kareina

Early this week my student told me that the uni travel agent was having troubles booking us lodging in Finland--that they were only able to find one room, a double, available anywhere within 60 km of the university in Oulu, where we were going to do some work on the microprobe. Neither my student nor I wanted to share a room, so I let him have the hotel, and I went onto the couch surfing web page to find a better option.

I so win! My host is a delightful woman who was kind enough to drive to work yesterday, so that she could pick me and my luggage up from the uni. She brought me home at 16:00 and then cooked me an amazing pasta with avocado sauce (that also involved garlic, chili, lime, and fresh herbs) for dinner, we had way too much desert (I had baked cookies for her, her friend who also joined us brought ice cream, and she had some really yummy left over cheesecake she had made with Bailey's Irish Cream). Then she, her boyfriend (who had also joined us for dinner), and I went out to The Koitelinkoski rapids, on the river Kiiminki. This was a beautiful adventure, with some nice walks along the trail--she managed (with his help) to find that geocashe that eluded her last time she was out there, and we also relaxed for a bit and sipped tea on the rocks while we watched the river happily rolling over other rocks.

Then we went back to her place where I did my yoga and was in bed soon after 21:00, which meant I actually got 9 hours of sleep (and thus now feel completely over that cold that I had had on Tuesday). This morning she lent me her son's bike and we pedaled our way along lovely tree-lined trails to the uni, not quite 3 km from her door, and I spent the morning using the microprobe with my student, and then, while it analyzed the points we had selected, I met my cousin for lunch and a short walk, then more microprobe time before meeting my host at 16:00 for a return to her place, yummy left overs for dinner (both hers, and some of the lasagna I had brought with me), and then she went off to choir, and I am enjoying a quiet evening at her place with her internet. Tomorrow we do the last of the microprobe analyses and then return to Luleå. With luck I will get home on time to join the rest of Aurora Band and spend the evening making music.

This is so much a better way of traveling than staying in a hotel, and my host here is the sort of person I would like to keep in touch with.

Yesterday's bad news about my most recent experiments had me feeling down. Today, however, I knew before I came in that my microprobe session would be devoted to trying to get good analyses of mineral phases in the older experiments for which we'd either not yet obtained good analyses, or there weren't really enough of them to be confidant with the results. As a result I rather enjoyed the session (I normally always enjoy playing with the microprobe--it is a cool toy), and I think that I managed to fill in some gaps in my data. I'll find out for certain tomorrow when I calculate the number of cations present in each mineral from the microprobe data.
I could probably have done that this evening, but instead I spent time reading fiction, looking at my finances (it is so time to transfer more cash to my Alaskan bank account, so that I can keep paying on my student loans!), reading e-mail, and playing with the "find people" function in Facebook. All in all a lovely, relaxed, evening, and no need to feel guilty about not working when I spent all of business hours doing so.

Now it is time to head home and do my yoga (and perhaps get in some additional exercise too) before I go to sleep for the night.

Today I finally had time on the microprobe again--first time in weeks. As a result I had two different experiments to analyze, two capsules each. The other experiments I've done have sometimes had a bad run where one of the two capsules didn't grow minerals large enough to analyze, but the other did. This time all four failed to grow decent minerals. Sigh. One of the capsules was broken open when I took it out. Given that it doesn't have decent sized minerals I'm guessing that it must have broken early in the run and lost all of its water (which really helps the mineral-growing reactions). No idea why the others didn't work. So instead of wasting time trying to analyze things which aren't there my boss suggested that we go back to another of the old experiments from years before I started this job. Looking at the list of what they found back in the day he suggested that I analyze B16, and we found one in the drawer of "B" experiments with a faded "16" written upon it. Put it into the probe, told it to create element maps and went to lunch. When we returned and looked at the compositions of what is present we realized that we couldn't have the B16 that we meant to have, so my boss looked again, and found another one with a faded "16A" written on it. This one appears to be a better match to what they claimed all those years ago was here.

Today's news is discouraging because I've got only two weeks till I do a talk at a confrence, and I still don't have enough data to answer the question we are trying to answer. Each experiment takes 200 to 400 hours to run (longer is better), and we don't know till it is done and we open it up and look if it worked or not.

In other news I've started a project I've been thinking I should start for ages. I'm creating a cloth spice cabinet which will hang on the outside of the kitchen cupboard--one pocket per spice jar. This will free up some much needed shelf-space in my pantry. Previously I've made wooden cabinets for my jars of spices, but this apartment is so very small there is literally no place I could put such a thing. A cloth one, I hope, will be light enough to hang from the cupboard door without damaging the hinges.

Today's progress report: tried my hand at "active" reading (see my other blog for a definition of what I mean by that, and for a summary of the first couple of sections of the paper I read thusly). So far I've spent one hour reading any typing up my paraphrased version of each paragraph in the first five pages. It will be interesting to see how long this technique takes for the entire 17 pages of the paper. It takes a fair bit longer than just reading, but I think my teacher was correct when she said that we'd get much more out of it.

This morning I went for a short rollerblade excursion, stopping at a huge grocery store on the far side of the train tracks (only 22 minutes away by skate--it is normally a 35+ minute walk) to pick up a few things (I wasn't even sure it would be open--most grocery stores in Milan are closed on Sundays). I look forward to the day when I no longer live in a city, and heading out of the house to get some exercise doesn't automatically mean combining the trip with an errand that involves spending money. It will be nice to live somewhere pretty enough that I want to head out to see it, rather than only because my body needs to move and I'm getting low on needed supplies.

