tabs

The current level of craziness I am experiencing in my life can usually be summed up in the number of concurrently open firefox tabs.  Four or five tabs corresponds to a very relaxing state of being.  Ten or more is the other end of the spectrum.  When we start talking multiple windows with multiple tabs on multiple computers, it’s just not looking good for anybody.

Current tab count: 11 on laptop, 8 on school computer (desktop 1), 3 on school computer (desktop 2).
Finals this afternoon I haven’t studied for yet: 1
ETD to Richland: 3 days
Amount of research-related work I must accomplish between now and then: → ∞

At least my grading and Christmas shopping are both taken care of.  That isn’t as much of a relief as it should be, though.

Oh Bernstein…

Leonard Bernstein’s Mass won’t get out of my head.

Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that I’ve rehearsed it three nights in a row.

Perhaps.

You should come share in the stuck-in-head-ishness this weekend: buy tickets online or just show up.

Friday, 8pm (least likely to be sold out)
Saturday, 8pm (Mike is attending on this night)
Sunday, 3pm

UCSD Campus, Mandeville Auditorium.  You know you want to.

Seattle is a lovely place

And I wish I could spend more time here!

Mike and I flew in late Wednesday evening, and we have been enjoying a fantastic weekend with his family.  In addition to his parents, Mike’s sister and her boyfriend (Jen & Ben) are here, and they are lots of fun to hang out with.  Especially when “hanging out” involves smashing each others’ castles and boats via Boom Blox on the Wii.  :)

On Thanksgiving proper, we enjoyed a traditional dinner with Mike’s mom’s brother and his wife, and afterward I dominated some Apples to Apples.  We have also enjoyed games of Ticket to Ride Europe and Settlers of Catan in the past couple of days.  Yesterday we went on a walk in Schmitz Park (the Pacific Northwest is so beautiful!) and today we made turkey-shaped cookies, a Bigelow tradition.  We decorated them meticulously with food coloring and sprinkles before baking them, smothering them in whipped cream, and devouring them.  Tonight we enjoyed dinner at a tasty Chinese place – a welcome treat given the lack of such things in San Diego – and we watched the new Star Trek movie with copious amount of air-popped popcorn.  I drizzled an obscene amount of melted butter on mine and it was glorious.

In sum: food, games, people, and nature.  Adds up to an awesome time any day.

I am sad to report, however, how adapted to southern California’s weather (or lack thereof) I have become.  It has been in the upper 40s/lower 50s and anywhere from partly cloudy to rainy since our arrival, and I am just chilly.  Sigh.

Tomorrow, we are off to find a friend who is running the Seattle marathon, and sadly Jen & Ben must depart.  Mike and I don’t return to San Diego until Monday afternoon, which should give me the opportunity to visit the University of Washington on Monday morning with a friend who is currently in the astronomy PhD program.

After all that, it will be back to business… orchestra rehearsals are on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday and concerts are on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.  We’re playing Bernstein’s Mass, which is both awesome and insane (like any good concert should be).  Not to mention it shall be “for reals” time in the realms of both PhD applications and research.

But right now: food, games, people, and nature.  I am grateful for all and already look forward to Thanksgiving 2010!

H20 on the Moon!

For reals this time.

Now we can send astronauts to the moon and they don’t have to haul metric craptons of water with them!  And we can use the water to make fuel!  This is HUGE!  Send me?

Someday I intend to write a proper post about why both manned space exploration and space science done from earth (or with robots/in low-earth orbit) are so important.

But right now, I have two crazy kittens to attend to and a warm bed calling.

(p.s. did you hear there’s water on the frakking moon?!)

November?

Indeed.

That means I should probably be preparing for the Physics GRE, contacting letter writers for recommendations, and keeping up with all my grading and homework and research.

Hmm.

Well, at any rate, I played with the La Jolla Symphony in two wonderful concerts this weekend!  We performed Beethoven’s 7th Symphony, two pieces by Bartok, and a set of three modern pieces by a guy named Golijov.  It was all very good music, for lack of a better description, and it went very well.  I absolutely love being part of a musical ensemble.

