CRUNCHsquish goes the cockroach.

So yeah. That was one of the highlights of my day. And by highlight, I actually mean OH GOD WHY. As I was leaving the geology building to head home after sequence stratigraphy, I decided to hit the bathroom. Except the doorway of the women’s room in the basement was guarded by an enormous cockroach. It was at least the size of a cocker spaniel.

I was planning to just slink quietly away and use one of the restrooms on the upper floors, where the cockroaches have at least had the good taste to remain hidden. Instead, one of my mineralogy students popped up and informed me that I should squash it, since I was wearing real shoes and he was wearing moccasins. I made gagging noises to signal my disagreement. Part of this is because I’m too soft hearted to even squash most spiders, and part of it was because I couldn’t begin to imagine what it would feel like to try to step on a bug that size – what if I only wounded it, and made it angry? What if it had a knife?

So then he told me to give him my shoe. Which I did. And he slammed it down on the cockroach. Twice. Then ground it in to the floor, at which point it made that awful CRUNCH noise that almost made me gag.

And then he threatened to wipe the bottom of my shoe off on my shirt sleeve before giving it back to me.

My students. They really know how to ingratiate themselves.

I ended up using one of the other bathrooms anyway, since I didn’t want to go near the gross, squashed cockroach. Gah.

Other than that, decent enough day. Had my weekly meeting with Mary, discussed some basic isotope geochemistry for the PETM and I think I understand at least the broad strokes of it okay. I also asked her if there was much on the petrology of the basin, and it turns out there is basically nothing. I have to see if I still like thin sections by the time I’m done with this sedimentary petrology class, but it sounds like there might be a good opportunity for a project there if I can find money to have approximately a bajillion thin sections made. Also talked to her about masters versus PhD, since I’ve started wondering if I made a mistake just applying for an MS. Apparently that’s something that can be changed pretty easily mid-stream, so I’m going to stop worrying about it until I settle on a project, at which point I’ll see if the scope of that project is more suited to an MS or PhD.