kareina: (Default)
Last weekend's home improvements included starting to fix the entryway to the shed in which we keep my tricycle, the ride-on lawnmower, the rock moving cart, and other things with wheels. The floor of the shed is a very thick layer of fine gravel, and there is a slight slope leading to the door. Consequently, when we moved in the gravel was gradually working its way out the door and blending with the coarser gravel of the walkway. Therefore, when we obtained a bunch of used curbstones cheaply some years back, we put one across the entryway to keep the gravel in, and then placed a board in front of it, at an angle, to make it possible to roll things up and over the large bump of the stone threshold. This worked, but there was always a fair bit of effort involved,to get the heavier items over the bump. Then on Friday evening, when I wondered aloud if perhaps I should re-do the raspberry patch with a stone edge the same way I did the strawberries, Kjartan suggested that perhaps a better use of energy would be to use some of the large old cobble stones we have to make an entry ramp for the shed. This sounded like a brilliant idea, so Saturday I started digging in the first row of them. Over the course of the weekend I did 5 hrs and 40 minutes worth of work on that project, which was enough to get half of the ramp done, and oh, is it ever so much nicer to roll things in and out!

half a stone ramp


Monday through Wednesday I started each day with meeting Johan for about a half an hour of acroyoga before heading to the archives, where I sorted and inventoried the papers turned in for the Gammelstad Lions Club for the time period 2013 to 2018 (after which the club disbanded due to having only a small core of older members remaining, who no longer had the energy to keep it going). They had previously archived their club records on two other occasions, so I needed to print out the list of the previous inventories to compare the codes used then for various topics so as to be certain to be reasonably consistent. I had pulled that set from the "to do" shelves because it looked small enough, and already well organised enough, to complete during my final week on the job, and it was, just. I wound up leaving work early on Wednesday to run some errands, and stayed 1.5 hours extra on Thursday to finish it up. Well, everything besides actually putting it onto the "done" shelves and adding the shelf number to its database entry--one of my colleagues, who has a key to the archives, said he would do that step.

Then I said goodbye to my boss (no hugs nor even handshake, because pandemic), and agreed that I would be in touch later this summer to determine when I should start my next short contract with them. I could have started already in June, but my garden needs some attention, and I need a break from working two half time jobs at once.

Wednesday's errands included a stop by the tip shop to get more decorative pots in which to put indoor house plants, and whilst there I found a small wooden chest, tall enough for our ceramic water jug, for only 150 SEK. While we could certainly make a nicer chest for feast gear, that would take time, and we couldn't do it for so little money!


second hand box

Therefore that evening's Frostheim Zoom craftsnight hangout I started sewing a wool lining for the box, and now, that done, I am also making a nålbinded cover for the jug, which I started Saturday morning during my Sister's Zooom Happy Hour, and continued during Crafternoon. I have wanted to attend [personal profile] fjorlief's Crafternoons since first she mentioned them, but now that they have gone virtual, I can! So nice to get to see her and other friends from An Tir, and to meet new people.

Yesterday I managed to get some seeds and the seedlings that my friend Barbara gave me into two of the three planting boxes by the house, and need to go buy more dirt for the third today (we had thought that two bags each would do it, but it turns out they need three). So in a bit I will head to the store to get more dirt, and another water hose, since Kjartan has planted potatoes on the field (having borrowed fro his dad a tilling tool to drag behind the tractor to prepare the ground), and it would be nice to be able to water them, and our hose just doesn't reach that far.

Tomorrow I need to get productive on LTU work, and start doing Durham research again, now that the archive job is done for the spring.
kareina: steatite vessel (2nd PhD)
Since I will be taking a month off to work a short-term museum archive job, I decided that it would be wise to devote a little time to creating a summary of the laser accessory composition maps I have been making, so that when I pick this back up I will be able to see at a glance what has and has not been done.
 
As of today I have run the laser to produce a total of 23 maps, from ten quarries. Nine of these have had sufficient data processing as to be able to look at the results as a map, but I have not yet sat down to interpret the results or decide on a consistent way to present the results.
 
The below image presents this information graphically, with each quarry marked on a map of Norway and Sweden, and photos of either the pre-ablation crystal (if the data hasn’t been processed), or a preliminary composition map (if it has), with lines showing which image comes from which quarry.  
 
The nine quarries for which I have samples but have not yet run maps are circled in red.  I would love to get at least one sample from each of those accomplished before I start that job, in just over two weeks. 
 
As you can see, there are sometimes duplicate maps from the same sample, and sometimes from more than one sample from the same quarry (and sometimes both). This was done at the suggestion of one of my colleagues here, who pointed out that if one is going to try to make generalisations about a specific quarry it would be wise to check more than one sample and more than one place on a sample to demonstrate that the results are consistent for a given sample and a given location.
large photo behind cut )
kareina: (BSE garnet)
Today, despite going to bed after 01:00, I still woke up early enough to shovel a little snow before I really had to head to work (and only managed that because I opted to take the bus). Today was the first lab day of a PhD student who wanted to know which phases in her sample contain vanadium, so we did tiny maps of her samples. This process was complicated by a repeated weird error, where the laser would drive the sample stage to the new location, and then just sit there for a while, doing nothing, and then display a notice explaining that it had timed out while waiting for the stage to move. Of course, when it does this in the middle of an experiment then the ICP-MS sits there waiting for the laser to fire, which it isn't going to do, because of the error, which means that I needed to stop the experiment each time (though now, many hours later, and much too late, I can't help but wonder, what would have happened if I had just manually fired the laser, would the ICP-MS would have been happy and then gone on to do the next step?), which then triggered another problem we have always had--if one stops the ICP-MS experiment in the middle, and then tries to resume it, the ICP-MS will send a signal to the laser to move to the next spot, which the laser will do, and then the ICP-MS will flash an error message complaining that it couldn't move the laser and it will then shut down the experiment. I know from experience that the only way to get the ICP-MS out of this loop is to re-start the computer. These issues combined in such a way that we spent a total of 7.5 hours in the lab, running three maps, each of which would have taken only 25 minutes if everything had gone smoothly.

By the time I was done I was DONE, and just wanted to go home, but it was only a bit more than 1.5 hours till Phrie practice was meant to start, so I decided to just relax in my office and look at mail for a bit, and then I was inspired to take the time to write up notes about how the experiment had gone, before I forgot, which meant that I wound up arriving at practice about 3 minutes late. At first it looked like it would be a quiet day, since there were only three of us at that point, but as I was finishing warming up a new girl arrived who asked about the Aerial Silks. Villiam volunteered to go get them from storage, and while he was gone she and I started doing Acroyoga. She had tried a little Acroyoga years ago, but claimed to not remember much. However, she has done lots of climbing and Aerial silks, which means that she has the core strength and flexibility needed, and she had no problems flying or basing anything we tried. Then she showed me some stuff on the silks. I need to train for them more. There was one thing, where one crosses the fabric behind one's back and then wedges one's upper body between them which I know is possible, as I saw her do it, but I couldn't get to work--I could get my head into that space, but I didn't have the strength (or the trick of it) to get my arms through so I could get my shoulders through. Oh well, next time!

