What a delightful weekend!

Friday night I hosted a spur-of-the moment party to welcome our visitor from the Canton of Eofowrick (Kingdom of Ealdomere), and despite the shortness of the notice, we still had a good dozen guests & way too much food! I wound up spending part of the evening helping one of the new ladies turn a king-sized sheet into a bliaut (some assembly required ;-) because she's got a very, very long waist, and therefore she needs a dress from a time when long waists were popular!

Saturday night was the Tasmanian Folk Federation's Masked Medieval Ball with the band Harlequin. http://harlequintas.googlepages.com/home As always, the dance was much fun! I was delighted with how many of the non-SCA folk present had decent attempts at costumes and/or masks. We did an announcement about the SCA and suggested that now that they have their costumes they might want somewhere else to wear them. I didn't do a count, but we had enough people that it was needful to break the circle dance into three concentric circles so as to have room to move!

I've spent time talking with the various members of Harlequin on any number of occasions over the past several years, but it was only last night that their singer and I realized that we'd also met at Uni, but didn't recognize one another out of costume! She is also doing a PhD, working on a project which involves looking at very tiny fossils on the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Said microscope is in the room through which one must pass to get to the electron microprobe, which I use on a regular basis. There was one afternoon when I was scheduled for the microprobe, but the operator wasn't yet ready for me, so I spoke to a lady using the SEM and she showed me the tiny fossils she was looking at while I waited. They say that it is a small world, but Tasmania is even smaller!

Now to devote what remains of the weekend to Uni work...

What a delightful weekend!

Friday night I hosted a spur-of-the moment party to welcome our visitor from the Canton of Eofowrick (Kingdom of Ealdomere), and despite the shortness of the notice, we still had a good dozen guests & way too much food! I wound up spending part of the evening helping one of the new ladies turn a king-sized sheet into a bliaut (some assembly required ;-) because she's got a very, very long waist, and therefore she needs a dress from a time when long waists were popular!

Saturday night was the Tasmanian Folk Federation's Masked Medieval Ball with the band Harlequin. http://harlequintas.googlepages.com/home As always, the dance was much fun! I was delighted with how many of the non-SCA folk present had decent attempts at costumes and/or masks. We did an announcement about the SCA and suggested that now that they have their costumes they might want somewhere else to wear them. I didn't do a count, but we had enough people that it was needful to break the circle dance into three concentric circles so as to have room to move!

I've spent time talking with the various members of Harlequin on any number of occasions over the past several years, but it was only last night that their singer and I realized that we'd also met at Uni, but didn't recognize one another out of costume! She is also doing a PhD, working on a project which involves looking at very tiny fossils on the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Said microscope is in the room through which one must pass to get to the electron microprobe, which I use on a regular basis. There was one afternoon when I was scheduled for the microprobe, but the operator wasn't yet ready for me, so I spoke to a lady using the SEM and she showed me the tiny fossils she was looking at while I waited. They say that it is a small world, but Tasmania is even smaller!

Now to devote what remains of the weekend to Uni work...

100 Days!

Back in June of last year I realized that I was simply not making time to read geologic articles often enough, so I set myself the goal of reading 1,000 words a day, either in journal articles or text books, or other things related to my field of study. I managed that goal for 55 days, and then forgot to read one day, so I started over, and managed 28 days before forgetting again. The third time I managed 84 days before forgetting, and the fourth time a pitiful 12 days. Today marks the 100th day in a row of reading my 1,000 words this time around. I hope I can keep it up without forgetting to read again. It is amazing what a difference it has made in my understanding of the concepts I need for this PhD project, and it really doesn't take much time. Heck, if you only read 1,000 words at a sitting, it takes several days to finish a normal journal article. Fortunately, while I have set the goal to read at least that many words, it does often happen that I read more than the required amount!

100 Days!

Back in June of last year I realized that I was simply not making time to read geologic articles often enough, so I set myself the goal of reading 1,000 words a day, either in journal articles or text books, or other things related to my field of study. I managed that goal for 55 days, and then forgot to read one day, so I started over, and managed 28 days before forgetting again. The third time I managed 84 days before forgetting, and the fourth time a pitiful 12 days. Today marks the 100th day in a row of reading my 1,000 words this time around. I hope I can keep it up without forgetting to read again. It is amazing what a difference it has made in my understanding of the concepts I need for this PhD project, and it really doesn't take much time. Heck, if you only read 1,000 words at a sitting, it takes several days to finish a normal journal article. Fortunately, while I have set the goal to read at least that many words, it does often happen that I read more than the required amount!