employed... in GREENLAND

pictures again!

2011-10-10T19:37:00.000-04:00

so it's been forever since I updated. Partly I have been busy, but also I have been kind of lazy about the blog. I will try to keep up on it more regularly.

Since I last posted at the end of August (yikes) I have been as far north as I've ever been, and I've also been underground at an exploration site, both of which were awesome! The weather here has gotten progressively colder, and about 10 days ago we had our first real snowfall, just in time for Greg's visit. :) Which was fantastic! (The part where he went home again was less fantastic.)

Anyway here are some pictures!

There were some northern lights the other night! They are a faint green streak down the centre of this image. My camera didn't do a great job with them, I'll have to try again with a better camera if I can get my hands on one.

I have owned my cellphone for 1.5 years and I only discovered this weekend that it will take panoramic shots! This is a picture of Frobisher Bay taken from the Iqaluit breakwater.

This wooden boat hangs out behind the museum. It was especially calm on Friday; in contrast we are having very windy conditions tonight with gusts up to 65km/h.

Maqtaaq! This piece is from the bowhead hunt that happened here back in the summer. It was good although it didn't have much flavour - if anything it tasted faintly of salt water.

A pretty sunset from a couple of weeks ago.

Snow!

Hee. :) We got snowed on rather a lot actually.

A geologist outstanding in her field. :D This was from the furthest north I've been. It was super cold that day!

I'll put up more in the next day or so - I'm thinking of doing a post of all the neat sundogs/rainbows/etc I've seen since I got here. There have been a lot!

my first foodmail

2011-08-27T13:30:00.000-04:00

Well it cost an arm and a leg but I got my first foodmail shipment: 10kg of organic produce shipped up from Ottawa. It smells great! I got an assorted fruit/veg box and it was a great selection, as you can see:

Two pounds of carrots, a bunch of celery, a head of red-leaf lettuce, 2 bunches of kale, 5 pears, a field cucumber, 6 tomatoes (in the box under the pears), a couple pounds of new potatoes, 3lbs onions, 5lbs apples, a giant head of cabbage, a melon, a box of mushrooms, and three bananas (one of which is kind of flattened in the middle, boo).

Oh and a box of cereal as well, because they had a kind I like.

I'm open to the suggestions for the head of cabbbage, I've never cooked it before. I think the peppers might get stuffed and the mushrooms are destined for tomato sauce.

I will definitely be ordering from these folks again. And tonight I'm having salad for dinner. :)

more pix!

2011-08-06T16:48:00.001-04:00

so I got back from my first set of site visits on Thursday night and it was excellent. I had a really good time, the weather was excellent almost right to the end and the projects were super interesting, I learned tons of things.

Also I saw lots of wildlife! Here are some pictures!

My first musk ox sighting (yay!) - a herd of about a dozen that we spotted from the helicopter.

This is a caribou we spotted on our tour of a site - he's not very old, probably only a year or two, and he's rather scruffy-looking because they're starting to moult at this time of year.

He just sort of wandered by the truck, not concerned about us at all.

Me at the mine! The haul trucks behind me are ridiculously large and the tires alone are more than twice my height.

Bunny!

Count the ptarmigans! I've come up with anywhere between 14 and 20. I can only spot one adult but there has to be at least one more, I don't think they have more than half a dozen chicks in a season.

This is probably my favourite picture so far. The musk ox near this camp discovered that the grass was particularly green around the greywater drains from the kitchen and showers, so over time they have made their way closer and closer to camp. Now they come in twice a day for lunch, and I think I'm only about 20m away from them in this photo. There were about two dozen all together in the herd and about 5 of them are calves. They are surprisingly smaller than I expected - musk ox are not as big as domestic cows but their coats make them look much bigger.

Yay!

piiiiictures!

2011-07-26T21:08:00.000-04:00

A photo collection from my first field trip!

Some garnets in some rock. Not as exciting as rubies but still pretty nice. :)

This is an American Golden-Plover.

An inukshuk. The bear spotters build these when they're out spotting for bears. There haven't been any.

Purple saxifrage! I love these flowers.

