kareina

Friday morning I worked & had a meeting with my boss. Was reasonably happy with what I accomplished, but have tons more I want done ASAP.

Friday afternoon mom and I drove out to Schnals Valley. When I went there at the beginning of Sept for the Textile Forum it took 4 hours on train + 30 more minutes in a car. In a rental car it takes only 4 hours to get all the way into the valley, including a couple of longish stops at a rest area. We arrived at the Archeoparc about 18:15 and met my friend, who is the director of the parc. We enjoyed a drink with her (she and mom had wine, I had water, of course) and made plans to meet the next night for dinner. She was kind enough to tell the hostess at the Pension we were staying at not to expect us for dinner on Saturday as we had other plans (the family speaks German and some Italian).

Saturday morning I walked up the valley while mom enjoyed visiting the Archeoparc and learning about Otzi and the world in which he lived. (Having spent a week at that park last month, I didn't need to look at the displays again so soon.) I walked all the way to the top end of the road, where there is a ski resort and cable car to the top of one of the ridges, stopping often to take photos of rocks (which I still need to get off of the camera). The plan had been for mom to stay at the parc till 12:30, and then drive up and meet me, but she miss-read her watch and left early, arriving at the parking lot at pretty much exactly the same time I reached the ski resort and started walking towards the large "WC" sign. She saw me, and thought that it was a good destination, so met me there. I decided not to take the cable car up, since the ridge-top was hidden in a cloud, and instead she and I went to one of the restaurants for lunch. (yum, dumplings!)

After that we returned to the room, where I had a quick nap and a shower before we went down the valley into the main valley below and looked around a bit before meeting my friend for dinner. She took us to a delightful restaurant at a ridge-top farm, where they serve traditional South Tyrolean food. I enjoyed the pumpkin ravioli with SnowMilk for desert. It is every bit as yummy as I remember from when I was last in that area, and I still really want the recipie (it involves bread, apples, raisins, and pine nuts, buried in cream & cinnamon). It was a wonderful evening, with good food and good company. After dinner I let the two of them argue about who would pay, and was unsurprised when mom won after using the line "that is what mothers are for, and since yours isn't here...". (Mom had warned me she intended to pay, so I just kept out of the way when the subject came up, I know better than to argue with her on that topic!)

Alas, on the drive back up the valley after dinner I started sniffling. Mom had come down with a case of the sniffles right after she arrived (probably caught them on the flight), and was doing mostly better by the weekend. I don't tend to get sick often (caught two colds in 2009, both mostly better within 24 hours, and this is my first for this year that I could find mention of in LJ under the "health" tag, and I tend to mention such things), but did get these sniffles. They bothered me Saturday night, and were sort of annoying on Sunday, but didn't slow me down any, and by today I was mostly feeling fine again.

Sunday morning I loaded up the car and then I started walking along the road back down the valley. Mom read her book for half an hour and then followed me, reaching me just as I reached a clump of houses with a side-road she could turn into to pick me up without blocking traffic. I love our timing. We went from there to the city of Bolanzo, where we found the Archaeological museum (and also saw a marathon in progress). It was interesting to compare their museum with the Archeoparc. They have the Iceman himself on display through a small window into his chilled room (don't want him to thaw after all these years!) and his actual artifacts. But the Archeoparc has its replicas out on display for people to touch, which is nice. Mom thought the Archeoparc was much better. I largely agree, but I did like the fact that the city museum also had floors for the Bronze Age, Roman Age, and Middle Ages.

After that we largely drove straight back to Milan, with just a couple of stops at rest areas. We got home early enough to cook her a meal (I'd been nibbling all day, as I do--I had leftover restaurant food, of course, plus the things I'd brought for the trip, so I didn't need to eat again) before returning the car. She decided to come with me, so that I'd not have to learn the car in city traffic (we'd paid for the right for either of us to drive, but she did all the driving). I'm glad she came along, as the company was nice. When we reached the airport the rental agency was shut, with a sign saying "back soon" (in English!). So we waited. After 10 full minutes we called the phone number which was also on the sign, and the lady said she'd be back in two minutes (she was). Once the paperwork was complete we hopped onto the city bus to head back into town.

