kareina

I have been trying to convince my apprentice, E. and my acroyoga partner (also an) E. that they want to come with us to Nyckleharpa night for many weeks now. Or rather, I managed to convince them weeks ago that they wanted to, but since it only happens every other week, and they have both managed to be sick or have conflicts, tonight is the first time it actually happened. They are both musicians with a city orchestra, one on the clarinet, the other cello, and both did well with picking up nyckelharpa (the cello player), and our huge base moraharpa (the clarinet player) and playing along. Since we took the new car we also had room for my dulcimer in the car, which is the first time in ages that I brought that along. It was fun to join them for the few songs I knew, though, with five nyckelharpas and a moraharpa playing I couldn't really hear my own instrument.

In between playing along I made some good progress finally turning the scrap wool from the veil I made quite a while ago into a small coif for me. It is nice to pick back up a long unfinished UFO. Granted, the only reason I did on this occasion is that the time before heading out that I would have spent getting my gambeson in progress to a state that was portable (I finished quilting the back at the weekend's gaming con demo, and haven't had a chance to cut out the next pieces yet) was instead finishing up E's letter of reference for her application to head to Japan this summer for a student research experience. I hope that she gets it. However, I also hope that she stays here this summer, since she plans to be my (unpaid) lab assistant if she doesn't, so that she can learn to use the LA-ICP-MS in prep for doing a Master's degree with it next autumn. In other words, it looks like my apprentice in the SCA will become my student in real life, too. Not so surprising, since we first met on a geology field trip to Cyprus in 2012, when she was one of the students, and I was one of the teachers. She has been referring to me as "her professor" ever since.

Today was fun at work--I got to spend the day helping the PhD student in the next office (who is 99% done with her degree--she has defended and everything, but still has a few weeks left to do stuff till her funding runs out) set up a laser experiment. It took 6.5 hours to set it up, let it run (1 hour), do a preliminary glance at the data and agree to actually do stuff with it in the morning, and chat briefly with my boss.

Since I need to meet her at 08:30 I really should have been in bed a while ago, but there is still yoga to do, so perhaps I had better put down the computer and get to it.

Today's Cyprus field trip focused on the young sedimentary rocks, so we spent the day along the coast visiting various outcrops. One of the stops brought us to the top of a cliff which curved gracefully around some lovely blue water. In the initial discussion the trip leader commented that the students were to look at the five different sediment layers exposed here and determine how each wa different from the other. He then pointed out that there were two ways to get down to the bottom "one of them is not recommended" he commented, as a random guy, who was also on the cliff top, jumped out into the water, far below. He then pointed out that if we walked around the curve of the cliff to the far side there was a sloped bit that made for an easy climb that would take one past each of the rock units in turn.

As we chatted a bit more one of the boys in our group jumped down into the water. I commented that I wasn't going to--wearing too many clothes, and the pack full of food and tablet (since it was way too hot to leave it in the car). Then another of our boys jumped. Then one of our girls startd to, hesitated, pulled back, approached the edge again, hesitated, pulled back again several more times before another of our girls went ahead and jumped (without hesitating) to show her it was ok. By this time I was gettin more and more tempted. That water looked very inviting. I was hot. I used to love jumping off the roof of the house onto the grass when I was little. Jumping off the Pipline into the snow was fun, too. Yet this was ever so much higer...

The first girl looked like she wanted too, but still she hesitated, and something inside me clicked into place, I would do it. I took off the pack, stripped down to my bra, panties, and sun hat (a wet hat would feel good later!) and put my hearing aids safely into their case. I entrusted the stuff to the students, and over I went. I wanted to hesitate, but the sun was shining on me, and I no longer wore my long trousers or long sleeved silk shirt to protect my skin, so there wa no time to delay, only to do, off I went!

