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summer student dinner
Jul. 11th, 2007 08:41 pm
A couple weeks ago I announced to the summer students, "We should cook dinner together!" With Bree in New York and Jeff an absentee housemate, I'm left to fend for myself. But group cooking (and eating) sounds fun, whether at a co-op or among summer students.
"Okay, you first!" Sonia, one of the summer students, announced in reply. "Cook dinner for us on Friday!"
And so I was immediately roped in to my own scheme.
It went excellently. We departed work early on Friday (7:30 pm!) and quickly descended upon the Armenian grocery store, where, hungry, we eagerly filled our basket with everything that was conceivably related to making pizza. For the pizza substrate, we picked a big round piece of (presumably) Armenian bread--I think it was called "Pourri"--and a couple bags of pita for good measure.
The pizza turned out excellently. This mysterious annular bread made a delicious crust, and we covered it in tomatoes, artichoke hearts, zuchini, garlic, olives, mushrooms, mozarella, and I forget what else. We should have taken a better picture of it.
July 4 in Los Angeles
Jul. 8th, 2007 12:21 am
Couchsurfer Korbi and ideal burger-eating conditions
Rob's friends threw him a birthday party combined with 4th-of-july party, held at their awesome house in the hills above Huntington drive where Los Angeles meets Alhambra. A delicious barbecue was conducted in the view of the San Gabriel mountains and lots of illegal fireworks from the neighborhood below.
Previously.
the best of things
Sep. 16th, 2006 11:04 pmWe bicycled a long way today, some 35 miles over rolling hills, hills gentle enough, but challenging enough, too, for our unpracticed legs. I was in a sort of bliss, gliding through air, gliding along pavement, gliding through the farm lands on the farm roads, scooting along under my own power on a good bicycle. Canal Trail to Pittsford, County Road 64 to Mendon, to Bloomfield. Then the turning farm roads. Gauss Rd, Green Rd, Bishop Hill Rd. Gliding through the countryside is the best thing, along the seldom-travelled roads. It was hillier, but still reminded me of Skåne. You can't return to a time, and you can't really return to a place—they change—but you can return to a state of mind.
* * *
My advisor had a good little party—barbecue—at his vacation house in the country, which is on a hill, by a pond, and which he bought from Marshak when Marshak moved away. The upstairs is airy and open and centered on a hearth. A few other professors and their spouses and their kids were the other guests. The pond was swum in, and Adrian ever played the host, with ice cream and chocolate cake for the kids, who played American football in the grass below. I enjoy the timelessness of it all. We need more of this.
* * *
Now most of Ant Hill is gathered in the attic, where I type. It is the impromptu Ant Hill orchestra. Jimmy on electric guitar, Adam on the keyboard, Kevin on a mic and snare drum and advocating the loop pedal, Bree with her violin, Emma smiliing away from a couch and Luke running around putting everything in order. It is all a good thing, too. (I wish I played something, but I am too timid to pick anything up. Instead I type quietly in the dark.)
* * *
Yesterday Bree and I went to a film at the Dryden. Today we bicycled the Canal Trail into the country. All of this is pretty much the life for which Rochester is optimal.
* * *
My advisor had a good little party—barbecue—at his vacation house in the country, which is on a hill, by a pond, and which he bought from Marshak when Marshak moved away. The upstairs is airy and open and centered on a hearth. A few other professors and their spouses and their kids were the other guests. The pond was swum in, and Adrian ever played the host, with ice cream and chocolate cake for the kids, who played American football in the grass below. I enjoy the timelessness of it all. We need more of this.
* * *
Now most of Ant Hill is gathered in the attic, where I type. It is the impromptu Ant Hill orchestra. Jimmy on electric guitar, Adam on the keyboard, Kevin on a mic and snare drum and advocating the loop pedal, Bree with her violin, Emma smiliing away from a couch and Luke running around putting everything in order. It is all a good thing, too. (I wish I played something, but I am too timid to pick anything up. Instead I type quietly in the dark.)
* * *
Yesterday Bree and I went to a film at the Dryden. Today we bicycled the Canal Trail into the country. All of this is pretty much the life for which Rochester is optimal.
