Another long day

I'm a little better than 1/3 done with scoring the samples. I had to get in around 8 this morning to turn on the muffle furnace, so I got a bunch done today. I now have 14 completed. That leaves 22. 
 

I don't think I'm going to do as many tomorrow, though. I have to retrieve the "burned" soil and that will take a little while (a long, slow walk, twice, up from the outbuilding where the furnace lives, carrying a dessicator with six of the twelve samples in it, and trying very hard not to trip or spill any of it).

I've got the next batch of soils in the drying oven (to drive off the water) so I could weigh them out once I reweigh these. 

It gives me headaches though, staring down a microscope too long, and I got a cramp in my neck from the shrimplike position I had to sit in to work. 

Also it's just intellectually/emotionally tiring, because it's the same thing repeatedly and is a lot of concentration, and also today I didn't talk to anyone else, so ALL it was was working on that.

Also, I'm tired. Bad dreams last night, including one where there were basically Blitz-like bombings going on and people kept having to "hit the dirt" to avoid injury (perhaps "All Clear" is not the best pre-bed reading choice....). There was another one I don't remember, I just remember it made me sad. Sometimes I totally forget the dream, but the emotion it caused sticks with me.

It seems like a bit of an evolutionary flaw that the emotions dreams conjure up affect you just like the "real" experience of that (like: being sad because someone died in your dream vs. actually losing a person in real life). I suppose it's either an artifact of how our cognition of emotion works, or else it serves some purpose; I've read that dreaming is sometimes a way the brain discards "junk" and sort of washes the neurotransmitters or something.

The problem is, in the summer, I often have unpleasant dreams - it's too warm and humid, I'm not comfortable, sometimes I don't breathe well because of my asthma. And I also sleep more "shallowly" because I'm too warm, so I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night unhappy. 

(Last night, after the first one, it was bright enough through the blinds I groaned and thought "is it 5 am already, almost time to get up and work out and then dress and eat and go to work" but when I looked at the clock it wasn't even midnight yet. I ALMOST got up and tried watching tv for a while - a common way of exorcising bad dreams for me.)

But yeah, I do think I need to do something "fun" later this week. It really does seem I need more escapes now than I once did; I don't know why. I think this week it'll be Fort Washita unless it seems just impossibly hot to do it and then, well, I don't know. 

I do wish we had some new small businesses here (that weren't weed dispensaries). The city claims we will be getting some but I'll believe that when I see it. (They also claim they want to build an "indoor water park" but that's really for the kids, it's not something I would use, so I don't know)

But it really does seem since 2020 I've realized what a small and remote place I live in - the nearest town of any size is a half hour away - we are the "big city" for most of the other counties surrounding us, and we really don't have that much. I don't know. If I weren't AS busy, I'd maybe plan a few overnight trips to places like Eureka Springs with the goal of "what if I consider moving after I retire" even though it's questionable I'd be able to afford a decent place. (Or maybe I just go to Denison a lot more for things, I don't know)