I like learning stuff!

This afternoon I discovered that the reading of the pile of papers I was given when I arrived here in Milan has been helping. I may not have managed to finish all of them, but when my boss came in today to talk with me about the experiments I will be doing, and the abstract I need to prepare to present a poster at the AGU conference in San Francisco in December I actually understood the entire conversation. He's given me yet more papers to read, which will help with the abstract preparation. As soon as I return from the geology conference in Edinburgh at the end of this month and the textile conference in the Netherlands in early September I will start actually doing the experiments I came here to do, and I find that I'm very much looking forward to it!

There are quite a number of folk on my friends list who have birthdays this month. I hope that you all have wonderful birthdays dedicated to spoiling yourselves a bit, and that they mark the start of a truly wonderful year.

I've managed more work than usual today by beating the heat at its own game. I took a short nap in the early evening last night, then got up and worked for a few hours in the middle of the night, then another nap, then worked again from 05:00 to 07:00, when it was still nice and cool (relatively speaking--still way hotter than I ever saw in Tassie) and I could think, then slept again till 11:00 before coming in to uni. Then I spent part of the day in the air-conditioned microprobe room, so that I could survive the worst of the day's heat. I may need to keep this sort of schedule till I leave for Scotland on the 28th. Of course, when my five houseguests from Poland arrive tomorrow (from the couchsurfing web page and I are heading out to meet some other couchsurfers. Should be interesting.

I like learning stuff!

This afternoon I discovered that the reading of the pile of papers I was given when I arrived here in Milan has been helping. I may not have managed to finish all of them, but when my boss came in today to talk with me about the experiments I will be doing, and the abstract I need to prepare to present a poster at the AGU conference in San Francisco in December I actually understood the entire conversation. He's given me yet more papers to read, which will help with the abstract preparation. As soon as I return from the geology conference in Edinburgh at the end of this month and the textile conference in the Netherlands in early September I will start actually doing the experiments I came here to do, and I find that I'm very much looking forward to it!

There are quite a number of folk on my friends list who have birthdays this month. I hope that you all have wonderful birthdays dedicated to spoiling yourselves a bit, and that they mark the start of a truly wonderful year.

I've managed more work than usual today by beating the heat at its own game. I took a short nap in the early evening last night, then got up and worked for a few hours in the middle of the night, then another nap, then worked again from 05:00 to 07:00, when it was still nice and cool (relatively speaking--still way hotter than I ever saw in Tassie) and I could think, then slept again till 11:00 before coming in to uni. Then I spent part of the day in the air-conditioned microprobe room, so that I could survive the worst of the day's heat. I may need to keep this sort of schedule till I leave for Scotland on the 28th. Of course, when my five houseguests from Poland arrive tomorrow (from the couchsurfing web page and I are heading out to meet some other couchsurfers. Should be interesting.