I was having so much fun at practice I nearly forgot that I was supposed to leave early so I could get to Herskapsdans. Luckily I remembered at just the right time, so was able to head out the door and go pick up David's car from the apartment and drive out to Gammelstad, where I arrived just as we were starting to dance. I really love that dance style--dances from the 1700's. The ones we are doing are from a handwritten dance manual that was written by a man who lived here in Luleå and took the time to write both the sheet music and the dance steps for a number of dances. That manual was found back in the 1990's in a dumpster outside of a house that was being demolished, and it was rescued and, eventually, gotten to dancers who were able to use knowledge of other dances to work out what the descriptions were meant to convey.

While dancing tonight I realised (probably again) part of why I am so fond of the style--it reminds me of Hole in the Wall, which was the dance we did at my first ever real SCA event, in 1982. The recording they had at that event was a long one, which meant that those of us who had never done it before had time to figure it out and get it working, and I fell in love with dancing then and there (I had never really done any dancing before then). It was years later than I found out that Hole in the Wall is actually from the late 1600's (nearly 1700's) and that is why it is so different from all of the other dances we do in the SCA. However, I still love the dance, and if anyone at an event requests it, and the musicians are willing to play it, I will still teach it, but I do specify that it is NOT period. I am willing to do some out of period things at events, but only if it is made clear that while it is taking place at the event, that doesn't mean it is medieval.

I shouldn't be surprised that they day was so busy, life just is. Tuesday was leave the house at 07:30, work till time for Phire training, then acroyoga and juggling, followed by choir, and finally home at nearly 21:00, where we discovered that there had been a long enough power failure during the day to use up the UPS that is attached to the server, which had then shut down, but not long enough to drain the UPS attached to my computer (which was still on). I hung out will David till after 22:00, then checked email and spent more than an hour finishing up an application for some travel funding to attend a couple of conferences in the spring.

Monday I had the car at the house, which meant I had time to do a half an hour workout before work. At work I had an email from the technician who had been here, and who sent me the replacement parts to install on Friday, who gave me a suggestion for one more thing to try, and IT WORKED! Helium now flows through the line again, and I can use the laser to run experiments. In celebration I ran a couple of maps that my boss wanted me to do for her. They didn't finish till 18:00, at which point I walked home and spent the evening doing useful things, like updating my finances and paying for SCA events I have registered for, and working out how I will get to Crown (car pool with a friend from Skellefteå).

The weekend was delightful. Linda L. was in town, so she came over on Saturday and spent the night and went back to her partner's parent's house on Sunday. It was so good to see her. We hung out and talked and cuddled. We traded massage, I curled up with a book while she and David worked out some old issues and got themselves back to being friends again. I read out loud to her ([personal profile] hrj's short stories Hoywverch and Hyddwen, which, even after several readings, some out loud to others, I still feel are two of the best short stories I have ever read. (Note: the link to podcastle.com on the above link for Hoywverch will actually take you directly to the published version of the story, but on the above link for Hyddwen, if you click on the podcastle.com link it takes you to the most recent podcast they have done, and you need to copy-paste (or re-type if you prefer) the name of the story to search for it there.)

On Sunday I finally finished reading Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I very much enjoyed. I did notice one thing which felt to me like a dropped thread (stop reading here if you haven't read the book and don't like spoilers). The story states that Strange's mother had died three days after going out walking in bad weather, just like his wife. However, it turns out that his wife had actually been replaced with a chunk of black oak, which died and got buried in her stead while she went off to Lost Hope to spend her life dancing at endless balls. When Strange arrived at Lost Hope he winds up talking to a woman who seemed familiar to him, and who complained that she had been there dancing, etc. for "four thousand years" (at which point we are treated to a footnote explaining that in the fairy culture that phrase means only " a very long time", and that they mostly don't actually measure time at all). I am very convinced that this woman is Strange's mother, and I was rather disappointed that this thread wasn't cleared up by the end of the book, but we are left dangling, with no way to confirm or deny this assumption. What do the rest of you think?
kareina: (BSE garnet)
We have been talking about selling my car, since it is having issues again (1. not long after having the break work done last summer the "check break pads light started shining again. 2. sometimes it refuses to go into reverse, which means that it is a good idea to only part places where one can go forward, just in case the next time one wants to go anywhere is one of those times (this one is infrequent enough I don't always remember to park were I can go forward, and only once so far have I needed someone to tow me backwards out of the spot so I could go forward again, and, of course, the next time I needed reverse, it worked). 3. Since Norrskensfesten the battery has been having issues in draining when left unattended for a while, so we have been unhooking the battery in between use to keep it from being drained.) However, before we advertise it seems like a good thing to get it cleaned off of the thick layer of ice that accumulated while I was gone, when it snowed and then rained on top of it (since David has decided that this winter, instead of letting the car sit in the carport, he wants the tractor in there, since the car is fully enclosed, and the tractor is not, which means that if the tractor gets snowed on it requires lots of effort to get the snow off the seat so that one can use it to clear the driveway of snow. I understand his logic, but I really prefer to have the car under the carport), plus the additional snow that has fallen since then, all of which was well enough attached to the car roof that it doesn't fall off when driving, not that I have been doing any driving with this car since I got home from Seattle, since dealing with both the snow and ice, plus the battery, has made it seem like too much effort.

But knowing that the only way to sell it is to get it usable again, last night I got the battery re-attached, and the windows clear of snow and ice, so that I could drive to Folk Dance, since David wasn't up for going, and his car was at Caroline's apartment, and the car worked fine. Therefore, when I got up this morning, and saw that it was snowing I decided to take the car to work, as an excuse to sweep off the new snow. While I was shovelling a path to the car I noticed the big yellow tractor that often plows the small private road to the neighbour's house was busy doing just that. So I walked over and asked if he would be so kind as to also get my driveway this morning, just one quick pass in one end and out the other. He said that he would have a look, and, much to my surprise and delight, he not only did that bit, but while he was in the top part, where we park, he also took the time to push the pile of snow that David had built up with our tiny tractor at the edge of the parking area back several meters. There is no way our tractor could have done that. As a result of his kindness I didn't have to do that much shovelling this morning (only about 45 minutes while the car warmed up).

