Beginning

(Monday, 10/5/09, 7 PM; This is retro-posted. My urge to blog got ahead of actually setting up a blog.)

I defended my dissertation two Thursdays ago. My defense went smoothly enough – my committee had no fundamental problems with my work and no major revisions. I should have been done years ago, but I took jobs after I finished my TAship, as an exploration geologist, an instructor, and most recently as a contractor for NASA. And, to be straight with you, until the last two years, I wasn’t in a big hurry. I was enjoying the extended adolescence of grad school in a town I loved. It all caught up to me, though, and here I am, having just finished my first day as a postdoc.

I took a pay cut in going from government contractor to postdoc fellow, but I’m excited to be doing pure research again. This town is pretty cheap anyway. Now I have an office with windows, a glass-fronted bookshelf, and an nice new (to me) loaded Apple computer. I can’t complain. My background is fairly broad, but I’ve concentrated in igneous petrology (magmatic rocks) with some ore deposit work and geochronology thrown in. For my contract job I start working with lunar regolith, in a capacity that incorporated some research but mostly had me providing geologic consultation to engineers designing hardware. Now I’ll be studying all kinds of meteorites using a variety of instruments and techniques, most of which are new to me. It should be fun.

So why bother writing all this, and why put it out for anyone to see? No single reason. Maybe I’m just revolted by the specter of free time after the dissertation (as if my new research won’t keep me busy enough). Maybe I just want to write. I keep a journal anyway, where I ramble to myself about politics and books, music and movies, food and drink…but if I’m going to subject others to my screeds I’ll try to apply a little discipline and focus and stick mostly to science news and my own postdoc. I’ll try to be honest about my stumbles and my complaints. Though there are plenty of great science bloggers out there (I read the ScienceBlogs and the Discover crowds), there are too few geologists (though some very good ones, like Eruptions) and even fewer planetary geologists, so maybe I’ll fill a niche. Or maybe I’ll spend more time than I intend getting angry about the culture wars and interpreting internecine conflict. Maybe I’ll even touch on a few recipes and drinks that move me. We’ll see.

(Still retroposted: Tuesday, 10/6/09, 6 PM)

Day 2 on the job, and I’m settling in. I have more books and papers to bring from the home office (which I hope to reserve for domestic purposes except for rare occasions) to work, but I’ll do a little at a time. Today I worked for an hour or two on a manuscript and presentation from my dissertation and then jumped into the new stuff. Identifying components of Martian regolith in Martian meteorites. This one comes to me as a large dataset that needs analysis, and I won’t be operating the microprobe or a SIMS, at least not until we deal with what we have. I’m cool with this – I can catch up on the Martian literature (that won’t happen in weeks or even months, but I can pick up enough to function in my niche), learn some new techniques (non-linear principle component analysis, anyone?), and settle into a routine.

Best of all, it rained today. Is there anything better than working inside when it’s gloomy and rainy outside? The drear suits me, and I’ve done time in it (SE Alaska field work, for example), but I especially like it when I’m inside and warm, coffee in hand, looking out.