A weekend off

I thought things would get a bit calmer once I turned in my dissertation, but I'm finding plenty of things that need to get done in the four weeks before I leave Maryland. So I'm a bit late posting these photos from last weekend.

To celebrate finishing my dissertation, I took a day off. We had brunch with friends, and then checked out the terrific Tacoma Park farmer's market. At this point, I'm just a tiny bit annoyed when I discover new and wonderful places in DC. It feels like Fate is just rubbing it in that I'm leaving DC, which I love so much. In spite of this, there were many great finds, which led to our celebratory dinner that night:

Baby greens with apples and toasted hazelnuts.

Daffodils, champagne, and homemade pappardelle with morels and cream sauce.

We also spent part of the afternoon at the U.S. Botanical Garden, which was having an orchid exhibit. The Botanical Garden is on the grounds of the Capitol, and whole area was just filled with protesters and counter-protesters. It was a bit confusing, because the protesters were supporting immigration reform, and the counter-protesters were advocating against the health care bill, but everyone found something to yell about. (This was the afternoon when some of tea party protesters spit on a Congressman.) And in the midst of all of it, I waxed nostalgic about how much I was going to miss it all.

And while I've been working on a dissertation, Andrew's been doing more experimental physics. He built a manometer, show to the left, which compares pressures. He needed to tune the motorcycle carburetors so that they all had the same amount of vacuum. In the picture, you can see four tubes, which are really two tubes, each U-shaped. They are partially filled with colored fluid, and then each end of the tube is hooked up to one carburetor. The vacuum is then adjusted until the levels are equal. Who knew he could do such practical physics?