I love "trash"

As most of you know, it snows here. For the past two winters I have relied on my technical shoveling skills to move the powder around. Well, the hard times are over. Two weeks ago, while walking home from university, I noticed that my neighbor had put their snowblower out for the trash. What?! For one, it's made of metal and plastic, so she could have at least recycled it. Second, donate the thing or get it fixed. We all need to stop buying new stuff every time we think something is broken. (I will stop lecturing now) SOOOOOOOOOOO, I politley asked if I could have it, asked her what was wrong with it, and was given the kind reply, "I don't know. I just bought a new one. You can take it. Good luck." Well, good luck indeed. I drained the old fuel, cleaned out the carburetor, adjusted the throttle, and brought this baby back from the dead. And just in time, too. We received 10 inches over the past two days.

The Exciting World of Rocks

No, I do not have a microscope "app" on my phone. These are pictures of rock thin-sections taken with the aid of my phone. (A thin-section is a piece of rock that has been attached to a glass slide and then ground down to 30 microns.) I have to look at these slides each week and learn to identify the constituent minerals that form the rock. I know how excited you must be just thinking about it. After staring down a microscope for hours on end, I then "get" to draw a picture. My drawings are on sale for a reasonable fee. Hopefully I can get a showing at a local gallery to help subsidize my education.

This is a sandstone. Notice the quartz, plagioclase, and volcanic lithic fragments.

Behold, an extrusive volcanic rock, better known as a clinopyroxene, olivine basalt. This can be found far off the coast of Alaska. The large, colorful easter eggs are olivine.

Plagioclase, quartz, biotite. (biotite rhymes with "dyn-o-mite")

Artist rendering of slide 2. Start the bidding at $1.