Normally when I return home from Linate airport I take the bus from the airport, and get off when it passes the point directly south of my apartment, then take the 20 minute walk north to get home. However, mom has some issues with her back that makes it less than pleasant for her to walk these days, so we decided to take two buses to get home. Alas, when trying to figure out were to exit the first bus so as to catch the next I forgot that bus 93 runs along the road next to my house for only part of the distance south--it then takes a jog over to the next major north-south road, and intersects the east-west road upon which the airport bus runs a couple of blocks from were we got off the bus. Oops. So we walked north the two blocks to get to the bus stop and mom sat down on the bench and we waited. And Waited. And Waited. The paper schedule said that the next bus was expected at 21:13 (we arrived at the stop at 21:05). Every so often the computer which normally announces how many minutes till the next bus would actually do so, but it went from "8 min" to saying nothing for several minutes to saying "7 min" to saying nothing to saying "8 min", and so on, sometimes going to a smaller number, sometimes not, and large chunks of time saying nothing at all (this is not typical behavior for Milanese bus stop computers). We watched three different buses going the other direction on that street pass before ours finally arrived, fully 40 minutes after we arrived at the stop, to carry us the rest of the way home. Even taking a slow pace we could have been home faster had we walked. Pity that wasn't an option. You can bet that I will remember to stay on the first bus all the way to where it intersects with the second when we return from Finland next week--not only because then she won't have to do the two block walk with luggage, but that street actually has three different buses going down it that all head close to my house, so we will have a choice, and not have to wait for one three times longer than the schedule says it should take.

Today I accomplished some work and yet another job application, had a nap, cooked a yummy soup, hung out a bit with mom, and have some energy left to do a bit more work before heading home tonight to do yoga and get some sleep. I missed my internet connection this weekend, but that was all I missed. I loved being in a beautiful mountain valley--I could so live there. Funny how the outer edge of the southern Alps doesn't really appeal to me, but that valley is far enough into the range that it is on the far side of some sort of climatic border--the vegetation there is a rich-dark green that is ever so much nicer than the brownish green of the plants on the southern most ridges of the range. The rocks there are also much nicer--a pretty metamorphic schist, while the outer edge of the Alps is sedimentary. I really do need to figure out how to arrange my life so that I get to either live in, or spend lots of time in, such a mountain valley.

During the next week or so I need to:

* finish processing all of the data from the last microprobe session & make lots of diagrams
* learn how to create "AFM" diagrams in Perple_X and compare the predicted and experimental results in that format
* finish finding papers that talk about talc & garnet in natural rocks and extract the compositional data to compare with my experiments
* weld shut another capsule for my next experiment (tried one today, but managed to split the weld at the last moment)
* fly to Finland on Friday and meet family, descended from my Great-grandfather's youngest brother
* replace my ailing computer with one that can handle changes in the building electricity circuits

It has been a week and a half since I returned to Milan from my 3.5 weeks of back-to-back conferences and short courses. Therefore I decided to go look at the to-do list I created when I got home and report on my progress (and/or lack thereof):

* hang up the clothes that are being washed as I type Not only did that washing get done, dried, and put away, I've done two other loads since then.
* turn in capsules from the last the experiment to be set in epoxy Done, and they've been polished till I was just barely past the first layer of gold, more epoxy added (to ensure the contents didn't come out in subsequent polishing), and then it was polished down till the experimental charge is exposed and smooth and ready to be analyzed next time the microprobe is available.
* get to the natural food store and purchase ingredients for more muesli and a variety of other foods that had run low before leaving town
* get to the huge supermarket that carries the cheese I like best and bring some home (both stores are a 30 minute walk away--in opposite directions!)
* finish unpacking everything from the last trip and put it away
* get the guest bedding and towels washed and ready for the next guest (Hi mom!)

* get the Mathmatica mass balance calculations working and compare the % of each phase in my experiments with the calculated % from Perple_X
This one is half done--we managed to get mathmatica working again up to the point of calculating how much of each mineral must be there given the composition of the starting powder and the compositions of the minerals present. However, sometimes the calculations wind up with a negative value for one or more phases. One way around that is to tell it Phase #3 is exactly 5% of the total, and then have it re-calculate. Alas, we are still getting error messages when we try this. With luck my boss will be able solve this issue soon. I can't really help--not only do I not really know how to set up programs in mathmatica, these programs are written in an odd mix of Italian and English + mathmatica coding.

