Canto LXIII

Alright, so it's been 2 months. Here's a recap, bulletin-style!

- Thanksgiving. Awesome. We made a "surprise" trip back to Oregon to see the family for Thanksgiving dinner. It really was a surprise, and we had a great time. The following week, we took off and visited a few people in the Portland/Eugene area, and also stayed at Black Butte. It was perhaps our most restful vacation back to Oregon, which was quite a change. If we didn't get to see you, so sorry, better luck next year!

- End of school. Finally. Our class did very well, coming 2nd in terms of grade average out of 7. Not bad for someone teaching his first real class ever, and someone who doesn't care (that's me!). Glad it's over, now I have until next September to do this thing we call "research". Time to Get Smart!

- Christmas. Well, with us having taken Thanksgiving off in Oregon, we stayed here in Cambridge. Christmas day, we had some people over (2 Indians, 2 Americans), and that was a lot of fun. But mostly it was about sleeping in and being lazy. I think our vacations this winter we by far the most lazy we've ever had. Not that we're complaining, it was very refreshing. When I finally got back to work, it was weird. I woke up in the morning with the alarm, but I was actually rested and ready to do stuff. Not sure exactly how long that lasted, since that feeling is gone now, but it was noticeably different for a little while. I miss vacation already.

- January. It's been both very cold and unseasonably warm around here. But there's snow on the ground now, so that's nice. I do like the snow. Not too much going on for me work/school wise. I'm getting better about budgeting my time, but still not great at it. The problem is, I find some interesting problem to work on, and I know I should only spend a day or two, but maybe it needs more than that? A week, maybe two. But there are plenty of other things that I need to read about, calculate, as well as non-research stuff that I'm doing like seminars and talks. That time-tuner from Harry Potter doesn't seem like that bad of an idea. I promise I won't kill my own grandpa! I just need a few extra hours in a day!

- More school. I'm taking a ceramics class, Basic Cups and Bowls. It's been a lot of fun! The lady teaching the class said it was the best therapy for stress that she knows. It's true, you start working with some clay on the wheel, and it's just fun. Among the other things I'm doing at work, I'm now the organizer for the Friday Lunch Club talks for the graduate students in the CTP. I'm trying to force them to actually practice giving talks, and there seems to be some success. The only way to become a better speaker is to actually speak in front of an audience. But they (my fellow grad students) were really only willing to do that if the faculty were un-invited. So I had to send out the email that said to many esteemed physicists (and some Nobel Prize winners) that they were not welcome at these talks any more. I tried to be polite, and I think it's for the best. I'm giving the first talk, in a little under 2 weeks, on February 8th. It's going to be on Bound State Quantum Field Theory, I'm really excited. I just learned about this topic last summer while doing a side research project. There was a retreat this week up in New Hampshire with the whole theory group and it was a lot of fun. The talks were pretty good, although I really feel someone needs to point out that after an hour or so, most people can't keep processing new material. There's a point diminishing returns, and when the speaker and the 2 interested people in the audience keep going on for almost 2 hours, it's a little hard. We need more, shorter talks, spaced throughout the day, rather than a few long talks.

- I've also been lifting with some regularity thanks to some friends, and I'm taking a squash class this spring. I've realized that I need a class or partners to make myself do these things other wise I'll just keep putting it off. Gotta stay healthy! Steph and I are trying to finish up Zelda - Twilight Princess, which we started a year late over Christmas. Then Final Fantasy XII for me, then I think I'm done. Seriously. No more. We also are finally replacing the computer that Tim willed onto us 3 1/2 years ago, and is now more than 5 years old. Yes, our home computer (not the one that I'm typing one right now, thank god!) is 1.3 GHz Pentium with 384 GB of RAM and a monstrous 40 GB hard drive. (Don't worry, we have an external 100 GB one as well, but it's hooked up through... USB 1.0!) But we decided to have an adventure with it, and are building our own. We have the case, motherboard, CPU, and RAM bought. We still need to get the hard drive and optical drive, but those should be in the next week or so. Then we'll take a day one of these weekends and see if we can't get it to work! There's always something so satisfying about doing it for yourself. Maybe with our tax rebate, we'll buy a nice flat-panel monitor. Will that help our economy, or the Chinese? And lastly, my 10 year High School reunion is now officially upon me. Lincoln '98 will be reunionizing this July 4th weekend. I'm really looking forward to it. How many crack addicts do you think we managed to produce?

Okay, well that's pretty much all my news from the last 2 months. Exciting, I know. Now to post some comments to let people know I'm not dead.