Actually Playing with Dirt

That's right. I'm actually playing with dirt. Apparently this blog is aptly named after all.

As the title of this post might suggest, I've started my lab work. F'real. I spent last week mixing batches of clay and cleaning/organizing my lab area. It took a couple attempts, but I finally managed a procedure to create samples with unit weights within 0.7% of each other (this is mission critical). Needless to say, a happy dance ensued. No, really, I started dancing around the lab. It could have been really embarrassing if someone had walked in. I also did a couple practice runs for my tests. After all, I'd rather know if something isn't going to work before I start processing samples en masse.

So welcome to my lab.

It's all clean and stuff! And the wires are actually organised, labeled, and go somewhere. I really should have taken a 'before' picture...

Of course, stuff takes time, and, while I was hoping to start real testing this week, I'm still waiting for the laptop to get setup. It's currently with the tech guys, so hopefully later today (or tomorrow morning) I'll have everything I need to get this show on the road. The apparatus and area is clean, I'm mixing a giant batch of clay and cutting samples tomorrow morning and, hopefully, will get my first set of big boy tests started tomorrow. I even have a triaxial test going. And it appears to be going well. This is exciting stuff, I promise.

I'm an eternal optimist. (Hah!)

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Of course, all this lab productivity comes at a cost. In this case, it was an absolute failure to study for yesterday's exam. Luckily, it was open book and I managed to get a couple hours of cramming done in the two days leading up to it. I'm not sure it went well, but I'm pretty sure I passed. I'm gonna be super burnt if I didn't. Now I'm down to two oral exams, one of which is next week. I have to finish the assignment before I can take the oral exam for the other class. That's going to be a February thing, methinks.

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The Netherlands has decided to have an actual 'winter' this year. It's been hanging out around freezing, resulting in a light frost and thin layer of ice on the canals. We had almost a week of barely-freezing temperatures and clear skies. And then, of course, it rained. Not one of those typical sporadic Dutch drizzles, but real, god awful, 1 degree Celsius rain. Last night was not one of my best rides home, especially since it was the only freaking day I didn't have a rain jacket with me. I was soaked. Ev and I had been talking about swimming, but by the time I got home I felt (and looked) like I had already been.

Go weather.

This morning I was thinking about cycling in. And then I walked outside. And fell on my ass. The magical downpour last night turned into a nice, thick layer of ice.

I took the train in.

And did a successful triaxial test on my clay (that's right, bitches, that means results I can use!).

And managed to get home at 19:20 so I can actually spend awake time with my boyfriend, who apparently still exists.

So Happy Thursday, everyone. Hope it's a good one.