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.

 

Even Lamer Pictures From CERN

I’ve been home from CERN for two weeks now, and I finally got around to unloading the pictures from my camera.  It was not a very exciting trip.  Mainly work, work and more work.  The highlight was going jogging one evening at dusk through a very picturesque French village.  But I don’t take my camera jogging, so I instead of a lovely French village, I bring your more weird CERN bathroom signs:

Apparently the standard signs are not sufficient — supplements are required.  There has got to be an amusing story behind this one, but I never found out what it is.  One day, I needed to use a restroom, and the nearest ladies room had a dude standing inside of it, holding the door open and just standing there doing nothing.  I stared at him for a few moments until he noticed me, said something in French, and then left.  I never did find out the story there either.  That’s kinda how things go at CERN.  Weird things happen and not everybody speaks English, so you sort of just have to go with the flow.

Like on my last trip, at the French farmer’s market I drug my friends to a coffee shop so I could get a caffeine fix.  After I paid for and received my coffee, we were sitting there and the waiter came up to us and started speaking French.  Not just a few sentences, but a very long essay.  He could have been telling us his life story for all I know.  He stood there for several minutes talking to us and asking us questions.  Not one of us spoke more than a few words in French.  So we nodded politely, I chugged my coffee and we left.  I still have no idea what he wanted, if anything.

If you’re read “Angels and Demons,” you might be under the impression that CERN is a futuristic wonderland with all sorts of awesomeness.  In actuality, it looks mostly like this:

Just a lot of grey office buildings and parking lots.  No crystal pallace.  No wind tunnels, no stable anti-matter.  Sorry to disappoint.

I also saw the hostel where I lived as a summer intern nine years ago:

Yeah, I know — the quality of the photos leave a lot to be desired, but this one brings back fond memories for me.  I am really glad I got the opportunity to visit CERN several times, but I’m hoping this one will be my last, for a while at least.  I’m not good at making life decisions, but I just don’t seem to be cut out for flying to Europe every other week.  So it’s not clear what the future will hold, but it probably won’t involve me working on one of the LHC experiments.  I think.  I’ll keep you posted!

 

The Four Dog Bed and Breakfast

On our recent trip to Arkansas, Howard and I stayed for a night at the “Four Dog Bed and Breakfast,” a.k.a. my dad’s house.  The story of the four dogs began 7 years ago, when I was living with my dad and stepmother for the summer, basically bumming around until I started gradschool. Their awesome Boston Terrier, Rocky, died a few months before, and the house just seemed very gloomy and quiet without him.  So I mounted a campaign to get another Boston Terrier.  But my stepmother Julia, after watching one too many episodes of “Frasier” and “Wishbone”, had her heart set on a Jack Russel Terrier.

And that is how we ended up driving to the middle of nowhere to get Rufus:

In case you are not familiar with Jack Russel Terriers, you should know they are nothing like Eddie or Wishbone.  But we love Rufus anyway.

A year or so later, my grandparents died, and my dad and Julia inherited Bandit:

Bandit is about 20x bigger than Rufus, and is a big old sweetie.

A few years later, my stepmother found a dog in a parking lot near where she was working, and brought home Third Dog:

As you might guess from her name, she was not intended to be a permanent addition to their home.  But I guess she grew on them, because she’s still there.  She is also very sweet, and likes to sleep a lot.  Sleep comes easily to her because she is completely deaf.

And finally, there is Lucy:

Who followed my dad and the other three home from a walk last year.  She looks freakishly similar to Rufus, but we think she’s actually a rat terrier.

The four dogs live a pretty good life.  My dad takes them on long walks almost every day, and has built them a little swimming hole at the park:

It was so hot while we were there, I was about ready to jump in with them.

Having four dogs definitely keeps thing entertaining.  But they are sort of like children… they can be very amusing, but I’m glad I don’t have to deal with four dogs everyday.  Howard has recently been campaigning to get a second dog.  I know Oliver would love it, but I’m fearful of the slippery slope towards more!

 

Ar-can-sass

Yes, I know, this blog has been shockingly quiet lately.  For the last week, this was because I was on a vacation in Arkansas.  Since everybody seemed to like the San Diego post, here are bulleted highlights of this latest trip:

• Continental still hates me.  Seriously.
• Howard  came with me and very patiently put up with my nice but occasionally deranged family.  I owe him a lot of trips to Buffalo.
• I think he experienced a little culture shock.  For example, he asked one of my cousins how long the earth has existed, to which my cousin replied “since Jesus made us.”
• I wanted to take a whole series of “you know you’re in Arkansas when you see this” pictures (like of signs at the airport stating that the bathrooms are tornado shelters).  But the above picture is as far as I got.  They are really serious about their Ro-Tel down there.
• We ate a lot of good food.  For instance, I introduced Howard to Shipley’s donuts, which beat the pants off any northern donut.  Man, I could go for a Shipley’s donut right now.
• I got to spend a lot of time with my grandma, which was really awesome.  One thing we did was to go to Sam’s Club, where she got to drive a motorized cart:She is hell-on-wheels in that thing!  I had to run to catch up with her.  Apparently, on a previous trip, she took out a whole display of garden seed packets and left the scene of the crime!
• I don’t know what the photographer of this shot was drinking:but I think it proves I got my eyes from my grandma.  Maybe my nose too?
• We saw three movies during the week: “Away we go”, “Public Enemies” and “The Hangover”, which was the best, hands down.
• We also watched the first episode of Warehouse 13, which seems  cool, and I began reading the Southern Vampire Mysteries.  Does this mean that I am becoming (gasp!) a science-fiction fan?  I blame Howard.
• It was really hot in Arkansas, but people kept saying weird things like “wow, it sure is cool outside.”  Also, it was really bright:
• We also met many, many nice doggies.  They deserve their own post.  Stay tuned.