I spent the morning in the office. I have been having a bit of a block work-wise. The folk at UTAS/CODES have released a beta version of a program for LA-ICP-MS data processing That they call LADR, and, back before I went to Seattle, the plan was to do a side-by-side test of it and iolite, the program we have been using. But, of course, that didn't happen before the year ended. Since coming back I have tried opening LADR a few times, but each time ran into problems, closed it, and found something else to do. Today I resolved that I really do need to learn it. First I tried messing with the same project I had created before Seattle, but soon hit the same issues. Then it occurred to me that what I needed was to start over, with a new project. So I went to my notes and found a suitable one, for which I have actually done all of the data processing in iolite, and have results with which I will be able to compare the LADR results, once I have them. By that point it was 11:30, and I realised that I should take the car home and shovel some snow, since it had been snowing all morning, and tomorrow was likely to snow as well.

So I decided that I should work from home the rest of the day, shut down my computer, unhooked it from the docking station, put on my coat, and boots, grabbed my back pack, and went out the door. I drove home, got the car lined up to back into its parking spot next to the carport (where it at least is sheltered from wind blown snow from that side (which happens to be the prevailing wind direction), got out of the car, shovelled the parking spot, backed the car into place, turned it off, opened the hood, unhooked the battery, grabbed the shovel and started working on the path to the house. Then I realised that, as I was unhooking the battery, I noticed that the ice at the edge of the roof, closest to the window, had clearly melted a bit on the underside, and was now sitting a but above the roof instead of touching it. So I walked back to the car, hit that ice with my hands, and enjoyed watching it break off and slide down the window.

At that point I realised that if I turned the car back on, and let it run for a while as I shovelled snow, I would get both the benefit of additional charge into the battery, and more melting of the ice on the roof. So I did. I first knocked loose more bits of ice on the front bit of roof, and then started clearing a path to the shed that has the tarps in it, thinking that once the car is ice-free I should cover it with a tarp to prevent a new build up of ice and snow. Then, after about 40 minutes after I first started shovelling the parking spot so I could put the ca in it, I realised that while I had un-docked the computer, I hadn't actually packed it, nor had I brought it home. So I hopped back into the car and drove the 4 km back to uni, got my computer, and drove home again. This time, when I went to back into the parking spot again, the car didn't want to go into reverse. So I put it into some other gears, and tried again, and it worked, and I started backing up. But when I got half way into the spot the tires bogged a bit in a softer patch of snow, and it didn't want to back further. So I drove forward again, got out, took the shovel to that area, and went to back into the spot again. But it wouldn't go into reverse. Putting it into other gears didn't help, either.

Since it has sometimes helped to drive a little bit forward and then try again, I did that. Nope. And again. Nope. I don't recall how many times I tried, but eventually the car was on the far side of the driveway, in the area where guests normally park, and I was running out of room to go "a little bit" forward. So I gave up, left the car running, so that it would stay warm in there, got a step ladder from the house (I am too short to reach the middle bit of the car roof without help, or perhaps the car is too tall), and in fairly short order, knocked loose the last of the ice from the roof. I gave it one more try, but it still wouldn't go into reverse, so I turned it off, unhooked the battery again, and went and got the tarp from the shed and covered the car, tying it down with a heavy twine passed under the car body in front of the tires. Then I finished up the rest of the shovelling the path to the house and sheds (another hour after I had gotten back from uni the second time).

Then I went inside, fell into a book (accompanied by a bowl of popcorn and green salad) for 35 minutes, and updated my logs a bit, and, just as I was about ready to resume work, got hit by a nap attack, and slept for 30 minutes. Then I finally sat down to resume my interrupted work day.

This time I decided to be much more methodical in my approach to learning LADR, and I took detailed work flow notes about which buttons I pressed for which step, and what decisions I was making as I made them, and, much to my delight, made much better progress, hitting far fewer issues. I even figured out what was wrong with the instruction to "hold control and then double click" that the LADR "getting started" pdf had instructed me to do for one step (it turns out that it is actually a "hold shift and double click" that does the trick). I managed to get further along in the work flow than I had on my previous attempts, but eventually realised that I was tired and perhaps I should put it down for the evening. Fully five hours after I had sat down for that session of work! (Bringing me to eight hours total for the day, which means that tomorrow I can focus on Durham stuff with no guilt, as I am doing good for LTU hours so far this week.) With luck all of these notes, which look clear and easy to understand today, will still make sense when I pick this back up the day after tomorrow.

Edited to add: the next day I tried again, and this time the car went into reverse with no problems, so I backed it into its normal parking spot, unhooked the battery again, covered it with a tarp, and left it be till next we need it, or we find a potential buyer who want to see it.
kareina: (BSE garnet)
Last night I worked on the Norrskensbard and "our songs" pages of the Frostheim web page, and then stayed up later than planned when I found out that my song had won the Drachenvision contest at 12th Night, and I took the time to include links for the video, too.

Needless to say, this morning I was feeling tired, but, also feeling hopeful that the company might return my messages and send a technician to fix my laser, so I forced myself out of bed at a reasonable time (not as early as the dawn light went off, but well before it went dark again). I then opted to take the bus, since I happened to leave the house at the right time to walk to the second bus stop and then only wait 2 minutes (which meant that the trip took only 25 minutes, which is about the same as it takes to bike in the summer (including locking it at the other end). It was a beautiful morning--I love the time of the year when there are stars and planets out when I leave in the morning. Sadly, with solstice behind us now it will soon be light when I get up in the morning.

I managed to put in almost four hours of stuff for LTU today, and 43 minutes of Durham stuff (the latter of which was half replying to an email from my advisor setting up a skype call for tomorrow. I have made zero progress on my research since leaving Durham (for good and understandable reasons), and I am hoping that talking to her will remind me what I love about the project so that I resume work on it.

Then I came home (again by bus, since I happened to reach a breaking point at an appropriate time, which, given the fact that the bus runs only once an hour, is pure dumb luck). However, since I missed out on more than 40 minutes of walking I would have done if I hadn't bussed, I did do a half an hour workout this evening. I also finally got my exercise log caught up with transferring data from my phone to the spreadsheet. So far January's exercise log is looking pretty good. While I have had a couple of days where it was only yoga +/- morning situps, other days I did more than three hours of exercise over the course of the day (between walks, acroyoga, snow shovelling, etc.). If I can just manage to do more of the active days and fewer of the lazy days, while also picking back up the threads of my research, it will all be good.
kareina: steatite vessel (Durham)
The down side of being enrolled in a half-timme PhD program which doesn't have enough funding is that I constantly feel that clock ticking. In the UK a PhD is meant to be done in three years, which means that as a half time student I can take six. However, the funding my advisor got as part of her Durham start-up package was only enough to cover four years of half time tuition, which means either I need to be done in four years, or I need to find funding to make up those last two years. As a result I have been feeling like I am not making as much progress as I should have by now.

