Here we go!

Yesterday was my first day at the lab! At first I thought I wasn't going to be able to get into the lab because I forgot my birth certificate in Tallahassee! Luckily I was able to contact one of my best friends at school and give her permission through the leasing office to go into my locked room and get it out and she mailed it to me (Chelsea, aka "Howie", you're the best!). Fortunately, I was able to get a temporary badge to gain access into the lab. Phew! I got into the lab at around 11am and my supervisor showed me around the few buildings we will be working in. I can't describe it in detail because of security reasons but it was it was so cool! A little after that, I ate lunch and then did a few training courses online in the offices. That pretty much took up the rest of the day and then right before I left for the day, my supervisor took me into the actual laboratory portion of the building and showed me one of the experiments they do and that I will probably be working on. I understood most of what he was talking about but I was so exhausted from the 3 hours of training courses and the fact that it was 100 degrees or so in every building. I guess I am partially still trying to adjust to the increase in elevation as well. According to my training instructor in today's training session, here in New Mexico it is very easy to get dehydrated because of the heat and the elevation combined. He also said that it usually takes about 6 weeks to get fully adjusted to the elevation. That means I will have 2 weeks of being fully adjusted and then I will have to get re-adjusted to the lower elevation in Florida and New York after my 8 weeks. Oh well!

Today I had an all day General Employee Training session at the White Rock Training Facility, so I was not in the lab at all. It started at 8am and went until a lunch break from 12-1pm and then until 3pm where we took a qualifying exam in order to get credit for the course. Overall, it was interesting but had its boring parts as well. I learned a lot about the lab itself, the security measures they take and that we have to take (that is why I am afraid to write too much about what I am doing at the lab), emergency procedures, etc. Apparently, the potassium-40 in bananas is radioactive! But don't worry, you would have to eat A LOT of bananas at once (like 1000) for this radiation to affect your body; you would die of potassium overdose before that would happen! This is probably the most interesting piece of information I gathered from the whole thing today, haha. Oh, and also we watched this hilarious "Office Safety" video. It was made in the 80's (they all wore bad clothes and huge glasses and the acting was over-dramatic) and it was about this Office Safety Investigator who came to this corporate office and explained to the manager all of the safety concerns he had for the office. There was a lot of tripping over filing cabinets, flipping over others as they fell over after tripping over filing cabinets, bumping into others and filing cabinets, etc. It was so funny, but I could also picture a less dramatic version of those things happening in a real office. This video was as funny, or almost as funny, as the Chemistry Safety video we had to watch in 10th grade chemistry. Anyway...

Tomorrow I will be back in the lab. I will probably read over some papers and get familiar with the research that my group is performing. Hopefully I will get to start working on an experiment! Tomorrow afternoon there is a lecture on "Issues Surrounding Plutonium" that I will attend. I do not know much about plutonium and I think it will be a good learning experience, even if it doesn't directly relate to my research. I am really excited about it! I will hopefully write again tomorrow!

Peace & Love,

Val