frustration
This week has been very frustrating, although I think most of that is past now.

Half of it was work, where I have been working on the same equipment upgrade for two months now. It has gone so much slower than I thought it would, with problems continually coming up... always realizing that I needed to order one more thing than I thought I would, getting to the next step and finding that I needed to do some small machining, then more extra parts, then more machining, then bad threads that break the ceramic I silver soldered to and having to do more machining and redo stuff I had already done... early in the week I had nearly had it. But I managed to push really hard and finally finish everything, which feels great, and put my cryostat back together and back under vacuum where it is right now, outgassing all the crap that has accumulated over the last two months. Finally. Soon there will be experiments again, and that will feel good.

In some ways, the part of an experiment where you are building stuff is the most fun, because you have a lot of freedom, and you are using cool things like a torch or the machine shop. And you are making something, like playing with legos or lincoln logs except that it's something really useful, that you made! But a lot of things always break or don't work how you thought they would, and there are always delays, and if you are a scientist and you need the thing you built to work in order to even start with the science then it feels like a huge time sink going nowhere. It's a mixed bag, I guess, and at this point I am relieved to have finished.

The other half was my knee, which is still giving me problems. I went on a 9-mile hike last Sunday, which in retrospect maybe wasn't the best idea with sporadic knee pain, but the result was that all week my knee has been achy when I get up to walk around, or when I bend it too much. I made a sports medicine appointment for Monday, but I'm just annoyed with the whole thing and very antsy to exercise. It didn't help reading Born to Run and the new Runner's World issue and reading a friend's family's ultra report from a 100 mile race. Today my knee was actually a little better, though, which is something. It goes without saying that I haven't worked out since that hike and it's making me crazy, though with the issues at work it probably helped to have a few more hours to put in.

Today was really nice, though. I got a lot of sleep and we made omelettes this morning, then went to Trader Joe's followed by a comic book store (Ben and his officemates are starting a roleplaying campaign which I think I am invited to) and a homebrew store (we have cider and whitbeer bottled and are looking to start an IPA). Then we went to the Italian Market for a variety of things, including delicious cheap salmon that we just ate for dinner, and since then I've been at home cooking and talking to Steph on the phone. This is the best Saturday I've had in awhile... I don't know why but recently I started to dread weekends, feeling restless I guess, but today was really nice.