kareina

--I got up at 05:00 and made myself a pizza so that I'd have food to take with me, and at 07:30 got a ride down the hill (thank you

baronsnorri!) to uni. Noticed the Department Head in the hallway, but as he looked like he was lost in thought, didn't speak with him (this turned out to be a mistake!) and just went into the room with the printer and set up my computer and printed the thesis draft (perhaps two minutes work, and not much longer to print the 106 pages), and then printed the figures.

"Printed the figures", what a delightfully simple phrase, isn't it? Alas, what that phrase fails to do is elucidate just what a tedious task that befell me! You see, very few of these are actually the figures in their final form, instead they are information-rich layers in a CorelDraw file, or a graph (or six) in an Excel spreadsheet, but they are not all nicely gathered into one place and organized ready to print. So, for each of the 86 figures which were referenced in the thesis thus far it was necessary to open the file containing that data, grab the relevant part, copy it into CorelDraw, add the figure number and caption, then, if there was still room on the page, repeat for the next figure. Once the page was full, it could be printed and I could then empty the page and start again. This process took more than six hours to accomplish!

Fairly early in the morning my advisor wandered in, and pointed out that we might have problems getting signatures needed for my application for extension, as so many folk from the department are out of town just now, including the Department Head, the head of CODES, the Graduate Research Coordinator... I commented that I'd seen the Department Head just that morning, which was a surprise to his secretary (who was in the room just then), as he left this morning to head to Germany, but clearly stopped into the building on his way out of town. If I had spoken with him, I could have printed out the form and had him sign it, but silly me, I thought that if he was there, that meant he'd actually be there over the course of the day!

Ordinarily everyone being gone isn't that much of a problem, with the others gone my advisor is "acting head of school", and as such could sign the form in that slot, but, as my advisor, he can't sign the form in both places. Sigh. So we went down the list till we found someone present who could sign as a "consultant" (needed when the primary advisor is head of school), and my advisor added a note explaining that the others were all out of town. Then I noticed that this new form also requires a signature of the "graduate research coordinator", who is out of town till 29 August. But there is one other in the department who has held that role in the past and can cover for her when she's out, but he wasn't in the building, so I called him at home to discover that yes, he is in town, but he is also without a car that day, and won't be able to make it in till Monday, but he'd be happy to sign the form then--just call over to the Graduate Research office and tell them the situation.

However, Thursday evening the Graduate Research Office had sent out an e-mail stating that they would be closed on Friday (the day my application is due, as it is 4 weeks before my funding runs out) and Monday due to a move to a new location. So I sent them an e-mail instead, letting them know that not only were they closed, but most of Geology was also unavailable, but that we'd lined up one last signature for my paperwork and that it would be sent to them via inter-department mail on Monday.

Once everything was printed and the paperwork as complete as I could make it, and the department secretary assured me that the paperwork would be sent on as soon as it is signed I ran an errand (posting my Alaska Absentee ballot for the primary election for senate and house there) and relaxed for a half an hour until

clovis_t arrived to turn in the essay he had due that day. We then had enough time for a short walk before it was time to attend that 90 Seconds of Fame contest.

There were 13 entrants, I was the only geologist. This was one of the many activities scheduled for "National Science Week", and it turned out to be much fun. The first speaker wasn't very impressive--way too many "ums" and "ers", but all of the others were quite good. While one or two of us did what I would describe as a "speech" (I was one in that category), most did what I would describe as "skits".

The girl who studies the facial tumour of the Tasmanian Devil had a friend in a Devil costume, and a small toy devil, covered with tiny Velcro-backed tumours, which got transferred to the healthy devil when they fought over food (a huge blow-up Kangaroo).

The girl studying obesity in blue-collar workers wore a tank-top, jeans, a hard hat, and filled the table with junk food and then *sang* a song describing the plight of the working class, illustrated with poster-sized, laminated photographs, which she held up in turn. The song included such phrases as "under represented in the literature".

There were many fun skits, and many of them brought in candy to symbolize some aspect of their research, which they then tossed to the judges and the crowd. The winner got a computer, the second and third places got trips to Melbourne and Sydney, and the rest of us were presented with a framed certificate of appreciation, an "ipod shuffle", and, my favourite, a hand-held flash light which is powered by a hand-squeezed dynamo.

I'm not really certain what to do with the ipod. Yah, I suppose I *could* put music on it, but honestly, it is bad enough having to stick hearing aids in my ears, I am not interested in wearing earphones! If I am going to listen to music, it can either be played by someone present, or it can be on a stereo which fills the room with sound, so that everyone present can enjoy it.

After all of that, I was, not surprisingly, worn out! As a result, today was a seriously slow starting day. I managed to get up around 09:00 and start some laundry, enjoyed breakfast and e-mail/LJ and then hung up my clothes and went for a walk with

baronsnorri to the local waterfall. The mountain, which is still covered in snow, is truly beautiful this time of year! But after that short walk, I was sleepy again, and returned to bed and didn't wake up till after 13:30! It then took a few more hours of reading e-mail and fiction before I was, finally, ready to start work for the day. But, as usually happens, once I started working I lost all track of time, and the next thing I knew nearly six hours had elapsed and it was well after midnight! Only 493 words written during that time, but 7 figures and tables were created!