This is either a semipalmated plover or a semipalmated sandpiper.

Siksik! Also known as arctic ground squirrel. This guy was pretty chill, he just sort of came out to see what we were up to.

The sky was very pretty.

The white blobs are flocks of snow geese. They were either in those huge clusters, or paired off (being as it is that time of year).

More flowers! I don't know what these are called but I like them.

And ditto these (although they might be a kind of heather?).

Hoping to have some pix of larger creatures after my next trip, I hear we may be in an area for caribou or musk ox... fingers crossed!

2011-07-12T23:18:00.000-04:00

out of the old, and into the new apartment! Everything but me and my computer are moved to the new place. So glad to be done with this moving around!

I should hopefully have internets tomorrow night but there won't likely be pictures until I can get it into some semblance of order down there, heh. It's pretty cluttered. But hooray for tons of storage space!

unpacking!!

2011-07-11T21:49:00.000-04:00

A mover came over this morning to help with unpacking, which was more putting furniture together and unboxing large things. So now I have a bed, a kitchen table, an awesome couch, a desk (that I will have to redo once I find my allen keys because the drawer didn't go on before the legs went on), a chair, shelves, an awesome lamp, and a shiny TV. :D

It's more organized than this now, all the large boxes are emptied and the small ones (with food in them) are moved out of the way. Tomorrow the movers are coming back to remove the rest of the packing stuff, which will be great because I'll be able to unpack all the dry goods into the storage room where the boxes are.

Tonight will be my last night in this apartment though! woooo! Real home tomorrow!

omg yay!!

2011-07-09T09:34:00.000-04:00

My stuff arrived! It's in my new apartment *right now*! Woooooo!

I cannot. wait. to have everything unpacked.

Because it showed up on Friday afternoon (of course) it won't get unpacked until Monday, but I get 2 days for unpacking etc, so one will be for the unpacking and I will distribute the rest over the rest of the week for things like internet setup. I had to go with NWTel which is a little disappointing but I'm still looking into a way to get the satellite-based, cap-free 'nets.

2 weeks and change

2011-07-04T12:28:00.002-04:00

On Friday it was 2 weeks since I got here. I am kind of in limbo as far as settling in goes, because my stuff is still in transit. Apparently it left Halifax on Thursday though so it should arrive here midweek next week, which is *awesome*. I get to take a day off when it gets here to deal with the unpacking process, which will be fun. Or possibly Fun, depending on how smoothly everything goes. But the movers will be unpacking as well, so I hope that will make everything go faster - it only took about3.5h to pack everything up and I can't imagine it will take that much longer to unpack.

Those may be famous last words, heh.

I found a bread machine last weekend! I went out to the yard sales again last Saturday and scored myself a really nice Black and Decker bread machine for $20, which is an awesome deal. It works really well - it's very particular about measurements and the first loaf I made resembled a brick more than anything else, but the one I made tonight came out very well and tastes delicious. Yay! So far I've tried the white bread and the lemon poppyseed bread. It's awesome to have fresh bread around, plus it's so much cheaper than buying it at the store (where it averages $5/loaf).

Work is fine, we're all fine here, how are you?

apartment things

2011-06-23T18:27:00.000-04:00

I saw my new apartment today. It's significantly smaller than my current place (the bedroom is smaller, and there's no more walk-in closet, sadface!) but the kitchen and living room are the same, and the view is better, so I'm calling it a win. There's still lots of storage space and the other advantage of being on the other side of the building is sun in the winter because it faces south. So, I think that will be great. It might be better for satellite internet reception, too.

The downside of all of this is that a) I still don't have my stuff, or any idea when it's going to leave Halifax, and b) apparently I have to be out of this flat on the 27th because there's someone else who needs the staff housing. I have no idea what's going to happen but I'm surprisingly not stressed about it. There isn't anything I can do about it myself, so, I will just keep waiting.

Work is still going well, I have been working on reviewing a couple of reports, and my boss gave me another project today that should be an informative exercise. Monday we're all having a meeting to talk about site visit travel plans for the summer, so I'm looking forward to finding out more about that.