I have never before lept off of something that high before, and it surprised me just how *long* I fell before hitting the water. There was more than enough time while falling to think about just how long it was taking, to wonder if I really just did that, and when I would eventualy reach water. In addition to all of that pondering I must also have curled up and tensed up my neck and shoulders, since while my feet did hit first, my bottom hit firmly enoug to feel the slap of the water, and when I swam over to where people climb back up I noticed that the muscles in my shoulder/neck were a bit sore. Only onthe rigt side at first, but now, hours later, the tightness extends all the way across the tops of both shoulders. I have rubbed them with tiger balm, and will soo go do yoga and get some sleep, which should make them feel better.

One more field day, then 1.5 travel days and I will be at Double War. lord_kjar and the Frostheim bus got there today. He set up the pavilion (without me :-( and sunshade. He tells me the sunshade is huge, and promises to upload photos soon so that I can see it.

I woke up from an odd dream this morning, wherein he and I were setting up the sunshade for the first time at an SCA event with a really odd layout. The site was long and narrow, with a drop-off on each side of it (rather like the narrow hotel bed upon which I wa sleeping). The land was just wide enough to set up the sunshade, with the skinny width filling the land width. Therefore it was necessary to put it up on some sort of scaffolding, so that people would be able to walk under the ends which stake to the ground (same style at the BC) as they walked around site. This made the roof *really, really* high. Sadly, I woke up before I managed to get to a place where I could actually look at it...

This morning was the hottest day since we arrived in Cyrpus. It was also the first day we were not in the mountains. I can't really recommend this combination. Our first stop of the day was a "mapping exercise". In this case "mapping" meant measuring a road cut (both sides of the road), drawing the profile of the hill, and then drawing the features of the road cut onto the profile. The students seemed to do reasonablly well with the assignment, but we were all relived whenthey finished and we could get back into the airconditioned cars. It was hot enough that the boys all stripped down to just shorts and shoes and most of the girls were not wearing much more than that. I, of course, wore long trousers and a loose long sleeved silk shirt over my tshirt to keep the sun off my skin (and a hat too). Honestly, I may have been cooler than they were, thanks to the extra fabric.

One of the features of that particular outcrop which made the mapping less pleasant than it might have been was the smell. Some sort of pungent animal dung was along the road, right there between the two road cuts, and in the heat it was rather stronger than I wanted to be around. The mapping took all morning, and then we drove up the road towards our second stop of the day looking for a nice place to have lunch. Not seeing anything really appealing we finally settled for stoping at a small local store/cafe which had a bit of shade. After enjoying my lunch (cous cous, broad beans and zuchini, which I cooked last night) I decided that since it wa so hot I would buy a popsicle at the store. Much too sweet, but the temperature was perfect!

Then the clouds came in, along with some wind, and the day got better. Stop number two wa a cute little mountain peak in someone's backyard. The peak is pillow lava, with a few visible feeder dikes, and zeolites growing in some vessicles. From there we went to an old mine site. Up until they quit mining during a war in the 1970's that location had been mined for about 3000 years. At first just the obvious copper deposits (the name Cyprus and the name copper come from one another), and in recent times the massive sulfide ores.

Then we came back to the hotel early enough to recover from the day by hopping into the pool. The students are now out at a resutrant for dinner, but since I don't eat in the evenings I stayed home to catch up onmail, do my yoga, and perhaps read a bit. Three more field days, and 1.5 travel days left till I get to Double Wars...

I spent the day Thursday alternating between cooking food to take with us on the drive, and finishing up slides for my talk in Tromsø on Friday. archinonlive got home from work later than he might liked to have done, so it was around 20:00 before we finally started driving. From Luleå to Tromsø is predicted by GoogleMaps to be a 9 to 10 hour drive. However, it is winter, so we rather expected it would take longer than that. The roads were clear, cold (as low as -30 by the car thermometer), and beautiful for much of the drive; it wasn't till we got well into Norway (north of Narvik) that we hit warm, snowy weather. By "snowy" think 10 to 20 cm deep and falling fast in thick, fluffy flakes. By that time it was after 05:00, so there were more lorries on the road than had been earlier in the morning, and, of course, each time one passed us heading the other way visibility disappeared totally unless we slowed waaaaay down. Needless to say, we didn't actually get to Tromsø till after 07:00.

