weird day

[kareina]

I went down the hill this morning, anticipating more of the dreaded zircon picking. However, today the person who will be helping me analyze them with the LaserICPMS was there, and he looked at the grains I'd separated last week, said there were plenty of zircons, and that many of the other grains are rutile, and since we've talked about using the "rutile geothermometer" on some of my samples, he suggested that rather than trying to select individual grains of zircon that I simply mount lots of the mixed grains instead, and showed me his prefered technique, which uses a different specially prepared brush to pick up lots of them at once, rather than trying to do one at a time. This was *much* better--it was a reasonably quick and easy process to accomplish it this way. That done, I mixed up the expoy, poured it over the zircons, rutile (and whatever else happens to be present) and set the mold in the oven to dry.

From there I went into town to drop off my application to be an Australian Citizen (and so a joint US-Australian Citizen, since both countries permit dual citizenship). My goodness has the fee went up since my mother did this five years ago! When she did it the fee was $20. Now the fee is $240. However, having that piece of paper (and the passport, which I will need to apply for separately, with a new fee, once my citizenship is approved and I've been sworn in) will mean that clovis_t and I are free to move back and forth between countries without my having to re-apply for a resident's visa every time we come home to Australia. Since I intend to stay in academia, the possibility of moving countries on a regular basis is a very real one!

Since I was in town I stopped by my favourite store to pick up more flour, and bulk grains, nuts, and dried fruit. Then I found out what happens if you don't have the cash to pay for a parking garage in Hobart. This town is one of those which is nice enough to let people park in the garage free for the first hour. The last time I was the one driving in town the cost for the second hour was $0.60. So before starting up the car to leave the garage I checked my wallet to see if I had any cash (we use EFPOS (that is a debit card for you Americans in my audience) for pretty much everything these days, so cash isn't something I need very often). Sure enough, I had exactly $0.60 in my wallet, and since it had only been one hour 15 minutes since my arrival, I thought I'd be fine. Nope. The fee has gone up to $1.00. So the guy filled out a form with my licence plate number and my name and address and gave me a copy. The form says that we need to pay the $1.00 within the next seven days or "formal action will be taken". I tried to give him the $0.60 as a deposit, so that we'd only owe $0.40, but he wouldn't take it. Sigh. The options are mail it in (in a country where the smallest note is a $5--to pay only $1 you need a coin!) or take it to any city parking garage, or to the City customer service center. Alas, *all* of these options are in the city centre (other than mailing, of course, which I could do from any post office, but it would still involve heading back down the hill (note for Americians: they deliver mail to your house in this country, but they will not pick it up from there--you need to either carry your stamped letter to a big red collection box, or go to a post office. We never need to "post" anything, so we don't' keep stamps in the house--good thing too, since the prince of stamps just went up, so it would require a trip to a post office.


Once home I spoke to my sister in Seattle (see my earlier post from today) and read LJ while eating a late lunch. I must have been in an impressionable mood, because emma7926's comments about cookies caused me to hurry off to the kitchen to do some baking before settling in to work. Tummy happily full of cookie-dough (using some of the organic oats and almonds I'd brought home) I spent some time writing up the "teaching philosophy" I sought feed back for earlier. Then I went for a walk up to the waterfall and back with baronsnorri.

Before finally settling in to uni work at 20:00! An hour and a half later I reached the end of the last of the calculations I've been plugging away at the past few days, but, feeling sleepy, opted to call it a day without actually writing them up. With luck tomorrow morning will see me motivated to do that writing before heading down the hill to deal with the newly created zircon (etc.) mounts.

Comments

[kahnegabs.livejournal.com]

I just love reading your journal. I've had a very static life overall, and it's fun to hear about your adventures and the differences in countries!