Last Thursday, I surprised Mike with a fancy dinner out followed by a gondola ride (complete with chocolate dipped strawberries and wine).  In turn, he surprised me with a dozen red roses!  All this was in celebration of four years of fun-filled adventures together. :)

One such adventure took place a week ago Saturday.  We dominated San Diego’s Great Urban Race with some friends from church.  We placed in the 90s (out of nearly 400 pairs who finished) and had a blast running around San Diego like idiots Battlestar Galactica crew members.  We got to eat pancakes, shave balloons, fold origami, apply temporary tattoos, drive GoCars across a parking lot, braid a long strand of ribbon, and track down and photograph many random landmarks.

Speaking of Battlestar Galactica… we watched “The Plan” yesterday and it was quite excellent.  The music alone was superb, of course, but seeing many events from Season 1 from the cylons’ point of view was fascinating.  A warning, though – one should NOT watch “The Plan” until one has seen the entire BSG series, save perhaps the very final episode (“Daybreak”).  It would basically be like reading Harry Potter 7 first.

With that, I’m off to eat some food and collapse.  It really is a shame that SDSU doesn’t do Fall Break, because I’m well overdue for one… despite all the above non-work-related fun, I’ve been managing probably 80% Mudd Average Workload lately.  I think 0.8 MAW would be a nice way to quantify that, shorthand.  Happy November!

Education

Last night, I led a group of 20 or so students up to Mount Laguna Observatory.  This is a field trip that is required for all introductory lab students, and a handful from another astronomy class came up as well.  It was a stunningly gorgeous night – not too cold, no moon, exquisite seeing.  The Milky Way arched across the entire sky, and David and I took turns slewing the telescope and pointing out constellations with the powerful green laser pointer.  We had a good look at Albireo (a double star), the Ring Nebula, the Andromeda Galaxy, M13 (a globular cluster), and finally, Jupiter.

I’ll admit that I’ve viewed Jupiter through a telescope too many times to count, and each time it is a sight to behold.  The four Galilean moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto) are usually visible as small “stars” near Jupiter, but sometimes only three of them appear because one is in front or behind Jupiter.  Yesterday night, however, in addition to three obvious moons, there was a funny black speck on Jupiter.  There were also beautiful red stripes contrasting against the whiteish orange background.  My suspicion?  One of the moons was transiting Jupiter, and I could see its shadow!!  I even convinced myself I could see the moon AND its shadow when the atmosphere was particularly cooperative.  My evidence?  What else would make a minuscule black speck on Jupiter… and I observed Jupiter both before and after everybody else, and I’m pretty sure the black speck had moved.  Suspicion confirmed.  (Set the time for around 8pm on Thu Oct 15 PDT to see for yourself – it was Ganymede.)

The generally awesome evening got me to thinking… why do we require field trips at all?  So much of what is broadly termed “education” falls into the memorize, regurgitate, repeat category.  Even more so at a state university with slashed funding and two furlough days per month for all faculty.  I enjoy teaching a lab course that has no exams, and where you get credit for showing up and explaining what you did during class in words, after the fact.  But for the field trip, the sole requirement is attendance.  Students are never tested on what they see through the telescope.  They aren’t asked to memorize constellations or names of stars.  Yet they learn volumes just by opening their eyes.  And the questions they ask!  It seems to me that education is a lot more about experience than assessment.  We need to go on more field trips.

Two other things I want to mention that are tangentially related to education:

1. Harvey Mudd 1, Victoria’s Secret 0 – if Mudders can pull this off in their spare time, imagine what an impact we can make in the real world.  Also it would totally rock if I could buy HMC sweatpants from VS.
2. Raleigh, NC has an interesting and highly effective approach to education reform, discussed here by a British journalist.  I was a huge proponent of neighborhood schools until I read this, and now I’m unsure what to think.

Unrelatedly, this week has been nuts.  One postponed jury summons, two parking tickets, one crashing computer, one midterm, and zero nights when Mike and I have both been home prior to 9pm.  Coming up this weekend: catching up on my grading (blech), taking the GRE (also blech), and not much else.

If you’re looking for something to do, go get vaccinated against both seasonal and H1N1 flu.  Here’s why.

Rummage Sale

I just spent my entire weekend helping execute a huge rummage sale at our church.  We raised nearly $3000 for Dorcas House, a foster home in Tijuana for some 40 kids whose parents are in prison.  The effort was tremendous and paid off hugely, and while I am definitely exhausted, it was really powerful to see how a small group of 20 and 30 somethings with an idea can pull off something this important.

