This week was short again due to Hurricane Beryl passing through. We lost power almost immediately, and unfortunately, a tree split in half and fell on our fence. Compared to others, my family is lucky given that I’ve seen houses completely destroyed by falling trees. While my family still has no power, we do have a small generator hooked up to the fridges so on Tuesday, we decided to grill a food and cut fruit to hand it out to our neighbors who also have no power. My family spent Wednesday cleaning up and chopping down the tree to ensure it wouldn’t pose a danger to any of our neighbors.

Regarding work, my primary method of transportation is the metro rail, and I learned that it was suspended due to the storm and temporarily replaced with shuttles which stressed me out. I got lost for a little while, but by asking questions, I found out where I needed to be and made it safely to my lab.

Once I arrived on Thursday, happy to be back and ready to scan samples, I saw that my lab had run out of liquid nitrogen, which is vital for scanning my samples. I asked one of the graduate students in the lab if he had any, so we went to check another lab that had three whole containers empty. We then decided to take a trip to the stockroom, only to find a note stating they were also out of liquid nitrogen, but to check another building. After checking the other building, we still couldn’t find any, so I spent the rest of the day making a plan for next week. I wanted to ensure that I would be able to scan all my samples, dropcast any extras if needed, and get the graphs necessary for my poster.

On Friday, we were still out of liquid nitrogen, but I wanted to make the best of it. I began working on my poster, which has been a learning curve since I’ve never made one before. Thankfully, my mentor has been extremely helpful whenever I ask questions despite being out of state. In addition to finishing my gradient project next week, I will also be creating all the plots and schematics, which hopefully shouldn’t be too difficult.

Lastly, my thoughts are with everyone affected by Hurricane Beryl. I hope you are all doing well and that recovery comes quickly and smoothly. Stay safe and take care.