb female they had preciously collared, so they were just going to release the trap and let her go.

This brings me to
Extremely valuable lesson about grizzly bears #2: Never ever approach a sprung bear trap. Not ever! Why not? you might ask, and indeed I asked this same question of the park warden when he told me this yesterday. It's not like it's going to be able to get out, sheesh! Yeah but, what if the bear inside the trap was a cub and the very distraught and aggravated mama bear was hiding in the bushes?

I still never finished The Force Unleashed, not because it's not fun, but because . . . I dunno why. TFU 2 is coming out this fall, so I guess that can be the deadline. Here's the trailer, watch out because it might kick your ass.
Also, a new trailer for The Old republic will be released in the next few days, hordes of Sith invade Alderaan. How do I know? Facebook tells me these things. Not just for Farmville anymore!
UPDATE: Here it is!

Here's some books I've read lately:
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Stieg Larsson- I like girls with dragon tattoos, I even know a few. If Fell Beasts can be considered dragons. And full grown vampires can be called girls. But anyways, good book. I hope the movie is good. Currently reading the second one, I think it is better. Michelle just finished the third one and says it's the best. I just like saying Lisbeth Salander. Fröken Salander. Interesting fact- the original Swedish title is Män Som Hatar Kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women)
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold- this one pulled me in right away, I mean I'm the father of a little girl right? After a while I was just waiting for it to be over however. The ending was worth getting to, though. I wonder if the movie is good? Peter Jackson directed it so I don't see how it couldn't be.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley- another mystery series, but in a genre that usually has sadistic serial killers and brutal sexual crimes, this one really is 'sweet', mainly because the main character is a 12 year old girl who loves chemistry, especially poisons.
Dry, Augusten Burroughs- I think I'm all caught up on his memoirs now. Not as funny or twisted as Running With Scissors, not quite as harrowing as A Wolf at the Table. As you can probably tell from the title, all about his battle with alcoholism.
Over to You: Ten Stories of Flying, Roald Dahl- one amazing fact that is generally not known about the world famous author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr Fox and James and the Giant Peach is that he was an honest to god Flying Ace in World War II. I would say he was a hero of the first degree. This is a collection of short stories about flying and pilots. Some of them are quite lovely, with a recurring theme of, I dunno how you would say it, not fantastic elements per se, but more of that thin place in between life and death that pilots like him in wartime lived in constantly.
Oh yeah and I picked up Marvel's recent adaptation of Wizard of Oz, mainly because I know the artist Skottie Young's work through deviantArt. Beautiful.

So the other day I went down to the Status Store to buy some Facebook statuses. There was a sale on, buy one get one free. They were even Twitter-optimized to be under 140 characters. Course I don't tweet but one of these days I might have to branch out. I loaded up, I paid for ten so I walked out with 20 really clever and witty statuses. I was trying to decide if I should use em all up in one day, just dump them out there so I'm on top of everyone's newsfeed like a passive aggressive drama queen. But a funny passive aggressive drama queen. But then I thought it might be better to ration them out, one or two a day.
Then this dude jumps from behind a sandwich board (listing 4 foods you should never eat) and he's holding a knife! Says "Give me those statuses right now muhfuh!
"But I just got these! They're Twitter optimized!"
"I ain't LOLing around here! Give em to me now!"
Obviously I had no choice. So now this asshole's out there posting MY statuses! As he was running away I cussed him out- "I hope no one 'likes' a single one of those, dickwad!"
He yelled back at me, "I did you a favor- now you can change your status to say that you got mugged!"
That's true . . . though it's really more of a story suited for a blog post.