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Monthly Archives: March 2013

Hi ho, hi ho / It’s off to work we go…

Recently, I’ve had to go through safety/hazard training at a mine site.  It’s mandatory of anyone who needs to work at a mine.  I may need to work at a mine within the next year.  Therefore, I had to go through the safety/hazard training.  Now that that’s taken care of…

I found out some interesting things in this training.  Things like…

  • Anyone who works on a mine site, regardless of what you do at the site, is called a miner.  This means the Sparkletts guy who delivers water to the site is also a miner.  Even though he’s a Sparkletts delivery guy.  Yes, he was in my training class.  Oh, and you have to take the refresher course every year.
  • Mine safety/hazard training involves more than just safety and hazards.  We also had to learn about endangered or protected species that we might encounter.  I found out that the Mojave tortoise is a protected species.  If you harass one of these tortoises, you can be punished with up to a $50k fine and/or a year in jail.  You think that leaving a tortoise alone would be pretty easy to do.  Too bad the enforcement agency believes that being with 25′ of one of these tortoises is harassing the tortoise.  That means, you might never see the tortoise or know that it’s there but if one of the agents knows that you’ve come within 25′ of the tortoise, you could be going to jail and be a whole lot poorer.  (Now then, I believe that the agents are a lot more reasonable than that, but technically this could happen.)
  • Sun spiders are really aggressive.  They get pretty mad at you if you try and stomp them to death and don’t succeed.  They’ll probably start chasing you after that.  If you try and stomp one of them to death and you’re wearing work boots, then you have to stomp really hard and then twist.  Otherwise they’ll just get into the tread of your boot and survive and then chase you angrily.
  • Our instructor was very chipper and has been training miners for a long time.
  • There are designer hard hats.  I think I’ll have to invest in a hard hat soon.  If not for this job then for another.
  • One of the most interesting and efficient uses for borax is fighting forest fires.  A lot of the trees in CA forests produce seeds that will only germinate once they go through a fire that reaches above some ridiculous temperature (I forgot the numbers and I’m too lazy to look it up right now, sorry).  So what they do is they air drop seeds over an area of the forest that’s on fire.  The seeds are able to germinate now, so they air drop borax powder over the fire as a flame retardant and to keep the fire from spreading.  Then, they go through and drop water on everything to put the fire out.  The water mixes with the borax and ends up being fertilizer for the germinating seeds.  I’m so impressed by the efficiency of this process.  So.  Impressed.
  • There was more but like normal, I can’t remember anything else off the top of my head right now and I’m too lazy to look things up.

So there you have it.  Stuff about mines.

Whimsey: September

I’m finally going back and hitting my backlog of Whimseybox projects.  This one is from September (2012).  I didn’t do the project when I got it because…I didn’t really have a need for gift wrap.  I still don’t really, but I figure I should clear out some of these boxes.  Also, I really like to glue things and September’s box held much promise for gluing.

So, September’s box (Box 12) was for confetti gift wrap and involved a lot of things.

WP_20130222_002 (2)In the box were an assortment of gift bags, a few gift tags, a small box, a fairly large packet of confetti, and a tube of glue.  Also in the box, but not directly related to the project was a length of ribbon.  I think it’s an advertisement of sorts.  There’s normally something small and advertise-y in each Whimseybox.  For September, it was some ribbon and it had the added bonus of being useful to the project if you chose to use it.

Directions for the project idea was basically: put glue on stuff and then sprinkle confetti all over the glue.  It’s pretty standard for something like this.

Here’s their example.

Well, it turns out I can’t show you because
there seems to be no record of it at all
anywhere on the internet
and I have no interest in taking a picture of
a tiny picture on the directions card.
No really, I googled “Whimseybox confetti giftwrap”,
“Whimseybox box 12”,
and “Whimseybox September”
and no matching projects came up.
This project idea isn’t even on their blog.

Here’s my version, having followed the directions exactly.

WP_20130305_001 (1)It looks SO. GOOD., no?  No, it doesn’t really.  The glue they included with the box is a really wet gel glue.  It’s the stuff I liked to play with and use as a kid, but it doesn’t really glue that well and it makes the paper wrinkle because it’s so wet.  And I realize that you can’t compare it to the example from Whimseybox, but let me tell you that they don’t look anything alike.

BUT!  The direction card also included suggestions on applying glue in stripes or in some shape instead of over the whole area.  I tried that too.

WP_20130305_002 (1) WP_20130305_003 (1)

Here’s the front and back of another gift tag I did, this time in stripes.  I also didn’t just randomly dump confetti all over the place but used that weird tool whose name I forget that came with my Silhouette.  I think I’ve talked about it before.  It has a mildly sticky putty that you can squeeze out on one side to help you pick up and place small pieces of paper and a reversible proddy thing to prod the pieces you just placed into position.  I kind of like how this one turned out.  It’s still kind of wrinkly.

 WP_20130305_005 (1) WP_20130305_004 (1)

Here is the small gift box that was included with all the stuff.  I went with a flower design.  This one turned out ok too.  I don’t really like the giant flower thing I did on the lid though.  I might peel it off and do it again.  Which is another thing with this glue.  It doesn’t stick well to glossy surfaces.  You can peel the glue and everything off the box and it doesn’t look like anything was ever glued there.

WP_20130305_006 (1)Here is a…lollipop?  I’m not really sure what I was going for.  I used normal white glue this time.  It sticks a lot better to glossy surfaces.

WP_20130305_007 (1)And here is that pink bag.  I went back to the glue included in the box.  I also went back to the dump confetti over everything technique.  I don’t think it worked out any better than last time.  You can kind of see that it says “hi.”  Kind of.

Are you a bit underwhelmed by this project idea?  I am a bit underwhelmed by this project idea.  I realize that I didn’t even confetti everything; there are a few bags I left undecorated.  I just didn’t see any reason to decorate the other bags.  I like plain brown bags.  What’s wrong with them?

Anyway, even though there was a lot of stuff in this box…well, it’s still kind of hard to justify the 15$ spent on it and the elementary school craft idea.  I mean, it IS a good craft for the kids though.  I remember really enjoying the glue/paper/mess in elementary school, when I last did something like this.  I just don’t think it was worth 15$.  And if you paid 25$ for this, I feel really bad for you.  I kind of feel like Whimseybox also feels bad for you and has tried very hard to erase the record that they ever sent out this box.