I'm roasting a chicken for dinner tonight. It will be delicious.

Things I didn't expect to find in Iqaluit

2011-06-21T18:33:00.000-04:00

a co-op greenhouse
a delicious shwarma/donair place
a 24h snack bar/convenience store
reasonably-priced produce
an active composting co-op program (including worm composting)
the awesome yard sales!

I'm sure I will have stuff to add to this list as I explore some more. My plans for this weekend involve more yard sales (yay) and checking out the library and the visitor's centre.

Also, I picked up my first rock this afternoon on my way home from the grocery store. That means I made it five whole days without collecting a rock. -_- In my defence it's awesome and is full of garnets (one is the size of my thumbnail!).

Iqaluit!

2011-06-19T10:38:00.000-04:00

Here I am! it's pretty awesome!

In my first 24 hours here, I have:

been to a work BBQ where I won a lawn chair
had dinner with my new coworker and his wife
used an ulu
gone to 4 yard sales
seen a snow bunting and a Canada goose and LOTS of ravens
gone grocery shopping (which wasn't as scary as I'd feared!)
walked A LOT, it's really hilly here!

Everyone here has been really friendly so far, both the people I'm working with and the folks in town - people just say hi to you all over. It's so nice. :)

Tomorrow is my first day at work and I am beyond excited! There will be a lot of paperwork and meeting coworkers and that kind of thing. Also I have to talk to the movers, my stuff didn't leave Hfx this weekend because I didn't get the money from Brookfield in time. But it sounds like my move has been pretty painless compared to some other people's experiences up here, one of my coworkers waited for his stuff for like 2 months. So a couple of weeks is not a problem, and my temporary apartment is really nice - I have close to triple the space I had at home. It's awesome. ^_^

Today my plan is for laundry and organizing and some more settling in, I might also go for a walk and get myself out of the house for a bit. There is a museum and a library and a visitor's centre, so I will probably visit them today.

Yay!! :D

it's official!

2011-05-11T12:08:00.000-04:00

My official offer has been made and accepted, and I'm off to Iqaluit! In five weeks! Ack!

I've been allotted 900 kg of belongings/furniture/etc. The pare-down process begins when I get home...

hold please

2010-10-08T20:31:00.000-04:00

*dusts off the blog* Hooray, I remembered my password!

I know some of you out there were hoping to see some really cool pictures of Mali by now... so was I. Unfortunately the whole project is on hold. My coworker who was over there is now back here and we're waiting to see what is happening with the project. Hopefully I'll have some info about that soon. In the meantime, I've been working on de-cluttering my house, which is about as exciting as it sounds, and trying to keep busy outside my house a little too.

Anyway, you'll know as soon as I do (provided you check back here regularly :).

winding down...

2008-09-19T13:32:00.000-04:00

So things are starting to wind down here in camp and I'm thinking about the end of the season... which means that if you would like a postcard from Greenland, now's the time to say so. :D

Send your mailing address me at my gmail (which I think you can get from my profile), and I'll do my best to get you a postcard.

Still not sure when I will be home, but I'll update once I know.

impending snow

2008-09-16T10:09:00.000-04:00

Yep, that right there is snow on the mountains around camp. There's quite a bit of it and it just sort of appeared overnight, with no sign of going away. It's been cold enough the last couple of days that there is ice on the little puddles in the morning (although it's pretty much melted by midday). There is snow in the forecast for this week.

*shivers*.
We had a pretty extraordinary storm here two nights ago. The wind was pretty crazy, every so often there would be huge gusts that felt like someone was taking my tent and shaking it, and heavy rain that would wake me up. So I didn't sleep too well. Yesterday was pretty sunny and today is spectacular, with a perfectly clear blue sky. It's only a couple of degrees C out there, but when the sun's out it's not so bad.

Yesterday Mike and Catherine and I got to take a trip into Fiskaenesset, which was a really great break from the routine. :) We went to the store and got some licorice and related gummy things for the next time we play yahtzee, and I bought some chips that turned out to be really terrible, which was disappointing. Danish chips are weird - they're all kind of like Munchos and Pringles and that kind of chip - like they're made out of those fake mashed potatoes or something. If you want chips made out of potato slices (like Cdn chips), you need to look for 'franske-kartoffeln', French-style potatoes.

