Funny

I read this over at iammommy.com and it made me laugh pretty hard. So I though I'd share. Side note: the woman who does this blog also does another blog called iambaker.com; this woman is amazing, not only is she a mother of four and an incredible baker, but she also finds time to blog about it, TWICE!!

All of them are at least a little bit true; number 4 is the one that made me really laugh :)

Random Thoughts of the Day

1. More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can think about is that I can’t wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that’s not only better, but also more directly involves me.

2. Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you realize you're wrong.

3. I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

4. The letters T and G are very close to each other on a keyboard. This recently became all too apparent to me and consequently I will never be ending a work email with the phrase "Regards" again.

5. Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

6. There is a great need for sarcasm font.

7. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and suddenly realize I had no idea what the heck was going on when I first saw it.

8. I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

9. Was learning cursive really necessary?

10. Lol has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say."

11. I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

12. Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart", all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

13. How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

14. I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent an aggressive driver from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

15. MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

16. Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

17. I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the shower first and THEN turn on the water.

18. I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

19. Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do.

20. Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from; this shouldn't be a problem....

21. You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren’t doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

22. Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't want to have to restart my collection.

23. There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

24. I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

25 When I meet a new person, I'm terrified of mentioning something they haven’t already told me but that I have learned from some light internet stalking.

26. I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle, then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

27. Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still not know what time it is.

28. It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

29. I wonder if cops ever get annoyed at the fact that everyone they drive behind obeys the speed limit.

30 Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what do to with it.

My First Time to The Rock

Yes, that's what seasoned "Hawaiian-ers" call it: The Rock. And I can see why; it's just a rock, albeit a very beautiful one, in the middle of the ocean. It is so gorgeous there, of course, the pictures don't do it justice. Unfortunately, my picture taking was cut extremely short due to my lack of memory and overall short-sightedness (it's a long story). Anyway, this is what I have and I hope to be able to go back (soon) and get some more.

The first full day I was there, we drove about half-way around the perimeter of the island. We were staying in Ewa Beach (pronounced Eva, not like the goddess in Avatar) which is on the south side of the island, and we wanted to go visit Grandma Unga, who lives on the North side (I think). Of course, we had to stop in Haleiwa to get some shave ice from the famous Matsumoto's. Seriously, the BEST stuff I've ever had. I don't know if I'll be able to even eat the stuff here, hahaha.

Side note: that flower is real; they look exactly the same in foam, which is, I'm sure, why they sell them that way. :)

Haleiwa is absolutely gorgeous and pretty much the quintessential Hawaiian town. So, of course, it was packed with tourists, hahaha.

I felt somewhat legitimized because I was with a native, but still couldn't do anything about my blonde hair or white skin. Though I never felt more out of place than when we were at the little hole-in-the-wall Korean BBQ place right after I got off the plane. We were eating with a couple of Thomas's brothers, and his nieces and nephew; the waitress served our food and gave everyone chop-sticks.... except me.... I got a fork. I immediately started laughing, as did everyone else, but they made me eat with the fork, anyway. For the rest of the trip, Thomas made a joke out of pointing out all the white people that we saw.

Much of the trip was spent at the beach, although we never did stay long enough for me to need more than one application of sunscreen. And, I'm proud to report, I only got burned a little bit, on my back, on the last day at the beach. Good for me!

The waves were HUGE!!! So big, that somedays, they wouldn't even let me in the water. Which I was ok with; I had no interest in being swept away from this beautiful island. The person in the picture isn't anyone I know, but I had to get a perspective on the wave. This wasn't even one of the bigger ones.

Thomas spent most of the time in the water. He bought a body board as a Christmas gift to himself, so he had to break it in. Don't worry, he's not flipping me off; he's flashing the shaka. Duh.

On one of the last days there, we took the time to again drive all the way around the island. It took us about 4 hours, but that was because we hit the evening traffic coming out of Honolulu (it's seriously only that big). On the way, though, we saw beautiful beaches, mountains, rock formations, flowers, cities, towns, everything. This picture was taken at the top of a pass moving from the east side of the island down to the south.

I love the whole look of O'ahu, and I love that I got to see it with someone who knows the island, someone who could tell me why an entire town was built on stilts (it's for when there are tsunamis) and who knew where the 7-11's were (for ibuprofen) and who could drive us to the north shore without a GPS (ok, not that hard, there's only 1 real road) and point to all the swells and give them names (which is quite a feat). It was truly an amazing experience and I'm so happy that I got to go. It's totally worth being broke!

