over encumbered

I’m working my way through my usual bloglist after being away from all internet activity for a while. Sciencewoman has a post here that reminded me of one of my travel/fieldwork pet peeves.

I am fairly young and able-bodied. I’m not generally travelling with a horde of small children. But at times I’m forced to lug extremely heavy and awkward stuff around in crowded places.

If you’re unencumbered and you see someone who has obviously had a long day, is limping, has several bandages on the hand she is using to grip her stuff, and is fighting with a door/trying to cross a street/trying to haul her stuff up a flight of stairs, the very least thing you can do is avoid getting in her way. I don’t usually ask for help from strangers, but I’d like to avoid getting run over by cars in crosswalks, having doors slammed in my face, and getting cut off by people going up stairs when I’m obviously struggling.

farmer tan

I use sunscreen all the time when I'm out in the field. I usually use 45+, and on a good day I actually reapply the stuff every couple of hours. I tell people that I'm so diligent because I'm concerned about my skin's health, but the real reason is that I detest farmer tans.

Since I wear t-shirts nonstop in the summer if I'm doing fieldwork, when I have the opportunity to not wear one, I do. So you'll usually find me in something sleeveless or with a scoop neck. I look ridiculous with a farmer tan and a frilly little camisole.

So I was outside a couple days ago, wearing a t-shirt, and I did in fact apply a lot of sunscreen. However, I apparently missed the sides of my neck and a 1-inch strip right under the edge of my sleeves (both arms). I now have the ultimate farmer tan, and I'm going to an outdoor semiformal event (think sundress) in a couple of days. Grr.

blog break explanation

So, I haven't spent the last couple weeks in an internet-deprived wasteland. What happened to me? Bear with me, I'm going at this one sideways...

Once when I was in high school, I came across my dad's performance review. Here's what it said in a nutshell:

"We really, really like Mr. Geologist because he cares way too much about this company and his duties. We do realize that we've put Mr. Geologist into an utterly thankless position with an absurd amount of responsibility. Our one negative criticism is that he's obviously going to work/worry himself to death over his job, and we don't actually want him to keel over because of it. Maybe he should relax a little and delegate more."

My dad waited until the offsprings' college bills were taken care of, then dramatically quit. He is now at the same age that my grandfather (same personality) died of a massive heart attack. We are all holding our breath.

I've mentioned before that we don't get along well. Certain facets of his personality drive me nuts, and I'm aware that some of the things that aggravate me the most are traits that I share. Like impatience, with myself and with other people. Like being unable to stop worrying, stop stressing out about things that are essentially out of my control.

The last month of work has been really hard. Even though I can't control what's going wrong, I can't help feeling responsible. I've been working long hours, coming home, reading garbage popcorn books to try and take my mind off work, and going to bed. Weekends, I sleep for hours and hours because I've built up a huge sleep deficit during the week. I haven't taken care of anything other than pressing bills, haven't gotten back to friends when they call.

Things are not looking up yet at work, but I've decided that I need to fight through this and not succumb to the temptation to become a hermit. Part of this is getting back into the habit of writing a post every day. We'll see how it goes...

lyme frustration

I posted about this in passing, but was reminded about it by this NYTimes post.

Why the hell doesn't Lyme disease get any respect? Are there actually doctors out there who don't think it exists? Why is the medical establishment so resistant to diagnosing it? In my experience, you'll get better treatment from a vet.

I know, I know, the test for it is dodgy and the symptoms aren't very exotic and it can look like a million other diseases. But it's very simple. Do you work outside on the east coast? Are you regularly in contact with grass/shrubbery/second growth areas? Then you're at risk.

My doctor had a laughably bad understanding of the disease (I panicked once when I found an embedded tick) so I thought I'd post this simple list:

1. You may or may not have a bulls-eye rash.
2. Ticks don't transmit the disease until they've been feeding for a while, so if you find one embedded and remove it later (i.e. in the shower once you get home), you're ok.
3. Ticks like warm, dark, um... furry places. Also, ticks can be really, really small. So they may not be spotted so easily.
4. Lyme disease gets harder to treat the longer you wait. Unfortunately, because the test is prone to false positives/negatives and it often seems to be the last thing a doctor will think of when you present with joint pain/neurological symptoms, you can go for years before diagnosis.

Also, lyme disease is only one of a whole bunch of diseases transmitted by ticks. The CDC sez babesiosis, crimean-congo hemorrhagic fever, southern tick-associated rash illness, tick-borne relapsing fever, anaplasmosis, ehrlichiosis, and rocky mountain spotted fever can also be spread by the buggers.

This is why I always wear pants and light-colored in the field...and take a very thorough shower afterward.

mapping preference

I've got a question for all you geologists out there (or whoever's left after my little blog break)...

if you have to create contours of some sort (bedrock elevations, water table, contaminant plumes), do you use software, or do you hand draw them?

I always contoured by hand, using a combination of triangulation and that elusive "professional judgement". Wherever I worked, we were too cheap to have any real contouring software, so I really didn't have much of a choice. I didn't even use simple software like surfer until I was in grad school.

At the same time, I've seen a number of astonishingly bad contours drawn by software. Here's a hint: in the real world, you tend not to have little divots and hills around all of your data points.

In the ideal world, I'd have some sort of software that would do a really basic set of contours, but that I could tweak by hand, using some sort of tablet and pen device. And the software (and peripherals would be not only cheap, but somewhat rugged.

Oh, well - a girl can dream, anyway.

blog vacation

I've been running myself ragged recently and I've got a bunch of stuff to do this week, so I'm going to be taking a wee blog break. I'll be back next week.

trivial answers

So here’s the trivia answers – I waited until today for late entries.

It was hard to decide because nobody said “highway x in state y” for all three. But Marciepooh had the most specific answers and did have something for all 3. Send me an e-mail and we’ll work out a way for you to get the tchochke.

What was I thinking of?

I did a lot of driving around the east coast, as you would guess from my profile. So that’s where I was thinking of.

1. I-84 in the southwest corner of Connecticut (gotta catch those New Yawkers)

2. I-81 in northern Pennsylvania (ditto)

3. I-95 south of Boston, in Massachusetts (incidentally, as a rule, try to avoid I-95. As the spine of the northeast corridor megapolis, it has horrific traffic jams pretty much along its entire northern portion.)

Of course, the east coast doesn't have a monopoly on bad road engineering, as you've shown in the comments. And we haven't even started on secondary roads, which can be mind-boggling...