Right Here, Right Now

I’m working from home today.  This is what’s going on around me:

 

Wordless Wednesday: You weren’t using this, were you?

 

Laundry and Ice Cream

Surely I’ve mentioned here before that I’ve got major issues with Laundry.  At some point while writing my thesis, I stopped wearing socks because I didn’t have time to find matching pairs.  These days, I have a little more time, but the laundry still builds up in huge piles that have to threaten the pets’ safety before I get around to dealing with them.

But I’m not sure why.  Laundry time is always fun in our house.  Look what it results in:

* Today’s photo processing brought to you by Laura’s laziness and Picassa’s “I’m feeling lucky” button.

There are several interesting features in the bottom photo:

• Do you see that Lucy is actually leaning against Oliver!?!
• The money on the dresser: about $40 that was washed with my laundry.  Howard says he would be worried if $40 was missing from his wallet.  I say life is better when you don’t remember that $40 is missing from your wallet.  And then when it shows up in the laundry, it’s like a bonus.
  
• Howard’s hair: that’s not just the flash — he’s going grey!  I think his salt and pepper hair is nice, though.

After laundry time, it was ice cream time, also a very exciting event:

I didn’t have an ice cream.  I was too full of the sweet and savory pies I made this weekend.  They were really yummy.

 

Nip/Tuck

Lucy (the fluffy one) is in surgery right now!  It’s nothing serious — she has a condition that causes her skin to irritate her eye and create a lot of discharge.  The surgery will tighten the skin, making her more comfortable and less likely to lose her sight later in life.  So it’s a good thing.  But it’s so sad to think of her being under the knife!   The procedure is apparently very similar to a human face lift.  She’s such a drama queen!

This is only the second time that Lucy has been to our new vet.  She went a few weeks ago to get shots, and the vaccination form she came home with described her color as “Butterscotch.”  For some reason, this seems like a much more awesome color than the “buff” that most vets describe her as.  Hopefully his surgical skills are as awesome as his cat-color naming skills!

 

CIPANP 2009

This week I have been in the Mithical Land of Sandy Eggo for the “Conference on the Intersections of Particle and Nuclear Physics”.   Here are some highlights in handy bulleted form.  Apologies for the digressions into physics-ese!

• My favorite quote of the conference so far: “Somebody’s wrong, and statistics doesn’t handle wrong very well.”  I am definitely using that in the future.
• The central theme of the conference seems to be “we have no signal, but are really hopeful we’ll have one soon.”
• I finally got to publicly present the results of my thesis research!
• Some theorists talked through the whole damn thing (my presentation, that is).
• The public lectures were possibly the most interesting and informative of the whole conference, which either says something bad about me or the talks aimed at physicists.  Maybe both.
• Fermi (a space-based gamma ray telescope) have turned their data into some very cool movies.
• The hot word in the CKM/Heavy Flavor talks was “tension”.  You don’t say disagreement or agreement anymore — you say tension.  As in “there is a 1 sigma tension between theory and experiment”.  Which actually means that theory and experiment agree very well!
• One theorist began his plenary talk by stating that he would explain the origin of all mass in the universe.  This is a kind of an inflammatory thing to say, just before the 10 billion dollar machine designed to understand the origin of mass begins to take data.  It turns out he was only explaining the portion of mass that comes from binding energies, which he claimed to be 95% of the mass in the universe, by some definition of “mass in the universe”.
• Apparently, the organizers of this conference have been getting hate mail.  It does seem to be kinda poorly organized.  It’s in San Diego, but is walking distance from nothing, so those of us who did not rent a car are stuck eating the scandalously expensive hotel food and without much non-physics entertainment.  I’ve been to the gym about zillion times.
• The talk entitled “flavor theory” turned out to be a talk on warped extra-dimensions.
• We still don’t know what dark matter is.  Some people still think that an excess in the cosmic positron spectrum is evidence of dark matter annihilation, but one speaker here said he hoped that “they will be able to overcome their irrational delusion and rejoin the ranks of productive people.”

