summer in the city

So I know this is sort of cheating since Jill made them not me, but look at my new socks!! A little cozy for this heat we've been having but I really love them and Jill sure does know my colors...
I have been super busy with making up classes and working and my summer class and everything, but I just took my last final and all I have to do is hand in a final cpy of a paper and I'll be home free!

I have been working in the experimental petrology lab more and more and I got my own project to work on this summer which is super exciting. It's a little complicated but I'll give you the run-down: I am going to be using this technique (called MISE or modified iterative sandwich experiment) to try and determine the compositions of equilibrium melts at 3 gigapascals. Basically, I take some crushed up synthetic mantle minerals (peridotite) and I take some powder who's composition I guess ("meat" of the sandwich, if you will), and put them in an itty-bitty capsule, put them in layers of graphite, magnesium oxide, barium carbonate, and lots of steel, and crush them with a piston cylinder to 3 GPa and 1449 degrees celcius and see what happens. I see what the composition of the resulting melt is, and do another run with that composition as the meat. And again and again until I get the same melt every time, at which point I've determined the equilibrium melt for that peridotite at 3 Gpa and 1449 Celcius. Pretty cool huh?


Other than that, I've been seeing this guuuuuuuy, Brian. We're actually going to Chicago this weekend for Father's Day because that is where he is from. Then next weekend we're going to Two Rivers. Crazy. The weather has been gorgeous so I've been doing tons of biking and galavanting around the city and it's marvelous. So, now that I won't be so busy expect many many more knitting updates from me.

Some summertime photos: Brian & I hiking, the Superior hiking trail, views of Minneapolis...