Notes from Putnam Camp
Jul. 16th, 2006 11:52 pm
The Farm House and another building
The camp where Bree works is called Putnam Camp. It was begun by some Boston doctors in 18-something who wanted to "rough it" in some way. The camp's claim to fame is that Freud once visited, and his portrait is sprinkled liberally throughout the place. Reportedly he did not enjoy his stay. Carl Jung also visited, simultaneously, but this receives much less attention. The motto of Putnam Camp is "Ille terrarum mihi praeter omnes angulus ridet," which I am told is a line from Horace translating into "This spot smiles at me more than any other."
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Journey to Keene Valley
Jul. 12th, 2006 08:55 pm![[View from the road]](https://static.flickr.com/62/188373938_b2bef1d1a8.jpg)
View from the road.
I couldn't sleep one night (a consequence of a diet of chocolate and coffee), and, laying awake, I suddenly realized it was July. July! You'd think I'd have realized it from the fireworks outside. But July meant Bree's birthday, and suddenly the Adirondack trip became mandatory. Even if small matters such as how to get home again were not yet figured.
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Jul. 2nd, 2006 11:37 pm1. DS and I biked 45 miles yesterday (more impressively: half way to Pennsylvania), to his and DK's cabin at Springwater. The rolling hills of upstate NY are gentle enough, but I think my legs would have seceded had I ask them to pedal another hundred meters. Nonetheless, it's got me scheming about multi-day bicycle-based voyages out into the villages...
2. Burgers tonight were a particular success. Frightening quantities of garlic and black pepper were mixed into the beef prior to cooking. Disturbingly large, 1/3 lb patties were formed from it. Alarmingly hot coals were prepared. Savagely thick slices of cheese were added. Frank's Red Hot sauce was applied to the sizzling beef with reckless abandon. Deliciousness ensued.
2. Burgers tonight were a particular success. Frightening quantities of garlic and black pepper were mixed into the beef prior to cooking. Disturbingly large, 1/3 lb patties were formed from it. Alarmingly hot coals were prepared. Savagely thick slices of cheese were added. Frank's Red Hot sauce was applied to the sizzling beef with reckless abandon. Deliciousness ensued.
back in rochester
Jun. 26th, 2006 05:03 pm
Postcard from Ryan and Lisa. June 26, 2006.
Well, after slightly less than a week, the novelty of being back in Rochester, even with the unusually verdant plants, improved weather, extreme cheapness, and lack of traffic (the latter two in noted opposition to California), is wearing off, giving way to, dare I say it, boredom. I have a bad habit of finding myself stuck in an unproductive haze for hours on end. This is not just true in the obvious sense: I accomplish more when I am busy (see Structured Procrastination).
There has been a bit of an exodus. Ryan, Lisa, Bree, Ben, and Kastan from the co-op and Stefanos, Ben, Sarah, and Dan from the physics department have all moved away or gone on vacation, some permanently and some temporarily, some near and some far. I haven't heard anything from Bree yet. The camp where she is working sounds pretty nice.
Poppies in our front yard.
It's funky being plunked down in Rachacha like this, in the sun, in a co-op, in a state of pleasant idle. When I left a month ago, Spring was still fighting for its existence and there was school and all that. On my return, school is out, summer is in, and new faces abound.
I like this lackadaisical co-op atmosphere. New members are happily making the place their own. Kevin instigated a boardgame night tonight, everyone laughing around a multihour Risk game. Jimmy has our basement a corral for bikes, with co-op bikes with co-op locks. Pierre's been here for a month but is busy starting a co-op in Turin, Italy, where he's moving in another month. I love it when these things happen, when good stuff happens, spontaneously, enthusiastically, organically.
I fill my days whimsically. For once it's nice to not be completely overloaded. I helped our summer student out with some Unix and Matlab. I sat down and learned about fiber bundles. I went to the bookstore. I read another book. I slept in. I ate chocolate. I worked on the hot tub. With Joanna I did the co-op shopping. With Stacey I learned some accounting. (Fiber bundles are easier.)
