Another Great Update from Erik

Hi There All!
Hope that everyone is doing a-okay. I'm doing pretty darn well.
I guess I'll cut to the chase and tell you all what's been going on.
Monday: Julie, one of her friends and I went down to SE MN to swap out bugs, collect water from the auto-samplers and wander around the woods. It was pretty darn good. It was a shorter than a normal field day, but it was very productive.
Tuesday: I went with Cale to the UMore site to put in a few more data loggers, upload data and meet some locals. It was a good day.
Wednesday: Julie and I ran a bunch of samples through the spec. had a lunch time meeting and took it easy. I also meet with Josh Feinberg the guy in the Institute for Rock Magnetism (IRM) we discussed my mud thesis and started running some analyses. Oh boy!
Thursday: We ran some more samples in the spec and that was really about all that we did. It was a really easy day. In the evening I went out with Ben, Mike, and Alissa to the Guthrie Theatre where we saw "When We Are Married" written by J.B. Priestley. It was a really good play.
Friday: We went out on Lake Superior as a whole group on the R/V Blue Heron, owned by the U. Out there we cored the lake a few times using different methods: a gravity corer, a dredge, and this nifty thing that settles down to the bottom and inertia drives 4 tubes into the lake sediment, then when it is lifted up, it trips and closes the ends of the cores. Pretty cool. We also did some basic water chemistry. Finally we ran a few passes of sonar to map the lake bottom. Pretty neat stuff. In the evening when we got back I also ran some more magnetics samples for my thesis.
Saturday: I spent almost the whole day in the lab running magnetics samples. Oh boy. In the evening I went contra-dancing with Ben, Liz, Becky, and Alissa. That was a lot of fun. After that we went back to the U picked up Angela and Mike and went over to Julie's house for a party.
Today: Well, I spent almost all day in the lab running my magnetics samples again. Oh boy. I finished all of my samples for susceptibility and have about 5/8 of the ARM samples completed. I wasn't actually going to write tonite because I was planning on working in the lab this evening but the ARM machine isn't working as of this evening.... I didn't do it for the record, the post-doc touched it, not me, as he was trying to set it up for me. I feel kinda bad about it. Now I'm in a world of hurt to get my samples done, we'll see how it goes! Hopefully they can fix it tomorrow.
No real plans for the rest of the week. I am going out in the field tomorrow to change some more bugs. Besides that I'm meeting with Scott to discuss my project so I can start working on that. About time.... Calvin and Scott are going to be out for the next three weeks, so I better be in good shape pretty soon, or I'm in a world of hurt.
I think that I'm going to be taking some swing dancing lessons this week, so that should be lots of fun.
I guess that's really about it. Taking it easy. Hope everyone is having a great time!! Only four weeks to go. Cripes!
Enjoy!!
Erik