6/25 Smear slides and Spaghetti

A trend is starting to emerge:  Lexy and I are the only people that don’t order wine with dinner.  This is my third night that I’ve consumed that fortified grape juice stuff...  I’m sure that tidbit of info will explain again the dis-conjunction of the following text...  

Cleaning the coring tubes

Lab day again, however with a different focus.  We had a peaceful walk up to the university, grabbed our coffee (the barista there knows us now, I didn’t have to ask for my cappuccino!) then over to Scott’s office.  Lexy and I started out our “lab” work cleaning the PVC pipes for the coring later this week.  To briefly review the coring process again (i’ll get better details Thursday along with pictures)  from a raft floating on a lake a large tube is pushed into the sediment.  These pieces of PVC tube have been cut length wise so the cores can actually be taken out of the tubes without disturbing the sediment.  If you’ve ever used a band saw on something, you know the little burrs it leaves on the edges.  These can really mess up samples, so we cleaned about 30 tubes.  It’s really nice to help out, even something this simple.  And we got some good time out in the beautiful Italian weather that decided to cool off a bit.  Great way to start the day.  

Claire and Lexy using the
computer to view the slides

After working on the coring tubes, we joined Paula and Claire who were working on the smear slides.  A smear slide is basically just a very fine sample of the sediments found in a section of the core.  Claire walked us through the process, which was quite interesting.  It starts with a core, much like you’ve seen before.  She marked off every 10 centimeters on the core where she will be taking her samples from.  A toothpick is then dipped into the sediment picking us a very tiny sample.  Two or three drops are then placed on a microscope slide which is then “smeared” around.  This creates a very thin cloud of sediment on the slide.  The slide is then placed on a hot pad to dry.  Next, two drops of adhesive is placed on top of the sample, then a coverslip.  This cures under an ultraviolet light for three minutes, after which the slide is complete!  

Claire and Paula completed several slides while Lexy and I observed them.  The microscope they were using to view the slides had a computer connection, so we were able to take a picture of what the slides look like.  (There is one on the dissecting microscope for the core samples, I’ll work on getting some pictures from this one as well) 

We are searching for certain sediment, microfossils, and diatoms.  The picture here includes a diatom, a small pill shaped protist.  Protists are unicellular organisms that aren’t quite animals, not plants, and not fungi.  It’s basically the “junk drawer” kingdom, and naturally my favorite one.  Diatoms are specific to the type of water they live in.  I was watching a CSI a long time ago and they were actually able to say exactly where their victim drowned based on the diatoms found in her stomach.  Pretty cool stuff.  (The diatoms, not the person drowning!)

New awesome espresso maker

After checking out the smear slides, we called it a day.  Lexy and I went for a walk down some streets that have our favorite window shopping stores.  Since it was so early in the day we were able to actually go inside!!!  There is a little kitchen gadget store we’ve both been drooling over.  She loves this little hedge hog cleaning tool, I picked up a little espresso stove top device.  We pealed ourselves out of there (it was painful, so much cute stuff!) and we went in several clothing shops.  Ok, if you haven’t been to Italy, this makes no sense.  THERE ARE NO SIZES!  I mean really, you just pick something up and it either fits or not.  I was able to pick up two very cute dresses for an affordable amount, but a few I tried on were just too small.  Apparently I’m at the upper end of their size chart.  It’s also a pain to find a dress that is going to cover you in a comfortable manner.  Maybe I’m just getting old...  

My dinner!  Three different types
of spaghetti

So, lab work done.  Shopping done.  Time for dinner.  We met Claire and headed out to a restaurant that the USAC students had recommended.  This restaurant has over 300 spaghetti dishes.  I’m not joking.  It’s not Olive Garden style where you pick your pasta, pick your sauce, pick your toppings.  They literally hand you a menu with 300 different sauce/topping combinations.  Totally overwhelming.  Then of course, as soon as we have a guess what we want, the waitress brings over the English version, so we started all over!  Lexy got some spaghetti with asparagus, egg, and a cream sauce.  I got the spaghetti with a cream sauce, eggs yolk, curry, and shrimp, and Claire got spaghetti with a cream sauce, zucchini flowers, pumpkin flowers, and white beans.  We shared all three, then realized we were getting dirty looks from our waitress...  Meh.  A bottle of wine and three spaghetti dishes later, we were all three very happy little lab workers.  That is certainly a restaurant we will be visiting again, it’s a nice break from pizza (although that is amazing too, which we had hash brown pizza for lunch.  Very good).

Hash brown and Mushroom Pizza

That pretty much completes my day.  I’m now sitting here in a beautiful leopard print maxi dress still enjoying the effects of my wine.  Sounds like a perfect time for some shut eye.  More lab work in the morning, probably back to cleaning samples, then coring on Thursday!  Whohooo!