kareina

Since my last progress report on Saturday I have managed to:

*register and pay for the EPMG confrence I'll be attending in France in April
*book and pay for the flight to Toulouse for EPMG
*register and pay for the EGU confrence I'll be attending in May
*successfully completed the polishing for my most recent experiment,it is ready for analysis next time the microprobe is available
*successfully sealed the powder into capsules for my next experiment, which will be ready to run as soon as the piston cylinder machine is ready to go
*contacted a couchsurfer in Trondheim, Norway about staying with him when clovis_t and I head up there for a geology meeting at the end of May (well, I'll attend the meeting, he gets to do sightseeing).
*updated the diagram which shows which minerals are present at which temperature/pressures and selected the temp/pressure for the next experiment.

Some random thoughts:

Getting to Toulouse, France which is served by a different set of budget airlines than those which serve my local airports costs more than twice as much as flying to Oslo, Norway, which happens to share some budget airlines with Milan.

I love being in a line of work where I am free to take a mid-morning nap if I want one, and it is fine if I feel like working in the evening.

It was wonderful to find broad beans and brocclini at the market on Monday, I haven't had either in ages. However, since they refuse to sell less than half a kilogram of anything at the market, I may well be sick of them before I manage to eat my way through it all. I am very conflicted about the market. On the one hand, I like how close it is, I like the fact that the produce looks and tastes fresher and better than what one can get in the supermarket. However, I do not like the fact that they only sell in large amounts, and they won't let me select my own fruits and vegetables. The forbid us to touch anything, but instead we point and they grab whichever individual pieces they feel like and put them into the bag. This makes sense from their perspective, as it means that the overall quality of stuff they've got available to sell stays the same over the course of the day, but is sad for those of us who would rather select one or two pieces of the best available, rather than being given a much larger quantity of random quality. As a result of this conflict some weeks I get stuff at the market, other weeks I don't bother. When I don't I wind up having to eat grocery store produce, which generally results in my returning to the market the following week. However, when I do go to the market they give me so much of each item that I can't purchase very many different types (unless I want some to go bad, which I do not), so I wind up struggling to finish what I bought before the week is up, and then I'm tired of those items and don't want to go back to market the following week. I miss the US and Tassie farmer's markets, where one can select one's own produce and purchase only as much as one wants!