* get two new capsules filled and ready for the next experiment ASAP
Alas, I still need to do this. When I went to do it someone had taken away the microscope, which is an essential tool for the job. However, I noticed this evening when I was putting away the keys to the lapidary room that the microscope is back, so hopefully I will get to this next week. Fortunately, my boss agrees that it makes sense to not start the next experiment till we see the results of the last, so I've got an unspecified amount of time, since I don't yet have an appointment to do the analysis of the last experiment.

* discuss with my boss which conditions that experiment should run at--does he agree with my thinking on the topic?Yes, he does! But until we see the results of last one we won't make the final decision.

* update all of my logs in the computer for yesterday and today from my notes
* update personal finances
* figure out finances for all of the uni-related conferences and turn in receipts for reimbursement

* look up all occurrences of Talc in real metapelites and/or metagreywackes and compile list of their compositions and associated phases and compare them with our data
I started a spreadsheet, and entered in all of the titles of the papers that come up when one searches Scopus for "talc" and "metapelite", and have downloaded those I don't have yet. However, I still need to actually extract the relevant data from those that have it, and make a note of which ones aren't useful.

* sand the various wooden objects that followed me home from Budapest
I've started this, but there are lots of them, and they were much in need of sanding. It will take a while longer...

* finish up the various nalbinding projects that are nearly done and get photos
Been too busy to do this.

* get photos off of my camera from the trip and post them to Facebook

* Type up adventures for both my geo-blog and LJ and include some photos with each (ok, I may not have typed up and shared photos on all trips, but on many of them)

* catch up on e-mail and livejournal (no hope of catching up on Facebook--Know too many people there--if you said anything there important in the past week or two that I should know about, please let me know
* apply to the teaching positions that have application deadlines this month and get ready to apply for the ones that have deadlines in October, November, and December Three have been submitted, another three are due soon, but now that I've got the others to use as a template...
* back up computer files though, of course, this could use doing, again.
* take down old poster and hang up one with most current results
* make table of predicted compositions of minerals from Perple_X to compare with our results

* mend black skirt
oops. Forgot about this one. Fortunately, I haven't washed it yet, either.

* book tickets to Cairo for Mom and I
Well, I booked them to Finland, does that count? She arrives tomorrow morning, and we will decide if we are doing Ciaro too, or other adventures closer to home on the other weekend she has available.


Well, considering that I hadn't looked at the list after typing it till tonight, I am reasonably pleased with how much of it has been accomplished. My routine since coming home has been to get up around 9 or 10, head in to uni, catch up on reading LJ and e-mail over breakfast, do some uni work, head home for a nap and a meal and return to uni around 16:30 or 17:30, then settle in to work and socializeing with friends over instant messaging till way too late at night (except for the nights I went shopping first), followed by yoga, reading my 1000, and then some fiction till 02:00 or 03:00. However, I don't think I'll keep this schedule while mom is here--I bet she'd like to actually spend time with me in the evenings, having flown all the way here!

One of the things which has been lurking on the bottom of my to-do list for quite a while now is to go through the literature to find the mentions of talc and see how the natural rocks compare with my experiments. Given how many other work-related tasks I've had to do, it has been put off in favor of more urgent tasks. However, it is something that is important to do, and given the issues I've got just now getting Mathmatica to do calculations, I decided that today is the day. After many hours of work, I now have a table of 34 papers which either came up in a Scopus search for "talc" and "metapelite" or which I already had on my computer. Now that I've got that list I will need to go through it and see which ones are actually relevant and extract the data, but given that midnight is fast approaching, that part can wait for another day.

I am also making good progress on a job application that is due this week--it is pretty much ready to send--the only information that would be nice to include is if I had any idea of the cash value of the tuition waiver I had when at UAF. I filled out an on line form asking them, so with luck it will be easy for them to look up and they can send it to me.

Another task I accomplished in the "been needing to do this for a while" category is the vacuuming. While I left the floors clean before departing for my 3.5 weeks of back to back conferences and short-courses, they got fairly dusty while I was out of town. Yes, I've been home for a week now, and normally I clean the floors more than once a week (they need it in Milan--I think all the traffic outside my window kicks up lots of dust. But whilst in recovery mode from the time away I didn't get to it. But today I did a load of laundry, and I so wasn't willing to take the clothes out of the washer without cleaning the floor first, for fear of dropping something on the floor and needing to re-wash it to get the dust off. I am *much* happier now that the floors are clean again, and intend to keep them that way.

