that week in Stockholm was intense

[kareina]

I spent last week in Stockholm for a short course on Thermocalc. If anyone had told the undergraduate version of me that I would one day voluntarily spend from 10:00 to 19:30 several days in a row for one class, instead of the 30 to 60 minutes at at time I was used to back then, she would have told them that they were mad. Yet I was so grateful for the chance. This program uses thermodynamic data to calculate which mineral phases will be stable at any given temperature or pressure based on the input parameters. Unlike the program Perple_X, which I used during my PhD research, Thermocalc requires a LOT more user input at every step of the way to draw the diagrams. Perple_X takes your input data, thinks about it for some time (minutes or hours, depending on what data you start with), and spits out a diagram showing which groups of minerals will be stable at which temps and pressures for the bulk composition in question. Thermocalc instead does the calculation for each boundary between regions of different mineral assemblages for you, but you have to tell it one at a time which calculations you want to do. This means you are effectively drawing the diagram yourself, the program is just there to work out the exact orientation and position of the lines, you choose which lines are drawn. The disadvantage is that it takes much more user time. The advantage is that when you are done you UNDERSTAND why each and every line is there. Totally worth the class to truly understand how and why these diagrams work. So very grateful I didn't try to teach myself how to use this program--one really does need a teacher. At least if one is me...

The downside of having to go away for the course was that I was gone for lord_kjar's birthday. So I celebrated that evening by baking shortbread cookies for him, and chatting on the phone with him, and I brought most of the cookies home for him the next day when class ended. I did leave some of the cookies with my host. She is a geologist I met when she was up visiting LTU to do some collaboration with one of the people at our uni. She was here for a month or three, so I introduced her to my gaming group and she really enjoyed hanging out with the lot of us. It was nice to see her again in her own home. It was also nice to discover that a series of books I have really enjoyed has been translated to Swedish, since she has them all on her bookshelf. Sadly, the science fiction book shop in Stockholm didn't have the Swedish version in stock, so I contented myself with picking up a copy of Hobbiten (note: in Swedish the word "the" is added to the end of word with either the suffix "en" or "et", depending on the word. apparently "Hobbit" is an -"en" word.)

Tomorrow marks a full week since I got home from Stockholm, yet today was the first chance I have had to sit down and write up a post. Well, I could have done it last night, since Choir doesn't start back up again till next week, but when I sat down to check LJ blamebrampton mentioned that she had written a new story, and I lost the evening reading it. She says that the story is 66,000 words, and it took me just over three and a half hours to read it, so I my reading speed turns out to be about 300 words/minute. I bet it is no where near that fast in Swedish! Technically, reading this breaks my "no fiction in Swedish unless it is reading outloud to someone else" rule, but reading LJ doesn't count, right? Sadly, she never has found me someone writing fan fic in Swedish, but then again, I am still happier reading stories I already know, so that I don't have to look up the words.

Monday we hosted the first ever dance practice in our living room. A couple of people said they plan to come next time, but couldn't make it this time, but we still had four dancers total (including us), which is enough for lots of dances, and we had fun doing them. One of the two dancers who joined us is from the folk dance organization, and the other is an SCA dancer who recently moved here from Umeå. After dancing I posted to both the folk dance email list and the SCA forum saying which dances we did and reminding everyone that they are welcome to join us for the next one, in two weeks time. That evening I got a reply from a musician who wants to come play music for us next time if the others in her group are interested. I, of course, replied with an enthusiastic yes, they are welcome.

On Saturday the folk dance group is having a dance-share day--all of the different dance groups will gather and show the others what they do, so I will go and try the ones new to me, and share the Medieval stuff with them. Perhaps someone will like it enough to come along.

Next week I head down to Boliden for more sample collecting. I would love to just stay home, I like home, but the samples need collecting, and sooner is better than later, since it can take months before the results get back once we send them away for analysis.