Two Weeks Away From Home

I have survived my first few weeks of my new job working at Fermilab and Northwestern. I’m learning a lot and the job is pretty good so far, except that I’m 700 miles away from these guys:

And this cute one:

And my goofy little Julius, who has had many trials and tribulations in my absence:

I really miss them! And our separation is making it into my subconscious — last night I dreamed that Howard tried to give away all our animals to his cousin. Not only that, but we were somehow in possession of my friend Val’s cats, and he tried to give them away too. Val’s going to be pissed when she reads this! I guess we can’t blame Howard for what he does in my dreams, when in actuality he has been taking care of all of the animals by himself, posting pictures of them for me everyday, and packing up our increasingly empty home.

Now I just have a few more days here by myself before flying back to Ithaca to pick up my family and my stuff. Yay!

 

Househunting

Howard and I just returned from a trip to look for housing in the western suburbs of Chicago.  This picture was taken in St. Charles during one of the better moments of the trip, even though it was -3 degrees (really) at the time, Howard had some sort of minor food poisoning and we were about to be involved in a minor car accident. Some of the houses we were shown were Horrible, but at least they made the house we ended up taking, even with its long snowy driveway, kitchen in the basement, and not being available until a month after I start work(!), seem like paradise in comparison.  Or at least they did at the time.  We saw so many bathrooms, so many kitchens, so many garages that they have all bled together in my mind, and I really don’t remember this place I’ve agreed to live in for a year.  For instance, it may or may not contain lots and lots of wood paneling.  We saw a lot of wood paneling.  One house had a great room with not only wood-paneled walls but a wood-paneled ceiling!

So now we are back home in Ithaca for a little while.  I guess it’s still home — home is where your cats are, right?

 

Christmas Interrupted

So as of yesterday, I’m unemployed!

And today I tried to go home to Arkansas, but American Airlines wouldn’t let me   Howard was very sweet and drove through a snowstorm to Syracuse twice to drop me off and pick me up from the airport.  He must be feeling extra good today because he also decided to wash the sheets.  I think he intended for us to stay off the bed in the meantime.  But did we listen?

No we didn’t.  Ungrateful little beasts, aren’t we?

 

The Calm Before The Storm

(They all look a little uneasy don’t they — that pretty much sums up the atmosphere in our house right now!)

Thanks to everybody who commented on my last post with very helpful advice on moving long distance with cats and dogs.  I don’t think I mentioned it there, but we aren’t actually moving until January, so I’ve had a lot of time to obsess about it, and that is mainly what I’ve been doing over the past couple of blog-free months.  Anyway, here is what I learned from you guys:

• Cats + tranquilizers = bad
• Cats + Zanax = good
• Don’t worry if anybody doesn’t poop for a while
• It will be difficult, but we will survive

I have about two more weeks on my current job, and am trying to write up everything I’ve done and learned over the last 9 months, so that whoever takes over won’t have too rough a time.  I’ve been wanting to write a blog post on what I’ve done at this job, but it’s complicated by the fact that I’m not sure what I’m technically allowed to tell you (particle physicists are really bad at keeping secrets, so collaborations make all sorts of rules about what is allowed to be said publicly.  The end result is that I’m not allowed to tell you stuff that doesn’t matter, but stuff that does matter will leak anyway).

On December 23rd, I’m officially finished with Cornell and will fly to Arkansas for a week to spend Christmas with my family.  This plan seemed like an excellent one many months ago, but now I’m beginning to question my sanity — Christmas does not bring out the best in my family.  But it will be nice to eat some good food, have some Christmas-y ambiance (all of my minimal Christmas decorations are staying in their boxes this year, since I’ll have more than enough boxes to pack in January), and hang out with Gram!

 

Big News

I have been trying to keep this under wraps, although Howard thwarted me a little, but now that the decision is made, I can tell you: we are moving to Chicago.  That is actually not quite true and sounds a lot more exotic than the truth.  We are moving to the cornfields northwest of Chicago.  I’ve accepted a job with Northwestern University to work at Fermilab on two neutrino experiments: MINERvA and NOvA.

It turns out that I am not very good at announcing major life events such as this.  On Friday, shortly after I decided which offer to take, and after keeping the details of my job search secret for months, I wanted to finally tell everybody the news.  But I realized there might be a few people in my life, e.g. my mom, who would prefer not to hear major news via Facebook (or via some acquaintance who checks facebook more often than she does).  So I wrote to a few people, posted to Facebook, then got on a plane.  It turns out that I forgot to inform one important person: Howard found out that I’d finally made my decision when his nephew called to congratulate him on our move.  Whoops.  Really, Howard knew what was going to happen.  But, in case it ever comes up, if your boyfriend is going to considerable personal effort to sell his house and alter his employment situation in order to follow you around the country, it’s really best to keep him fully in the loop.

So, as you might imagine, life is a little chaotic right now.  I have been imagining scenarios that involve moving myself, Howard, two cats and a dog and all of our stuff 700 miles and have so far been unable to come up with a reasonable scenario.  How does one do this?  Does anybody have advice on moving pets long distance?