I really like the little dragon/sea monster finials on the top of this house. It's fun to see little decorative touches like this - most of the houses in Fisk are prefab so they all look pretty much the same.

A view of Fiskaenesset from the ridge above the town. This is probably one of my favourite pictures I've taken this summer.

A shipwreck! This is on the other side of the ridge, I guess it wasn't worth it for the ship owner to recover it, so it was just left. It's in reasonable shape, I suppose - Mike climbed on it a little and didn't fall through the boards or anything. Anyway, it made a great subject.

Mike and Catherine on the ridge where I took the last picture from.

picspam yay!

2008-09-04T12:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was one of the last really nice days we're likely to get, so I spent some time in the evening taking some photos. I also found out it was blueberry season so I picked myself some delicious berries as well. :)

This plant is related to Labrador tea, but I'm not sure of the name. You can see by the red that leaves are starting to turn... (it's also blurry, I wish I had a tripod, my knee isn't cutting it.)

I like how the hills look when only parts of them are sunlit. The clouds have been pretty low the last couple of mornings, and this morning they were low enough that the helicopter couldn't fly until almost 10.

More turning leaves.

A couple of neat fungus-like things.

More pics upcoming soon, we had some pretty impressive aurora last night...

2008-08-31T13:03:00.000-04:00

The last few days have been pretty awesome. I got to do some real field work. :) We went up the hill to the place where the drilling was, and Mike and Jose and I made up a grid to map the area on, which Mike and I then photographed and mapped. It was tough work but a lot of fun. Also the weather has been*fantastic* for the last three days, so we finished just in time - today is cloudy and cold and tomorrow through Wednesday call for rain in the forecast. (It was nice enough that I got a bit of a sunburn on my arms and my nose has come over all freckly. oops. -_- My hands are nice and tanned though!) In this picture I have just finished painting some lines.

Yesterday I also learned how to drive a Zodiac boat, which was pretty cool. Mike and I weren't sure if the helicopter was going to be able to come up for us in time, so we took the boat across the lake and were just getting ready to start the hike down the hill when it showed up, so we took the boat back and got back in time for supper, instead of an hour late. yay!

The view was pretty spectacular from up there, too.

A handful of the remaining people in camp left on Saturday. Brian, Iqbal, Jose, and Gary have all left, so things are even quieter than before. I think pretty much everyone has a cabin to themselves.l-r: me, Mike, Jose, Brian, and Gary.

a caribou!

2008-08-26T11:03:00.000-04:00

I saw a real live caribou yesterday, yay!

My camera is not so good with the wide shots, though, so that's why there is an arrow pointing him out. If I can get my hands on some of Britt or Gary's pics I'll post a better one.

I also got a nice shot of a raven:

And it was Jeppe and Tom's last day in camp yesterday. They are heading back to school soon, so off they went to spend most of a day in Kangerlussuaq (which apparently has a golf course! so they are going golfing...), and then leave for Copenhagen. Camp has been much quieter without them.
(Britt, Tom, me, and Jeppe. yes, I know, I look even shorter than usual. I'm actually standing in a hole. :P)

foodz

2008-08-26T10:50:00.001-04:00

So we have a new cook/chef person at camp. Last night was his second night here; this was dessert:

Yes, that is in fact deep-fried ice cream with whipped cream and maple syrup. I made sure to skip for extra time last night. *sigh*

aaaaargh.

2008-08-24T13:01:00.001-04:00

ETA: never mind. apparently it depends on the browser you're using or something. bleh.

why, why, WHY can I never seem to prevent the floating words that show up to the right of the pictures I'm posting? They are never there in the preview!

if anyone reading this knows how to work blogspot enough to fix it, please, I'm begging you, help me get rid of this ridiculous little quirk.

2008-08-24T10:52:00.000-04:00

I'm back in camp and the weather has definitely turned cold - Lex's mittens came in super-handy, I really didn't think I was going to have to wear them right after I got back! Very glad to have them.

