I have had a really full and busy day today, but the highlight was:
So I'm sitting in the staff work area and one of my colleagues comes up to me. There's an open day this weekend, and so we need to plan an activity for the would-be students.
"Simple!" I say. "Let's get them to dissect some owl pellets. Hands on, fun, they get to play with skulls."
"Good idea!" she says. "But we'll need something even fancier for the open day in February. What can we do? Perhaps we can take some soil samples."
And as we're debating the photogenic merits of soil Vs dead mice...
Suddenly, a Dashing and Handsome Stranger (read: an autistic engineering lecturer) appears with a flourish (read: launches himself into a seat beside us while visibly and physically vibrating with excitement about his special interest being Useful) and asks "HELLO I'M SORRY DID YOU SAY SOIL BECAUSE I HAVE A RAMAN MICROSCOPE"
"Amazing!" declares my colleague. "...Who are you?"
"COME AND SEE IT!!!" he says, currently the human embodiment of the :D emoticon.
We went and saw it. It's an excellent microscope and his ten minute infodump about it was both spectacular and also extremely useful. We're going to use it to assess microplastics.
I have a new friend.
