Testing the LOBREC Fronius Link

Another blog to follow

So I'm making up another blog for the Mars Simulation. You can find it here:

http://martianadventures.wordpress.com/

This is mostly so randoms from the internet can read it, but not follow up on all the other family and friend stuff on this blog. I know, it's all public, a persistent person can find it all anyways, but I don't need to hand it to them on a silver platter. They can at least do a Google search or two first.

And so, for the next 8 months, check out the other blog.

Mission Commander Mars?!?!!

So nearly a year ago now, I found out about an analog Mars mission in Hawaii. On the day of the deadline. And then promptly spent 2.5 hours of my work day creating a research proposal and applying. After an aptitude test, Skype interview, and 6 day backpacking and leadership training course, not only am I going to fake Mars, but I get to command the mission! Woot! Who knew I could lead something like this? Apparently everyone except me. So we'll see how it goes.

The camping trip was most excellent. The weather was great. We never hiked more than 6 miles per day. The route was beautiful, the people were fun, and it was exciting to take people who'd never been backpacking out before and seeing them come into their own.

Some photos from the course:

And then, since I was in Wyoming, I convinced a few friends from California to come out and visit Yellowstone with me for a bit of a long weekend after the course was over. When in Rome. Photos from Yellowstone:

But seriously, thank you to all my camping buddies who, it turns out, were exemplary examples of proper expedition behaviour. I owe my ability in planning adventures in a large part to you. So shout out to Mat, Oleg, and the Girl Scouts - Neil and Jason. Thanks for being awesome guys!

Cottage Time!

I just had a glorious two weeks up at the family cottage. I haven't been up, except for May 2-4 opening weekend, in probably about 8 years. It was fantastic! I went up on a Saturday with Nat, Little, and Little's friend Darius. Bob and Old E met us up there. The first 3 days were glorious dock weather, and the next 3 were stormy. There was a great lightning storm one night, and the next was a great fishing night. Here's a shot of the Big One that Bob caught, with Nat's help on the net, and which Bob, Darius' dad and I all ate later that night :)

Bob and Nat headed back to Waterloo on Thursday morning, dropping me in Baysville to do some work on the start-up company at the library. After that, I walked the 9km back to the cottage. Then Saturday I did it all again so that I could go to a renewable energy co-op meeting at the senior centre, walking both ways this time. So training for Wyoming is a check! The Saturday night, Paul had me over to his place for dinner with Mrs. Prince, and it was a lovely evening with great conversation.

Mom came up to the cottage Sunday with Honey. We had a nice, relaxing time. Here's a couple good photos of Honey on the dock. She had quite an impressive rock collection this year!

The weather was great. We saw some people surfing. On Lake of Bays. Yes. There's a surf shop at the end of our street now. It's funny, but works, turns out.

Writing Style

I've finally settled into my basement room properly. Thanks to Mary and Bryce, I now have a bed! And I cleared the junk off the little desk I bought, and have properly set up my laptop. And got a chair.

One of the things with moving is that you discover some gems that you've had in storage for ages. Now and then I get these writing fits, where I decide I want to write a travel book, or a book of short stories, or a great novel, based loosely on a bunch of the adventures I've been on. Then I start going through my old writing, invariably starting with the Leatherback Turtle story from Ghana, and then get pulled into reading all those adventures again, and no writing happens at all (I found some of my Ghana stuff, that's where this all started today).

For those of you who didn't know me back in undergrad and before, I sent out a roughly weekly e-mail from my time in Ghana. Those e-mails are great. Michelle printed them all off and gave them to me as a booklet when I got back, which was fantastic since I sent all those e-mails from my old uni account which is now long gone. Anyways, reading through them again I noticed my writing style was quite different back then - much more colourful, more entertaining and humourous than most of the stuff I've written since. Maybe the PhD strangled all the fun out of my writing, or maybe California impaired my sense of humour. At any rate, those old e-mails are waaaaay better than anything that's turned up on this blog in the past year. It was also a tough year, though, so maybe that had something to do with it too.

Anywho. I think I'll be doing mass e-mails from Fake Mars again. Two reasons: e-mail is slightly more personal and less public than Facebook or blogging. So if I have a rant about a living situation, I can vent without (hopefully) hurting anyone's feelings on Fake Mars. Second reason: I think I just have a better writing style when I'm writing to a person than to a blog or journal. Not sure why. I think the blog tends more towards my journal writings, which on re-read are like bad fan fiction, and the mass e-mails read more like Bridget Jones' Diary.

Oh, by the way, I am short-listed to be a fake astronaut, living in a habitat on Hawaii for 8 months! I'm pretty pumped about this. I'm doing an outdoor leadership school thing in Wyoming in September as a prep, so will start e-mailing after that. Stay posted!

Waterloo Region Air Show

Jim had 4 spare tickets to the air show that he couldn't use, so he gave them to me and I got to take Big, Little and Danny out to see cool fighter planes and such this past weekend. Here's Little with the Sharkinator, which is what I assume this plane is called:

And another with the Thunder Pig:

Is It Love Or Toxic Radiation?

Baby it's both, but who cares! Check out what came in the mail today! Thanks Mary!

In other news, I really need to find the battery charger for my proper camera.