die Nacht zum Tag gemacht

The sky's beginning to turn deep blue. I appear, accidentally, to be watching sunrise around a solstice again, more or less.

Here are some things that have happened: yesterday, I finally (finally) got 24-hour access to our buildings; this was supposed to have been granted back when I started. And in spite of the fact that I was in the middle of a mass spec run, I actually managed to head home from work before 8pm; and my first use of the access was getting in at 6.45am to check on how my run was going (my machine time technically finished yesterday, but today's user wasn't going to get started til 10am, which gave me a solid 12 hours for an overnight run even if I'd got it started late), and the answer was good and I have data and tasty TASTY data.

I spent a significant chunk of the day sorting out the data-from-the-machine into something useful in my master spreadsheet; another chunk messing about with some of my incredibly shonky python; some on final tweaks to the transfer report (still need to write some and replot some graphs then send it off tomorrow, oops); and yet another on a flurry of e-mails about the solid month of labwork I've got planned once I return from the US trip, along with sitting around with my supervisor being excitable about rocks. I've got ten grams of a mica previously analysed as containing 550 parts per billion (ppb) of thallium; bear in mind that the average concentration of thallium in the mantle is ~2ppb, and most of my samples have concentrations around 30ppb. For these typical samples, 100 milligrams is enough to get three to six measurements out of -- what on Earth we're going to do with ten grams of 550ppb I am not entirely sure and nor's my supervisor, but that's the smallest quantity they'd sell it us in. (Exciting times in analytical terms, incidentally: of the three sample sets I'm wanting to shove through chemistry in July, #1 is of direct and immediate relevance to the PhD in terms of being actual data relating to the central question; #2 is tangentially related and getting me second authorship on a paper that's basically ready to go apart from firming up the numbers; and #3 is a set of geological reference materials nobody's measured my element-of-interest in properly before, which (1) have direct relevance to the PhD in terms of helping work out why I'm seeing what I'm seeing in the whole-rock samples, and (2) will make a nice little technical paper in their own right, which I have hopes of submitting by the end of the year.)

I also spent some time on the phone to Air Canada, who I am finding somewhat infuriating (oh crap, must remember to fill out my visa waiver application...), and was left sufficiently pissed off that I went "buggre all this for a larke" and jumped on a train to Brighton, where my useless ex + the Boything + sebastienne + Entomancy + I ate dinner at Giggling Squid before a subset of us headed off to a gig. sebastienne was there for David Devant & His Spirit Wife; I was there for 30 minutes of Indelicates, and because they were a support act and the rest of the audience were being awful and talking I got to sing along without feeling bad about it. (Also, I am so so SO looking forward to the repeat CNdeliMechs show happening in London in September -- CN Lester, The Indelicates, The Mechanisms as triple headliners, please join me, it'll be fantastic, I'll link to the deets once they've actually been announced...)

-- and then meandered my way home via the last train from Brighton to London, and shenanigans with night buses (I keep thinking I should maybe do something a bit more rigorous than go "I know roughly where I want to go and I'm comfortable navigating by a mix of dead reckoning and Boris map" for the occasions when I get back into London at gone 1 with no idea how to get home except a certainty that I can wing it) and walks: I do still adore walking round central London at 2, 3 in the morning (having said which, highly unusually for me I was wearing a skirt in public today and got noticeably more hassle than usual, though not enough to actually upset me).

Right. Yes. To sleep as the sun is rising, the better to be human when That One Lady gets into town later today...

Feeling scattered

( todo )

( tada )

( tada 22/06 )

Ask me questions about my job?

I kind of want to be excitable at people about my work (and I kind of want the human contact without needing to actually parse audiovisual cues as required in in-person conversation), so... if you are curious please Ask Me Things? <3

Tiny picspam

On Monday, I briefly attempted to be Fashion for the sake of a meeting with my supervisor:

(Me, wearing green corduroy trousers, a black top 3/4-length sleeves and a dark green flower print, and a green sparkly lace scarf wrapped tightly around my neck.)

This was, in fact, a Scarf Of Shame; I generally think it's polite not to be visibly covered in bruises at my boss.
( Scarf Of Shame Was Required... )

And then yesterday I had a Somewhat Irritating Time Of It with respect to airlines and stomped home at 4pm to get changed for the evening-in-Brighton. I more or less hit the point of "fuck it", and went out wearing a skirt in public for the first time in ages, along with a heavy-duty steel collar that clearly disconcerted some people...
( Read more... )

It was... interesting, the effect wearing a skirt in public had on people's willingness to approach me. ( Content note: harassment, being approached by strangers. )