A few more hours than expected

This time tomorrow I'll be on a plane to (hopefully) sunny Stanford. Our beam time here in NY is over and we got pretty much everything done that we wanted/needed to. We even got an extra 15 hours of beam - ordinarily it would have been down for 'machine studies' for two day, but they decided they didn't need it last night. I pity Mary for working the night shifts... but she knows what experiments are needed on this project more than I do.

Went to Tanger yesterday, there was hardly anybody else there. Managed to get a few assorted bits and pieces - hope it doesn't put my bag in the overweight category (1.2 kg of chocolate, anybody?)

Have had the sling off for a bit long the last few days, but I managed to twinge it the other night in the shower. Owww... taking it easy at the moment. And watching the rain, come a-tumbl-ing down.

Measuring the periodic table

Today is day 2 since arriving at Brookhaven (NY), things are going pretty cruisy so far. I haven't had to do anything. We swap over later today to do the experiments I'm here for. With 5 people it gets way too crowded (even three makes this particular beamline crowded), and I do have other stuff I can be working on.

So far they have looked at gold, copper, and zinc spectroscopy; today we will change to nickel and possibly to tungsten later. Usually we only do one element, or maybe two (not that it's a big deal to change, but you have to be organised and make sure you've done everything you want to on one element before going to the next). So to do four or five feels like we are almost doing the whole periodic table. (Yes a gross exaggeration because there are over 100 elements in the periodic table.) Ok I should stop trying to explain myself - people will think I'm a geek. Oops - too late.

We're not going into the city on our days off - two of the students are heading there afterwards so there's no point. Don't know what we'll be doing instead but no doubt I will let you know. Somebody said something about going to the beach, but the weather's meant to pack in. We might go to Tanger; you can do that in the rain.

Update on the shoulder: it's coming along. Still sore but I am taking the sling off for a couple of hours each day, and at night too. It's now 3 weeks AB.

Bye bye Chicago; hello New York

Well our experiments here are finished and I am flying out to the next ones in about 6 hours' time. All in all, the time here has been very productive. In fact we've already started writing a Nature paper about some of the results... (well I guess the Introduction and Experimental sections are always easy to write.)

The experiments in New York are using x-ray absorption spectroscopy to look at valence states of particular atoms in potential fuel cell materials. It's not something I've been looking forward to. Our collaborators are very secretive and so they don't give us enough information to work with, which makes writing beam time applications more than a little difficult! Add to that we have had scheduling woes since October last year. So this experiment has basically been in preparation for the last 18 months. And yet I've got to the stage where I basically don't care any more. It's terrible.

For everyone reading and about to post suggestions of great restaurants to check out, I'd better say up front: I've been to Brookhaven, NY, about 5 times now and only made it into the city once. So there's probably only a 20% chance that I'll be anywhere near the city... but you never know. We have two days of 'beam studies' i.e. no beam for us, so depending on what everyone wants to do (did I mention there are 5 of us??) maybe we will go somewhere. Oh, also depending on my shoulder - although that is still improving every day. I'm typing this blog entry two handed (albeit with the keyboard on my lap).

Hmm I guess I should say something about the news back home. I didn't mention in my earliest post, but about 2 days after arriving back in NZ from my post-doc (and sincerely hoping it would be a long time before I saw the inside of a plane again), we got word Dad had had a heart attack while on holiday in Japan with my uncle. Mum and I flew out on the next plane because the info we were getting was sketchy. We were there for a week, he had to stay another month because the insurance company said he had to, he came back home and has been paranoid ever since. He had a stent put in in November. A couple of days ago he went for an angioplasty and now is booked in for a bypass operation on 5 May because it is blocked.
Now I know this is a serious operation etc. but I feel pretty much aloof and impassive to the whole thing. Then I feel guilty for not feeling anything. I am not looking for sympathy, just saying what's going on. There are some things I care about and oddly this is not one of them. Of course I am praying, but...

If I could request prayer for this it would be that God would open my dad's eyes. To Himself, to what his life has become and how he treats people, to what is important and what is just pathetic. And for healing as well, but people prayed for that last time and the other stuff (listed above) hasn't changed.

That's all for now. I feel like (((insert your derogatory word here))) but I know it's just lack of sleep and having just come off a 26-hour stint. I'll feel better once I'm not living out of a suitcase any more. Oh wait - that's not going to be until June... {sigh}

You've gotta love night shifts

This is the first day (night? ah - '24-hour period') of experiments. It hasn't been too bad to adjust to working nights, because it's almost NZ time anyway. Which will be good for keeping in email contact with people back home (once the weekend is over).

Neither of the chairs in my room at the guest house were particularly conducive to sleeping in, so I've bit the bullet and tried sleeping in the bed. Kind of like a regular person, except it resembles a nest when I get out of it. It hasn't been too painful to get out of, although both nights I had weird dreams about something trying to attack me (first night a lizard, second night a cat) and moved quickly to get out of the way - which promptly resulted in pain shooting through my shoulder and making me wake up.