I wound up staying up way too late last night--I finally got the weaving pattern for the project I started at the textile forum, and compared it to the one I'd attempted to re-create. I almost had the pattern correct on my own--I only forgot one important point which made it impossible. The way my teacher does the patterns uses ovals set at an angle to indicate if the cards turn forward or backwards, and which of the to top threads is active depends upon which direction the cards turned. So when I did my pattern always showing the thread from the top front hole in the cards I was correct only for those cards that were turning towards me. Even so I still had the pattern about 85% correct, and it was an easy thing to fix my version once I saw the original and remembered that detail. I felt it was worth doing my version even though I have hers, because my version is annotated with letters telling which two holes are on top for each card after each turn. This will make it *much* easier to figure out where things should be if I make any more mistakes. However, having gone to the effort of analyzing the pattern closely enough to create this diagram, I may not make any more mistakes. Certainly I didn't when I went home last night and picked up the project to try "just one repeat", and couldn't bring myself to stop till I had done three of them. I might not have stopped even then, but it was 1:30 in the morning and I still needed to do my yoga before going to sleep, and I do want to be on day shift this week, since my boss indicated that he might be able to help me with the Mathmatica issues sometime this week.

Now it is not yet midnight, so I think I'll close this here and see if I can get yoga done and me into bed while it is still a reasonable hour...

In the past 24 days I've attended three conferences and one short course, ridden one plane and 20 trains to travel between them, toured a salt mine, and attended a traditional lamb dinner in a 14th Century house in the beautiful Schnals valley in the Alps. I'll try to make time to write it all up, later, but in the mean time I need to list everything that needs doing ASAP now that I'm home, in hopes that it helps...

* hang up the clothes that are being washed as I type (ok, so some of these are easy!)
* turn in capsules from the last the experiment to be set in epoxy
* get to the natural food store and purchase ingredients for more muesli and a variety of other foods that had run low before leaving town
* get to the huge supermarket that carries the cheese I like best and bring some home (both stores are a 30 minute walk away--in opposite directions!)
* finish unpacking everything from the last trip and put it away
* get the guest bedding and towels washed and ready for the next guest (Hi mom!)
* get the Mathmatica mass balance calculations working and compare the % of each phase in my experiments with the calculated % from Perple_X
* get two new capsules filled and ready for the next experiment ASAP
* discuss with my boss which conditions that experiment should run at--does he agree with my thinking on the topic?
* update all of my logs in the computer for yesterday and today from my notes
* update personal finances
* figure out finances for all of the uni-related conferences and turn in receipts for reimbursement
* look up all occurrences of Talc in real metapelites and/or metagreywackes and compile list of their compositions and associated phases and compare them with our data
* sand the various wooden objects that followed me home from Budapest
* finish up the various nalbinding projects that are nearly done and get photos
* get photos off of my camera from the trip and post them to Facebook
* Type up adventures for both my geo-blog and LJ and include some photos with each
* catch up on e-mail and livejournal (no hope of catching up on Facebook--Know too many people there--if you said anything there important in the past week or two that I should know about, please let me know
* apply to the teaching positions that have application deadlines this month and get ready to apply for the ones that have deadlines in October, November, and December
* back up computer files
* take down old poster and hang up one with most current results
* make table of predicted compositions of minerals from Perple_X to compare with our results
* mend black skirt
* book tickets to Cairo for Mom and I

I suspect there is more, but that is quite long enough for now. Time to actually try to accomplish one or two of them...

in the past day and a half I have:

* Finished chapters 1 & 4 and sent them to my advisor

* got back chapters 1, 2, & 3 with minor suggested corrections from my advisor (and have already acted upon those from 2 & 3)

* Packed up all of my things in my office and brought them home

* got all of the UTAS catalogue numbers written on the rock samples I collected and turned them in

* re-organized 150 rock thin-sections into numerical order (well they were already in order, but I had one box of "didn't wind up doing analysis on these" and one of "samples I actually used", and it was needful to consolidate them back into a single series again) and turned them in.

