Busy Tuesday

Today was one of those days where you get to experience a whole bunch of different emotions for (most often) unrelated reasons. This roller-coaster of a day essentially started a breakfast when the janitor yelled at me for sitting on the wrong side of the dining room. This was the first time I had heard that there was an 'exclusive' side of the dining room and a 'regular' side of the dining room. I've definitely sat on both sides before and I really don't think anyone else here knows about this or cares either. But, to the janitor he wasn't happy about this. He had a somewhat malicious tone in his voice and so much of me just wanted to do anything from simply looking at him and saying 'no thank you, I think I'll be okay here' to getting up and pouring coffee all over the table. As you can imagine, I got up and moved to 'the other side' of the room to finish my breakfast.

After that somewhat less than ideal start to the day, I got to enjoy the exciting rush of racing down the steps at Flinder's Street Station to catch a train just in time. The doors were closing, so I had to throw myself into the gap so that the doors would open back up and I could get on. Never underestimate the sense of exhilaration and accomplishment found by 'just' catching a train like that - haha!

My day turned nostalgic as it came time to leave CSIRO for the last time (as I have described below). However, when I got back to Melbourne, the sun had come out and I was feeling adventurous. So, I went and walked through St. Paul's Cathedral (Anglican Church - i.e. The Church of England). Though this cathedral sits just a few hundred meters from Flinder's Street Train Station (i.e. I've gone past it almost every day since I've been here), I hadn't gone in yet. The decorations were really nice and the cathedral had a very ornate feel to it. Even the tile work on the floor was very intricate.

I was surprised by how much access visitors had. The main altar (located at the crossing) was closed off, but visitors could access the choir altar (located behind the main altar). They also had a cool baptismal font. The basin had what appeared to be a large steeple sitting directly over it. However, this steeple 'cover' was attached to the ceiling via a cable. It would appear to me that this could be raised during a baptism. If anything, it was unique. They also had a walk-in baptismal font.

After walking around for a while, I made my way toward the large stained glass window by the exit of the cathedral. I walked around outside for a bit and decided to walk some of the way back to the U. of Melbourne. There were a lot of people outside relaxing (it seems like no one actually works here sometimes since this was ~2pm - haha). It was a nice, cool, sunny day for walking around in the city. Eventually I decided to hop on a tram and go the rest of the way back to the university.

There I just wanted to neutralize some polymer samples (this consists of soaking them in a solution of essentially table salt). So, this was pretty easy. I just needed to make up the solution and pour it into the appropriate jars as each already had a sample in it. It went pretty well. One of the students who I hadn't met approached me and I figured he wanted to say 'hi'. Nope, he wanted to reprimand me for not wearing a lab coat in the lab. Now this is just ridiculous when working with water and table salt. In fact, I would bet that I was more at risk putting on the disgustingly dirty lab coat that he gave me.

(By the way, the photo of the beach ball didn't come from the lab today. Rather, I took this photo during the summer of 2004 after we had set this up in the gate area of the Boiling Springs Pool as a joke. However, I thought it was fitting to include here.)

Afterward, I returned to the graduate house to do my final load of laundry. I should have enough clothes to make it until next week and I'll just wash the rest when I get back to Austin. I also had dinner in the garden behind the Graduate House (no grumpy janitors there!). Dinner was actually pretty good tonight - a pleasant surprise! Now, I need to sit down and do some data analysis. I'll be cozy'ing up to the AFM all day tomorrow. So, today was a busy, but all-around generally good day!