more of grum's daily doldrums

A family photo from England: The Complete Spray Family (Grandad and his two sons' families). From left to right, by lateral position of centre of head: cousin Michael, Grandad, me, Dad, Mum, bro James, sis Laura, aunt Hillary, bro Adam, cousin Richard, uncle Alan.

Apparently there's some ancient poem with the line "God preserve us from the Sprays" in it, a reference to my family's heritage as wreckers on the southeast coast of England and opposing shores of France. Google can't find it. A thousand points* if you can find it for me. I'll frame it and put it up somewhere to remind me to try and live up to my ancestors' reputation. Ironically on my mother's side I'm related to a Welsh prince "Llywelyn" (not sure if it was Llywelyn the Great or Llywelyn the Last).

Spent yesterday doing nothing useful at all. I meant to "telecommute", i.e. do work at home, to avoid the myriad sick people at the office (Erik got a particularly nasty flu, possibly Norwalk), but of course ended up spending the whole day watching Sopranos and old Top Gear episodes, and playing Age of Empires. I didn't shower or get dressed, or stray any farther from my room than the bathroom. I am only here today because these are my office hours for my lab section of GLGY 443: Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology.

Despite that I am quite familiar with the material of this class (as opposed to optical crystallography last term), it will be far more work because we mark the labs (we didn't in crystal). Since I understand it fairly well, I'll be much more effective as a teacher, which benefits everyone.

For me, this material is one of the reasons I got into geology; I like to understand things, especially important things, like the Earth. It's my rather direct way of finding answers to the big questions like "why are we here". Igneous and metamorphic rocks hold the clues to the most ancient history of our planet. Like how the earliest continental crust was generated. Understanding our planet, and indeed other planets (real and theoretical), holds great interest for me. Sedimentary rocks are also very important, but if you want to study older rocks, there's a good chance they've been metamorphosed at some point, and are, ipso facto, metamorphic rocks and no longer considered sedimentary rocks (not that the rocks care how we classify them). I wouldn't mind studying tectonism on other planets, but the chance to do fieldwork (the other reason I'm doing this stuff) is limited to comparative work (since I can't just hop in a truck and go to Mars to get some samples).

Essentially I'm a historian for pre-pre-pre-pre-history. The rock I work on was cooked up around 95 million years ago, but was deposited between 750 and 600 million years ago. As such, I do not search for proto-humans, or even any fossils at all. The life explosion started at around 550. When dinosaurs traipsed about on top of my field area, the rocks that are currently at the surface were more than 25 km deep below their feet.

Possibly more family photos to come, if they don't try to lynch me for not having their permission to put their pictures on the net.

At least one of the local hares has decided to live under my deck. Possibly because yesterday I threw a bunch of old mini-carrots dated December 12 into the yard for them (yes, I care about nature). They weren't off, just really dry and tasteless. Anyway they were apparently well received.

Actually it's all part of my new plan to acquire a pet "fell beast" (one of those flying beasts with exruciating screams that the Nazgul ride in Lord of the Rings). First I attract the hares with carrots. Then the hares attract coyotes, the coyotes attract bears, the bears attract animal control, and animal control officers will hopefully attract a hungry beast. I'll train it to sit in the tree in the yard, eating unsuspecting locals and screaming over the neighbourhood. I would enjoy flying around town on it, attacking the police helicopters and generally scaring the hell out of everybody.

I just found, under some papers, a bag of m&ms that I bought a few hours ago and totally forgot about. It's little surprises like this that make life so great.

Join us next time for the story of the Comet McNaught, of which I might have just obtained two good photos. Probably not as good as the ones from south of Red Deer (only an hour or so away) in that link, but we'll see.

*points not valid for exchange or purchase of any goods or services.