I completely forgot it was Saturday in the midst of surveying. We're working for eleven days straight of data collecting without weekends. Whatever. One week down, one more week in the field, and then two more back in Golden. It's gone by pretty quickly, mostly because we're constantly busy. I'm also extremely exhausted. My feet hurt. Quiet or alone time is hard to come by. The food's okay.
Alright. I think I have my complaining out of my system. Field Camp is mostly cool, a lot of hard work, and some parts awesomely weird. I wake up at 6:15AM angry at the world and myself for not getting to bed sooner. When I have my coffee at 7, I'm extremely happy and cheerful, sitting down at our morning meeting saying, "Good morning, Terry! Good morning, Andrei! How's it going, class mates?" and such. Depending on what's being talked about, around 8 I feel meh. Then we get out in the field after driving for a half hour, and then I'm like, "Yay, Geophysics!" until 4. Then we go back to our meeting place and then I start getting frustrated, especially if the data takes a long time to download. I become extremely hungry and moody until 6, and then I'm happy but exhausted. At around 9 I stop being tired and then don't get to bed around 11 or 11:30 because I don't think I need to. But then I wake up at 6:15 again the next day.
Field camp is also awesomely weird. Our class is weird. Our professors know so, even if they are weird themselves with their own quirks. Geophysics people in general have this awesome weirdness about them. We're the weirdest thing to happen to the small town of Pagosa Springs in...well, a year.
I hope to blog every week, but here are a few quotes from last week so far. I have been taking notes in my field notebook, but the TA didn't give it back to me tonight.
"Last one in the vans is a geologist!"
"There are more buttons in this truck than the MT equipment!" Andrei
"Do these trucks automatically downshift? Because mine just did." - Andrei
"Look! Geology IS useful!" - Batzle, after propping a door with a rock.
"Geophysics girls get frisky." Craig the TA, who might have been joking around.
"That DC inversion was beautiful." "And it's not even smoothed yet, just raw beauty." "No makeup and still a ten."
"Geophysicist uses GPR...it's not very effective." Roy
"I'd rather grades you all's tests than listen to Rod Stewart." Rich, who hates grading exams
"We can fill up at the Flowing Well." - Shane, on this oil seep in a field (we almost ran out of gas).
But yeah. The highlights of my day include hanging out with professors on the line, in the car, and elsewhere, watching a pickup truck accidentally roll into our headquarters building, getting malts at the malt shoppe while the boys got girly temporary tattoos, having way too much fun on the walkie talkies, getting called an idiot after I asked my professor Rich to (it's an honor, believe me), having Dr. Bob call our geologic cross section "elegant", our department head's sense of humor, and joking around with the TAs.
Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday left for data acquisition. I will make it to the weekend after the longest week of my life.
