Interlude #1: The First Reading of the Oracle

... upon the sphere of annihilation. "Just don't grant him the ability to see his own death at my hand." The tendrils of the tentacle rod drag upon the floor as Hedrack stops in front of the thick basalt door. He gazes into the demon's face on the door and asks, "Do you still seek to challenge me?" Understandably the door opens, revealing a chamber lit by a trio of dim glowing balls floating near ...

Pink

... of Tranquility. Well, Starscream supposed ungraciously, they got the ‘Tranquil’ part right, at least. The basalt plains were as silent as death. They were some distance from any of the humans’ landing points... the near barren moonscape. The only thing in the area was a couple of large pieces of basalt tumbled haphazardly on the ground. “There’s nothing but a pile of rocks here.” Skywarp said,...

When does teaching become routine?

...can't skim for keywords because there are a number of students who will write down every single word they can remember. Specifically, when asking about the qualities of an igneous rock (in this case, vesicular basalt) which show that it must have formed near the surface, I had one student who threw out a string of words, many of which indicated nothing about how or where the rock cooled. While the...

Grrr logs

... kind of person logged them in the Ye Olde Style prose logging form: a verbiose description of each interval including every single 2mm thick vein within 200.2m of core. *headdesk* Its all just fucking basalt, alright? 69-200.2 = MB. The veins are irrelevant small-scale shit totally unrelated to what pissy amounts of gold there actually were (1m @ 2.35g/t; hence why there aint no mine there)....

... treat her with reverence, like she’s a delicate thing, as sweet and ephemeral as webs of ice on a windowpane. But no , he wants to rage. She’s really all fire underneath; hard like granite and basalt, the coin in the cake you break your teeth on. “Why me,” he asks hoarsely, not unlike a plea or an exultation either. “Why is it always, always me?” Even on her brink, as she ...

Climbing with Peter.

... shouldn't have looked down, but I was trying to assess whether downclimbing was an option. Downclimbing slab sucks: if you slip (and you will), you'll finish the downclimb sliding face- and palms-down along dirty basalt. This can't be good. Peter was down there, but I wasn't on a rope. He couldn't save me from falling, couldn't do anything but encourage me. And then it started raining a little....

Session 07 Log

Session 07 20091029 [Tir-na Nóg'th] It's dark and cold.  There are screams in the distance.  They aren't human screams.  In front of her are the ruins of the basalt monolith  set against the falling ash.  A cold fog clings to the ground.  Rosaline searches about the ruins alone.  She sets about drifting slowly and carefully around the bodies of children, women, and old men.   After a time, she...

In between trains

..., such as ballast. For that I use chicken grit mixed with mortar for the mainlines which nicely simulates the crushed coral used the the Oahu Railway and Land Company. For the engine facility area, I mix basalt sand, mortar and charcoal cement paint. When I dries, I spray paint with a flat black. I've added 8 blocks to add more variety to operations on the three loops that are all interconnected....

More

..., the trip was fun; I came back with bags of gypsum, quartz, talc, calcite, and, I think, celadonite, to display in my office. We climbed huge sand dunes and slippery river-smoothed basalt rocks, hiked through a lovely narrow canyon, gingerly climbed over jagged and sharp salt formations, explored an old mine — quite dark when flashlights are off! — to see rocks glow under black light, walked ...

Thurs 22, Ians 22nd Birthday.

...had been watching for whales, and we suddenly spotted one off the headland, so decided to go to the point for a better view. Found a crowd up there watching a pod of 4 or so circling round ,just off the basalt pavement, heading into the bay. Tracked them back into the bay, getting a good piccy of a fluke, and a blow. At least Ian had a view of them, much impressed! Went back to R & R's, ...