Today I met with my advisor, who assures me that I am doing fine. I am working hard on the science I need to do for my first paper, and it looks like I will have enough data to be seriously writing that paper by early next year. I should be able to have it submitted before my first "annual review" comes up in July (which will be 1.5 years since I enrolled, and thus the equivalent of nine months into the project.

I can do this. It just takes time, energy, and effort.

And appropriately timed distractions for when I need to recharge my batteries. Really looking forward to Kingdom University this weekend, it will feel good after working 8 to 10 hour days this week. I may or may not actually attend any classes, I will decide that on the day.

much better

Aug. 2nd, 2018 07:44 pm
kareina: (house)
After losing many days to the heat--not able to sit at the computer because it was just too warm upstairs, I finally passed an intelligence test and cleaned off the desk in the guest room in the basement and moved my computer, both monitors, and the ultra-heavy UPS I keep them plugged into down stairs, and I am now happily sitting in a room that is so cold I actually had to put on socks! Wonderful! Now I just need to follow up all of that industry by actually doing some work--I am somewhat behind at the moment.
kareina: steatite vessel (2nd PhD)
I still haven't found time/energy to post about Cudgel War, which is a shame, since it was so much fun. But since mom likes it when I check in now and then I shall procrastinate on doing yoga a bit longer and say something...

This is a typical Durham week for me (if one can call the third such week in my life "typical"). I spend the day on campus, this time around in the lab behind one of my advisor's office, where I first turned 25 samples into powder:

* cut or break off a bit (1.5 to 2.5 g) of rock
* wrap in grease proof paper
* insert bundle of paper and rock into a plastic bag
* gently and lovingly hit it with a hammer till the rock is either in tiny bits, or it has torn through the paper
* extract paper-wrapped rock bits from bag
* carefully pour the rock bits onto a square of the paper one uses in a lab to weigh stuff on
* if there are any pieces left bigger than about 7 mm wide pick them out with tweezers and put them onto a fresh bit of grease-proof paper.
* repeat from the hammer bit till all the bits are less than 7 mm wide
* pour the rock bits into a ball-mill and grind it for five minutes
* pour the powdered rock onto the weighing paper, fold it into an envelope, and insert it into a numbered sample bag.

That took all of yesterday. Today we analysed them on the XRD:

* Put the ring-shaped sample holder onto its base.
* pile rock powder into the middle of the ring
* use the metal cylinder to press the pile of powder flat into the space in the middle of the ring
* add yet more rock powder to the pressed pile of powder and press again
* with the metal cylinder in place to hold and cover the pressed powder, use the brush to remove any excess powder that may have landed on the ring instead of within it
* snap the flat disk onto the ring to cover the powder
* turn over the entire assembly and remove the part that had been the base (thus exposing the nicely flattened powder in the middle of the ring)
* carry it upstairs
* remove the last sample from the XRD
* insert the new sample
* enter the new sample number into the computer and press start
* while it runs empty the last sample ring, clean it and fill it with the next sample

After work (normally 17:00, but today I stayed till 18:00 to finish up all of the analyses), do the half an hour walk "home" (technically [personal profile] aryanhwy's home, but it feels like mine too when I am here), eat something and then do acroyoga with Gwen till it is time for her to go to bed (~19:30), then either do uni work on the computer (which I haven't had a chance to touch all day) or relax with FB/e/mail, etc. (or both) till time to do my normal yoga and go to bed.

Tomorrow, however, I will need to bring my luggage with me to work, as I have a train north at 14:25. Normally I would stay with [profile] sismith42 in Edinburgh, but they are out of town just now, so instead I will meet Master Duncan at the train station and head home with him for the evening. Then on Friday morning his wife will drop me off at the train station on her way to work and will head back to Luleå.
kareina: (Default)
It has been a busy couple of days of travel prep: packing for SCA event and getting ready for the conference and Durham trip. I finished the poster for the conference on Wednesday and sent it to my advisor, who thought it looked great, but suggested that it would be good to include the Durham logo and sent me a power point poster template that the department (possibly the whole uni?) uses. She will be doing the printing for me, and would happily have accepted the CorelDraw file I already had, but the uni print shop told her they would rather have powerpoint. So I spent three hours today fighting with powerpoint to re-create the same poster by copy-pasting in each text box and each photo and then using the painful ppt interface to get them to be the correct size and shape again. Then, after a break to do more event packing, I went back and spent another couple of hours on tweaks and edits.

Once it was truly done I sent her the file, and then went in to the office, where I had planned to print some flyers for the Uma XXV: Hostdans & Norrskensbard event that the autocrat had sent me (I asked her to, so I could give them out at Cudgel War), pick up the rock samples I want to take to Durham for analysis with the XRD while I am there, and then go to the grocery store to get a few things for the road (especially fresh fruit--I am totally out at home).

However, it took some time to make the printer work (had to re-install the uni printer authentication system and reintroduce my computer to the printer system). Then I decided that rather than taking the samples as they are that it would make sense to cut the bigger ones into two pieces and take only a small one of each with me to Durham (to keep the luggage reasonable in mass). This meant labelling new sample bags for all of those, and taking photos, etc. by which time the store was closed. Therefore I also took the time to enter into the spreadhseet which ones are cut and which ones I am taking the entire sample, and I even re-named all of the photos with their sample number and the word "-cut".

Now I can go get some sleep. David has to work in the morning, and has a few more things he wants to pack into his wooden chests, which need to go in the bottom row in the car, so car loading won't happen till he is home. He hopes to work only a half day, but he is in IT, so it could happen that he gets stuck having to fix something that takes hours... But we will get on the road when we do, and then it is 10 hours driving (plus breaks) to Cudgel War. I don't expect to get another chance to post again till I get to Durham on Friday the 13th, since last I checked it wasn't possible to post from my phone...