So we went to uni and found a couch in the geology department and took a couple of hour nap (I'd had a bunch of short naps during the drive, but he drove the whole way, so had been up for over 24 hours at that point). We got up on time for my 11:00 meeting, and he came along to the part where I did my talk describing the research I did in Tassie and the research I did in Italy. Then he wandered off for another nap and I spent a couple of hours discussing the research they are doing in the Kalak Nappe Complex and what I could do if I can manage to get funding to join them.

After the meeting we checked into the hotel and got another nap before meeting the geologists at a pub. That pub closed around 18:00, and the others said that the plan was to go from there to another pub for one more drink, and then off to dinner. If plan A had happened I might have been able to join them in food, but instead of one quick drink they happily chatted over several (I, of course, drank only water). Eventually archinonliveand I called it a night and went back to our room, leaving the others happily chatting at the pub. I did yoga and he had a late dinner (it was after 20:00 by then) and we went to sleep by 22:00 so that we'd be able to do the return drive during daylight hours.

Saturday's snowfall in Sweden was no where near as heavy as Friday's had been, and the plows had been out, so the roads were in reasonable shape. As a result we managed to take some photos of mountains on the drive, though many of the peaks were hiding behind clouds. I'll try to find time to upload some of the photos later. We managed the drive in just under 8 hours, so we had plenty of time to unpack and relax before getting to sleep early again.

Sunday we normally do SCA fighter training between 10:00 and 12:00, but this week we opted to sleep in, instead so as to better recover from the road trip. In the afternoon we went out shopping, acquiring useful items like a beard trimmer for him, a popcorn popper for me, and a wake-up light. We could have gone to Swedish folk dancing at a local restaurant this evening, and considered it, since we had so much fun last time. But the lure of a relaxed evening (testing out that popcorn popper!) won out this time. Fortunately, we have folk dance class tomorrow night, so there will be some exercise.

Having made the time to create a photo-rich post for my Geo-blog, I'm not really going to post further tonight, other than to say that I'm still enjoying the short course, and am glad that clovis_t has joined me out here. Not only is he good company, but he brought the cable that attaches the camera to the computer.

More photos will likely wind up on Facebook, later, and I might even make time to link some here, but it is too late to do so tonight. Morning classes are early...

I flew into Edinburgh last Friday afternoon. This was a *long* day--I stayed up way too late the night before trying to finish up some work on a paper I'm the second author for and then packing, and then got up way too early so that I could do the half an hour walk to the train station from which the cheap bus to the airport departs. That walk is much harder when dragging suitcases--my elbows were not happy with me. When I arrived I was greeted by sismith42, whom I'd not seen since her departure for this country to do her Master's degree many years before. It was a delight to see her again, and I've truly been enjoying being her guest. I'd never met her husband, loupblanc (they met over here) and was delighted to see that she'd chosen such an attractive long haired-man with whom to share her life and start a family.

Saturday she and I went on an adventure on our own, leaving him to play with their daughter and do the gardening he wanted to do. She did a post on that topic, with links to her photos (my camera batteries were flat), so I'll let that stand as the record of the day.

Sunday I did a pre-conference field trip. So far I've written up stop one for my other blog and I plan to do the other stops in future posts. Suffice it to say that it was much fun. The only person I really spoke to on the trip was the trip-leader. This is, no doubt, due to my tendency to walk quickly and stick close to the teacher whenever a "class" is out for an adventure--my hearing problem means that I need to stay nearby if I want to hear anything, and I'm not willing to risk missing any interesting information. The rest of the group spread out a *long* way behind those of us who were in the lead as we walked from one outcrop to the next.

This trip really reminded me that even though my favourite rocks are the pretty metamorphic ones, with the slow-cooling (and therefore large-grained) igneous as a second choice, I really do love all aspects of geology, and I found it much fun to be tramping around on an extinct volcano and seeing such important outcrops to the history of geology.

