I got a maid

It had to be done. I am tired of living, if you can call it that, in a house that looks like it was recently vacated by frat boys. It is depressing and worse, a total drag. So I used the whole Sittercity.com thing that the DoD gave us to find decent sitters/housekeepers/pet sitters, etc for free and I found a super girl who is an undergrad and  she's amazing, walks on water, the whole 10 yards. She even does dishes and laundry. I think she may be an angel. I am keeping an eye out for her wings.

This is a GIGANTIC help to me, because while she is making my house amazing and letting the dogs out to play and eat, I am on campus cutting the samples for my dissertation research and writing this blog post. I am cutting rock slices that are about 200 nm thick, or just over 100x smaller than a human hair. This obviously takes a LONG time.

The sample is mounted to the arm, right which moves the rock over the tiny diamond blade. The rock slices are captured in the wet basin, where I can scoop them up with a coarse hair taped to a stick.

Then these tiny slices are placed on the copper grid held by the tweezers you see in the picture. And then we put the grid in a holder and into the TEM (transmission electron microscope) and use an electron beam to look at the texture and composition of the sample. I am looking for bacteria.

So now you can see why having extra few hours in my day is the godsend of all godsends, as well as why I get cross-eyed by the end of the week.