look corva, photos for you!
Yesterday during the day I didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked to have done. This is hardly surprising--thus far every time I've had Monday/Tuesday scheduled on the microprobe I tend to be slow-starting on Wednesday. I spent way more time reading LJ & Facebook than I should have done. I did manage to get to the bank to do the paperwork to transfer another large chunk of cash to Alaska, so that I can keep paying on my student loans. With luck it will arrive there before the last of what I've got in that account is spent on loan payment. I'm not looking forward to finding out how much in the way of fees will be removed by each bank in the chain of getting it there, but I don't really have another option, so I'll cope.
Yesterday evening clovis_t and I went out to the weekly "SCA meeting" (can we call it a meeting when only the two of us plus the hosting family are in attendance?). We had a very nice time visiting, he got one of them to look over the internship application he's got in progress, I helped him cut out the fabric for the shell for his new armour, and he borrowed a sewing machine to stitch together the lining. Next time he can stitch the rest of it. We also made plans to head back over on Saturday for our long-neglected D&D game, and on Sunday for Easter Dinner.
This morning my boss made time to help me solve some of the issues I've been having determining which of the many normalization schemes we want to use for our biotite analyses, and I've now, finally and at long last, managed to re-run all of the old data plus all of my data using that scheme, and can finally state with confidence which experiments actually have that mineral phase present. I'm also nearly done doing the same for the chloritoid. Then I'll need to repeat for the other minerals ASAP so that I can finish preparing my talk for the confrence in France 12-14 April.
After working hard all day I went home for more food and some time spent in an old favorite book, after which I noticed that the recent rain has washed the sky and the Alps were nicely visible. To celebrate I decided to head out for a walk. Since sunset was approaching, I took the metro to a stop just north of Parco Lambro and then spent a delightful half an hour wandering in the park--stopping to smell the blossoms on the trees, admire how high/fast the water in the river is after the rain, climb the hill (the only one I've found in the Milan area) and admire the view of the Alps and of the river running through the park:
and of the river running through the park.
The walk home from the park was a full hour, so between exploring the park and walking home my exercise log for this month is looking pretty darn good so far! (I do so love starting a month with extra exercise.)
Tomorrow I need to keep working on the data processing--with luck I'll be able to get it together enough to reduce to images for the talk. I gather that the holiday weekend starts at 14:00 tomorrow--one of the people who works here managed to convey to me in Italian (unlike the scientists in the department, the hired help don't tend to speak English) that I needed to sign the log by the door earlier than usual today because the caretaker wouldn't be here, and that no one would be here after 2 tomorrow.
Oh, darn--it is midnight already--I guess I'd better go do my yoga and see about getting some sleep!
Yesterday evening clovis_t and I went out to the weekly "SCA meeting" (can we call it a meeting when only the two of us plus the hosting family are in attendance?). We had a very nice time visiting, he got one of them to look over the internship application he's got in progress, I helped him cut out the fabric for the shell for his new armour, and he borrowed a sewing machine to stitch together the lining. Next time he can stitch the rest of it. We also made plans to head back over on Saturday for our long-neglected D&D game, and on Sunday for Easter Dinner.
This morning my boss made time to help me solve some of the issues I've been having determining which of the many normalization schemes we want to use for our biotite analyses, and I've now, finally and at long last, managed to re-run all of the old data plus all of my data using that scheme, and can finally state with confidence which experiments actually have that mineral phase present. I'm also nearly done doing the same for the chloritoid. Then I'll need to repeat for the other minerals ASAP so that I can finish preparing my talk for the confrence in France 12-14 April.
After working hard all day I went home for more food and some time spent in an old favorite book, after which I noticed that the recent rain has washed the sky and the Alps were nicely visible. To celebrate I decided to head out for a walk. Since sunset was approaching, I took the metro to a stop just north of Parco Lambro and then spent a delightful half an hour wandering in the park--stopping to smell the blossoms on the trees, admire how high/fast the water in the river is after the rain, climb the hill (the only one I've found in the Milan area) and admire the view of the Alps and of the river running through the park:
and of the river running through the park.
The walk home from the park was a full hour, so between exploring the park and walking home my exercise log for this month is looking pretty darn good so far! (I do so love starting a month with extra exercise.)
Tomorrow I need to keep working on the data processing--with luck I'll be able to get it together enough to reduce to images for the talk. I gather that the holiday weekend starts at 14:00 tomorrow--one of the people who works here managed to convey to me in Italian (unlike the scientists in the department, the hired help don't tend to speak English) that I needed to sign the log by the door earlier than usual today because the caretaker wouldn't be here, and that no one would be here after 2 tomorrow.
Oh, darn--it is midnight already--I guess I'd better go do my yoga and see about getting some sleep!