I've returned to Rochester! I've been gone for a month, an expedition covering five missions in four states. Yesterday I was at Fermilab, currently and for some months more the world's most powerful particle accelerator. With some other students we disassembled an optics experiment, carefully packing lenses and beamsplitters and power supplies for shipment back to Rochester. A gigahertz photodiode and a library book were retrieved. In addition, we retrieved a laser that is, evidentally, mine, as my advisor kept referring to it as "your little laser," with an endearing tone as if it should reside in a terrarium in my hotel room and be checked up on every hour. After all this effort avoiding fermilab as a place to which graduate students are sent and from which they never return, it turns out that it is a nice place, more a pleasant park with verdant prairie grasses, ponds, and bike trails than the industrial park / grad student tarpit you'd expect.
A couple days before I went to Caltech to scope out their 1/100th scale LIGO prototype, a 40-meter interferometer where they design and test future LIGO technologies. One professor I spoke with there with silver hair and darting eyes exclaimed excitedly "These are Class 4 Lasers. They will set things on fire!" He wore a tiedye T-shirt emblazoned with a happy face. In his hand he held a coffee mug bearing in giant cartoon letters the phrase "ROCKET SCIENTIST." I inquired about a job.
Rochester in mid-june is exploding with life, trees huge and green and the whole place a jungle of unrestrained vegetation. This is only partially hyperbole: the hops vine grows up the house an inch an hour. In the evening, fireflies and mosquitoes. It seems (fleetingly) so much a paradise that four months of depression vacate the memory. But for now it is that paradise and we'll take it. Tonight is Midsommar. The summer solstice. Our landlords initiated a bonfire in the backyard and we drank home-made wine, swatted mosquitoes and admired fireflies. I had feared the co-op in disarray, but it seems to be just fine, with a new porch, and we moved the hot tub onto its new foundation (railroad ties!) this evening, and the "wildflower mix" Bree planted last year has shot up now, months later, as brilliant red poppies.
Pierre, a french student who moved in here while I was away, is quizzing me on starting a co-op in Turin when he moves there in a few months. He's taking an Esperanto course too, and was esctatic when I pointed to my Esperanto-English dictionary on the shelf just a few feet from where he was working.
Bree left this morning for her summer job in the Adirondaks, where she was to be a sous chef at Putnam Camp near Keene, NY, but something didn't work out with the hired master chef from Australia, and so Bree has ended up with a promotion to that position. The camp itself is a bit of an enigma. It's a "private family camp" and you have to be invited to stay there. Sigmund Freud once stayed there. The place bears prominantly in the family history of our landlord. It was begun in 1876. In any case I look forward to visiting.
A couple days before I went to Caltech to scope out their 1/100th scale LIGO prototype, a 40-meter interferometer where they design and test future LIGO technologies. One professor I spoke with there with silver hair and darting eyes exclaimed excitedly "These are Class 4 Lasers. They will set things on fire!" He wore a tiedye T-shirt emblazoned with a happy face. In his hand he held a coffee mug bearing in giant cartoon letters the phrase "ROCKET SCIENTIST." I inquired about a job.
Rochester in mid-june is exploding with life, trees huge and green and the whole place a jungle of unrestrained vegetation. This is only partially hyperbole: the hops vine grows up the house an inch an hour. In the evening, fireflies and mosquitoes. It seems (fleetingly) so much a paradise that four months of depression vacate the memory. But for now it is that paradise and we'll take it. Tonight is Midsommar. The summer solstice. Our landlords initiated a bonfire in the backyard and we drank home-made wine, swatted mosquitoes and admired fireflies. I had feared the co-op in disarray, but it seems to be just fine, with a new porch, and we moved the hot tub onto its new foundation (railroad ties!) this evening, and the "wildflower mix" Bree planted last year has shot up now, months later, as brilliant red poppies.
Pierre, a french student who moved in here while I was away, is quizzing me on starting a co-op in Turin when he moves there in a few months. He's taking an Esperanto course too, and was esctatic when I pointed to my Esperanto-English dictionary on the shelf just a few feet from where he was working.
