Thou shalt not forget thy ipod!

During the summer we graduate students help with projects out at the research farm as often as possible.  Our lab group has many research trials that are ready for harvesting and data recording, it's usually fun and gets us out of the office (which isn't air-conditioned anyway so why bother....)  

One of the most tedious tasks is cleaning grass seed.  After grass seed has been cut, laid in the field for a while, and the seed harvested with the combine it needs to be sent through the seed cleaner.  This chest-freezer-sized machine separates the live seed from the stalks, hulls, and chaff that the combine also collects.  Each experimental plot is individually bagged during combining and must be cleaned and weighed individually.  This is a long, noisy, and tedious process that is made worse by the heat and dust particles released during cleaning.  

Listening to music, podcasts, our audiobooks is one of the few things that make this task more bearable.  I forgot my ipod today, and oh how I suffered.  I thought I might be able to call upon my creative storytelling brain function to entertain me with fictional stories and random characters, but I completely failed.  Apparently my "magical thinking" does not work upon request, or by force of will.  Must, must, must remember ipod!