Michelina's Macaroni & Cheese!!
Ok, I know, a slightly odd title for an entry, especially considering I haven't updated for months now... I do intend to summarise the entirety of my year so far (feel free not to suffer through the whole 2 months!) but for now, a diatribe on dinner!
So, the circumstances surrounding this dinner? I'm currently sat in the underground control room, on my overlap shift. Normally these shifts are taken from surface, and are ~3.30pm - midnight, so not too bad. If it's smooth neutrino running you can get a lot of useful work done in that time. Or watch 1/4 of an entire season of 24... I know this from experience ;-)
This week though, we're doing N16 calibrations, which involves the detector operators being underground for all shifts. So, it's the 2.15pm cage down, and I'm stuck down here until the 2.15am cage back up again! Talk about a long shift. Not only that, but INCO have a new rule saying we can't bring laptops down (something to do with their worry that wireless communication devices might interfere with their radios and accidentally set off some blasting or something...). So, 12 hours down here (well, 10 once you take off the walk each way along the drift, and going through the drys) without my laptop. So, what can I do to while away the time! Not a lot! BUT there is a video camera monitoring the underground control room 24/7... the odds are noone is watching it (the live feed is on the internet, and no, I won't tell you where) but it's perfectly possible that someone is checking up on things... So, a need to look busy! Well, there are a dozen computers down here for monitoring the detector, so I can open up Mozilla (an internet browser) windows on one of those, as I am doing right now, and check email. I can even ssh into the computers in Oxford to do some work, although the scope of that is limited. I did bring a book down with me, 2 in fact, thank god.
Anyway, snacking, in fact eating or drinking of any kind, is forbidden in the u/g control room (it's a 'clean' area, and yes that is supposed to be in '' - it means you can't do anything there at all! you even have to go through an air shower every time you enter the room). So, it's off to the lunch room for a 10 minute break now and then when I get hungry. Marie (post-doc from Queen's) is down here as the calibration leadhand, so we take turns to watch things while the other takes a break.
And it was on one of these breaks that I had my macaroni & cheese. This is a new addiction of mine. And just to put it in perspective for you, it rates right up there with Tim Horton's Maple Dip doughnuts! And those are goooooooooooooooooooood! This macaroni & cheese is orange. I don't mean because they use double gloucester cheese or anything like that. This is a cheap, microwave, freezer meal and it's plastic cheese on squishy pasta. And I can't get enough of it! It doesn't even vaguely resemble mum's macaroni pie (which still holds sway as one of the best things ever created) - it's an entirely different creature altogether. It's fake, and frozen, and cheap and it's soo good! What's up with that?! Fortunately it also happens to be low fat (how do they work that for a dish that should be solid fat?!) so my addiction can be satisfied without the incumbent guilt :)
Anyway, it's now coming up on 11.20pm, so only an hour more before graveyard shift people appear. Then it's back to the drys to change out of the shapeless coveralls and into the shapeless mining overalls (the Hodge figure was never intended for shapeless overalls...) and back into the drift. I like the drift - 2km walking through dark, dank, eery mining tunnels, with occasional sounds of miners blasting rock in the background. Kinda fun. Our cage down was late today - there was some problem with the electronics that run it (they told us the brakes weren't working, but I think that was their idea of a joke...) so we only got to the 6800 level (6800ft below the surface, where SNO is) at about 4.10pm. Considering the day shift had to be out by 4.15 to catch their cage back up (or wait another 2 hours for the next one) that meant a rather brisk walk along the 2km drift to the lab - day shift can't leave until we arrive because we can't leave the detector unmanned. Mark was in the lead, and he set a hell of a pace! Given that he's over a foot taller than me, knows the dirft well and has been down here pretty much every day for the past x years, it's no wonder I had a little trouble keeping up... Marie was behind me, and I thought that was so I didn't get left behind (she's way taller than me too) but she said, panting, when we arrived at the lab, that she had just been trying to keep up with me!
Evening shifts down here are kinda cool - it really is just the 3 of us in the entire SNO lab, which is fairly large. Marie & I sit in the control room, starting new runs with the calibration source at new positions every 20 minutes, and Mark is off who knows where. There's something rather fun about the deserted atmosphere down here. Still, I'm hoping we get the calibrations done today, as planned, and I'll be back on the surface for tomorrow's shift - apart from anything else, it means I can sleep in later tomorrow morning!
