(And yes, I do make sure that when we’re working – even on the mine site – we pick up our trash and keep the lease clean. Hypocritical? Maybe. But I think every little bit of senisble resource use counts – from recycling cans to composting vegetable waste in the kitchen.)

First big snowfall of the winter! Time for Tiny Hauler to strap on the tire chains and get to clearing off the back deck so I can still get out there to feed the birdies that come by. And maybe do the odd barbecue if it’s not too windy. A little snow certainly can’t come between this Albertan and her steaks!

Fun fact: that gorgeous spoon was given to us (along with other cutlery, of course) as a gift from my Father in Law when we started our own home. He got them as a gift from the now-defunct Canadian Airlines, where he used to work as an avionics specialist.

Tiny Hauler knows the importance of good safety communication. Zie always keeps the radio clear of chatter and listens carefully to directions. Even on gorgeous days like this, when zie would rather look around at the scenery.

The Alberta Oil Sands get a lot of (deserved and undeserved) media attention. Everyone has an agenda, and no one is telling and showing all sides of the story. I obviously have a horse in this racce, and the only thing I have to say is this: while reducing the dependance on fossil fuels should be the end goal of the energy industry, so should responsible, ethical, sensible extraction and useage techniques in the interim.

Tiny Hauler has encountered an incredibly cute and fuzzy obstacle on hir way back from dropping off a load. Is there a way around it? Is this a new form of tipping hazard? How to navigate such a creature?

This is my beloved and spoiled cat Barlow who decided to get up on the desk while I was taking pictures of Tiny Hauler and all hir cuteness. The cute combination is incredible! The blurry iPhone photos are less so.

Tiny Hauler works away into the dark hours of the night, tidying the front hall. Cleaning all the loose change from the mirror and carting it away to be safely stowed in repurposed pickle and sauerkraut jars. (Pickle jars are for pennies).

Another early pic, where all I wanted was to show the size of the Tiny Hauler. The dark lighting is ok, but I think this pic could have used a bit more sparkle and shine on the coins. Hey look, a Twonie!

Tiny Hauler helps me muck out the burnt offerings for this year. Zie’s little box held a surprising amount of pumpkin seeds!! Zie is very industrious and hauled many loads of seeds back and forth all day!

The pictures have a nice light to them, but the colours seem a little meh. I had hoped that the yellows and the oranges would make a nice warm feel, but they feel washed out, and the pumpkin stems look too grey for me. The limitations of the iPhone camera, I guess. I do love the look of the scattered pumpkin seeds, though, Pumpkin seeds have such a photogenic shape!

This is how Tiny Hauler gets around. The tea tin (avec tea) was a Christmas gift 80 million years ago, and now Tiny Hauler can travel in style in this lovely boutique tea tin (sans tea). Because it’s Ceylon tea, I thought the second pic was appropriate.

When Tiny Hauler isn’t travelling all over Canada snug in hir cotton-lined tea tin, zie is ually found on the shelf next to the pictured Starbuck figurine and cozied up with a rhinovirus I caught.

Here is Tiny Hauler working away carrying a small piece of Quaternary glacial flotsam, while a heavy hauler toils away in the background. The heavy haulers go back and forth 24/7, taking overburden to the dump where I was doing some structural studies.

This is a picture I tried to get my entire shift. I wanted to have a nice shot of a heavy hauler and then Tiny Hauler for contrast. For obvious reasons, we’re not really allowed near the heavy haulers. The one in this picture is *much* closer than it looks. There were really bad forest fires in BC this day, and it smelled like a campfire at the mine. THe hazy air gives a nice “gritty” effect, but not as clear as I would have liked for this setup.

I also got *filthy* laying on the post-process sand in the foreground so I could get a good shot. I got sand everywhere and spent the rest of my shift scratching and shuffling while the drillers laughed at me.

One of my workaday tasks when I’m in the lab. Depth correction – using the geophysical logs to find the exact depths of various features on the recovered core (including where there wasn’t any core recovered.) Boring work, but it brings out the inner office supply nerd in me cause I get to use all sorts of brightly coloured tags and different felt pens. Fun!

This photo is another of my favourites. The tags fit in Tiny Hauler’s box like zie was made to haul them. The Sharpie is nicely reminiscent of all sorts of “busy office work” sort of pictures, gives a good scale and is a nice looking pen, to boot. (I think I grabbed a new one from the box just for the photo.) The dip meter log is sharp too – lots going on in it so it’s visually interesting and gives a nice “sciencey” feel. An image log would have been better, but oh well.

Hands-down my fave Tiny Hauler picture to date. (And my fave flavour of Timbit!). The colours work so well, the Timbit (donut hole) shows the size just right, and the whole thing captures that “cozy winter morning at the lab where I need coffee and Timbits to get through the fog” feeling in just the most exact way possible. Love. Love love!