My Journey to the Center of the Earth!

There was one day this summer when I got to go underground. Every two weeks, someone in the environmental department has to collect sump samples from the underground. There's a lot of groundwater around our mine which we pump out at a rate of about 1500 gallons/minute (which we then pipe back in for dust control; I can't help but roll my eyes at the redundancy). But in the low areas, water collects and erodes the rock which creates some pretty nasty stuff. This railing has had water dripping on it that's so acidic, it's almost eaten right through it!

Anyway, Lakin (the environmental summer student) and I got to go underground.

You can't see our whole get-up in this picture, but we were wearing the hard hats with the light clip and the light with it's own battery pack (that weighed about 5 pounds) attached to out belts. Also on our belts (not your average flimsy belt but, industrial, haul-you-out-of-a-sticky-situation belts) was a self-rescue canister in case there was a fire underground so we didn't get carbon monoxide poisoning. Also, we were wearing knee-high rubber boots. FUN!

Of course, we had to fulfill our primary purpose: collect samples. To do this, we had to wade out into the pools of water and fill up a jug, or turn on a valve and get sprayed with mud. Lakin and I hung back a little while our guide filled the jugs from the spray. :D

But we also got to have a tour of almost the whole underground. It's a good thing we had an underground supervisor with us because we would have been sooo lost, the whole thing is just a maze of tunnels with spray-painting on the wall to tell you where you are. This one says "1038 B. F. P." which means we are 1038 feet below the surface. At one point we were nearly 5000 feet (ok, so it was only 4985 feet) below the surface! That's almost to sea level!!

Underground, there is all the same types of mining tools that are used in the open pit: shovels, haul trucks, grinders and crushers, etc. Everything is just smaller. This is one of the haul trucks; it's only about 15 feet tall with 8 foot wheels, which is TINY for a haul truck.

One of the stops on the tour was to see the crystal cave. A few years ago, the miners opened up this cave after a blast. It wasn't lit up like it usually is on tours, so I didn't get a picture of the whole thing, but it was pretty big: about 30' high, 40' wide and 30' deep. And all the walls are lined in these kinds of crystals.

As always, the safety culture at Barrick is prevalent everywhere you go. On all the levels, right outside of the shaft elevator, this phrase was sprayed on the wall.

The Blast!

There was one day that I had the chance to go out with the blasting crew. At Goldstrike we blast every day, and sometimes twice a day! But usually just once, at 2 0'clock. Anyway, they work hard all day filling and packing hundreds of 40' deep drilled holes with explosives. Each hole has a detonation cord that runs to the next one. The green cord is the detonation cord. This is what it looked like before the blast.

Before the blast, the holes are in neat little rows. Like this:

Then we have to run around getting everyone clear of the blast. No people can be within 1500 feet of any edge of the blast, which doesn't sound like much, but actually really is. We use the big trucks and other vehicles as road blocks so no one goes where they are supposed to. This driver wasn't quite sure where he was supposed to be.

When they blast ore, each individual hole has a microchip connected to it so that, when the blast is set off, each hole blows at the same time. This way, they know exactly where the rock falls and they can mine more efficiently. But, this blast was just for waste rock; there wasn't any ore here, so it didn't matter where the rock ended up (as long as it wasn't in someone's face). Instead of attaching a microchip to each hole, only a few holes at the top had them and then detonation cord connected all the holes after that. As a result, there's a ripple effect when the blast is set off.

After the blast, the crew has to go down and check each hole to make sure it detonated. If any of the charges are left un-detonated, it can blow the bucket right off of our shovels, which is a bad thing, considering those are multi-million dollar machines! This is what everything looks like after the blast.

Because it was so hot on the day that we blasted (about 103 degrees) a couple of the clips that keep the detonation cord in place malfunctioned. They're made out of plastic and when it gets too hot, they get soft and don't hold the cord in place. As a result, 2 holes did not blast. So we hooked up some detonation cord to those 2 holes and hooked that up to a manual detonator. I got to set that part off.

The trigger on this one is a bit tricky because it will snap that opposite way it's supposed to, so I did have a little trouble with it. But it all worked out in the end.

Good day, fun people, awesome blast!