I chose to miss the conference "ice breaker" that evening--our bus returned from the field trip at 17:00, and it wasn't scheduled till 18:00. They were holding it at the uni residence halls at which most conference attendees were staying, but sismith42's house is on the other side of town. She'd been wonderful and dropped me off in the morning on time to join the trip, and she lent me her old mobile phone, so I could call them when we returned and get a ride home (buses not running much on Sundays). So as our bus approached the university I called "home" and let them know we were back, and spent a very pleasant evening with my hosts, rather than meeting geologists.

Monday was the first day of the conference, and there were many interesting metamorphic talks. I intend to blog about them as well, but I was so tired that evening I didn't do it then, and still haven't gotten to it. Oh well, I've got the program to help me fill in details when I do. I took the bus in, and was appalled to find out that it takes fully 45 minutes for it to wend its way through the city center and reach the uni.

Tuesday morning there was only one track of talks, and I didn't understand any of those abstracts in the program. So rather than attending those talks, I slept in, and then she and I went into town and ran some errands and had a stroll in the park before she dropped me off at uni so I could attend the Poster session. I hung out near my poster and had conversations with people when they came round to read it. One of the people I met turns out to be the husband of the woman in Seina, Italy with whom I published a paper comparing the Tasmanian ecologites with those of Antarctica. (I asked him about her, as he'd done a talk where she was listed as the first author.)

While waiting for the bus home that evening I got to speaking with a woman who was also waiting for the bus, who commented that the bus is often late, and it is generally faster to ride her bike, but some days that isn't an option for one reason or another. This reminded me that sismith42 had said that I could borrow her bike if I wanted.

Therefore this morning I chose to commute by bike. Because she and I are pretty much the same size this was an easy thing to accomplish--I didn't even have to adjust the straps on her helmet, which is amazing--my head is so unusually small I normally need to really take in straps in order to get other people's bike helmets to fit me. There is a major bike path which happens to pass right next to her house, so for the first half of the journey I enjoyed a pleasant peddle along a tree-lined, shady trail with only other bikers and the occasional person on foot to watch for. The second half of the trip required frequent stops to consult the cycle map she provided, but was still very pleasant, with many lovely stone buildings and pretty gardens on my path. Even with all of the stops, the ride took only an hour, so I suspect that it really would have been faster than the bus had I known where I was going and just peddled.

Today's talks were also interesting, and we got a bonus short talk about tomorrow's field trip to the Highlands. Ordinarily they'd have saved that talk till tomorrow, but apparently there will be 55 of us on that trip. They were expecting 10-15 people, so they decided that logistically, it makes sense to do a pre-trip talk. On the way home I stopped at a post office to send my poster back to myself. It was expensive, but since there is a good chance that one or more of the three flights I'll be doing between here and home would have charged me for excess baggage if I tried to bring it back with me on the plane, it is probably worth the expense.

Tomorrow I've got an early start for the next field trip, Friday sisimth42 and I will head to Glasgow to meet a friend for lunch, and Saturday I'll take the train to Inverness to visit the family of clovis_t.

Yesterday I posted to my other blog about some large garnets mentioned in an article I was reading. Soon thereafter I got a comment from another geologist, who said that he's often been underwhelmed when taken to see large garnets, which are rarely as big as "they" claim they will be. So I e-mailed the author of the paper (who is at an Australian University) and asked if he had any photos. He sent me some, with permission to post them on the blog, and commented that he'd heard that I'd moved to Italy to start a post doc with my boss (mentioned by name), and suggested that the garnet-location in question isn't that far from Milan and I should go visit it.
I was actually surprised that he knew who I was and where I was going for work, because until I was given his paper by my boss, I hadn't yet been made aware of his name. However, having enjoyed his paper, and seen the list of other things he researches, you can bet that I'll remember it and look for other publications of his--he does interesting stuff!