In other news, we have our minivan back, and it runs so smoothly!  Now it looks like half of two of three brake lights don’t work, but I saw another Previa today with the exact same issue, which was both comforting and amusing.

I have a midterm on Tuesday, I’m behind on grading, I have a scholarship essay due tomorrow that I haven’t started, I haven’t done much research in over a week, and I’m taking the General GRE on Saturday.  But, all of that will be addressed in good time.  Inboxes are never empty.

For now, I am reveling in a weekend well spent, and I am going to get some sleep.  The whole rummage sale experience was almost as good as two days on staff at Camp Cross… it’s heartening to know that such experiences can exist anywhere you choose to create them.

Busi-ness

There’s no doubt about it – I am busy this semester.

But that’s not to say I’m too busy, or I’m busy in a bad way (well, aside from the timesuck that is grading).  I just need to find some time to do thesis research…

And now, I present An Optimistic List Of Side Effects That Have Sprung Up From Not Having A Car For Some Two Weeks:

• Better for the environment
• More exercise and more time outside
• Good way to catch up with friends (while bumming a ride)
• Gives an excuse to take somebody out to lunch
• Realization that it is possible to live without a car
• Not spending money on gas
• Empathy for others who rely solely on public transit to get around
• Little to no time spent stuck in traffic or experiencing road rage
• Renewed appreciation for businesses within walking distance

That’s all I’ve got.  Oh, and this, in reflection on a psalm by Ann Fontaine over at Episcopal Cafe:

“Life is what I am given in this time and this space and asking God to save it seems more a prayer to live it fully in this moment, not obsessing about the past or anxious about the future. When I can be in this place, I feel aligned with some greater life, in tune with the dance of the universe whether rejoicing or sorrowing, singing or lamenting. I can’t hang onto it by myself – it takes something that encompasses all of us and fills the spaces between us.”

Good to remember the bigger picture whilst caught up in the day-to-day.

Bumming Rides

We’re into week two of bumming rides and adapting to the pokey public transit system here in San Diego.

Apparently our trusty 96 Toyota Previa needs a new EGR valve, vacuum switch valve, and temperature sensor.  (It decided to put out some dark exhaust recently and has developed a habit of “hiccuping” in certain circumstances, such as under heavy load, so we took it in last Sunday.  These symptoms are apparently linked to the check-engine-light code that has been on for many years[1].)

The industrious Pep Boys down the street took several days to diagnose it and are now having difficulty ordering and receiving the proper parts.  So there it sits, half disassembled, taking up space in their bay and not being of any use to us.  They’re saying they should have it ready by the end of Tuesday, but I’ll believe it when I see it.  I for one just hope that this solves the problem, because either way it will be costly!  I fully intend to get many more miles out of this “built-like-a-tank” minivan – it currently has just shy of 160,000.

To everyone about to play the “Ugh, just get rid of it already and get a new car!” card, I would like to mention the following:

1. I don’t own the vehicle; my Dad does.
2. Furthermore, it is licensed in Washington and he pays for insurance as well as two tanks of gas per month.
3. As much as I would love to suddenly own a Prius (or similar vehicle), I don’t really make very much money as a graduate student, and new cars cost money.
4. Yes, it is true that Mike makes money, but we are actually trying out this novel thing called saving.
5. It is phenomenally cheaper to maintain an old vehicle than to purchase/finance a new one.

Of course, if all else fails, I could always resort to this.

[1] For the record, the van was taken into the shop when the CEL first came on.  (Code: P401 Exhaust Gas Recirculation Flow Insufficient Detected.)  This was many years ago when it still resided in Richland.  The mechanic cleaned the EGR valve only to have the light come back on.  At the time the van was running perfectly nicely, and the mechanic stated that it certainly wouldn’t hurt to continue driving it with the light on, but if we wanted we could spend hundreds more to investigate the issue thoroughly.  Guess what Dad did.

Hubble lives!

…and it lives gloriously.  I’m pretty much speechless.

How, exactly, was this a waste of money?  Oh right, it wasn’t.  It involved astronomy and astronauts and will result in not only breathtakingly beautiful images, but gobs of priceless scientific data.

NASA may be slow to deliver, but when it does deliver, it doesn’t frak around.

Check it out.

A couple of folks closer to the source weigh in here and here.