A public service message

So today was my first day at the museum. This is pretty well going to be the most amazing job I've ever had (Yea, take that stupid pottery studio that fired me!).

I spent all day going through orientations and meeting wonderful new people. They are all really nice. Seven of us went to dinner tonight and made really good friends.

It's odd that I got here expecting to live with all girls but in reality I live with all boys. There is Mike who is a fellow intern at the museum and working in conjunction with me so that is very nice. There is Rui who is a very funny talkative fellow who works at the JP Morgan in Midtown. Then there is Ryan who is from Harvard and he works at.... a bank. I forget which one. He is in the double room upstairs with Shane who is also working at a bank... again the name escapes me. They are all very very nice people and three of them at least are familiar with the area so that is very helpful to me. We get along great and just finished a game of Spades. So right now it is one shower for four boys and one girl... soon to be two girls but the second has yet to move in. But it's hardly a conflict because we all have very different schedules.

There are lots of girl interns in the suites scattered around the courtyard but there's too many to list. They seem very nice and we should get along well. It's all just good things I've got to say.

I have really flexible hours but I will probably go in around 9 or 9:30 and leave anywhere between 4 and 6... just depending on what I accomplish for the day.

So we went through a very arduous process of sitting in a lobby for a few hours waiting to get ID badges made... but in the end it was all worth it. With one swoosh of my little ID badge I am granted magical clearence to places that look like just black walls. I didn't even know there was a door in front of me until we walked through it.

And in case anyone has ever been to the Natural History Museum before... you will notice on your map that there are some large blank areas. Those are the places I will be working in. I've got clearance to the coolest places and they are giving each of us our own Mac laptops (Sorry, I'm not mac savvy and do not know the correct term for this object).

So we went to some more meetings and Mike, Julie (she is not on our project, but tagged along do to lack of supervisor), and myself were given a little tour of the meteorite room and the rooms where the electron microprobe and SEM are located.

After which point my friends and I left the planetary area and realized we were alone in the museum... not quite comprehending the situation we looked around and finally realized that the museum was closed. It was closed and we were still inside and that was ok. Do you know why? Because I am allowed access to the museum after hours. I know. It's awesome. =)

I also get to go the other public museums in the city for FREE as a perk of being a museum employee.


Ok... I'm done bragging ... but just to recap incase you missed any of it:

*Mac laptop
*Free reign
*Me + Closed museum = Fine to be inside
*Free entrance to other museums

Actually this is going to be a continuation of the bragging for me... but it is the research I will be doing for the summer. I will work on the Allende meteorite as I've previously mentioned. Everyone in the know about this thing knows that there are Calcium Aluminum inclusions (CAIs) scattered through the meteorite. Basically these are particles which are older than Earth itself and are suspected to have orignated from some other nebula (okay, I'm not an astronomer and it's my first day... so this nebula business may be a smidgen off). They were later encompassed into the Allende but nobody ever bothered to figure out in what concentration they exist in this meteorite. It sounds like an easy question to answer... but in reality it is not so easy. There are plenty of large (about 2 or 3 mm in diameter) CAIs, but then you've also got to take into account the seemingly infinite number of itty bitty teeny tiny weeny teeny little CAI guys hangin out in the conglomeration as well. So that's where the fancy SEM and microprobe come in. I'll be mapping these suckers and hopefully coming to some sort of conclusion about all of this. Dr Ebel (my advisor) even said he expects we'll get an abstract out of it and that is really good for me to get my name on. Hopefully I will be able to present this research at geologic or astronomy conferences in the next year. That is really good for me to get into as well, as you may have guessed.

So pretty much things are going fantabulous and I am having a blast. Except for the poles in the subway... I dont know what it is about those metal poles you have to hold, but as my friend pointed out, every one of them have the same greasy-grimy-millions-of-people-have-touched-this before me feel. And to a germophobe like myself that is slightly unnerving. But I've got the always handy nerdy bottle of hand sanitizer so that takes care of that. And one time a rather large fellow sat on me. That wasn't fun either. But I narrowly escaped suffocation as he had bad aim and only got my right leg.

=)

Chelsea