Overall, it has been interesting and I’m glad I came, but the conference is now in its 6th day and I’m ready to go home.  Howard has renegged on his promise to post cute pet pictures on his blog while I’m away, so I’m doing it instead:

I sure do miss those guys!

 

Home Alone

Howard is far away in Albequerque at the moment, so I have been rattling around our big house by myself.  The cats and dog always miss him when he’s away — I am too boring for them.  One thing Oliver does like about Howard being gone is that he gets to sleep in the bed with me.  This morning, I woke up squished between a purring cat and an unusually cuddly dog.  It was an excellent way to start the day.

After Howard gets back, it will be my turn to travel.  In the middle of May, I’m going to CERN (in Switzerland) and then a week after than I’m going to a conference in San Diego.  About a week after that, I’m going home to Arkansas for a little while.   I hate travelling, so I’m not really very enthused about any of this.

Anyway, speaking of Oliver sleeping in bed, is this funny or what:

Julius is all like “OMG, WHAT did you do with my mom!?!”

In other blog news of my pets, Oliver was featured on a really awesome dog photography blog, and Howard took some really cute photos last weekend.  Well, the pets look cute.  I am sadly not at my just-got-out-of bed best!

 

Peace

It has been almost a year and a half since Oliver came to live with us.  When he first arrived, he couldn’t look at either of the cats without going batshit crazy (aside: I don’t know where that phrase came from, but it is awesome).  Literally, it took both me and Howard to restrain him from flying at the cats.  So for a long time, I had to spend time with either my cats or my dog.  Which was sad.  But I think those days are behind us.  Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

And Exhibit C:

Hooray

 

Kitty Hidaway

It was recently necessary for me to acquire a new nightstand, to avoid being electrocuted in my sleep by my cat.  Apparently the cat had an ulterior motive:

The new nightstand has created a nice little dog-free zone next to the heaters that has become a favorite napping spot for both cats.  They normally spend most of their time in the basement when the dog in inside, so I’m glad they have this new spot where they can hang out upstairs and feel safe.  Cat-dog relations have actually been steadily improving.  I think Lucy is actually starting to like the dog, not that she would ever admit that.

 

Busy Busy

As if working on a thesis and paper draft were not enough, this week I had to plan and throw a party for friend who is graduating and give a presentation to my collaboration.  It was a particularly stressful week, even for me.  But somewhat surprisingly, the talk and the party both turned out well.

This weekend has been relaxing and fun enough to make up for the sucky week.  Yesterday, I purchased my first real christmas tree, and, if I do say so myself, it is beautiful:

So far, the dog is ignoring the tree and the cats are very interested.  It has already lost a few ornaments, but is still standing.  Today, Oliver and I went on a hike to a waterfall with our friends V & S.  Here we are corrupting some natural beauty:

As you might infer from the picture, it is COLD COLD COLD in Ithaca.  We haven’t had significant snowfall yet this year, but the thermometer showed 15 degrees F at 8 PM.  Brrrrrrrrrrrr.

 

A Peaceful Thanksgiving

It was a quiet but nice thanksgiving here at Casa Fields.  A few months ago, my advisor said “you should at least write a paper draft before you graduate.”  Two weeks ago, we got the go-ahead to start writing the paper that will present the details of my thesis research to the rest of the world.  And two days ago, I sent the paper draft to my advisor.  It was a frenzied two weeks of non-stop writing, and I’m grateful that it is done, at least for the moment.  Here are some other things I am grateful for:

Update: For the people curious about the food above: cranberry sauce and gravy on the left, then stuffing, green beans and tofurkey.  I love, love, love tofurkey.  It is great for thanksgiving, and the tofurkey leftover sandwiches are even better.  The green beans are from a recipe that Howard and I both heard on NPR during our separate drives home from work last week: Molly Katzen’s “dramatically seared green beans”.  Basically they are cooked on very high heat for two minutes, then tossed with salt, garlic and chile, and they were very very yummy.  In fact, everything was very very yummy.