Ooh, that post was a lot longer than intended, whoops! Congrats if you made it through the whole thing!
So, the circumstances surrounding this dinner? I'm currently sat in the underground control room, on my overlap shift. Normally these shifts are taken from surface, and are ~3.30pm - midnight, so not too bad. If it's smooth neutrino running you can get a lot of useful work done in that time. Or watch 1/4 of an entire season of 24... I know this from experience ;-)
This week though, we're doing N16 calibrations, which involves the detector operators being underground for all shifts. So, it's the 2.15pm cage down, and I'm stuck down here until the 2.15am cage back up again! Talk about a long shift. Not only that, but INCO have a new rule saying we can't bring laptops down (something to do with their worry that wireless communication devices might interfere with their radios and accidentally set off some blasting or something...). So, 12 hours down here (well, 10 once you take off the walk each way along the drift, and going through the drys) without my laptop. So, what can I do to while away the time! Not a lot! BUT there is a video camera monitoring the underground control room 24/7... the odds are noone is watching it (the live feed is on the internet, and no, I won't tell you where) but it's perfectly possible that someone is checking up on things... So, a need to look busy! Well, there are a dozen computers down here for monitoring the detector, so I can open up Mozilla (an internet browser) windows on one of those, as I am doing right now, and check email. I can even ssh into the computers in Oxford to do some work, although the scope of that is limited. I did bring a book down with me, 2 in fact, thank god.
Anyway, snacking, in fact eating or drinking of any kind, is forbidden in the u/g control room (it's a 'clean' area, and yes that is supposed to be in '' - it means you can't do anything there at all! you even have to go through an air shower every time you enter the room). So, it's off to the lunch room for a 10 minute break now and then when I get hungry. Marie (post-doc from Queen's) is down here as the calibration leadhand, so we take turns to watch things while the other takes a break.
And it was on one of these breaks that I had my macaroni & cheese. This is a new addiction of mine. And just to put it in perspective for you, it rates right up there with Tim Horton's Maple Dip doughnuts! And those are goooooooooooooooooooood! This macaroni & cheese is orange. I don't mean because they use double gloucester cheese or anything like that. This is a cheap, microwave, freezer meal and it's plastic cheese on squishy pasta. And I can't get enough of it! It doesn't even vaguely resemble mum's macaroni pie (which still holds sway as one of the best things ever created) - it's an entirely different creature altogether. It's fake, and frozen, and cheap and it's soo good! What's up with that?! Fortunately it also happens to be low fat (how do they work that for a dish that should be solid fat?!) so my addiction can be satisfied without the incumbent guilt :)
Anyway, it's now coming up on 11.20pm, so only an hour more before graveyard shift people appear. Then it's back to the drys to change out of the shapeless coveralls and into the shapeless mining overalls (the Hodge figure was never intended for shapeless overalls...) and back into the drift. I like the drift - 2km walking through dark, dank, eery mining tunnels, with occasional sounds of miners blasting rock in the background. Kinda fun. Our cage down was late today - there was some problem with the electronics that run it (they told us the brakes weren't working, but I think that was their idea of a joke...) so we only got to the 6800 level (6800ft below the surface, where SNO is) at about 4.10pm. Considering the day shift had to be out by 4.15 to catch their cage back up (or wait another 2 hours for the next one) that meant a rather brisk walk along the 2km drift to the lab - day shift can't leave until we arrive because we can't leave the detector unmanned. Mark was in the lead, and he set a hell of a pace! Given that he's over a foot taller than me, knows the dirft well and has been down here pretty much every day for the past x years, it's no wonder I had a little trouble keeping up... Marie was behind me, and I thought that was so I didn't get left behind (she's way taller than me too) but she said, panting, when we arrived at the lab, that she had just been trying to keep up with me!
Evening shifts down here are kinda cool - it really is just the 3 of us in the entire SNO lab, which is fairly large. Marie & I sit in the control room, starting new runs with the calibration source at new positions every 20 minutes, and Mark is off who knows where. There's something rather fun about the deserted atmosphere down here. Still, I'm hoping we get the calibrations done today, as planned, and I'll be back on the surface for tomorrow's shift - apart from anything else, it means I can sleep in later tomorrow morning!
Ooh, that post was a lot longer than intended, whoops! Congrats if you made it through the whole thing!