Edited to add: just taught the phone my password so I can log into the web page. So not as nice as the LJ app, which doesn't work with DreamWidth...
kareina: (stitched)
There, the grant application that has been taking so much of my time has been submitted. We can re-open it and edit as many times as we like between now and next Wednesday's deadline, but in the worst case, they at least have the current draft. This means I am free to spend tomorrow packing for the weekend's SCA event, and can enjoy the SCA event this weekend. (however, if any of my colleagues sends me comments tomorrow during the day, I will, of course pause from packing to deal with them straight away, but it also won't surprise me if I hear nothing more till Monday)

This has been a fun grant proposal to work on--I have learned a fair bit on how to do them, especially from the comments from Grants Office. I am quite happy with some of the paragraphs I wrote today. But then, it is fairly low stakes for me--if they say yes then there is another post-doc in the department with whom I will work closely, but nothing else changes for me (ok, it gets us one step closer to having the budget for me to go full time, but I don't know that this one alone would be enough for that), and if we don't get it my employment situation doesn't change at all. On the other hand, it would make a huge difference for our potential post doc. But she knows that there is only an 11% success rate, so she isn't holding her breath.
kareina: (BSE garnet)
As I think I mentioned yesterday, my energy levels at work were kinda low and I didn't get much accomplished on my first day back from vacation other than cleaning the junk out of my in-box. After last night's choir I foolishly sat up at the computer till after midnight, and then finally got around to yoga, and headed to bed around 01:00, fully expecting to be tired today, too. This morning, however, I woke up early thinking of an email from my Russian colleague, which inspired me as to a direction one of my Master's students might go in her research, so I sent her a quick email during morning situps, did my workout (which I didn't do yesterday), and triked into the office before 08:00. That was good, as it gave me time to refresh my memory on where we were on that grant application we started last spring before my 09:00 meeting with one of my colleagues to discuss it. That meeting went well, and I returned to my office inspired as to how to fill in the last few missing sections and trim down some of the earlier sections to get us closer to our page limit.

That part of the application, which describes the research project, the post-doc we want to hire for it, and our department, explaining to the evaluation committee why the project is important, why she is the perfect person to do the project, and why ours is the perfect location for the research, can't be more than 10 pages. By 14:00 today I had managed to fill in some text in every section, and shorten the long bits enough that instead of the 12 pages I started the day with, I had only 10 pages plus three extra lines of text. Satisfied with this result, I sent it off to the grants office (who had been warned it would be coming, and who are still willing to give me feedback on it), with questions as to which bit of the "gender dimension" section that I wrote are actually relevant to the evaluation committee, what else, if anything needs cutting, and have we left off any information that would make it better?

I thought to go home at that point, but just then the guy in IT who had been helping me by writing a script to merge a grid of photos from the laser into a single image called, and wondered if it would be a good time to show me how to access and use the script. It was, so we did, and it turns out to be very easy. Now I just need to find the time to take a new set of photos, with a closer spacing this time, so that we can crop off the outermost edge, where the photos get darker as the edge of the field of view on the laser is further from the light source. Then, when I know how much to crop, he will write the next half of the script, so I can crop and stitch with the typing of one simple command.

Just as I finished up that one of my colleagues, who is a structural geologist, stopped by the office with a question. He wanted to know what kinds of depths equate to 1 kb of pressure. My first answer was "not bloody much", and I reached for my copy of the bible of metamorphic petrology and quickly flipped to a diagram like this one, which shows both pressure and depth, one on each side of the diagram. He was quite pleased to hear this, since he has been trying to understand the rocks in his field area, which are very folded, yet lack any clues indicating high pressure. Another of our colleagues had done some P-T work on rocks from that area, and calculated pressures of about 1 kb, which is really low, but temperatures high enough to permit a rock undergo ductile deformation. Apparently there is also brittle deformation in the fold hinges in that area, which also makes sense in a high heat-low pressure area, as the deformation concentrated there could use up enough of the heat to permit the transition to brittle.

I also managed to talk with my other colleague about my idea for the one master's student to work with the samples from Russia, and she likes the idea. Now if the student only likes it, too. Then, just as I was leaving my office to head home, my other Master's student dropped by to make an appointment for tomorrow morning to discuss what she wants to do for her project.

On a normal work day I sit alone in my office and never see or hear anyone. Today I spoke with five different people in the line of duty, and enjoyed it.

To celebrate I came home and made some home made noodles with veg and nuts and seeds. I have the house to myself the next couple of days while [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar and C. are up north visiting one of her friends from uni, who is working at the Naturum Visitor Centre in Laponia, the World Heritage part of Swedish Lappland. I have never been up there, so I would have loved to have joined them, but with the grant proposal mentioned above due on 14 September, I really can't spare the time. Besides, it might be easier for them to look like a normal couple, rather than a triple when visiting a friend from school.

Look, mom, since I have been home I have been good about posting pretty much every day, so you will have something to read. However, now that they are letting you out of the hospital early since you have had such a rapid recovery from your stroke, I don't know if you will have time to keep checking this daily.
kareina: (me)
This week has slipped by very quickly--we have managed several four-hour sessions on earth cellar building, and are now nearing the point where we will be able to start building the framework for the roof. We have also managed to get in some yard work--the first few strawberries and smultrons are starting to ripen, he fixed the ride-on mower (again) and has taken it down to clear something resembling a path between the many black currant bushes, we transplanted a little plant with maple-leaves that had been growing just inside of the carport.

I remember seeing it there early last summer, and wondering if it was a baby tree (there are no maple trees any where in the neighbourhood), but then it got taken out, along with the grass and flowers also trying to grow in that area, when he took the weed-wacker to it. When I saw it again this summer I decided it was cute, and perhaps it should have a chance to live elsewhere. So I moved it to the little triangle of land between the walkways to the house and sheds. Then we set three large red granite old curb stones around it, so that he will remember not to run it over with a lawn mower, and so that none of the paths drift onto it when shoveling snow in the winter. It will be interesting to see if it grows up to be a bush, a tree, or what.

Yesterday afternoon we visited the other local laurel and his family, since [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar had been helping him with some computer repairs, and the part he had been waiting for had finally arrived. They invited us to stay for dinner afterwords, which was lovely (especially as they eat early enough in the evening that I was still hungry!).

Inspired by [livejournal.com profile] lifeofglamour's reports of her regular fitness workouts I finally decided this week to look to see if there were a useful phone app that might encourage me to do a bit more exercise than I get from my daily situps, yoga, and concreting rocks into the earth cellar in progress. I am not inclined to use videos as she does, but I was willing to download one of the simple 30-day challenge apps that only provides a list of which exercises it thinks one should do on a given day, and an illustrated description of how to do them. I can now report that starting from "beginner, level one" (which, so far, is taking me 15 minutes to complete all the exercises for a day) is really easy if one is as active as I am, except for the squats. There is nothing like squats in my normal daily movement patterns, so that one actually gets me to break a sweat. Today was day three, and it involved 75 normal squats, and another 14 "wide squats". Makes me a bit concerned about what Advanced, level two will be like. However, if I do the app in order from the beginning, that is six months from now, so nothing I need to worry about yet.