 

Travel and Grandmas

You all have met my favorite person in the world many times:

I like to think that I am also among Gram’s favorite people in the world.  But we were chatting on the phone a while back and I was complaining about all this endless work-related travel I’m doing.  And she was all “yeah, yeah, yeah — what’s Howard up to”?  That’s my translation of it — she said it in a much more grandmotherly way, of course.  So I told her that he was traveling to Vancouver for work, and she was much more interested in this.  That I study the fundamental interactions of our universe and do it well enough that people fly me all over the place to talk about it (although, to be honest, that’s not saying a lot) is not impressive to Gram.  But, that Howard made something that broke (rather spectacularly!) and had to go fix it is very impressive.  Hrmph!  But really, I deserved it — she tried to talk to me on Facebook earlier that day, and I accidentally ignored her! I know — I’m a terrible person!

Anyway, the travel is going okay.  I made it home from Chicago, Howard made it home from Vancouver and now we are spending the weekend on Long Island to attend a wedding.  This is the event that forced me to consider the exact definition of “black tie.”  I’m still not entirely clear, but am hoping that there will be enough alcohol at the wedding to make me forget that I’m a dorky scientist rather than someone who has 16 ball gowns in her closet.  At this stage in my life, that level of intoxication only takes about 2 glasses of wine, so we should be good.

The picture of Gram is courtesy of my aunt Cathy — thanks Cathy!

 

Happy Birthday O

The good news is that Howard and I both have successful careers. The bad news is that our respective careers are making us feel like someone has put our heads in a vice and starting cranking. Right after I finished three weeks of traveling to San Francisco, Chicago and Charlottesville, Howard got word that he would have to go to Vancouver on Sunday and I was all “Yessss!!!! For once it isn’t me!!!”. And then today I found out I have to go back to Fermilab on Tuesday. And then go to Fermilab again the following Tuesday. Not so “Yesssss!!!!”.  Fermilab is actually a very cool place, but I’ve been away so much lately that the cats are getting used to sleeping in my bed and get kind of pissy when *I* want to sleep there.

The other good news is that I get to spend the weekend with my adorable pets, and this past week was the second anniversary of Oliver’s adoption, and his approximate 3rd birthday.

Happy birthday, old man!

 

San Francisco Highlights

(Warning: lots of dorky photos of me standing in front of stuff below!)

We had a nice trip to San Francisco, and I survived turning 30.  Here’s some of what happened:

My talk at SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) went well, except that it was a wee bit short.  I’m the only particle physicist in the world who gives short talks.  I feel bad that I didn’t give them their money’s worth, and, since I have to give the very same talk at least two more times in the coming months, I’m going to have to think up something more to say about semileptonic decays.  That’s easy, but coming up with something to say about semileptonic decays that other people would actually want to hear is less trivial.

We took not a single picture of SLAC!  It was the nicest particle physics laboratory I’ve ever seen, but that is not saying a lot — particle physics laboratories are notoriously ugly.

Palo Alto is a little weird.  Much more to my taste was Mill Valley, where we headed next.  We stayed at the Mill Valley Inn.

The innkeepers left a birthday card, chocolate cake and a bottle of wine in our room for my birthday.  Isn’t that nice?  There was also a redwood grove right outside our room.

We also drove up the coast to Point Reyes Seashore on highway 1, both of which were really spectacular.

We went for a very pretty and very windy walk on the beach.

On my birthday, we went for a hike in Muir Woods.

Howard was very good to me on the whole trip, and especially on my birthday.  Among other things, I got cool nike+ipod stuff. In San Francisco, we stayed at the Harbor Court Hotel.  The staff seemed to be high on something, but we had an awesome view of the Bay Bridge.

For dinner on my birthday, we went to Millenium, which was lovely and delicious.

My friend val loaned us an awesome book Stairway Walks in San Francisco, which was a really excellent way see and learn a lot without spending money.   The hills there are craaazy!  I have no idea how people drive standard transmissions in that town!

On our final night there, we walked out on the pier next to the hotel

And finally, we had dinner at the Tanga Room with my long-lost friend Sherry, and Howard got to hear about all the trouble I got up to in junior high and high school.

All in all, it was a wonderful trip.

As usual, I’m really happy to be home.

 

Going to San Francisco

… but probably not wearing any flowers in my hair.  Howard and I are all packed, but as usual, the most difficult part of leaving is saying goodbye to my homies:

But they will be well cared for.  Oliver is going to stay at his doggie daycare, which he really prefers to home.  My friend Val is coming to feed and cuddle the cats, and there is no better cat sitter in the world than Val. I’ll still miss them though!

 

Ta Da!

I was on a good run of updating this blog regularly, but then life got busy again and it all went to hell.  This week, I did manage to finish the second course of the Wilton cake decorating series and made the cake above.  I made all the flowers myself out of icing.

It is looking like I won’t get to take another decorating class for a while.  Amongst all of the other traveling in near future, it looks like I’m also going to squeeze in a trip to Charlottesville, VA.  Anybody know anything about Charlottesville?