DIY Projects

Finishing up some unplanned home repairs this week. Having a couple windows reglazed at a local glass shop along with minor gutter repairs.

Happy Mother's Day!

From all of us to YOU!!!

Have a great Happy Mother's Day!!!

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Days are getting longer and the hair is getting shorter...

The littlest princess decided to go all grown-up and sophisticated.  Between this, her brother getting ready to pack it up for UTM and big sis going into her junior year at MTSU, her  parents dad is getting to feel a touch old.

Very nicely done and gets that big smile out even more---the displaced locks are going to the children's hospital.

New Bling for Mini

Picked up the Captain Skyhawk decal for Mini's rear window.



Now I have all the cool schools covered---though opinions vary widely of course :)

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Republican and Democratic Feathered Friends

John and Harry eating out of the same bird feeder, albeit with their backs to one another---how symbolic:)

A male Northern Cardinal and a male Blue Bunting show off their colors.  Cardinals are year round residents while the Buntings fly in for the summer.

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Drilling the Hard Stuff

Here is Alexander, underground drill operator extraordinaire.  He showed a somewhat illiterate Yankee (hey, everything is in Russian!) how the drill he ran everyday operated----and gave me some chocolate :)  Great guy, has family, kids, etc.  Just another guy working for a living.  Here is a video from the sound-deadened cab where we stood.

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Just Passing Through

 We typically do not see the Rose-breasted Grosbeak very often---just the second time in the past 11 years while they migrate past us.  They stay over around the red pins in a wildlife management area but in years with flooding (like this one) they move further inland and hog the bird feeder.

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How deep is the water?

Not quite "knee-deep, knee-deep" here at the house, but many of the surrounding areas are either flooded or getting to the flood stage.  We're in the 8"-12" range for the past week and easily half that again for the past couple of weeks.

Sitting high and almost dry

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The Captain Knows Coffee

Captain Skyhawk is all around the University of Tennessee at Martin's campus. Spent the day there this past Saturday with #1 son as he registered for his Fall classes while the parents were educated about UTM.

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Springtime in Nuuk

I took this photo as we flew near the northernmost capital in North America----the metropolis of Nuuk, Greenland.  The Vikings and the Inuit inhabited Greenland during the Medieval Warm period but the onset of climate change (the other way) forced all Viking and most Inuit settlements to be understandably abandoned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuuk

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Looking for Polar Bears

Looking out the window at 35,000 feet, searching for the elusive Polar Bear is pretty much an exercise in futility. This type of cover was typical of our flight over the Labrador Sea between Greenland and Canada.

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Domodedovo 3-D Exhibition

Looks like some local budding artists are making use of the technology behind the "no-glasses" flatscreens.  Hard to tell the 3-D from the photo, but several screens were featuring a slide show of  3-D images using a lenticular like effect.
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Low Ride Grader

At the risk of sounding like an old white guy, the CAT grader looks like it should have neon lighting in the undercarriage and a high-wattage stereo with pounding sub-woofers you can feel 3 lanes over :)

No A1? Try HP!!!

The camp cafeteria has a great selection of food to chose from at every meal but occasionally someone has to douse their entrée in some type of sauce.  In this case it was HP sauce and most likely gotten through the Canadian connection from the parent company or the Indian connection with our cooks.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Sauce

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Bird's Eye View

Got invited to take an aerial tour of the area.  The photo shows the mine buildings as seen from a Russian Mi-8---the most widely produced helicopter in the world.  Room for an American football team inside!!
The mine keeps the helicopter on the site in case of an emergency and, if needed, to help remote villages in the area with occasional supply runs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mil_Mi-8

Bird in B&W

I've been hearing a bird song as I walked outside to and from the offices the past few days. Never have seen the bird that I knew was out in the snow. This morning he/she flew up and landed on a snow bank less than 10 feet away just to get my attention and probably just to watch me scramble for my camera.

Going Away Present

Giving chocolate as a gift is a big cultural thing here. Most of the treats are home grown but some American treats are coveted as well. An older Russian miner working on improving different concrete recipes for shotcrete was leaving his rotation on the mine site and dropped off a couple of Mars bars for us CI types.

Expensive Bricks

Worth at least $250k once processed, these ingots of electrum (a mix of silver and gold known to hard core D&D players of old) are still slightly warm to the touch. Most gold is tied up with silver in some fashion and in this case the mix is about 40:1 causing the ingots to appear silver.

Mining is a Close Knit Group

Noting a communication board in the Exploration area I noticed a nearly universal sign of mining the world over. The overloaded and stubborn mule :)

Regenerative Ice

With the days popping above freezing in the sun, areas once covered with a layer of ice and snow are melting away for a few hours each day. The rest of the day is spent below freezing and the ice begins to form again for the next day as seen below.

 

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