Have I mentioned how wonderful my boyfriend is recently? As I sat here typing this he came in and did the vacuuming. How many other people have partners who do house work after 01:00 in the morning (or at all)? Now I hear him playing the piano in the next room, so I will post this and go enjoy it...
kareina: (me)
April and May were particularly busy months for me, and included travel. As a result my exercise log got kind of behind. Not the basic data entry--these days I do that on my phone, but the excel spreadsheet where I actually tally up the number of hours spent on various activities and convert the data to graphs--that part didn't really get done during those two months. Since then I have managed to keep that part up to date for new stuff, and have, every so often, gone back and copy-pasted the older data into the spreadsheet. Tonight I finally finished all of that for those two months, to discover that while April was fairly typical in terms of my exercise levels, May was the lowest month since I started keeping the logs in Excel where I could see the graphs as they form. I strongly suspect that, had I been pulling that data into Excel and looked at the graphs as they were forming, I would likely have been a bit (ok, a lot) more active that month. Oh well, the logs are current now, and likely to remain that way--nothing like seeing a record low to inspire one to return to paying attention to that aspect of one's life!

We managed another four batches of concrete today, and, since today's rock were on the back side of the wall, we were also able to fill in lots of gravel and dirt behind the walls. (Why, yes, yes that does count towards the above mentioned exercise log.) Sadly, some of the rocks used today were particularly pretty, but no one will ever see them again, since they are on the back side of the wall. So it goes, and it can't be helped--there are far too many pretty rocks available for all of them to wind up in visible places in the walls (and, sometimes, rocks that aren't so pretty wind up in visible locations because that is where they happen to fit best).

While I was updating my logs [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar managed to do some maintenance on the ride-on lawn mower and make progress on the great computer stuff sorting project which has been filling the guest room. Not too much more needing to happen in there before it will be ready for mom's visit in September.

If it isn't raining tomorrow (or only does it lightly) we can make more earth cellar progress, if it is we can focus on other projects. Monday some friends are coming over for dinner, one of whom I have been discussing the possibility of her becoming my apprentice. I hope she says yes, it would be lovely to have a local apprentice.

Have I mentioned that I will be running Norrskennsfest in November? It is the big event of the year for the shire, and I am looking forward to it. We are looking at doing a day-time feast and bardic competition, in addition to some of the traditional activities.
kareina: (stitched)
They have finally published the article summarizing the research I did for the first few years I was at LTU. Such a relief to finally have that well and truly done... (if anyone actually wants to read it and doesn't have access to the journal give me an email address and I can send you a copy, but I don't know that it will be interesting to anyone who isn't working on a related geologic research project...)
kareina: (BSE garnet)
We have confirmation from the supplier that the Argon Gas, which is necessary to run our laser ablation system, will actually be delivered on 17 April, and the installation of the Laser is scheduled for the week of 20 April. So, just over 6.5 months after being hired to run the LA-ICP-MS lab, I will actually have a LA-ICP-MS to run!

It will be an interesting, and hopefully fun, change to my working life.

So, basically, the trip to the Known World Dance event in Germany will be the turning point--I will come back from that on 19 April, and the next day we will start installing the lab.
kareina: (BSE garnet)
In Sweden both the Friday before and the Monday after Easter are public holidays, and the Thursday before most businesses are only open the first half of the day. Since we had the days off and would be free to hang out, C came up from Göteburg to spend time with us. She will actually be here two full weeks, and intends to use the time we are at work to make time on her studies for the distance courses she is currently working on.

However, even though we have a friend over and it is time to work on projects (my dress is nearly done now!), I am still finding a bit of time to work on that paper from my research when I was in Italy. By getting up way too early in the morning and doing a couple of hours while they are still asleep, but at least it is something. Today I wrapped up a section of the paper, and sent what I have to my co-authors in Italy for their feedback. Assuming they don't make time to look at it till after Easter this means I can enjoy the rest of these days off without feeling guilty about not working on that project any more.
kareina: (stitched)
life is busy

Spring (which is to say weather that flits back and forth above and below zero every day) came early, just before I got back from Australia and is still here, so the snow is steadly melting. However, we had enough that it is still nearly knee high in some places, so I have been out cross country skiing fairly often. Not that I need to mind you, I could just walk on that solid icy stuff if I wanted to.

Been working on that paper from my Italian research, and managed to finally finish editing a 75 page manuscript for some of my colleagues. Still no laser at work.

Tomorrow we head to the Skellefteå area for an SCA event.

My bliaut isn't done yet, but it is getting closer--one last seam to finish before I can start attaching the trim to the hem and do the side lacing.

We decided to head to Double Wars in May, which will be a long drive. One could do it in 15.5 hours if one didn't need to stop, and could do the speed limit the whole way. We will have a trailer, so no faster than 80 km/hr, and we will stop often to stretch, and at least once to nap, so we guess at least 24 hours.
kareina: (BSE garnet)
Long time readers of my journal may recall that I spent 1.5 years in Italy, doing experimental petrology, which is the process of making very tiny rocks by putting powder of a known composition into a 2 mm diameter gold tube (7 mm long), welding the tube shut, and subjecting it to really high pressures and temperatures for two weeks to a month, before opening them up and looking at which minerals grew, and what specific composition those minerals had. I did this a number of times, at a variety of temperatures and pressures, and, as expected, there was a definite pattern to which minerals formed at what temperature/pressure combination.

In an ideal world I would have written up the results from that post doc position while I was still in Italy, but I was still doing experiments up till a week or two before the job ended and I moved to Sweden (for love of [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar, and it didn't happen. Then I was having so much fun spending time with a delightful man I didn't make much progress on the paper, and then I got hired at LTU for a project that was demanding enough I totally abandoned all attempts to do anything with that paper. I did, briefly, consider dusting off my notes and returning to it last year around this time, when I went to 25% time at work, but then I enrolled in that Swedish for Immigrants course, which took up the energy which might otherwise have gone for that.

However, now that I am working 50%, I have been thinking I really ought to get back to that paper--after all, I did finally finish the paper from my PhD research, it would be nice to make a clean sweep of all of my research UFOs. Besides, that was a fun and interesting project, and the data will be useful to other people (and therefore I would get cited, too).

The straw that finally tipped the balance and prompted me to write to my old boss from Italy was seeing an email to one of my geology lists that said:

***********
DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 30, 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Section on Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism for the centennial celebration of American Mineralogist

Special Section Associate Editors Jane A. Gilotti, Daniela Rubatto and Hans-Peter Schertl are soliciting papers on the broad spectrum of mineralogical, petrological, and geochemical aspects of ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism in crustal rocks. Topics of interest include aspects of UHP mineral nano- and microstructure, crystallography, fluid and melt inclusions, petrology and geochemistry related to UHP topics, and geochronological studies. Papers that present theoretical, analytical or conceptual advances toward the understanding of UHP metamorphism are particularly encouraged. The window for submission of papers is has been extended to June 30, 2015. Please contact the guest editors with the title of your intended submission, and any questions, if you have not done so already. Follow the instructions for online submittal on the American Mineralogist website. The papers will be reviewed on an as received basis, and they will be published in American Mineralogist as soon as they complete the review process under the special heading of Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism. Papers will be collected in a dedicated hard copy version after all the papers are published.
***********

So I forwarded the announcement to Stefano, and asked him if he thought it might be worth re-working my paper in progress to better fit that series. He replied in the affirmative, so I spent quite a while today composing a letter to the Special Section Associate Editors to ask if they would be interested in my submitting my research, which actually focuses on the changes in which minerals are present above and below the transition between high and ultra high pressure metamorphism.

