Mandles

Chrissy is one of those women who likes to have scented candles in strategic places around the house.  The smell is usually pleasant in moderation, but we both always comment on how we love the smell of wood smoke, and someone should make a candle that smells like that.  We were returning from a shopping trip to Burlington on Sunday, and I got to thinking more about it, some additional scents that you could do, and even a perfect name for it - Mandles, Candles for Men.  It would obviously be a sort of gimmick, but heck, people will buy all sorts of ridiculous stuff, and that actually sounded kinda cool.  Anywho, before investing my life savings ($0.00) into a candle making factory, I looked around to see if something like this existed.  Lo and behold, they do!  And they even have the same name I had in mind!  Argh!  There goes my chance to be a billionaire...
Anywho, they still sound kinda neat, and I might get one just to see if it's a total novelty, or something you'd actually want to light when company is around...
Mandles - Candles for Men
Some of the scents Chrissy and I thought of were wood smoke (#5 on their list), bacon (#4, "camp breakfast"), dirt (#7), Urinal cakes ("Space Cake") and a few others.  Some of the more repulsive sounding ones they've got are:  "Kegger", "Stogie", and others.  There are some baffling ones in there too, like: "Slab" (cement?), "Cruise Ship Deck" (sun tan lotion?), "Jim, Jack, & Johnny" (whiskey I assume), and "Wild West".
Anywho, back to the drawing board.

England

I've been back about a week now from my work trip to England.  Overall it was a successful project and we got a lot more done than expected.  The working conditions were pretty crappy, and we didn't get to see too much, but it was an OK trip.  There's a pretty good chance we'll be going back for more, I just hope it's not until it warms up.  We were working mostly inside a building, but there was no heat, so we were sitting in freezing temps all day, without much moving around.  Also, we were getting to work in the dark and heading home in the dark, so we didn't get to see much of the town either.  Some unseasonably cold conditions while we were there and they don't deal with it very well.  All I really took pictures of was the site, so here's a few of those:

 Driving around Huddersfield in "Arctic Conditions".

 Dave driving the Audi A6 we had.  Front wheel drive with tires that had no tread (rain grooves only) = pathetic in the snow.

 One of the rooms I was working in.  Notice the big puddle in the foreground.

 The roof above where I was working in one spot.  This was an easy one to avoid, but many other places, I had to keep moving around my table as new leaks in the roof and sprinkler system dripped all over my equipment.

 Another view of that first room.

 At least they cleaned the place up for us...

 Several of the rooms didn't have any light, so I was often working by headlamp.

 One of the cleaner parts of the facility...

 Pretty much all the stuff we usually have packed in one of those trucks, mounted on a pallet.  Before we found these extra-long pallets, we had to move things around piece by piece.  There's also a 200-lb nitrogen cylinder under the table that you can't see.  The rod sticking out of the ground in the foreground is a hole I just finished.

 Another room.  I like the lighting on this picture.

 More damp, cold and dirty stuff.

 By the last day or so, it had warmed up enough, we could do a few holes outside.  We had this van for that purpose.  The machine in the foreground is a "geoprobe", which is what drives our rods into the ground.  It's basically just a fancy, track-mounted, really fast and powerful jack-hammer.  The drillers were from Belgium.

 Another view of one of the outside holes, with a backdrop of some breathtaking English architecture.

 The van had a manual transmission.  The pedals were in the same place (gas right, clutch left), but shifting left handed took a bit of getting used to.  That and the fact that the cab of this thing was super cramped for me.

 We finished a day early and did some sightseeing in York.  York had some neat sights to see, but I'd left my camera in the car.  Here we have Vinny driving into the sunset on the way home, which was one of the few times we actually saw the sun...

Another crappy hotel room, the night before we left.















It's pretty glamorous being a globe-trotting geologist, let me tell ya...

Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo

Well, I've been out in Nebraska for the past week.  Just finished up the job here and I had to take a DOT-mandated day off to reset my clock before the drive home.  Other times I've had to do this, I'd go for a bike ride, or check out a park or something.  However, the hotel I'm at is in big box store hell, so there's not a lot to see nearby, and I didn't have a bike with me.  So, I wound up taking a little trip to the Omaha zoo.  I have to say it was probably the best zoo I've been to!  Some cool critters I've never heard off and some I have that I've been wanting to see.  I'll let the pictures do the talking...

 Some sort of bluebird.

 Cool jungle exhibit.

 Monkeying around.

Malayan Tapir

 More cool indoor jungle.

 Nile Softshell taking a snooze.

 Pygmy Hippo.

 Panamanian golden frog.

 Largest indoor jungle in the U.S.  The trunks are cement, but the rest is real.

 One of the coolest things I saw; arapaima.  They are gigantic!  So cool...

 Solid muscle.

 Some sort of tropical butterfly.

 Some butterflies trying to get out.

 Sphinx moth of some sort.

 Really pretty moth.

 Butterfly hatchery.

 Atlas moth.  Big.

 Giant katydid.  Huge!

 The Desert Dome.  Also home to the nocturnal exhibit and the swamp exhibit.

 Amphibians beware!  You know about this Teal?

 They also had a decent aquarium with one of those underwater tunnels.

 Funny looking catfish

 A big, herbivorous relative of the piranha.

 Welwistchia, a plant from the Namib desert.  They can live as long as 2,000 years!

  Bastard quill tree.

 Spectacled caiman.

 Acacia bloom, I think.

 Bobcat.

 "Let me out, meow!"

 Broad-billed hummingbird, sitting still.

 Colorado River Toad.

Cantil Viper.  Cool markings.

African Giant Bullfrog.

Aardvark.

Fly River Turtle, from Australia.