Bree left this morning for her summer job in the Adirondaks, where she was to be a sous chef at Putnam Camp near Keene, NY, but something didn't work out with the hired master chef from Australia, and so Bree has ended up with a promotion to that position. The camp itself is a bit of an enigma. It's a "private family camp" and you have to be invited to stay there. Sigmund Freud once stayed there. The place bears prominantly in the family history of our landlord. It was begun in 1876. In any case I look forward to visiting.
Yosemite by Thumb
Jun. 4th, 2006 06:32 pm
Bree, me, and my little cousin Anna. Oakdale, CA (map). June 4, 2006.
There are three main routes into Yosemite from the west: Highway 120 from Modesto, Highway 140 from Merced, and Highway 41 from Fresno. The route from Merced is usually the most convenient for train travelers, and was our originally intended entrance. Conventional travelers can even book an Amtrak ticket all the way to Yosemite Valley, with the journey from Merced to the park on a YARTS bus.
For us it looked like a good candidate for hitchhiking as well, with the bus available as a backup plan. Checking out Merced on Google Maps, it looks like the train station is near the edge of town where 140 comes out. We planned to walk from the train station, make camp in an agricultural field, then hitchhike up the highway to Yosemite. (Later, in Yosemite Valley we met two Slovenian girls who told us of a Merced Hostel which I hadn't known about, and the presense of a new University of California campus in Merced might lead to additional opportunities.)
A cheaper alternative to Amtrak for getting out to Modesto might be to take BART all the way out to Pleasanton station ($3.80 from Berkeley) and then take the Modesto Area Express (MAX) bus to Modesto and then find some local bus to Oakdale. By comparison, Amtrak from Oakland to Modesto is still a pretty good deal, about $25, and certainly grander. Tickets to Merced are a few dollars more.
We were propelled up and out of the Bay Area and into the central valley with the conductor coloring each station stop with homemade alliterative concoctions. "Marvellous Martinez, Home of the Martini," "Scintillating STOCKTON, Pearl of the Delta." Our trip was one of serendipity, and, time after time, it seemed that the right decisions just played themselves out in front of us. En-route to merced, we heard that Highway 140 had been closed by a huge rockslide, and is likely to be closed for months, maybe even a year! Fortunately Modesto is on the same train line and we could just step off the train a few stops earlier. I called up my aunt and uncle in Modesto and asked if we could spend the night—thankfully my relatives have come to tolerate, possibly even appreciate, my surprise visits, and, though surprised, they sounded eager to have us. The train came to Modesto (announced as a "Monument to Modernity"!) (map) and we stepped off to find my waiting uncle and cousins.
My relatives were all very antsy about our determination to hitchhike, with everyone describing Modesto as either the serial killer capital of the U.S. or the methamphetamine capital of California, and multiple offers to pay for a rental car. But we were, of course, determined, and tried to be nonchalant about concerns and confident in our plan. In the morning we enjoyed San Joaquin hospitality in the form of a lazy and delicious corn pancake breakfast, then my uncle drove us out to Oakdale on the fringe of the metropolitan area.
Highway 120 is the main street for downtown Oakdale. We fastened our packs and walked to the end of town, then down to the highway just far enough to a good place for hitchhiking: plenty of space for the driver to pull over, plenty of visibility for oncoming drivers, and a slow speed limit. It was a Sunday and campers were pouring out of the mountains, one gigantic RV after another, huge SUV's pulling boats, and smaller passenger cars stuffed with gear. This was heartening: Yosemite campgrounds fill up very quickly, and most require reservations; I hoped that getting into the park just after the weekend would make finding a campsite easier. There was also plenty of traffic into the mountains. We set ourselves by it, thrust out our thumbs, and began our first experiment in American hitchhiking.
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Mission #3 (Originally written June 17th)
Jun. 3rd, 2006 04:51 pm
Sculpture at Albany Bulb park. June 2, 2006.
I don't think I ever properly introduced this trip that has now reached its conclusion, other than mentioning that I bought airline tickets for it. Four of the Five Distinct Missions have now been completed, but I'll sleep easier if it's properly documented. The most recent mission was to show off California to Bree and have an adventure of it, and I think you'll approve of the execution.
