kareina

Those of you who know me would probably not be surprised to hear that I've always thought that a nomadic lifestyle sounds appealing. The thought of moving from one place to another on a daily (or weekly or monthly) basis, bringing along everything needed to make each new spot "home" sounds fablous to me. I've had a hint of that lifestyle when I've lived places where there were sufficent SCA camping events near enough to get to. I love all aspects of those weekends--from the skill required to pack everything in such a way that it will all fit into the vehicle, to the driving long hours seeing interesting scenery, to setting up my camp and arranging my things exactly where I think they should be to enjoying the event itself and all that entails right through to the skill required to get it all organized and packed up again followed by another long drive. I've occassionally had wistful thoughts about how much cooler it would have been to have been born into a nomadic lifestyle. Perhaps herding reindeer through the mountains of Scandinavia or some such. But never did I think it would be possible for anyone to get to experiance such a thing without having been born to it. Until today, when one of my friends in Alaska just sent me a link to a web page on some upcoming adventures in Asia. The author of the web page is going to get to spend two full months in Mongolia living a nomadic life. That is so cool! I don't know if I'll ever seek out such an opportunity for myself, but now that I know that it is possible...

In other news, today's progress report includes getting my fifth experiment polished--I can now analyze it (and #4 as well) on Monday the 29th when I return from the writing workshop in Zürich. I also welded shut the first end of some capsules. Tomorrow I need to fill them and weld them shut so that I can run my 6th experiment as soon as I return. The rest of the work day was spent on data processing, and time slipped by much faster than I expected it to. I looked up at one point, feeling kind of tired and ready for a break, thinking it might be 13:00 or 14:00, but it turned out to be 17:00! I wish I knew who keeps pushing the fast-forward button on me, because I'd like to ask them to stop.

After some quality time with a book I came back in (which is when I did the polishing) and finally got around to fixing the frame of my trike. As some of you may remember, the shipping company failed to actually pack it properly, and it got damaged in transit. The replacement wheel is on the way here, and the check from the shipping company to reimburse me for replacing the wheel has arrived. The other damage involved some tweaking to the frame such that the hinge to fold it in half no longer worked properly, leaving it stuck in the folded position. So tonight I went and got a mallet from the lab and gently beat the hinge until the two parts were once again lined up and they once again pivot around the pin. Having achieved that success, I decided I may as well put the seat back on, too.

( Alas, that part didn't go the way I hoped it would )