In light of current developments in our careers (aka I hate grad school and Colin is losing his job in December), Colin and I have discovered a new way of releasing anger... hitting rocks with a sledge!
Figure 1. Action shot of Colin hitting pegmatite with 20+ pound sledge. Note safety goggles.
We went on a quarry trip with Abi (the glue that keeps our geo center together aka program administrator), Abi's 2 year old son, my favorite undergrad Meredith (soon to be a grad student at the center) and 2 other undergrads. We were looking for beryl. The beryl kinda sucked, but we discovered that looking for columbite was REALLY fun.
Figure 2. Columbite is lame but getting it out of rocks is not lame.
The columbite wasn't any good, but smashing pegmatite loaded with 10-15 cm chunks of feldspar and quartz to get to the columbite was REALLY fun. Seriously, we all have a new hobby. The best part was when I was sledging the crap out of a chunk and one of the undergrads announced that he had a piece of pegmatite up his nose, and then blew it out! It flew up his nose! He was fine -- it was a tiny piece and it was just barely in his nostril. But seriously. UP HIS NOSE. That's some serious sledging, and some serious fun.
And, yes, I was totally wearing my pastel pink safety goggles while sledging rocks.
Figure 3. Stylin' it up. Please don't use this picture as blackmail.
I felt much better afterwards. I'm back to being a cranky pants again, but at least I had a good weekend!!!
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