I'm Official!!

Take 3:

It's official...I got my badge!!! Yeah!!!! Now no one has to escort me from museum to museum etc. This will be a short post because 1) I smell bad and desperately need to shower 2) I'm tired 3) If you want the nitty gritty details call me after 5 pm tomorrow.

8 am: Breakfast Club with Barbara's yummy Gruyere Cheese from Switzerland
9:45-10:30 am: Morning meeting with Don, John, _Joe?____( the name of the other guy that works there; I can never remember his name), and Joe the Intern.
10:30-11:15 am: Joe the Intern takes me to the Capitol Gallery to get my badge

By 11:30 am I had my badge and went back to Natural History.

Things I learned today:

• How to use a Hasselblad with a digital back hooked to a power back and usb'd to a mac running flexsoftware
• Gray Card insertion and 18% gray balance test using automatic/manual software adjustments
• How to use the server at Natural History Museum
• How a SEM [scanning electron microscope] works...the controls, the beam, the aberrations, the balance of contrast/brightness
• How to apply plasma argon alkaline metal to mounted samples [this time of prototypic spider parts]
• How to glue back a specimen that has fallen off a mount using a stereo microscope
• Observed John the Intern who works for a Senior Scientist named Dr. Curano, who is Head Curator for Dinosaurs, analyze crystalline structures of samples that were inside the SEM from fractured bits of Dinosaur eggs!! [Coolest thing ever the whole John Williams "Jurassic Park" theme song riveted in my head. I also had the coolest and most easy to understand lecture about calcite crystal formations which was.....EPIC!

That's it for now...stay tuned (Oh, I also baked chocolate chip cupcakes with an Orange Pumpkin Spice Glaze for tomorrow morning's breakfast club!!

Love Ya'll--JJ