On our last day in Berkeley we dined on Infinite Sushi at Edoko on University and indulged in gellato at the absolutely phenomenal Gelateria Naia. This establishment offers saffron gellato and thereby earns my eternal blessing.
A highlight here was meeting
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fg and one of his housemates for these above-mentioned culinary expeditions. fg somehow showed up, doubtlessly via a livejournal friend-of-a-friend connection, on my radar as he wrote of his wanders through Mongolia. He'll tell you he's traveled in Russia, but he's not talking about Moscow Russia, he's taking about Spans-Eleven-Timezones Russia. Having made it something like 19,000 of the 20,000 miles around the globe, he's settled, at least for the time being, in Oakland. I'm sure there will be adventures to follow.The previous day we partied lightly at Casa Zimbabwe's rooftop speakeasy. My friend Billy kept us entertained with tales of urban exploration, physical space hacking (such as climbing the Wells Fargo Building, one of Berkeley's two skyscrapers), and other crazy capers. We visited Kingman co-op and elected to sleep on the roof. And so on.
But anyways, after our gellato, Saffron and otherwise, it was time to get on the road. Our things packed up, our backpacks loaded, suddenly we were mobile again, with ten days of freedom stretched out before us. We took the number fifty-one bus out of town to the Oakland embarcadero and boarded the San Joaquin Amtrak train with Yosemite National Park our intended destination.
Trojan Implosion II
May. 20th, 2006 10:41 pm
The title of this entry may lead you to expect some kind of terrible story involving America's most popular brand of latex prophylactic. Fortunately you will find no such thing. I do not know why the Trojan Project was so named.
Goble Tavern. Goble, OR.
I had begun to think I would just get a burger and run, but as soon as I found the place, I knew I would spend the night. Goble is not a town. There is a little white sign on a post by the railroad that says "GOBLE". Visible there is one house, one mobile home park, and one tavern. In 1966 a reporter described the place as "a hamlet which has been fading slowly from Oregon's memory for almost a half century, but which still hopes to recapture its brawling vitality of yore." The crowd at Goble Tavern seems content to keep it this way, partying on in eternal denouement.
In quick succession I committed two faux pas. First, I presented a California drivers license for entrance to an Oregon bar. I winced. Fortunately the bouncer did not make a scene. Second, I asked if this was the way to the "backyard." I should have said "beer garden."
"Beer Garden" at Goble Tavern.
This was—and I do not apply this appellation lightly—the most hilarious thing ever, and in the best possible way. Songs were sung to the rythmn of fiddles, banjos, spoons, and saws. Songs were sung about three-eyed fish. This was, after all, about the huge Nucular Plant of Monty Burns fame, the real life version. Someone walking by raised a fist in the air, gestured vaguely northward, and cried, "Tomorrow that curs'ed tower will be gone!" Many of those present had worked in the plant during its tortured operation. One woman handed out scrubs, explaining, "We have to wear these every day!" I eagerly donned a pair. I was quickly befriended by a couple from San Francisco who asked me about Burning Man and shared their beer with me like we were old friends. Some guests had driven up from Portland or from further away, but by far most of the attendees were definitively local.
Riana arrived, with a boy, a dog, and some kids they'd found at a party on the way from Portland.
I slept in the car. Taking a cue from Ryan and Lisza, I slept through that portal between the truck and the back seat of my rental car. Accomodations were sufficient. In the morning I wandered down to the beach. This involved the evading of police officers.
I overheard in passing, "What they don't realize is that controlled demolition has become a spectator sport."
Beach of the Columbia.
Gathered on the beach were a few other spectators. Two guys wore gas masks and hard hats, for hilarity purposes. Someone commented wryly that we were among few who intentionally put themselves downwind of an impending nuclear plant explosion.
The river was full of police boats with flashing lights, enforcing the security perimeter.
At 7 AM the implosion commenced. First we saw this. About seven seconds later we heard the kabooms. Then the rain of dust began.
I took a video. There are many videos.
Self portrait with nuclear scrubs and fallout-filtering bandana.
After the implosion, everybody wandered back to the bar. It was just after 7 AM and the Goble Tavern was open for business, serving buscuits and gravy.
Trojan Nuclear Project. Evening prior to demolition.
