No escape from the lab

All was going smooth; the radiocarbon lab was doing our 14C measurements, one of the lab technicians was working on pollen counts on my sediments, and I could focus on my beloved foraminifera. How long do you think such a situation can persist? No, not very long indeed.

Pollen!

We got a message from the radiocarbon lab; something had gone wrong with three of my samples. Whether I could perhaps send replacements...

We got a message from our good old collaborator Rob: he wanted to do our pollen analyses. It turned out our technician had hardly started with these, so we happily tranferered that job to Rob. But that did mean I had to send him samples. And only our Connecticut core already consiusts of 200 samples I had to subsample.

One can imagine how fast I get through these forams counts this way. But then again; I claim sometimes one of my stronger scientific merits is sheer doggedness. So I'll just plough on. The evening is still young...