Anyway it's not the first time I've had to work nights, and probably won't be the last. Although, the Argonne guest house is probably one of the better places I've stayed in for having to sleep through the day (the walls are thick enough to block out the noise, and the curtains are thick enough to block out the light). So there aren't as many sacrifices that need to be made, apart from the food choices at 3 am being pretty limited (vending machine contents, or food we bought at the supermarket yesterday).

By the way the pizza place (the original Pizzeria Uno) was ok; maybe if we'd ordered something with more meat and fewer onions and mushrooms I would have been happier. Our waitress was a bit of a dag. Conrad had finished his cranberry juice and she asked if he wanted another, but then realised that it wasn't on the list of free top-up drinks. He said, 'Oh well, could I have a beer then?', to which she replied, 'Sure. Oh, that's not a top-up either.'
She must have been about 60. You don't mind tipping for service like that.


(For all my US readers: tipping is not something we do in NZ. The minimum wage is a lot higher here. So it's a bit of a foreign concept to us that takes a bit of getting used to. 'When in Rome', and all that.)

Chicago, Chicago

Well here I am in the 'windy city' (and I thought the 'windy city' was meant to refer to Wellington - only uttered by Aucklanders of course, and at their own peril), after some 18 or so hours on a plane cramped into a seat with a sore shoulder. Ibuprofen is my new best friend...

Anyway I am here at the APS (Advanced Photon Source, a 7 GeV synchrotron facility at Argonne National Laboratory just outside Chicago) with two colleagues from Victoria University back home to look at x-ray reflectivity and diffraction from Langmuir monolayers. We take a single layer of a particular type of molecule and fry it with an x-ray beam. Fun stuff!

We arrived at the lab just after midnight local time. I took my time to unpack and have a shower. Major achievement for the day: I managed to get a t-shirt on. But I still don't want to risk sleeping in a bed, in case I can't get out of it (the bed in the guest house room feels pretty lumpy anyway).

Tomorrow (or should that be, later on today) is set to be pretty cruisy: I have to repeat some training, then the others are going to prepare solutions etc. and the plan is to go to the 'best' pizza restaurant in Chicago for dinner. My first time out and about in the city - woohoo! - and this is my fourth time here!!

Yes, I really do need to get out more.

One week since the break

Time for me as of late has been measured either as 'BB' or 'AB' (before break or after break). Now it is 7 days AB and things are going pretty well. Still a bit of movement in the shoulder from time to time, but it doesn't stab me with pain (e.g. going up the bump in a driveway). Still a bit achy, but if I shift position that will dissipate. Whoever desgned anti-inflammatories deserves a medal.

I have been wearing the sling outside my clothes since Friday. So as I promised, I'll be going up to Palmerston North tomorrow for the NZ synchrotron users' meeting I've spent the last 2 months organising, and the flying out to the US on Thursday. By the time I get back from the US I should be out of the sling.

So I'd better go and do some last minute packing (including the computer I'm writing this on) and go to bed, because it's a 5:30am start tomorrow. Leaving the house at 6 to get to Palmerston by 8.

Thanks to everyone who has been praying for me - at Bethel and at church, and the others - you know who you are. God bless.

Collarbone, day 4

It's now day 4 after busting the collarbone and things are doing much better. I had to move back in my with parents because it was much too painful trying to manage on my own. I can't get the sling on and off myself, and I can't drive. Getting dressed takes at least 10 minutes.

Things are still falling into place for the synchrotron meeting next week, and I might even be able to make it. If I can wear the sling outside my clothes I'll go. Similarly for the US trip on Thursday. None of the nurses or specialists at the fracture clinic thought I would have any problems travelling, which is encouraging. I managed ok at CKC (church kids' ministry) last night, and it wasn't as painful riding in the car as on Monday!

What do you need a collarbone for anyway?

Yes, well, that's a bit of a rhetorical question, the collarbone is the only bone that connects the arm to the sternum - and you never really think about these sorts of things until they break. Like my left collarbone.

It's quite a short story really: first soccer game of the season, 30 minutes into the first half I got tripped by some unco on the opposition team, landed awkwardly on my shoulder. It didn't hurt too much at the time, so I stayed for the rest of the game before heading off to A&E.

They didn't show me the x-ray but apparently it was pretty clear it was broken. So the advice was to keep my arm in a sling and take painkillers as often as needed.


Not my collarbone, but mine would look like this...

I slept really well last night, but trying to get dressed this morning was unbelievably painful. Apparently this is normal! but the sensation of bone ends grinding along each other is something I could really do without. (I don't think I'll ever be able to have kids...)

So from here on for the next few weeks it'll be taking one day at a time. It's too early to say whether I should cancel my US trip or not. They said the bones should start knitting around day 10 - which would be the day I'm supposed to be leaving. But even if I do sort of feel ok, is it worth taking a trip to the US - land of the impossible health system - because if something goes wrong, it would go very very wrong?

Your thoughts and advice please! especially if you're in the US (hi Regina...)