It was snowing yesterday up at the drillsite and the other spot where Brian was out in the field. Then it hailed and rained a bit in camp and I got lucky and snapped a picture of a rainbow. :)

I also had an unexpected visitor to my tent last night in the form of the largest spider I have seen since I got here. I was pretty sure it was on its last legs (heh) as it didn't really move much when I picked it up on a piece of paper, so I took the opportunity to get a couple of pictures of it, and then put it over in a less exposed corner of my tent (the deal being that I didn't put it outside in the 0C temperatures if it stayed out of my hair). About half an hour later I looked over and it was gone, and since I didn't wake up screaming with a spider on my face, I guess it listened. ;)

gasp an update

2008-08-02T17:35:00.000-04:00

I got to go into the field yesterday. ^_^ It was such a nice change! I'm pretty tired of the computer work, tbh, especially since the weather has been *spectacular*. Perhaps there will be more opportunity later in the season.

Interesting textures abound!

This rock is a neat result of what happens when a rock is metamorphosed, and then goes through retrograde metamorphism - minerals that grew at higher temperatures or pressures are gradually reabsorbed into the rock as its temperature or pressure conditions decrease.

The light-coloured blobs used to be garnets, and I'm unfortunately not sure about the darker stuff, I can't remember what we decided it was.

The second picture is a view from the hill we were working on. The inland ice cap (I almost feel like that should be capitalized... the Inland Ice.) is just barely visible in this picture, which is sadly a bit overexposed. It's in the centre of the picture, if you look straight up from the dark boulder by the lakeshore up towards the horizon line.
Hopefully I will get a closer look sometime soon.

an eye for detail

2008-07-13T16:08:00.000-04:00

It's kind of necessary in this line of work, especially when what you're looking for is very small (and fortunately colourful!) Aaju and I are picking tiny rubies out of this sediment sample I took from one of the sites. It was actually a pretty good sample considering that most of what was present at that site was thought to be not very good, so somewhere in there is some better-quality material, which is good to know. Most of what we were finding in this stuff was anywhere from 1-5 mm.

(yes, it was cold enough for the down vest... I also have on my wool sweater and a wool undershirt, and leggings under the pants. It's *cold* when it's rainy here!)

wildlife count: Mike and Brian saw a caribou yesterday (jealous!). Also a baby hare. The fox has been spotted around camp a few more times as well.

more landscapes

2008-07-10T14:49:00.000-04:00

A couple more landscape pictures. The sunset pic is another photo, a little later at night (sometime around midnight I think), from the night I saw the fox. He's been spotted a few more times hanging around the camp.

The shoreline pic is from Ruby Island, where my boss and I have been doing some mapping. It's going well and I got to pan some sediments for any rough stones, which was fun. Found some little ones, but we still have to clean and sift the fine stuff to get them out.

The white rock is pegmatite (a rock type consisting of very coarse-grained crystals that have intruded (while molten) in to the existing country rock. The thing that's neat about these chunks of country rock is that they have very clean edges and near-90 degree corners, which is very cool. Usually stuff melts and you end up with oblong blobs, so the breakage likely happened later in the history of the intrusion.

fox take 2

2008-07-10T09:27:00.000-04:00

Here is the promised fox pic. :) He (or she I suppose) is small but near the centre of the photo. It's really, really rainy today and therefore slow, so I thought I would update.

The second photo is the sunset that same night. It was quite pretty.

fox!

2008-07-05T09:10:00.000-04:00

I saw a fox last night! It was really neat. I stepped out to take a picture of the sunset and caught a little flick of motion out of the corner of my eye. I moved a bit so I was facing the right direction, and there, about a hundred metres away, was a little dark-brown fox with a white tail. :D He froze when he saw me move, and we stared at each other for a moment, and then he decided that I wasn't really a threat and moved on across the stream towards the tents on the other side. I took some pictures but will have to post them later, as I left my camera back in my tent. There is also some (probably crappy) video, also still on the camera. It's raining today so I'm not especially motivated to run out and get it. ;)

wildflowers

2008-07-04T11:48:00.000-04:00

There are some pretty fantastic tiny wildflowers up here. A lot of them seem to be pink, as you will see. I wonder if the pink attracts pollinators better. There are bees here, although I'm not sure what kind they are. Large ones anyway.

