of sleep, and gold, and food
Jul. 21st, 2009 10:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaStayed up far too late last night. Spent the first part of the evening playing in the kitchen. First I kept ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
clovis_t company (and assisted occasionally) as he made a meat/pasta/tomato/cheese dish for his evening meal, then I cooked up some of the veg I'd obtained at the market that morning for my lunch today:
Today's market vegetable blend:
Slice small eggplant, lightly salt, set in toaster oven at 200 C for 10 minutes to dry out. Meanwhile slice one potato and put it on to steam. Then dice a small zucchini, a carrot, and the stem of the bok-choy like vegetable (which is actually something else that is taller, but substitutes well for either that or spinach) and put all into one bowl till ready to cook them. turn the heat off from under the steaming potato. Then tear the leaves from the not-bok-choy and slice a number of the small tomatoes and put them into a second bowl till ready. Add flax seeds and cashews to the first bowl. Pour the now slightly cooled water from steaming the potato into a bowl with some flour and yeast to start a bread-sponge for tomorrow; cover it, and put it in the fridge. Melt a bit of butter in the pot in which you steamed the potato (there is only the one pot in the house till my stuff arrives, or I do more shopping, whichever comes first), add the contents of the first bowl and stir for a bit. Add the steamed potato and the slightly roasted eggplant, then put in a small amount of water and the contents of the second bowl. Add a bit of the yummy sort of nutritional yeast (I wonder if I can buy that in this country--I'm starting to run low), and stir till the green leaves are wilted and the water/tomatoes combine to make a thick coating on all of the other veg. Dish into bowls ready to take to Uni in the morning, where they will be re-heated in a microwave for a really yummy lunch (in conjunction with some cheese and fresh fruit, also from the market). All in all a bit more effort than I often go to for my meals, but worth it, particularly starting with the fresh market veg.
After we'd gotten the kitchen cleaned back up again I did a bit more uni work before yoga, and then stayed up even later chatting. Finally went to bed some time after 01:00, which might have been fine, but about 05:30 some passing car/truck/whatever made an unusual noise that happened to wake me, and I didn't fall straight back to sleep, so I got up and did more uni reading. Got sleepy again about 7:00 and went back to bed for a "nap", and didn't wake again till 10:00. Despite having cooked lunch the night before, it still took a full hour to do my morning situps/pushups/etc., get showered, dressed, pack lunch, pack the computer, and actually walk the couple of blocks to uni, where I spent the morning feeling sleepy and not accomplishing as much as I would have liked.clovis_t wandered into town to do touristy things (feeling much better rested than, having actually slept uninterrupted from 01:00 to 10:00).
I was still feeling tired at lunch, which I have with my colleagues on my research team each day, but after lunch my boss turned me lose in the lab, where he taught me what I needed to know to do my first practice welds. Playing with the toys woke me right up!
What am I welding? Gold! The experiments we do here involve encasing powder of known composition into sealed capsules and then subjecting them to elevated temperature and pressure for long enough to grow minerals. The largest diameter capsules we use are 3 mm wide. This is the size I was practising on today, using scraps from other people's work, since I wasn't making a real capsule, yet. The technique involves using a pair of pliers to first crimp the end of the tube of metal shut, one third at a time, such that the three crimped bits meet in the middle. Then one carefully trims the edges of the three crimped bits so that both sides of the metal are not only in contact, but at the same height. Then one takes a bit of sharpened graphite, which has been inserted into a rod attached by wires to a large box that controls the voltage (after first checking to see that the voltage has been set to an appropriate level, whcih, for the gold capsules of this size is just over 30 volts). One then carefully (while wearing protective glasses) pushes the button on the rod and moves the point of the graphite along the three lines at the top of the capsule. When done correctly the gold melts and the end of the capsule is fused shut with no air holes remaining. When done incorrectly the metal goes past molten to ugly and scared. If one happens to pick up one of the smaller diameter (1 mm?) platinum tubes instead it will take more hand-strength to crimp the edges, and 30 volts will be way too much energy to use, as I discovered when the metal melted the entire end and left a hole in the tube itself. But these things happen when one is left alone to practice and find things out for oneself...