You can really hit the ground running when you're flying West on the earliest flight of the day.
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Tomsawyering the Rhône
Jul. 20th, 2003 02:26 pmMaybe the idea was formed when we saw the swiss guy throw his waterproof
backpack into the warm but swift waters of the Rhone and then himself leap
in and swim after it, on some kind of evening river "hike"; or maybe it
was just the exuberant feeling of having that river pull us along after
jumping on Thursday that made us want to go further. In any case, it was
decided when we saw that little boat in Carrefour.
Kenny and I each slapped down twenty francs ("just think -- if we just moved out of our
room, we could buy all this ridiculous stuff *every day*!") and then we
were off to the River, us two and Adam, for our scheduled bridge-jumping,
us inflating the boat (christened as Artemis, or maybe Artemis I, after, well, Artemis) by lungpower at the bus stop (carrying the
half-inflated thing on the bus itself), applying sunscreen in central
geneva while waiting for the number eleven.
At the river of course the
current looked stronger than before, the boils more menacing, and the
kayakers' helmets were vaguely foreboding. But we resolved to throw in
our little boat, swim after it, and boldy go with full foolhardiness we
had no idea where to -- "downstream" being the short but not particularly
helpful answer. This is exactly what we did, passport, CERN ID, and a few
coins wrapped in plastic bags pilfered from the co-op; and this big
pervading sense of adventure and of the mysterious territory ahead. Our
mission was now clear: enter France by the river. Fort l'Ecluse,
MARSEILLES OR BUST.
There was the shockingly cold, silt-filled waters of
the Arve, Kenny navigating by the bus map (which proved to quite
misrepresent river width -- and thereby speed), each of us our 50g ration
of liquid chocolate, cross-river chatting with Ohio kayakers ("HEY - Does
the river get any rougher up ahead??") napping half submurged and half
lying up on the warm raft, and finally pulling out at the Autoroute
("hmm.. 2km of motorway tunnel..we can walk that, right?"), trudging
overland to the nearest bus stop, getting back to CERN in time for a late
arrival at the Hardronic Festival, an adventure in anticlimax. All in all,
it's just another day at Camp CERN.
Then we went home with the band.
backpack into the warm but swift waters of the Rhone and then himself leap
in and swim after it, on some kind of evening river "hike"; or maybe it
was just the exuberant feeling of having that river pull us along after
jumping on Thursday that made us want to go further. In any case, it was
decided when we saw that little boat in Carrefour.
Kenny and I each slapped down twenty francs ("just think -- if we just moved out of our
room, we could buy all this ridiculous stuff *every day*!") and then we
were off to the River, us two and Adam, for our scheduled bridge-jumping,
us inflating the boat (christened as Artemis, or maybe Artemis I, after, well, Artemis) by lungpower at the bus stop (carrying the
half-inflated thing on the bus itself), applying sunscreen in central
geneva while waiting for the number eleven.
At the river of course the
current looked stronger than before, the boils more menacing, and the
kayakers' helmets were vaguely foreboding. But we resolved to throw in
our little boat, swim after it, and boldy go with full foolhardiness we
had no idea where to -- "downstream" being the short but not particularly
helpful answer. This is exactly what we did, passport, CERN ID, and a few
coins wrapped in plastic bags pilfered from the co-op; and this big
pervading sense of adventure and of the mysterious territory ahead. Our
mission was now clear: enter France by the river. Fort l'Ecluse,
MARSEILLES OR BUST.
There was the shockingly cold, silt-filled waters of
the Arve, Kenny navigating by the bus map (which proved to quite
misrepresent river width -- and thereby speed), each of us our 50g ration
of liquid chocolate, cross-river chatting with Ohio kayakers ("HEY - Does
the river get any rougher up ahead??") napping half submurged and half
lying up on the warm raft, and finally pulling out at the Autoroute
("hmm.. 2km of motorway tunnel..we can walk that, right?"), trudging
overland to the nearest bus stop, getting back to CERN in time for a late
arrival at the Hardronic Festival, an adventure in anticlimax. All in all,
it's just another day at Camp CERN.
Then we went home with the band.