The little white ones in the first picture were on a cliff face next to the harbour in Fiskaenesset.

The second picture is from Fiskaenesset as well, from a field next to the helicopter landing area. I think they are crowberry blossoms. So far this is probably my favourite picture that I've taken here. I really like the out-of-focus rocks in the background.

The third one was out in the field the other day. I asked Aaju what they were called and she told me, but I can't remember, so I'll check again sometime. They looked very much like fuchsias, just skinnier.

The second-to-last ones are good to make tea with. You just steep the whole plant (flowers, leaves and all) in some boiling water. I didn't try this one but there is a variety of labrador tea that grows here. Mike made some of that the other night and it was quite nice.

These last ones are called pincushion flowers.

I heart the macro setting on my camera. ^_^

home sweet tent

2008-06-30T13:58:00.000-04:00

This is my home for the summer - a very cozy, mostly bug-free, 'tent'. I think 'cabin' is more the thing but the walls are flexible, so it's not really your average cabin either. It's not yet battened down in this picture.

The inside is quite comfy, with a small cot and foam mattress, night table, and a little closet for each person. I'm on my own in mine for another 10 days or so, and while I wouldn't mind company I kind of enjoy the privacy and the peace and quiet (of which there is an ample amount here!).

This is the inside. I have since switched my sleeping bag's direction so my head isn't right next to the window, plus I have a mattress now. It's still too cold in the night to have the windows open - it doesn't get dark, but it gets chilly. So I turn the heater on until it's borderline uncomfortably hot, turn it way down, and hope it's not freezing when I get up. Yesterday morning it was cold enough that I sort of shuffled over to the heater while still in my sleeping bag to turn it on - it was probably somewhere near 6C or so.

I don't see my breath here, which I think might be connected to how dry it is. It hasn't rained for about 3 weeks, which may be a little unusual, but it looks like rain later in the week. Walking on the moss and grasses that make up the ground cover sometimes sounds like walking on crunchy snow.

All things considered this is a very posh camp - the girls (all three of us - eventually it will be 4 and maybe 5) have our own shower and sink in a little cubicle in the wash tent, which is about twice as big as the cabin tents. There's lots of hot water and a place to wash our clothes when we need to. It will get a little more stretched when the drilling starts as the drillers will be coming in and out and also need to do laundry and things, but so far it's pretty good. And the cook makes really good food. So, things are going well so far. I got out in the field again yesterday and came back windburned, today I have been in the office, therefore, update. :)

wildlife count: arctic hare; grouse; eagle (all yesterday). Jose Luis saw a fox this morning.

the landscape

2008-06-29T06:08:00.001-04:00

This is a picture of the lake on the south side of our camp. There's no fish in this one, as far as I know, but a couple of my coworkers caught some fish at the next lake down. We'll be having them for supper as soon as there's enough. I'm sure Gary's crushed about having to go fish some more. :)

And, the picture below is what we're here for. We all got the talking-to before we got out there about what we could and couldn't bring back... so no samples, sorry guys. ;) However I did get some nice pieces of some other minerals, and I'll post some pics once I have a suitable setup for my camera.

wildlife count: duck and duckling family; 6 (!!!) eagles of some kind.

even Greenland has graffiti.

2008-06-28T19:23:00.000-04:00

The place we are closest to is called Fiskaenesset (or Qeqetarsuatsiat if you speak the language. I don't. I'm not nearly good enough at swallowing my q's.). Obviously someone had some pretty strong feelings about it at one point...

welcome to greenland.

2008-06-28T19:09:00.000-04:00

So here is the promised Greenland blog! Huzzah! Welcome. :)

For those who come across this blog randomly, a little about myself and what I'm posting here. I'm a geologist working in Greenland for my first field season. It's a pretty interesting place (not to mention beautiful), and I'll be posting pictures here of my work this summer and fall.

On to the pictures. Hope you enjoy them!