Wednesday, March 4, 2009

One week...

After all that junk about Hakuna Matata and "no worries", my AC adapter died on Sunday night. Thankfully, I was able to order a new one on Ebay just as my laptop battery took it's last breaths. To my amazement, my adapter shipped on Monday and arrived today- super fast, which I am SO GRATEFUL for. I have my computer back! No more computer labs! Yes!

But here's what I got done over the past couple of days.


I really like them all.

Tomorrow I have my last class field trip. It's just a half day trip, and we have our field exam final, which should be easy enough, just some rock identification. On Monday we had an optional field trip (which I went on, of course!) to the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver. It was in a federal compound, so we all had to present our IDs and go through security.

In the lab they store, sample, and analyze all of the ice cores that they've gotten from drilling in Antarctica. Some of the cores go back 750,000 years. (Well, the two oldest are the EU core, which goes back 500,000 years and the Russian Vostok core, which goes back 750,000. The US is currently in the process of drilling at WAIS-D to get a core from 1 million years ago. Of course. Because we have to be the best, you know!)

It was a beautiful day on Monday, setting all kinds of records for the warmest temperatures ever, (over 70 degrees) and we were going into an ice laboratory! We got all bundled up to go into the working lab, with temps of around -12 degrees. Then we went into the storage room, where all of the ice cores are kept. It was -36 degrees. I have never been that cold in my life! So in the course of a few minutes, my body went through a 100+ degree drop in temperature. It was pretty amazing.

And what's with the one week reference? Well, I'll be home for Spring Break in one week! So if you want to hang out with me (and you know you do), I'll be home from March 11 - 22.

1 comment:

Trudy said...

I think the fish does need fins after all (Ella agrees with me). Maybe just a long dorsal fin along the back rather than side fins. Otherwise they look great (although El did think the elephant was a koala until she saw the profile shot).