So, I went to campuswide Commencement today. Lacking a ticket, I had to sneak into the Greek Theatre in order to attend, scaling the chain-link fence in the back --- Let me tell you, that's a metaphor for the UC Berkeley experience if there ever was one.
Oh, no, wait, it isn't a true story. They had extra tickets at the gate and I just walked up and asked for one. The desperate can draw a new metaphor.
* * *
I almost left near the beginning --- the RallyCom and Californians and other student group speeches were so boring. But the other speakers were interesting, so I stayed. It was almost like they conspired in writing their speeches... lots of common references to "it takes a village," two speakers calling for the establishment of a mandatory two years of service (military, public health, civil service, peace corps, americorps, etc); and lots of (de)motivational warnings about the precarious state of the world: no jobs in the economy, huge budget deficits, tax cuts borrowing from future generations, American without allies... It was not really an uplifting Commencement. Funny, too, because I was sitting with the audience (not the graduates), and because it's so sparsely attended. At least there was free food.
* * *
These days are good ones. I went for a run yesterday morning, in the prenoon overcastness, loops around Clark Kerr Campus and the track. Shower, coffee, went to work feeling refreshed and energized. I joined Michelle, Chuck, and Luis for some time on one of the electron microscopes...
Let me tell you, it's like Mission Control in there, with all of the illuminated plastic buttons, the checklists, the TV monitors, the subdued lighting. The microscope works in almost exactly the same way as a light microscope, except --- in addition to costing millions of dollars and filling a room --- illuminated with electons shed from a filament and accelerated through a 400 kilovolt potential and focused with a sequence of field-producing coils (yeah, electromagnets!). All of these magnetic lenses have to be aligned just right, or you lose the beam into the side of the microscope or somewhere. Comments about the "flux capacitors" defuse the frustration of steering the beam... Eventually the beam is found.. focused... and there in the phosphors at the bottom of the microscope column, there's the image of our zinc crystals...
* * *
At dinner I started building an icosahedron from newspaper and masking tape, but then I had to go so I just turned it into a tetrahedron. The edges are easy, but I need to find a better way to make verticies.
* * *
Jamie emailed me from Chile, a "quick hello to the little red head bundle of joy." To Jason she wrote, "Give Tobin a big kiss for me." Hmm. Eeeue? I think something is lost in the transfer. She's sweet and sentimental, and expresses her desire to go travelling together, sometime in the indefinite, imaginary future.
* * *
After dinner Alex and I wandered over to Cory Hall to meet IEEE for the `subsidized' Matrix viewing. That group's done well in the last two years, with a fun group of people percolating up to the officer level, and now the student branch spends their money doing fun things... the play about Buckminster Fuller, the Dim Sum in Oakland, Midnight Matrix at the Metreon. They joke that I am in the representative member since I'm apparently the only non-officer member to go on these little escapades.
At the last minute Nadia joined our little crew and we were off to the Metreon, driven by this guy Jason who seemed pretty cool and who I had apparently met some years ago. I feel like I have some special status with this group of IEEE'ers, from being Micromouse chair during their freshman year, or something.
It was fun spending time with Nadia; she's sweet and clever and we seem to have at least a few common interests; travel, research, and general geekdom among them. Too bad we have only one common language between us --- something will have to be done about that.
* * *
Listening to Sigur Ros with headphones, sitting in the cool dark. Talked to Eric yesterday, he promises we can have some Scandinavian music at our slumber party after special dinner. It could be great. Yay for vemod! I was thinking I could pipe in some Radio AF via RealMedia... but I would probably be the only one to appreciate that station identification... ``Du lysnar på... RADIO A-F, direkt från LUNDAGÅRD!'' And words in Hopelandic. There is a tender happiness in vemod that I quite like. And that dance music popular in Europe 2000-2002 goes right to the heart of anyone who was there then -- Kenny and me at least.
* * *
One of my coworkers brought to my attention the movie Crash, and specifically the fact that it is rated NC-17 due to the following automobile-related fetishes: ``man / woman sex, woman / woman sex, man / man sex, woman / aircraft sex, man / tailpipe sex, woman / parking brake sex, man / car cigarette lighter sex and woman / woman / strap-on-rearview-mirror sex.''