Now, I must confess that, before I saw the call for papers I hadn't actually though in those terms about my work--when I started the position he told me that I would be working on "elucidating the talc-garnet tie line", which, now that I look at my results, corresponds pretty much exactly with the above mentioned transition between "UHP and HP". Having this new way to look at it will make it *much* easier to write the introduction and discussion sections of this paper. My first draft of the paper, which never got done, was actually being written more like a thesis, describing what I did and what the results were, with pretty much no "so what" at all, because, honestly, at the time I did the experiments, I didn't really know "so what". Perhaps if I had remained in Italy until I finished the paper I would have worked out that part in conversations with my boss, but I had other things to do, and left the day my contract ended.

I am actually looking forward to doing this paper, and doing it right this time.
though there is a minor hitch )

However, before I got very far with the new outline I saw that I had a bounced message notice--the address in the ad for one of the editors was incorrect, so I looked her up on line and re-sent to her real address, noting in passing that she is doing REALLY interesting work on Greenland UHP rocks!. She replied almost immediately to say that they are interested, please submit. She also included an article from her Greenland research for me to read. It is, in fact, as interesting as I had expected from the blurb on her web page.

So now I have a new goal: write up the research I did whist in Italy and get it published in the Special Section on Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism for the centennial celebration of American Mineralogist, before the 30 June deadline. Wish me luck.
kareina: (BSE garnet)
When last I posted it was the first week day of my second week in Tassie. At the time I rather expected that I would continue to check in each day and record my adventures. Nope. Been home for the better part of a week, and haven't posted any of that, either. So, what can I remember...

Ok, the training week was both really, really useful, and a bit disappointing. The latter because, while I know I learned lots, I am also aware of just how much more I am going to need to learn to be able to do my job well, once our lab actually exists. I did wind up making a rater long list of stuff that our lab will need to acquire, preferably by the time we are operational. Did you know that there exists a hand-held meter for measuring the energy of a laser beam? Neither did I. The model of laser they have in Tasie has two different places one can measure it--once at the beginning, right after it gets generated, and again at the end before it gets focused and goes into the sample analysis chamber. The way the tool works is that it has a little round bit of (glass?) in a frame that gets slotted into a gap in the machine, blocking the laser path. The laser beam travels right through the gas, and sensors built into the frame send a message up the wire to the hand-held unit, which converts the information to an number, which it displays on the screen. If everything is working properly then that number will match the one you entered into the controlling computer saying how much energy the laser is supposed to be firing at today. It will also be the same both at the beginning of its path, and after traveling through the machine (and being bent around corners by the mirrors). A good lab checks this daily. Oh, and that gap into which one puts the sensor? One can stick ones finger in there--at that point in the process the laser hasn't been focused--it is still a fairly wide beam, and you can't feel anything more than what you would feel to have any other beam of light shining upon you. Yes, the laboratory analysis demonstrated this for me.

The adventures I did during my second week in Tassie included:

Monday: Contra dance. So much fun! I have missed contra dancing. I did my best to convince my friends D & C who run the contra dances there to come to Sweden and teach a contra dance workshop here.

Tuesday: SCA dance practice: More fun! It was good to practice a bit of Italian Ren dances--we don't tend to do them up here, and I will need to do some at the Known World Dance event in Germany in April. Held at the home of a friend who has a lovely house built in a really pretty farming valley about a half a hour south of Hobart. His cow had a new calf, and the flock of wallabies which graze in his paddock includes an albino wallaby.

Wednesday: Walked into town and met my dance friend C, then drove to a home on the other side of the river, where lives a man who has been making and selling leather hats at the Salamanca Market in Hobart for more than 40 years. I bought two hats from him--one for [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar, and one for me. Then we did a walk along a lovely sandy beach, and after that we drove a bit further down the road and walked along another beach, which was muddier, had lots more plant life, and a fair bit of wildlife (crabs, etc.). She showed me one of the plants along the shore, which is mostly green, but it has red bits, which start low and gradually work their way to the tips, and then the red bit falls off. The red part is where the plant is concentrating all of the salt it takes up, and getting rid of it when it falls off. She then plucked up a bit of red end and bit it to taste the salt. Since she didn't seem hurt by doing this, I tried it. Yup, really salty. I only tasted, I didn't eat any--I don't tend to use salt in my cooking, so strong salty taste isn't appealing.

Thursday: The only evening I spent in my hotel room instead of adventuring with people (I needed it by then!) I had thought to catch up on posting to livejournal (I do my reading on the phone during my morning situps, but it isn't practical to post then), but instead spend the time on a skype call to my sweetie at home, and showed him the hat and other stuff I had gotten for him. I also showed him the SCA stuff we had gotten from [livejournal.com profile] clovis_t's mum, and he surprised me by saying that he wanted more of the armour and shields and costumes than I had expected. This complicated things, since my luggage on the way down was already 15 kg of my 30 kg limit, and it took a bit of effort to manage to make it all fit. In fact, I wound up leaving behind the aluminium heater shield with metal basket hand protection, and only brought home the aluminium round shield--it wouldn't have been worth paying the excess baggage fees for that last 4 kg. So an SCA friend kept it and said she would sell it and give
[livejournal.com profile] clovis_t the money for it.

Friday: met up with my friend E, with whom I had done adventures the first weekend, and we did one final adventure, walking on a beach (it was a hot day, so that sea breeze was really welcome). I gave her the last bit of food I had purchased and not yet eaten (a little bit of flour, 4 eggs, and part of a pack of butter--I did alright guessing how much to buy, I think), and then she took me to the airport for my flight to Melbourne to visit my step-sister, K and her husband and their sons. I had only met the boys once before, back in 2011. Now the oldest is almost 10 and his brother about 6.

Saturday was really hot (35 C). K and I went in the morning to a yoga studio near her house. She did the 1.5 hour beginning class, and sent me to the next room for the intermediate class. This is the first yoga class I have attended in many years, and it was rather nice to just follow what someone else was doing for a change. She also had a couple of poses I hadn't seen before, which was nice. In the afternoon we drove further up into the hills (they live in Belgrave, which is as far from the city as one can get and still be on the train line) to a park on a river, and we kids played in the river while K relaxed on the beach in the shade. Ok, I spent a bit of time on shore at first too, because the ankle-deep water next to our blanket was in the sun, but then I discovered that just down stream a bit there was a stretch where the river was in shadow and the water was deep enough in one spot (next to some lovely rock outcrop) that if I stood up in it only my head and shoulders would stick out.

