Photos! T3i! Desert Flora!

I have about an hour before I have to start getting ready for my classes today. I realized that I haven't been posting many photos lately and I have a few on my camera so I thought I would get some of them up.

First is a photo of young Saudi geologist and geophysicists working on a core examination activity that I arranged as part of the Flagship course I taught a couple of weeks ago.


The young women normally wear abayas but I told them that abayas and thobes (the white dresses the men wear) were not permitted in the Core Lab for safety reasons. This was a major test of the constant tension between cultural restrictions/norms and the goal of providing a real training program. The young women certainly rose to the occasion with a compromise of western clothes that weren't loose or hanging but that still covered them. I permitted head scarves (I knew from the outset that was not a battle I could win) but told them they had to tuck loose ends into their over-shirts.

Next up is a series of photos of dog toys. Yes, T3i is back in action! That's "Terrier Toy Testing Institute" to the uninitiated!

Here's a photo of the two stuffing-free foxes that Mother sent for Harry and Mimi. Mimi managed to remove the nose of her fox (the one on the right) and chew a hole in its head so she could extract the squeaker. These precious toys live on the top of my dresser or they wouldn't have lasted this long. Still, they are well made and hold up to some tough tugging. T3i rates these an 8.

Here's another Mimi special. She finally managed to chew a hole in this one and in the process of removing all of its body stuffing, she turned the body inside out. The head is still stuffed and looks sadly up from the limbless torso. It sort of looks like a fuzzy sea creature. Despite all of this, the toy lasted for several months (but it did spend most of that time on the top of my dresser). T3i rates this one a 5.


DSL sent along two more chicken toys to replace ghastly chicken elf, who finally met his demise earlier this spring. Unfortunately, Earl and his son didn't fare too well with Mimi. She chewed Earl's toes off during one play session when I turned my back on her for maybe all of 10 seconds. Even though he no longer squeaked, she still enjoyed playing with him.

But the final blow came when I tried to grab Earl from her one day and she held on to Earl and I yanked a little too hard...and pop! his head came right off! So I immediately grabbed Earl's son, the surfer dude chicken. Mimi learns quickly and managed to pull surfer dude chicken's head off in less than a minute. I was a bit surprised to see some sort of esophagus affair come with the head--I thought these chickens were fairly empty inside.

I laughed my ass off as I surveyed the chicken carnage. T3i gives these two a 4 for silliness.

Harry is not a perfect angel. Maybe it was the corrosive action of dog spit over a period of months, but Harry managed to pull Bear Baby's arm off yesterday. Here is a photo of Bear Baby lying face down on the stairs where Harry dropped him later that evening. Note the missing right arm!

Why face down? Harry usually carries Bear Baby around by the crotch or the back. T3i gives Bear Baby (and his cousin Frog Baby) a 9, but only if Harry plays with them. If Mimi gets involved, the rating drops down to a 5.

Before I took the dogs to the kennel this morning where they will spend the week while I am out in the field, I took them out for our usual morning walk in the jebels.
I know most of these jebel pictures end up being pictures of Harry's butt, but he's usually out front leading the way.

We got up really early before it got windy and hot. I am amazed at how hot it has been, above 40C every day by midday. It doesn't feel that hot. I mean, it is obvious it is hot but I would not have guessed it was that hot. It is extremely dry here now with humidity less than 20%. The dogs have adjusted well to the temperature but I am careful about when I take them out and how long we stay out. And I always take water on our jebel trips even though we are never more than half an hour from the car.

One thing the dogs have not adjusted to are these gigantic burrs. I call them "camel's heads," a pun on the name "goat's heads" that we called regular old grass burrs when I was a kid.

You can see the size of these things. They are flat on the bottom and the spines are thick, strong, and very sharp. The dogs get these stuck on their feet all the time. They usually stop in their tracks and wait for me to remove the camel heads. I've learned where these particular plants grow and try to route the dogs away from those areas. Still, they blow around in the very stiff winds we have here and can show up anywhere in the jebel area.