Days Off Are Here!

It's been a long work week - that is, more than ten days, less than twenty. Yesterday was my last day at work for this shift, and now I'm on days off, and I'm lucky enough to be off for the 4th of July this year. MOH will be starting his days off soon, so our days will totally overlap this time.

It's early summer here, or at least it's acting like it with blue, cirrus-filled skies in the morning and mid-day, which sometimes give way in the afternoon to thunder-poppers. Winds will sometimes pick up a bit in the afternoon, but overall not that much. The monsoon has yet to move in on a regular basis. Temps in the valleys are reaching the mid to high 80's, and it has been difficult to really cool our little house down at night using our tiny window AC. If it's cool enough outside, I'll leave the bedroom window open a crack, but sometimes it's too warm for that.

Sounds of summer, so far this year, are a nearby church bell that chimes the quarter hours, and the local historical train giving touristy train rides. The train excursions increase during the summer.

Any visitors [link not currently available] from colder climates are encouraged to bring T-shirts, a couple long shirts, and a jacket or sweatshirt in case it suddenly goes cold on us. This is Nevada, after all.

When I leave my little office for days off, I clean the dust and any loose rock chips off the desk, and put all my logging and geology tools in order. These tools include spray water bottles, an acid bottle, a coffee cup, a couple magnets, and various scratching devices for testing mineral hardness. Also, a streak plate is handy to have at hand.

Nearby, I have my rock color chart, a mineral percent estimating chart or two, a sand grain sizing gauge with pasted-on sand particles, and a pocket knife. All kinds of miscellaneous other things are lying around here or there, some buried in plastic boxes, others under piles of paper or journal articles: color pencils, marking pens of various sizes, extra flagging of a couple different colors, extra sunscreen in case I run out, a pocket stereo viewer that I rarely use, extra boots, extra vests, extra hats, extra field books, extra, extra, extra... And some old, stale Swisher Sweets, which I really should throw away: they're probably awful by now, and I haven't had any desire for a (good or bad) cigar in a couple years.

The back of my truck, now, that's another story. It's organized and disorganized, depending on where or how deep you look. Where I should have the requisite 5 gallons of water per my own desert rules, I've got a bunch of rocks - can you imagine that? And that's in the back of the truck. I've also got rocks under both sides of the front seat, and one rock hammer under the driver's side, and another rock hammer under the passenger's side. The rock hammers belong in the back, unless I'm getting in and out of the truck a lot. The rocks belong outside the truck. Most of them are so old that I'm not sure I will be able to tell where they are from, although several have numbers on them, numbers that no longer mean a thing to me.

I used to be much better with organization, with labeling rocks and keeping them in places where I might actually look at them again. Oh, well.