This afternoon I manged to fix the problem with my trike that I mentioned a few days back. The part has now been successfully extracted, sanded down a bit (I *like* having access to a shop with a lathe!) and properly inserted into the frame. The seat has been reattached, and I even put air into the two tires which didn't get damaged in transit. As soon as the replacement wheel arrives and I get it attached in place of the broken one, it will be possible to pedal myself places too. I'm looking forward to that. (Why is is that two hours of hard work so easily reduces itself to a single paragraph?)

Tomorrow I'm scheduled to use the microprobe; I hope that the data I generate helps answer some of the questions we are trying to solve--it would be nice to have something concrete to say in the speech I'm working on for the confrence I'll be attending in a couple of weeks.

My progress report for Monday: 1) Welded shut the first end of several new gold capsules, which are ready to fill with powder for future experiments on another session. 2) picked up the epoxy-mounted capsules from my fourth experiment (take two) and started the process of polishing them. Stopped for a break at the first hint of getting tired, and again when I'd just polished into the "charge" (as we call the powder we pack into the capsules from which the minerals grow). Me, being overly cautious after what happened last time? Yup. I could possibly have finished getting it open enough to add the second coat of epoxy early enough in the day to have it ready for more polishing so that I could have analyzed it in today's microprobe session. But I didn't think it was worth the risk to rush it. 3) added a bit more to the paper summarizing my PhD research, then sent the still very rough draft to my advisor in Tassie to ask if he thinks that I'm heading the correct direction with it. I know that editors don't want to see the unedited version of one's thesis, but I'm not positive if I'm making the correct sorts of changes in the process of "summarizing", so I decided to ask before spending too much more time on it.

Today's progress: Microprobe session! Went back and obtained many analyses of minerals from my first three experiments, and from the three experiments whcih had been done in this lab years ago with similar composition "charges" and at similar pressure and temperature to my experiments. Those experiments were run long enough ago that they had an older microprobe, and they'd missed some of the minerals present, which, as a result, were never analysed, so I'm going back and doing them now. That took seven hours of my day. Then I went home an curled up with a book and some food for a bit before returning to uni and catching up on personal correspondence (my personal e-mail in-box is empty again, two days in a row, and I've also gone back an replied to Facebook messages that had been sitting in a folder awaiting my attention for ages (some nearly for a year). That task accomplished, I returned to uni work and spent another hour going over some of the results, and tabulating things.

My, don't I lead an exciting life?

When I booked my microprobe time for today's session, I was feeling lazy, so I simply forwarded the note from my advisor suggesting I re-analyze this sample because the results I had the first time were unexpected. The microprobe operator read the request as "need to look at one of the minerals again", rather than the "need to completely re-do this sample" that I had planned to do. So he replied that if it is a short session, rather than booking the evening shift (as I usually do), it is probably better to give me the afternoon. Now, I used to do three samples at a time, so doing only one sounded like a "short" session to me, so I said ok,without really thinking about just how short of a time block the afternoon really is. Oops. I should have replied with something along the lines of, "are you sure, I need to do __, ___, and ___, will that be enough time?" But I didn't. As a result I took most of the time I had available today selecting the points I wish to analyze, taking photos of them, printing the photos, drawing the spots anlayzed on the printouts, and then checking the focus in the Z direction (which requires the use of the optical camera rather than a back-scatter electron image like the rest of the steps, which is why it is done separately). By this time both the probe operator and I had figured out our miss communication, so we came up with a Plan B: I finish setting the probe up and pus "run", it goes for the half an hour to an hour till the next guy gets there, then he stops the session and Monday I return, set it back up (much faster the second time, when I am simply checking to be certain that the spots marked still point to where I think they do (remember those photos?)) and finish the session. Around the time we worked this plan out and I was on the final stages of checking the focus before pushing "run", I received a text message from mushroom_maiden asking if we could re-schedule our meeting to another day. Being somewhat tired from that long on the microprobe, without water, as I'd forgotten my camel-back in my office, I was quick to agree with clovis_t suggested that if we weren't meeting her then we should just go home and relax till time for the evening dance class. While I do feel bad wasting the petrol on two trips into town in one day, it turned out to be a very good thing to head home. I got better food than what I'd packed that morning to take with me, and I got some much needed time to simply relax and read e-mail/lj/facebook/etc. and then took the time to start aligning the x-y data for the points I'd selected with those photos. Just before it was time to head to dance I received an e-mail from the microprobe operator saying that the person who had been scheduled on after me had agreed to reschedule, so he was going to leave my samples running, and I don't have to go back on Monday to finish the process. Yay! I immediately sent back a thank you note and asked him to pass on my sincere thanks to the other person. To celebrate I completed the task of aligning the photos with the x-y data when we got home from dance class (which was fun, I might add). This means that when he gives me the results (hopefully tomorrow) it will take only seconds to align those points with the ones I've already entered, and it will be very, very easy for me to compare the data with the photos to determine which mineral is which.

Today's primary goal of doing the microprobe stuff was met. Didn't make time for any other uni work, but didn't really expect to either.
Tomorrow's goals: If the results arrive, process them and do the calculations and write up the results. If not continue the work I've been doing on chapter three. If I finish either or both of those tasks (depending on if both are options) return to the monazite results I got back the other day and finish processing them.

(I'm liking this specific goal stuff--it is really helping my progress!) Now it is time for yoga, followed by reading my 1000 words of literature a day (today will be the 82nd day in a row since the last time I forgot), and get some sleep!