Time inching by.

This has been a long week. I've had tests, papers, and two labs to do. One of those labs was pretty intense. Each group in my paleontology class had a chunk of limestone. We put in the rock crusher, which knocks it around and breaks it up into little pieces. Then we put that in a strainer and put it in an acid bath for a day. (Acid! Eeeheehee!) Then we take it out of the bath and put it through a couple of strainers so that we got a collection of very fine-sized particles. We baked that off for a few days to dry it out. The longest part comes next: going through all of that in very small portions under a microscope searching for tiny little teeth. (It takes hours. The picture shows some of the teeth on a nail. It's blown up and bit blurry, but... AH, YEAH!) The teeth belonged to eel-like creatures called conodonts. Their teeth are referred to as "elements." The cool thing is that depending on the kind of elements found and their color, a paleontologist can help an oil company know whether to drill for oil or not in the specific area the limestone was obtained. Isn't that awesome?!? And when my professor gets back from his trip, we need to tell him the age of the rock. I'm thinking Pennsylvanian at this point, but I will be doing more in-depth classifying if possible.
And Johnny can call me now! Much more frequently! It makes me so happy. He's in Alabama now. He graduated from Basic Training yesterday. I didn't make it out there. We decided together that I should stay home. It was hard, but we can do anything. I love him so much! The closer Christmas gets, the longer it seems to be taking. All I want is to spend a day at home with him with nothing else in the world. No homework, no army, no work, no nothing. "Makin' banana pancakes, pretend like it's the weekend now. We could pretend it all the time... We could close the curtains, pretend like there's no world outside. We could pretend it all the time... The telephone is singin', ringin', it's too early, don't pick it up. We don't need to. We got everything we need right here and everything you need is enough. Just so easy when the whole world fits inside of your arms, don't really need to pay attention to the alarm. Wake up slow. Wake up slow." (Banana Pancakes, Jack Johnson) It will be so nice -- we haven't had time to just be together since our first year married. John's worked so hard for us to get by. He's gotten us through 5 years together (surgeries, car accident, job changes). And he's worked some really crappy jobs to get us through. I'm so grateful to him. He deserves this time. And I'm going to make it as wonderful as I can. :)