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The last month has been busy, so here is a not-so-brief summary with pictures.
Jun 11-13
I went camping with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
corivax to collect obsidian at Glass Butte, in central Oregon. It is quite remote, and once you leave the highway there aren't roads so much as linear sections of ground with a slightly lower weed density. It really isn't the kind of place one should drive a 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva, but we got out without any serious problems. (Except the suspension has sounded squeaky ever since and the headlight switch failed, but I was pretty happy that the oilpan wasn't torn off, so I'm not complaining.)
The thing about Glass Butte that is hard to appreciate before you get there is that the hillside really is made largely out of (volcanic) glass. Realizing this rotated my mental space by a few degrees, taking me from a fairly uninspired and obvious place name to something out of a middling-to-cheesy fantasy novel. A hill. Made out of glass. Dude. It even glittered in the sunlight at the right angles.
Here and there are places people have dug, leaving a cascade of glittering obsidian chunks to be picked through. We came back with quite a bit of it.
The reason we made the trek, beyond a childlike love for shiny things, was to collect materials to learn how to flintknap. Neat, but it will take some time before getting any decent results. However, I am pleased to note that the fabled razor sharpness of an obsidian flake is not exaggerated. It slices! It dices! (Note the thick leather pads. Even with those, we didn't make it out without a little blood sacrifice to the old gods.)
On the way we stopped by the always breathtaking Multnomah Falls on the Columbia Gorge. They had a book on the Great Missoula Flood, which I promptly snatched up. It's my favorite geological event ever, after all. I'm thinking a trip to see the Dry Falls might be in order this summer. Could be a nice little sidejaunt on the way to see my parents.
Jun 20-22
Drove down to Mojave Airport withdatavore, shadowblue, corivax, xmurf and lilsquishy to see the first private, manned space launch. Because of tight scheduling constraints, this involved driving 19 hours straight on the way down. Luckily we had our share of mad scientists along, so the rented minivan was well tricked out with a complete power system, wireless network, GPRS bridge for slow but surprisingly reliable internet access, GPS and several tens of gigs of MP3s. Being good citizens, we shared our network with the interstate. I spent most of the time driving, sleeping, or filming for a small documentary, so there aren't many interesting still pictures from the trip.
Jun 26-27
Nothing major happened this weekend, amazingly enough. We did have a wayward Canadian hanging around, getting us all excited about their election, but that was about it.
Jul 2-4
Westercon in Phoenix. I still hate Phoenix. It is the anti-Seattle. A rather under-attended con, where the hotel staff outnumbered the con-goers. But the filking was good, and it sounds like we might be GoHs at next year's CopperCon. Woot!
Jul 11
vixyish and I moved into the new house. Many, many thanks to craigp, corivax and cow.
We still haven't decided on a name for the new place. The current tentative idea is The Burrow, but we're not 100% happy with it. The problem is that it is so nice and cute and pastoral on the outside, with a huge lawn and fruit trees and those adorable gables. Inside it's still nice, but oddly small in places. (All the appliances are tiny and we can't get the boxspring up the stairs.) It uses square footage in inefficient, twisty ways -- but has amazing amounts of storage space because of it. The basement, where my workshop/office/lab space lives, is dark and a bit musty and has a severe lack of headspace. So a single name that encompasses all of this is hard to come by.
Jul 17
I rode in STP, as recently described. (I should have got an after pic. Oh well.) I've been feeling oddly unsatisfied with this accomplishment. I'm starting to think that striking out on an epic bike ride alone would be more fulfilling. Biking to Spokane no longer seems particularly impossible... and I like the idea of summarizing the trip as 'across a state and over a mountain range'...
Next weekend
Glassblowing lessons!
Jun 11-13
I went camping with
corivax to collect obsidian at Glass Butte, in central Oregon. It is quite remote, and once you leave the highway there aren't roads so much as linear sections of ground with a slightly lower weed density. It really isn't the kind of place one should drive a 1995 Oldsmobile Achieva, but we got out without any serious problems. (Except the suspension has sounded squeaky ever since and the headlight switch failed, but I was pretty happy that the oilpan wasn't torn off, so I'm not complaining.)
The thing about Glass Butte that is hard to appreciate before you get there is that the hillside really is made largely out of (volcanic) glass. Realizing this rotated my mental space by a few degrees, taking me from a fairly uninspired and obvious place name to something out of a middling-to-cheesy fantasy novel. A hill. Made out of glass. Dude. It even glittered in the sunlight at the right angles.
Here and there are places people have dug, leaving a cascade of glittering obsidian chunks to be picked through. We came back with quite a bit of it.
The reason we made the trek, beyond a childlike love for shiny things, was to collect materials to learn how to flintknap. Neat, but it will take some time before getting any decent results. However, I am pleased to note that the fabled razor sharpness of an obsidian flake is not exaggerated. It slices! It dices! (Note the thick leather pads. Even with those, we didn't make it out without a little blood sacrifice to the old gods.)
On the way we stopped by the always breathtaking Multnomah Falls on the Columbia Gorge. They had a book on the Great Missoula Flood, which I promptly snatched up. It's my favorite geological event ever, after all. I'm thinking a trip to see the Dry Falls might be in order this summer. Could be a nice little sidejaunt on the way to see my parents.
Jun 20-22
Drove down to Mojave Airport with
datavore, shadowblue, corivax, xmurf and lilsquishy to see the first private, manned space launch. Because of tight scheduling constraints, this involved driving 19 hours straight on the way down. Luckily we had our share of mad scientists along, so the rented minivan was well tricked out with a complete power system, wireless network, GPRS bridge for slow but surprisingly reliable internet access, GPS and several tens of gigs of MP3s. Being good citizens, we shared our network with the interstate. I spent most of the time driving, sleeping, or filming for a small documentary, so there aren't many interesting still pictures from the trip.
Jun 26-27
Nothing major happened this weekend, amazingly enough. We did have a wayward Canadian hanging around, getting us all excited about their election, but that was about it.
Jul 2-4
Westercon in Phoenix. I still hate Phoenix. It is the anti-Seattle. A rather under-attended con, where the hotel staff outnumbered the con-goers. But the filking was good, and it sounds like we might be GoHs at next year's CopperCon. Woot!
Jul 11
vixyish and I moved into the new house. Many, many thanks to 
craigp, corivax and cow.We still haven't decided on a name for the new place. The current tentative idea is The Burrow, but we're not 100% happy with it. The problem is that it is so nice and cute and pastoral on the outside, with a huge lawn and fruit trees and those adorable gables. Inside it's still nice, but oddly small in places. (All the appliances are tiny and we can't get the boxspring up the stairs.) It uses square footage in inefficient, twisty ways -- but has amazing amounts of storage space because of it. The basement, where my workshop/office/lab space lives, is dark and a bit musty and has a severe lack of headspace. So a single name that encompasses all of this is hard to come by.
Jul 17
I rode in STP, as recently described. (I should have got an after pic. Oh well.) I've been feeling oddly unsatisfied with this accomplishment. I'm starting to think that striking out on an epic bike ride alone would be more fulfilling. Biking to Spokane no longer seems particularly impossible... and I like the idea of summarizing the trip as 'across a state and over a mountain range'...
Next weekend
Glassblowing lessons!
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On the other hand, his part of the house (basement==workroom) is mostly underground...
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I have to go see it sometime.
Which reminds me: have you heard of the Oklo Fossil reactor in West Africa? If not, google it right now. It's a trifecta of your interests.
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Not enough, I guess, to actually do it. But it's so much fun to watch, and hey, melting stuff.
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