Sunday we just hung out with one another, visited, and lounged around the house and tried to keep cool (went through a fair bit of ice in our water) until it was time to head to the airport for my long journey home.

The trip down had involved:

*~1.25 hour flight to Stockholm
*~2.25 hour wait at the airport in Stockholm
*~6.25 hour flight to Dubai
*~4.5 hour wait at the Dubai airport
*~7 hour flight to Kuala Lumpur
*~1.5 hour wait at the Kuala Lumpur airport
*~7 hour flight to Melbourne

By comparison the flight home was faster:

*~14 hour flight to Dubai
*~2.25 hour wait at the Dubai airport
*~6.25 hour flight to Stockholm
*~2.25 wait at the Stockholm airport
*~1.25 hour flight to Luleå

Luckily, that plane for the 14 hour flight is a huge one, which meant that the area at the base of the stairs and next to the toilets was large enough that it was possible to do yoga there. I did yoga and the physical therapy exercises they gave me to keep my hips from hurting when I sit three different times that flight! (and in every airport on the way,and the trip down included both yoga and physical therapy at every airport--next to a nice little waterfall in Dubai).

I arrived home to what seems to be a really early Spring. The temperatures here have been hovering around 0 C, and often warmer than that, and predicted to be mostly warmer than zero for at least the next nine days. This means that there has been a fair bit of melting--huge puddles in parking lots and on some roads. Slippery sidewalks. I remember complaining about this kind of weather last year around this time, or perhaps a bit later. I still don't like it much and would rather have the nice -15 C temps and fluffy snow, but I must confess that after two weeks of summer, which both begun and ended with temps of +35 C, and am really enjoying the comfort of temps ranging from -4 to +4. Though I shouldn't have worn that cotton sweater under my coat the other day for the walk home from work--I wound up sweating.

One advantage of the warm weather is that it has made it slightly easier to deal with one of the downsides of home ownership--the filter pump on our septic system has died (after many years of use). So [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar ordered a new one, and while waiting for it to arrive rigged up a temporary one run by an extension cord from the house (ok several of them to reach that far) with an attached hose he ran over the snow from the one tank to the next. Since it has, just, been freezing at night he has had to go out each evening after work to bring out the pump and turn it on for a few hours, then bring it back in before bed. But the new pump arrived Friday, and it has the correct fittings to attach to the underground hose (or pipes?) connecting the two tanks, so it can be just left out there. Tomorrow he will attach it to the underground electric cable that the old pump had been running from, and we will be able to bring back in those electric cables. If it had chosen a week of -20 for this I am not certain it would have worked to run the hose over the snow--at those temps perhaps it would have frozen even though the pump was running.

Now that I am home we finally have a date (17 April) for the arrival of the Argon gas canister, being shipped from the US, that is needed for the installation of our laser--it needs the Ar to make the plasma so we can analyze the samples, and apparently it isn't permitted to use European gas canisters with their different sized openings. Assuming nothing comes up between now and then we will have the laser installed promptly after the gas arrives, and my job as a laser operating mad scientist will properly begin. In the meantime my Master's student, who was supposed to finish up last spring, has finally returned from his holiday in Thailand and given me his latest draft to check, and a couple of my colleagues have given me a long manuscript they have been working on to check it for good use of the English language, so I have plenty to do to keep me busy at work.

I am certain there was more, but I have been typing quite long enough...
kareina: (stitched)
This morning we bundled the hammer duclimer, nyckleharpa, a microphone, a trolley and box of cables into the car, drove to Uni, where [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar dropped me and the music stuff off at my office on his way to work. I spent the morning accomplishing stuff (to the point where my in-box was empty!), and at noon I wheeled the music stuff towards the next building, and was met by [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar on the way, so he took the trolley and I had only the dulcimer left to carry.

The Solar Wind Orchestra performed four tunes for the students hanging out in the big room with a stage and some comfy couches, and then I brought the gear back to my office and [livejournal.com profile] lord_kjar hopped into his work car to do the 45 minute drive to Piteå, where he had a computer to fix (or something). I then spent another few hours doing useful stuff on the computer, and finished up and started walking home around the same time he started driving back from Piteå. I walked briskly, and managed to get home about 5 minutes before he did, but that was enough time to get our car plugged in so that it would be warm for the trip back to campus for choir and start a pot of vegetable soup.

Since we didn't have much time available, I did a really quick soup: I tossed one chunk of frozen mashed pumpkin (which I had cooked and mashed a month or two back and froze in empty yoghurt (actually skyr) containers) into a pot with a little water, and turned the stove on high and put more water into the electric kettle to warm up. I then tossed a handful of frozen cabbage, the last of the bag of frozen mixed corn, broccoli and capsicum, a handful of frozen kale, another of frozen spinach, and some additional frozen broccoli into a bowl to wait a bit before putting into the soup pot. About the time I finished that and got the rest of the frozen veg back into the freezer the kettle was hot, so I added that water to the pot. As soon as the pumpkin had thawed I tossed in the rest of the veg, a "can" (cardboard box) of lentils, and a can of sliced water chestnuts into the pot. Added some pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, a few green herbs, and a dash of soy sauce. As soon as the pot returned to a boil I took it off the heat and sat down to eat, only 21 minutes after completing the walk (and that time included taking off coat and boots).

This gave me 40 minutes to relax with a book before we went out to choir, where the turnout was really low--we started with one each soprano, bass, and tenor, and three altos. A bit later a second bass showed up. However, we had lots of fun. Sung Dona Nobis, a couple of new songs I hadn't seen before, and Spider Pig. However, our director had only three parts for Dona Nobis, so I promised to email her a pdf with all five parts--I hope that she likes the other two parts and we add them to the list.

After choir we picked up the music stuff from my office, unloaded it, finally shoveled away the berm that got plowed over the bottom of the driveway yesterday, I emailed the pdf to the choir director, and spent a full hour paging down my FB feed reading all kinds of good news, and inspirational posts. Eventually I hit a negative post, followed promptly by a political one, and so I decided to close FB and post here instead. I have heard a fair few people lately complain about FB being too negative/argumentative/political, and I am pleased to report that, actually, those posts are in the minority of what I see over there. Perhaps I have used the "I don't want to see" this button often enough, and long enough ago that the computer in charge of deciding what should be important to me learned? Perhaps I just know lots of wonderful people? Either way, I am happy with it.

Ok, time for yoga and bed!

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kareina

July 2025

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