Venus and Little Sand...

I "punched my ticket," as far as Venus transits go, back almost exactly 8 years ago, on June 8, 2004, while I was in Baikonur supporting a launch campaign. They may be rare, but if you've seen one Venus transit, you've pretty much seen 'em all (especially if you're using homemade "pinhole camera" techniques :^). To summarize:


Of greater impact locally is an apparent flare-up of the Little Sand fire. The past couple of days, if you hadn't known where to look, you could be forgiven for thinking that the haze over in the direction of the fire was some kind of persistent fog. This afternoon, however, there was no mistaking that something was going on, maybe the result of fuel drying out after some welcome rains a few days ago.


The fire has also generated quite a plume:



Here's hoping for rain, or at least staying upwind of this thing.

Cheers...

UPDATE: According to the folks managing the fire, "On Wednesday, June 5, 2012,  the fire burned into pockets of unburned fuels on the west side of the fire near the Sand Creek area north of the Piedra River. Winds assisted in pushing the fire back on itself towards the northeast corner. An air attack plane continues to monitor parts of the fire by air." (Hmmm. There's something about the usage of that "air attack plane" terminology...)

Food and phosphate finishes...

For the second day in a row, Galina and I gave in to laziness at midday and went out to eat. Yesterday, we ate at the Shanghai, but Galina's tolerance for the menu is rather limited, and I later consumed most of the leftovers that went home in the to-go box.

Today, while on our way to a tacqueria we had never been to before, we noticed that the Pagosa Brewery was open for lunch, and so we ate lunch there. Galina had the fish tacos, while I had something called "The Kraut," which was probably called that because the house wanted to call attention away from the other major constituent of the sandwich, which was a very indifferent bratwurst. Galina let me try some of her fish taco order, and it was much better.

I'm not exactly sure how much I've gotten done today, in terms of work. I did another several hundred words of The Paleolithic Job™, and am finding it easier going, but then turned back to despeckling and sending two documents, turning around one new small document, and then sitting down to "interpret" about 250 different finish descriptions from Russian into English (e.g., "Ан.Окс.хром/лкп" to "anodic oxide, in a solution of potassium (sodium) bichromate with various activators, with subsequent application of paint or varnish"). The good news is that most of the descriptions were not as difficult as the one shown above, but the process still ate up a lot of time.

How did it get to be so late so fast?

Ah, well... no matter. We just pick it up again, tomorrow.