Tuesday evening things

 * I have done eight (of 36) samples in the "sort" stage (this is wetting down the soil and searching through it using a dissecting scope to find any invertebrates that missed falling through the mesh). It's tiring work, surprisingly, and it does give me a little eyestrain. I did five samples today, I don't think I can force myself to do more than that (and four is probably better). 

I also barely said two words to another human today. My colleague's student who's working with the herbarium stuff was in but he's not talkative and no one else was around.

* I think perhaps it's the extreme aloneness and the lack of small tasks that gets to me - yes, I'm getting research progress done but the actual goal of results is far, far in the future, and if this ever actually sees the light of day is also unsure (and not even totally up to me). So even as busy as I am during the regular year, I have things like advising students or doing tutoring or whatever that makes me feel useful and without that feeling I'm not happy.

I think of a story I read after 9/11/01, where they talked about the rescue dogs that were called in, and when they found there were essentially no rescues after the very short first few hours, the dogs actually started to seem "depressed" and the handlers took to recruiting people to hide under rubble so the dog could have the win of "finding" someone alive. 

Unfortunately, I'm clever enough I couldn't be fooled by something like that, so I just have to tough it out.

* I do need to find some "fun" things to consider. Most outdoors stuff is out right now - it took me a solid week to recover from the heat exhaustion; this is the first day since last Tuesday I feel normal. But something: a museum, or a shop in a town I've not been to before, something. I keep looking at the maps but I really am kind of in a hole of "nothing" - Denison is a half hour away and anything much in my state would be at least as far. So I don't know. 

* I do have a vague plan to go to Albertson's either Friday after doing Meals on Wheels (I am on deck to help that day) or Saturday. Or maybe if I burn myself out briefly on sorting samples after tomorrow, I go Thursday and just go in and work before and after on Friday and a little on Saturday

 (But if I do that? lock the lab door behind me; on Friday when I was changing stuff over some guy wandered in claiming to be from a water-treatment company trying to get me to let him into a room to "look at" the set ups. The room number he gave is not a room number I have and I asked twice if he meant the Chemistry building (which does have that room number) but no. Also the name he claimed was his contact at the university was someone who's not been here for 20 years. I was VERY anxious about it, thinking "is this a line to get in and rob or worse?" but I THINK he may have just been trying to sell his company's product. I kept emphasizing I only had a key to the lab I was in (I did not mention my office, where my purse was) and that I wasn't authorized to order the stuff anyway and he'd have to come back and talk with my chair. The guy was also a very "close talker," which added another level of discomfort for me; I prefer several feet of personal space.

I caught my (new incoming) chair on Monday and described it to him, and he was equally suspicious, noting that the person who had been chair would have told him to expect the guy. So while I (fortunately) didn't take more than a little anxiety damage, the guy probably wasn't supposed to be there. 

(The building itself was unlocked; guys were working on the roof and they needed to get in to cool down/use the restroom/use the water fountains. I didn't mind those guys; I knew why they were there, and they had no interest in talking to me; they were there for the job) 

* I restarted "All Clear" but I admit it is a slightly "stressful" book in the sense that you worry about the characters, and them maybe missing their connection (the retrieval team) and the fact that it's set in wartime, and parts of it in a particularly dangerous part of WWII in London. 

(It's also a bit hard to keep the characters straight; several of the time travellers use different names depending on what timeline they're in, and then they have their "real" name that only their fellow time travellers know)