October Fools

October always does this to me. Its full of a thousand joys and sorrows, its the epitome of bittersweet. Everything good or bad always begins in October. In fact, was nine years ago that Rob and I met and decided to give “us” a try on what we now call October Fools Day (October 1st).

I’ve had a really wretched week, there’s no other way to put it. The problems with the toughness tester went from bad to worse, and I went from nervous to catatonic. It became clear that I could no longer pretend my data were kind of okay… there was no consistency to my results and they differed dramatically from what had previously been published on the same tree species. I just didn’t know if it was something I was doing wrong, if there was something wrong with the machine, or how this would ever get resolved. Rob spent many, many hours trying to help me, and at long last, he thought he figured out what the problem was. There seemed to be some kind of error in communication between the electronics box and computer.

Barth and P.L. have been fantastic throughout this whole ordeal. I don’t know either of them all that well, but we exchanged numerous long emails describing the problem and trying to figure out what to do about it. It turns out Rob and I were pretty much correct in our estimation of the problem. At the moment at least, it doesn’t seem like I have to send it back to Hong Kong. There are ways to work around this communication failure; its not ideal, but my data will still be useable. With the quick fix in place, I re-did a bunch of samples from the same tree species and got values much more in line with what had been published. I breathed a sigh of relief. Then I did a different species that was published in the same paper, and had some of the same problems as before. So I still don’t really know if there is something more substantially wrong with the machine, if I will have to change my dissertation topic, if I have spent over a year making myself and everyone around me a wreck over this thing only to have it amount to nothing more than a big empty waste.

October thus far seems desperate rather than sweet or even bitter. The rains have begun again, leaving me drenched in the forest. At night, there is barely time for my things to dry for the next day. The time has switched, so the sun comes up around 5:15 instead of 6:15. I don’t think I’ve gotten more than about 5 hours of sleep since this month began.

What tops this all off is that Rob left today to go back to the states. I have been dreading this more than anything. I could not have gotten through this whole ordeal with the TT without him. For starters, I don’t know the first thing about complicated electronic equipment and computer programming, so I never would have figured out what the problem was. Beyond that, I needed to hear him telling me that it was going to be alright—otherwise I couldn’t stop replaying worse and worse scenarios.

This morning after one last hug and kiss, I watched him get in the truck with Jorge and drive away in a cloud of dust. The girls from the kitchen knew I was crying; they looked at me with sad, knowing eyes and encouraging smiles. I came back to the room, alone, and tried to avoid looking at the big black case that contains the toughness tester. I cried for about 5 minutes, and then I felt better. I did laundry; I made friends with an Argentinean girl; I fixed some lunch, and I decided that I am going to scrape myself together and try to go out to the forest tomorrow. I think maybe the dread of Rob leaving was worse than actually being here alone.

Thanks for reading, and until later then.