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maps and spots
Aug. 2nd, 2017 11:16 pmThis is the second week I have been back at work after vacation (and pretty much no one else in the corridor will return till next week at the soonest), alternating between gathering data and processing it. One of my Master's students is finally getting in her LA-ICP-MS time. (She was off in Svalbard for a course when the other students were collecting their data for their projects. I might be a bit envious of her for that.) So Monday we ran her another trace-element composition map, Tuesday we started her spot-analyses, today she started the data processing for that while I kept working on the lovely garnet maps I made last week (damn, they have some interesting trace-element zoning patterns!), and tomorrow we will do more spot analyses for her.
Monday and Tuesday evenings I didn't accomplish much at home, but this evening I was inspired to get out and do some stuff. I dragged a couple of rocks up the hill from the field to the area behind the sheds, where they will be used later to stabilize the change in slope between the bit we leveled and lowered earlier this summer and the upper level the shed sits on. In hind sight I probably shouldn't have put both of those rocks onto the cart at once, since between them they weighed so much I couldn't drag the cart up the direct route to the upper yard, but had to go around the tree the longer, but gentler sloped, route. Even so the only way I manged to get that cart up the hill was to lean into the pulling rope with all my strength, then carefully move one foot up the hill, then lean some more, then move the other foot. Repeat. Yes, it would have been smart to take one rock back off the cart and go back for it after I got the first one up there, but it was hard enough to get onto the cart in the first place I didn't want to, so I stubborned myself through the job.
However, once I managed getting them up, I did not go back for any more, but instead decided that today would be a fablous day to lift up the six paving stones at the base of the steps to the porch, remove the grass between them, add some fresh sand under them to adjust their lean so that they will no longer have a puddle when it rains, and put them back again. It has been four years since I put those stones there, and it took till this spring before the freeze-thaw cycle had tilted them enough for puddle formation. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts this time.
Monday and Tuesday evenings I didn't accomplish much at home, but this evening I was inspired to get out and do some stuff. I dragged a couple of rocks up the hill from the field to the area behind the sheds, where they will be used later to stabilize the change in slope between the bit we leveled and lowered earlier this summer and the upper level the shed sits on. In hind sight I probably shouldn't have put both of those rocks onto the cart at once, since between them they weighed so much I couldn't drag the cart up the direct route to the upper yard, but had to go around the tree the longer, but gentler sloped, route. Even so the only way I manged to get that cart up the hill was to lean into the pulling rope with all my strength, then carefully move one foot up the hill, then lean some more, then move the other foot. Repeat. Yes, it would have been smart to take one rock back off the cart and go back for it after I got the first one up there, but it was hard enough to get onto the cart in the first place I didn't want to, so I stubborned myself through the job.
However, once I managed getting them up, I did not go back for any more, but instead decided that today would be a fablous day to lift up the six paving stones at the base of the steps to the porch, remove the grass between them, add some fresh sand under them to adjust their lean so that they will no longer have a puddle when it rains, and put them back again. It has been four years since I put those stones there, and it took till this spring before the freeze-thaw cycle had tilted them enough for puddle formation. It will be interesting to see how long it lasts this time.