* four loads of laundry, including all of my bedding I want to take with me (and re-made the bed with sheets from the house, as I may not be sleeping much just now, but I want to be comfortable when I do)

* re-arranged the furniture in this room so that I can get to the shelves/cupboards in which my things I still need to pack are located.

* Made arrangements for the shipping company to pick up my things to ship to Italy on Monday

* attended my good bye dance/party and had a wonderful time seeing everyone who could make it & got in a reasonable amount of dancing (and got some wonderful gifts from friends, thank you--it is so good to be loved!)

* managed to get a total of seven hours of sleep, in short, concentrated bursts

( Still to do before flying out )

I've just taken an entire day off of uni work. My first since May. Well, I did read my 1000 words of geologic literature, but while interesting and informative, and certainly uni related, it does not progress the thesis (though one could argue that doing this reading every day does improve the overall quality of the thesis).

So, what did I do? See the subject line! I've said it before, I love moving! Call me weird, if you must, but it is true. It was actually fun to work on areas of the house, clean them out, decide what to get rid of and what to keep, pack some stuff, and set others up to make packing easier later (since we are moving into a fully equipped home, I am *not* going to pack my kitchen until after Sunday, when we move our selves, such furniture as we are keeping (the bed, our computer desks and chairs, my file cabinet, and the small night stand thing we keep our toiletries in, and which is an important part of my computer work station (as is the file cabinet, which holds my second monitor)).

Unfortunately, to accomplish all of this I had to clean up some of the belongings that the tall apprentice *still* hasn't taken away. He was given the deadline of 1 November to move out and have his stuff gone and everything clean and spotless. However, the lad doesn't drive, so he has been coming up the hill at random intervals, usually with his mother, who does drive, and packing and loading a small amount and then going away again. While I've told him that it would be kind to the drivers if he'd do prep work in advance of their arrival and have everything packed and ready to go, he never did organize anything, just left his messes wherever they happened to be for the rest of us to stumble over. Sigh. The lad has a heart of gold, but... He simply doesn't understand why I consider his mess to be undesirable, I don't have to be out of the house for a week, why should I care if he still has things here? Nor do I think he will understand how much easier my life is now that his shelves in the pantry have been emptied (all bagged up and waiting for him to collect) and the contents of the fabric chest of drawers stacked neatly there, awaiting the great kitchen packing. (Why use paper for packing when one has a fabric stash? The fabric has to be shipped, the kitchen toys have to be shipped, why not do it together?)

So I've put in many hours of work, advertised a few more things for sale, and even more were posted to FreeCycle (thank you etfb for your post the other day alerting me to the fact that it exists in Australia--I'd checked for a Hobart Craig's list years ago and didn't find one, and never thought to look for any such thing again, figuring that they simply hadn't made it here). So the day involved work a bit, check the computer, reply to the folk wanting stuff, back to work, check back in, send more replies, go clean or organize, or pack something else. I'm very satisfied with the progress, particularly as clovis_t was just as busy packing and cleaning other stuff. Once we were finally done for the day, around 19:30, we decided to go for a bit of a jog, which felt *really* good--it has been raining lots lately, so the air was fresh and clean. And my exercise log for the month is looking good--clovis_t pointed out that all of the hard work I'm doing with the cleaning/packing/etc. must count as exercise, so I decided to credit it at 25% of the time is exercise. Funny, that puts my total for the past couple of days up where I want it! (You don't think that is "cheating", do you?)

I haven't yet played with the Hammer Dulcimer today, because I'd told myself that it would be a reward for doing uni work, but I did give it the final polish Harry recommended with very fine grade steel wool and oil (I used almond oil, which I had in the kitchen, rather than the suggested linseed oil, which would have required shopping). I should have taken a photo, but didn't get the camera, so you will have to wait another day.

Plan for tomorrow:

Check the various job listings which sounded interesting to see if I've missed any deadlines, and if any deadlines are looming, and if appropriate, apply.

Do some uni work.

Play the Hammer Dulcimer.

Work on the case for the Hammer Dulcimer.

Get some exercise.

Pass on some more of the stuff I'm getting rid of to their new people.

and, if there is still any time or energy left, pack some more.

Here's hoping I can manage it all!