 

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!

 

My Lame-o Pictures from CERN

Last week, I traveled to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), near Geneva, Switzerland, for work. I took a camera, but returned home with a whopping three pictures. The only place I went that was really photo-worthy, a French farmer’s market, was the one place I forgot to take the camera. But you’ve seen pictures of those before… miles and miles of vegetables that look almost comically perfect. And I can tell you, those pictures are accurate. The French are really serious about their farmer’s market.  Seriously, it made Ithaca’s fabulous farmer’s market seem like a road-side fruit stand.

The trip was really frenzied. Continental continued its spree brilliant customer service by denying me boarding on the flight out of Ithaca due to the plane being overweight.   So the trip got delayed by 24 hours and I ended up giving a talk basically right after I got off the trans-Atlantic flight. I don’t remember it very well — it was probably amusing, if not very informative.

I’d been to CERN as a summer student 9 years ago, but had forgotten just what a weird place it is. Building 40, where my workshop was, is about as nice as it gets:

And being there feels a bit like your hanging out inside R2-D2.  It is sort of the main building where a lot of meetings happen, and on the bottom floor are four doors labeled  A,B,C and D, each leading to conference rooms.  After my talk, I left our meeting for a few minutes and then realized that I didn’t remember which room I’d walked out of.  So I tried them all, but all of the conference rooms were occupied by particle physicists, who are a very homogeneous bunch.  Every room was occupied by a bunch of old white dudes, and I could not for the life of me remember which ones were “my” old white dudes.  Eventually I had to get help from a friend to find the right room again!

I’d also forgotten how very male CERN is too.  Particle physics definitely doesn’t have many women, and most of the people I work with are guys, but here at Cornell, when I walk outside my building, there are other girls wandering around.  Not so much at CERN.  Everwhere I went, a lot of people did double-takes when I saw me.  Maybe it was because I looked so deranged and sleep-deprived, but I think it was more like “OMG it’s a girl!”

The bathroom labels  at CERN (or possibly elsewhere in France/Swizerland?) are pretty amusing:

You have to look hard to tell the difference, no?  But we wouldn’t want the bathroom labels to be behind the times fashion-wise.  I’m kind of surprised the girl isn’t wearing kinky boots too.

Overall, it was a nice trip. I got to catch up with some good friends from grad school, ate lots and lots of good food, and hopefully convinced a couple particle physicists that the high-pitched voice they’ve been hearing at teleconferences is attached to a person who does occasionally know what she’s talking about.  It was also very exhausting, and I’ve just got a few days to recover before flying out to San Diego on Monday for a conference.  But, I’ve heard rumors that they speak English and accept dollars out there, and even have this weird thing called a beach!

 

Paradise

If you are looking for a nice beach vacation, I highly recommend St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.  It is easy to get to, not crowded, very laid-back and very, very gorgeous.  Most of the time we were there, Howard and I camped out on the beach pictured above, hanging out, watching the ocean, and going for a swim or snorkel when we felt like it.  It was just the vacation I wanted.

The hotel we stayed in, “The Palms at Pelican Cove” was also really nice.  When we first arrived in our room, we were greeted by this:

A complimentary bottle of Cruzan rum, which is made on the island.  Cruzan rum made MANY appearances during our vacation.  We drank so much of it elsewhere, we didn’t actually end up drinking this bottle, but we brought it home for a little taste of the Carribean during the Ithaca winter.  Anyway, more importantly, this view also greeted us when we walked into our room:

I probably could have stayed in the room the whole time and been happy, but as it turned out, we spent very little time there.  Other than going to the beach, we also did a lot of eating and drinking.  We had several beach-front breakfasts:

At night, we generally went into the nearby town, Christiansted, to have dinner and sit on the boardwalk, watching the boats in the harbor, meeting interesting people, and drinking Cruzan rum:

I was somewhat sad that the fruity drinks on St. Croix generally don’t come with umbrellas, and styrofoam containers seem to be the container of choice.  But what they lack in classiness, they make up for in quantity.  When you order a drink in St. Croix, it often comes in a 16 oz. container:

One day, we tore ourselves away from the beach to take a tour of the Island, including a trip to the rum factory and a sugar plantation:

The above picture shows an old sugar mill… animals of some sort were hooked to the chains and walked in a circle, causing the cylinders to turn and crush sugar cane.  Poor animals!

We also, of course, took many walks on the beach.  St. Croix seems to have a pretty big stray-dog problem.  We ran into several strays:

who kinda freaked me out at first, but they turned out to be sweet doggies.

All in all, it was a really good vacation.  Here we are on our last day there:

Notice I’m already layered-up for the trip back to Ithaca!