Well we are definitely making progress here. The first set of experiments, using small-angle x-ray scattering (or SAXS for short), worked really well and in fact we finished a day early. That gave us two days' break before beginning our current x-ray diffraction (XRD) experiments.
It turns out that the changes we see in XRD take much longer to happen under the same conditions than the SAXS ones. Interesting!
(Addendum: this afternoon we had a mental wrestle with the temperature controller, and managed to find *a* solution to the problem. Maybe not the optimal one, but I guess this is one of the 'features' of this particular piece of kit.)
Anyway I won't bore you too much with work; suffice to say that we'll be working through the weekend, finishing at 6 am on Monday and I'll be flying home on Monday evening. Yay!
On my days off I managed to catch up with Lisa and Regina, which was great. But in talking about church, jobs (or the fear of losing them), the man-drought, infirmities etc. it struck me that I really don't have anything to complain about. Nothing that keeps me awake at night, or prevents me from doing something I enjoy. Now I'm not saying that I'd like to have a bad back or be considered for redundancy, but all around me are people who have struggles in different aspects of life and somehow manage to cope. I mean, we don't really have much of a choice, do we. I guess what I'm saying is that there are some times where you feel like you can't really say anything because you think it might come across as showing you can't relate to them... hard to explain. For instance, it feels inappropriate to talk about your pet when the other person's pet was run over sometime in the past. (Not that we talked about that.)
So I was kind of feeling like there was something almost wrong with me for not having something worth complaining about. But maybe in their eyes, I do have something...? I mean, the amount of travel I do is a sure killer for any serious relationship (not that I really have time even when I am at home), and being a scientist isn't going to get you too far in most social circles. But that's who I am and who I have become, and it's all fine with me. I just know that God is in control and everything that happens in my life is all according to His timing.
Ecc 3:1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.
You can tell it's late at night. Time to go to bed. More experiments await, tomorrow.
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