How quickly we fall back into good habits

Working on my PhD project necessitated developing a number of good habits with regard to work patterns. Although it has been two full years (and a week or three) since I finished my thesis and got on a plane to start my first post doc position it turns out that some of my work habits from here are tied to the town, not just the house in which I lived then. Now that I am back in Tasmania I am finding it easy to pick up the pieces of that project and get back into "thesis mode", breaking the list of things that need to be done into tiny bits and working on them. Taking breaks to exercise, get food, and catch up with friends I have not seen in a couple of years, but still being way more productive than I have been in the past six months since that post-doc position ended, when I was on what is better described "vacation mode".

While it was a delightful vacation, I find that I am enjoying working on this project once again. Today I looked at thin sections of my samples in the microscope. The first thin sections I have seen in person since leaving (I had plenty of microprobe time analysing the experiments I did, but no actual rocks to play with). I would say that I had forgotten how pretty they are, but, really, I hadn't. I do have plenty of photos (and good ones!) of these samples, but there is something nice about being to rotate the stage and see the colours change.

Yesterday at EGU

Yesterday was the first day of EGU, the session on today’s schedule which came closest to matching my research interests was TS6.5/GD5.10/GMPV55, Ophiolites, blueschists and mélanges in convergent margin tectonics. I enjoyed the morning talks, and then checked out the vendors, where I found myself doing an impulse purchase. I now own a copy of Vernon’s Practical Guide to Rock Microstructure , a review of which is available here . I couldn’t resist the purchase, since it is full of pretty pictures of deformed rocks, and thoughts about what the physical expression of that deformation tells us about the processes which formed it.
After my shopping trip, there being no other sessions scheduled for the afternoon related to my research interest, I hoped onto my borrowed bicycle and enjoyed a lovely trip along the Danube bike path back to my friend’s house and took a much needed nap.
Now I need to get ready to attend my poster for the afternoon session, so I’ll post about today’s interesting talks tomorrow (no internet access where I’m staying). If you are at the meeting, I’ll be at XL192 from 17:00 to 19:00, come on by and say hello.