My Busy Week

Ravens on the roof of my car outside Gran Telescopio Canarias, -Roque de Los Muchacos, Garafia
January 5, 2017

I’m not sure what I was thinking of when I agreed to work from Monday to Friday this week. I let myself slip way behind with paperwork and now I have to catch up. Besides, I’m self employed and the new year means setting up new spreadsheets. It’s not as if any of these jobs are particularly long or difficult, just that there’s a lot of them. Also my cleaner…

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Plan K

Rainbow on the wy tot he Cumbre tunnel, BrenaAlta, La Palma
October 27, 2016

I spent quote a lot of time organising a visit for a large group (55!) of high school students. They’re Erasmus exchange students on an astronomy-related trip, some from Tenerife (the hosts) some from Poland, and some from Slovenia. The main point of their visit to La Palma was to see GTC, but they were going to be on La Palma all day, so what else could they see? So…

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Busy, busy week

The Saga Pearl in Santa Cruz de La Palma
October 14, 2016

Whew, what a week! On Monday I did the panoramic tour with the Saga Pearl (basically, “Lovely views and quite a few of them”). On Tuesday and Wednesday I worked at the Roque. The first group on Tuesday included a French couple who didn’t speak any English or Spanish. I think they expected to just look, but I felt I had to try, so my extremely rusty French got a…

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The ravens are back

October 5, 2016

I saw very little of the ravens over the summer. I think they were so many tourists with tasty food that they didn’t need me, thank you so very much. Now that it’s getting colder there are fewer ham sandwiches and almond biscuits to be had. Yesterday, my bag of cat food was back in demand. First they ate from my hands, as usual, and flew off. Then one came…

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Bikers

Today’s visit to Gran Telescopio Canarias was a bit different. Most of the group were bikers from Gran Canaria. It made for a good photo op as they left.

September 9, 2016
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Butterfly

Butterfly on a T shirt
August 13, 2016

Today I was doing my talk on the heliport, and this butterfly landed on a guest’s T shirt. I think it thought it was a flower. You can see the butterfly’s long tongue, looking for nectar.

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