The laser tags me back for my neglect

So it's been a long stretch of time again since I've posted anything, and with the uneventful spring break I had there really isn't much excuse why I didn't jot something down with everything that has been happening.

School has been pretty time consuming lately, and with a sudden urgency to write papers coming due before the end of the school year I will be doing a lot more writing on my Geochemistry project, Colorado Plateau poster, and some Entomology papers for my elective class than any recreation writing.  I have a lot of anxiety right now about all that writing simply because I haven't started on any of it, but I hope to remedy that by the weekend.

I've been really happy to be learning about the (TIMS) mass spectrometer and the chemistry that goes with it.  I'm reluctant to be such an easy catch for Dr. R, but geochemistry has really caught my attention this semester and if I work for him this summer I will probably get even more into his type of work.  Next semester should be a good time to test how much I really enjoy it though, when I'm taking more sedimentary based classes.

My schedule for next semester is essentially complete after today.  I have GEOL 399 Igneous and Metamorphic Petrology, GEOL 420 Stratigraphy and Sedimentology, GEOL 465 Isotope "Geoghemistry", GEOL Structural Geology, and GEOG 381 Cartography and GIS.  This will be the heaviest 15 credits I have ever seen assembled together, but I certainly won't be working next semester so I feel that I persevere.  It feels odd to have all of my general education credits nearly covered as this semester comes to a close.  My only non-departmental elective I haven't covered is an engineering or programming course, but the GIS course could be covered under the new catalog if my sources are right...

Thursday was an unusual day considering the past month.  I had been severely neglecting my LIBS work by doing Geochemistry work and today I finally got back to my LIBS data.  I hadn't realized that I had 12 data sets just waiting to be analyzed so it was long overdue to sit down with Dr. M and run the Unscrambler software to analyze my spectra.  Running those 2100 shots with 13701 spectra each took a long time though, and so I was at school from 8:50 to 6 with only one two hour class to go to, and I was sad to miss out on the laser tag event the school was hosting that night.  I guess when you trade up in laser class it's hard to go back to the simpler tools of learning you had as a child.

I have had some very good times lately though, and I have to say this is a very happy time in my life right now.  Coming off of spring break after visiting with a lot my good friends back at home and taking it relatively easy in the shadow of midterms, I can't complain.   I may have two midterms next week already and due dates on papers quickly approaching but this may be the golden semester compared to what in my future classes.  All I know is that tomorrow will be a relief from today's nonsense, and over the weekend I am going to make some serious dents in those papers!

Photo Credit
Cornell Geology Department Facilities. "Thermal Ionization Mass Spectrometer"

The Sydney Traveler. "Code Red" (for Code Red Leisure Centre)