clovis_t company (and assisted occasionally) as he made a meat/pasta/tomato/cheese dish for his evening meal, then I cooked up some of the veg I'd obtained at the market that morning for my lunch today:Today's market vegetable blend:
Slice small eggplant, lightly salt, set in toaster oven at 200 C for 10 minutes to dry out. Meanwhile slice one potato and put it on to steam. Then dice a small zucchini, a carrot, and the stem of the bok-choy like vegetable (which is actually something else that is taller, but substitutes well for either that or spinach) and put all into one bowl till ready to cook them. turn the heat off from under the steaming potato. Then tear the leaves from the not-bok-choy and slice a number of the small tomatoes and put them into a second bowl till ready. Add flax seeds and cashews to the first bowl. Pour the now slightly cooled water from steaming the potato into a bowl with some flour and yeast to start a bread-sponge for tomorrow; cover it, and put it in the fridge. Melt a bit of butter in the pot in which you steamed the potato (there is only the one pot in the house till my stuff arrives, or I do more shopping, whichever comes first), add the contents of the first bowl and stir for a bit. Add the steamed potato and the slightly roasted eggplant, then put in a small amount of water and the contents of the second bowl. Add a bit of the yummy sort of nutritional yeast (I wonder if I can buy that in this country--I'm starting to run low), and stir till the green leaves are wilted and the water/tomatoes combine to make a thick coating on all of the other veg. Dish into bowls ready to take to Uni in the morning, where they will be re-heated in a microwave for a really yummy lunch (in conjunction with some cheese and fresh fruit, also from the market). All in all a bit more effort than I often go to for my meals, but worth it, particularly starting with the fresh market veg.
After we'd gotten the kitchen cleaned back up again I did a bit more uni work before yoga, and then stayed up even later chatting. Finally went to bed some time after 01:00, which might have been fine, but about 05:30 some passing car/truck/whatever made an unusual noise that happened to wake me, and I didn't fall straight back to sleep, so I got up and did more uni reading. Got sleepy again about 7:00 and went back to bed for a "nap", and didn't wake again till 10:00. Despite having cooked lunch the night before, it still took a full hour to do my morning situps/pushups/etc., get showered, dressed, pack lunch, pack the computer, and actually walk the couple of blocks to uni, where I spent the morning feeling sleepy and not accomplishing as much as I would have liked.
clovis_t wandered into town to do touristy things (feeling much better rested than, having actually slept uninterrupted from 01:00 to 10:00). I was still feeling tired at lunch, which I have with my colleagues on my research team each day, but after lunch my boss turned me lose in the lab, where he taught me what I needed to know to do my first practice welds. Playing with the toys woke me right up!
What am I welding? Gold! The experiments we do here involve encasing powder of known composition into sealed capsules and then subjecting them to elevated temperature and pressure for long enough to grow minerals. The largest diameter capsules we use are 3 mm wide. This is the size I was practising on today, using scraps from other people's work, since I wasn't making a real capsule, yet. The technique involves using a pair of pliers to first crimp the end of the tube of metal shut, one third at a time, such that the three crimped bits meet in the middle. Then one carefully trims the edges of the three crimped bits so that both sides of the metal are not only in contact, but at the same height. Then one takes a bit of sharpened graphite, which has been inserted into a rod attached by wires to a large box that controls the voltage (after first checking to see that the voltage has been set to an appropriate level, whcih, for the gold capsules of this size is just over 30 volts). One then carefully (while wearing protective glasses) pushes the button on the rod and moves the point of the graphite along the three lines at the top of the capsule. When done correctly the gold melts and the end of the capsule is fused shut with no air holes remaining. When done incorrectly the metal goes past molten to ugly and scared. If one happens to pick up one of the smaller diameter (1 mm?) platinum tubes instead it will take more hand-strength to crimp the edges, and 30 volts will be way too much energy to use, as I discovered when the metal melted the entire end and left a hole in the tube itself. But these things happen when one is left alone to practice and find things out for oneself...