back home

We're back from Virginia Beach now. It was a pretty good week. Very relaxing. Now we both have a couple days at home before we have to go back to work. Yesterday I cleaned out the gutters on the house. It was the first time I've ever done that, and I had to buy a ladder from Home Depot just to get up there. It was gross, but not as bad as everybody makes it out to be.

No Surprises

It was windy and rainy on Wednesday. We could even feel the beach house shaking! We decided to check out the Virginia Beach Aquarium. There were some cool exhibits, including an awesome shark tank, but it was ultimately disappointing because nearly half of the place was under construction until sometime next year.

Dolphins

Kelly and I took Gunner for a long walk down the beach this morning while the sun was rising. There was nobody around except for a few surfers. We also saw a pod of dolphins just past the wave break. Most of them were just surfacing to breathe, but a couple actually jumped a bit out of the ocean. It was pretty cool.

Vampire Weekend

I hate that I like the new Vampire Weekend song. What the hell is a mansard roof anyway?

Virginia Beach

Kelly and I rented a beach house in Virginia Beach for the week. We took Gunner on the beach at 6pm (when dogs are allowed) and he went nuts in the surf! He kept trying to go after the sea foam. But he kept running really far out in the surf, so we called him back and went back to the beach house. Maybe in the morning we'll try it again when we can see better. Kelly and I are gonna try and get up for the sunrise tomorrow.

If you're wondering how I'm blogging this, let me just say that there are a lot of people around here who don't know about wireless security.

What do we know about Renazzo matrix?

It's been several weeks, but I finally finished a powerpoint summary of all the publishable data I've collected on my Renazzo meteorite sample. You see, it broke off not too long ago, and we need to figure out if we have to ask for more sample from the American Museum. So Rhonda asked me to put together a powerpoint showing all the data I have to see if we can get a paper out of it, or if we really do need more sample. It's kinda like how a dissertation is a summary of all your knowledge from 4+ years of grad school; this was more like 5 months of various TEM and STXM observations, including images, electron diffraction, x-ray emission, x-ray absorption (but no electron absorption, unfortunately). Needless to say, it's a lot of material.

There's actually a lot of interesting stuff in my Renazzo section. Interesting carbonates, sheet silicates, organic matter, and even (possibly) a mineral that has yet to be found in a meteorite (It's only been discovered on Earth so far). It does really suck that we lost the sample.

cold and windy

It is so cold and windy right now. Last night the wind was so strong it blew open our back door twice! It must have really sucked to have been a colonist on the east coast during the winter months.

Snow!

I walked into my cube today, ready to finish up my AbSciCon abstract, when I saw that I had no computer to work on. I had forgotten it at home! So I drove back through traffic, grabbed my laptop, and came back to work. That was a 90 minute mistake!