* * *
There was a lunar eclipse tonight.
Oh, no, wait, it isn't a true story. They had extra tickets at the gate and I just walked up and asked for one. The desperate can draw a new metaphor.
* * *
I almost left near the beginning --- the RallyCom and Californians and other student group speeches were so boring. But the other speakers were interesting, so I stayed. It was almost like they conspired in writing their speeches... lots of common references to "it takes a village," two speakers calling for the establishment of a mandatory two years of service (military, public health, civil service, peace corps, americorps, etc); and lots of (de)motivational warnings about the precarious state of the world: no jobs in the economy, huge budget deficits, tax cuts borrowing from future generations, American without allies... It was not really an uplifting Commencement. Funny, too, because I was sitting with the audience (not the graduates), and because it's so sparsely attended. At least there was free food.
* * *
These days are good ones. I went for a run yesterday morning, in the prenoon overcastness, loops around Clark Kerr Campus and the track. Shower, coffee, went to work feeling refreshed and energized. I joined Michelle, Chuck, and Luis for some time on one of the electron microscopes...
Let me tell you, it's like Mission Control in there, with all of the illuminated plastic buttons, the checklists, the TV monitors, the subdued lighting. The microscope works in almost exactly the same way as a light microscope, except --- in addition to costing millions of dollars and filling a room --- illuminated with electons shed from a filament and accelerated through a 400 kilovolt potential and focused with a sequence of field-producing coils (yeah, electromagnets!). All of these magnetic lenses have to be aligned just right, or you lose the beam into the side of the microscope or somewhere. Comments about the "flux capacitors" defuse the frustration of steering the beam... Eventually the beam is found.. focused... and there in the phosphors at the bottom of the microscope column, there's the image of our zinc crystals...
* * *
At dinner I started building an icosahedron from newspaper and masking tape, but then I had to go so I just turned it into a tetrahedron. The edges are easy, but I need to find a better way to make verticies.
* * *
Jamie emailed me from Chile, a "quick hello to the little red head bundle of joy." To Jason she wrote, "Give Tobin a big kiss for me." Hmm. Eeeue? I think something is lost in the transfer. She's sweet and sentimental, and expresses her desire to go travelling together, sometime in the indefinite, imaginary future.
* * *
After dinner Alex and I wandered over to Cory Hall to meet IEEE for the `subsidized' Matrix viewing. That group's done well in the last two years, with a fun group of people percolating up to the officer level, and now the student branch spends their money doing fun things... the play about Buckminster Fuller, the Dim Sum in Oakland, Midnight Matrix at the Metreon. They joke that I am in the representative member since I'm apparently the only non-officer member to go on these little escapades.
At the last minute Nadia joined our little crew and we were off to the Metreon, driven by this guy Jason who seemed pretty cool and who I had apparently met some years ago. I feel like I have some special status with this group of IEEE'ers, from being Micromouse chair during their freshman year, or something.
It was fun spending time with Nadia; she's sweet and clever and we seem to have at least a few common interests; travel, research, and general geekdom among them. Too bad we have only one common language between us --- something will have to be done about that.
* * *
Listening to Sigur Ros with headphones, sitting in the cool dark. Talked to Eric yesterday, he promises we can have some Scandinavian music at our slumber party after special dinner. It could be great. Yay for vemod! I was thinking I could pipe in some Radio AF via RealMedia... but I would probably be the only one to appreciate that station identification... ``Du lysnar på... RADIO A-F, direkt från LUNDAGÅRD!'' And words in Hopelandic. There is a tender happiness in vemod that I quite like. And that dance music popular in Europe 2000-2002 goes right to the heart of anyone who was there then -- Kenny and me at least.
* * *
One of my coworkers brought to my attention the movie Crash, and specifically the fact that it is rated NC-17 due to the following automobile-related fetishes: ``man / woman sex, woman / woman sex, man / man sex, woman / aircraft sex, man / tailpipe sex, woman / parking brake sex, man / car cigarette lighter sex and woman / woman / strap-on-rearview-mirror sex.''
* * *
There was a lunar eclipse tonight.
