Day 57 - Back to school, sort of

The beginning of my third-to-last work week began like many previously: with coffee at Cafe Madaa. I had to leave before Zvonimir, Tanmay and Clay did, to get to the lab and drop off my stuff before heading to Wolfson with Patro.

< .science >

We then had our first TEM class with Talmon! The purpose of this first session was for him to give us a very in-depth introduction to the microscope, including details about each lens, aperture, valve, pressure gauge, and vacuum pump. I always knew it was a very complex piece of equipment, and Talmon has been telling me about it little by little during our sessions, but only in response to my questions, and I don't know everything to ask. It was also helpful for him to be able to make all sorts of adjustments to demonstrate things as we went along; most of this was stuff you can't do with a sample in there, so it was mostly new to me.

< / science >

Anyways, I took about 8 pages of notes, including annotated diagrams. It was very jam-packed, but hopefully if I review it all it will sink in. Patro and I headed back to Perlman afterwards, luckily early enough for me to head straight to San Martin, where I sat with Anna and Onur. Back at the lab, I continued work on my presentation, and ended staying at work until very late (around 8:30 pm). When I was happy--or as happy as I was going to be--with the powerpoint, I decided to call it a night, and headed back to Clore.

When I got back, Dan, Ari, Stephen and I headed out for dinner. This was a banner evening: Stephen's FIRST TIME AT HERTZL BAR! I got shakshouka, which was delicious but since I was so hungry, I didn't wait for it to cool fully and really burned the roof of my mouth. Stephen ordered a mixed drink consisting of coffee and Kahluah, and it was delicious. Dan got an Irish coffee (coffee and Bailey's), which turned out to not be delicious at all. In general, though, the service was slightly faster than usual, and everything was yummy.

Back at Clore, the "party" was in Ari's room. I grabbed my computer to catch up on some blogging, while chatting with Ari, Dan, Zvonimir, and Oren. I don't know how it started, but I got into a sort of shouting match with Zvonimir on the subject of Macs versus PCs, which was very silly but somehow made a lot of sense at the time. At some point Joel came in. His family is visiting this week, so he was with his little sister Barbara. While I would have liked to hang out with them more, I was tired and sort of cranky by this point, so I lingered only a few minutes more, enough to promise Barbara her first tag (and here it is!), before going to bed.