Typing

I... am... typing... this... so... slowly... that... I'll... forgive... you... if... you... want... to... leave... and... find... a... peppier... blog... today.

So I had this great idea to teach myself the Dvorak keyboard. It's supposed to be faster (because a large number of your keystrokes are in home position) and reduce the likelihood of carpal tunnel syndrome (because a large number of your keystrokes are in home position). As others who have done this have promised, the transition is excruciating. I've gone from something like 70 wpm to something like 4 wpm. I literally find in easier to cut and paste a word that I have already typed than to try and type it again. So blog posts may be shorter for a bit while I struggle to remember where the 'k' is located.

The visit with my brother and his family: we saw monuments, memorials, and museums. Kyla and sis-in-law rode the carousel on the Mall. (I think s-i-l enjoyed it the most. In all the pictures - and my brother took one every time they came around - there's a big grin plastered on s-i-l's face, while Kyla wore the same expression as she does when she's in her stroller. She just couldn't quite see what all the fuss was about.) We ate good Indian and good sushi and good bubble teas accompanied by a terrible steamed bun. We had chocolate cake every day.

I must stop now. This post took me all morning and at some point I need to do the work they pay me for.

A picture book

Fun times were held by all this weekend. More soon, I promise. But in the meantime, a short illustrated story to read to your wee ones before bed.

Kyla asks her father to play one - two- three - Wheeeeee!

Not receiving an affirmative answer quickly enough, Kyla stands up and demands to play one -two - three - Wheeee!

One... Two...

Three....

Wheeee!

Visitors from another dimension - children

My brother and his family are coming for the weekend! I am so excited. Expect many, many pictures of my incredibly cute niece next week.

We're ready: we've purchased everyone's favorite drinks, cleaned the house from top to bottom, and I'm baking a cake tonight. I think the best way to show someone that you love them is with buttercream frosting.

I have never had a toddler spend more than an hour in my house. I've tried to pack up everything that she could either eat or bang her head on, but I'm sure I'll have misjudged what I should have done. I'll just have to count on her parents to keep her alive for the weekend, in spite of the (probable) death trap that my house is.

Have a nice weekend!

A wonderfully boring weekend

I had a great Memorial Day weekend, and did not a lick of work. We went and saw Prairie Home Companion. (In this case, "saw" is just an expression - we only had a view of the stage if we stood up.) I've grown up listening to this show, and I love going to see it live. It's not as if it's wildly different than listening to it on the radio, but somehow just sitting there, with no dinner to put on the table, and nowhere else to be, allows you to just focus on the stories and songs.

We also went thrift shopping, and purchased a kitchen table for our new place. The new place, as you recall, is tiny, tiny, tiny. So I'm hoping this will fit it. It's perfect for two people on a daily basis:




Then, when we have guests, you can pull up both sides and it expands to allow six or eight to sit comfortably:



And if you're going to invite an entire soccer team to dinner, it expands even more:


You'll have to imagine the leaves we'd put in the middle for now, since we'll have to make them.

I'm excited - it was a good deal and solid wood and Andrew is willing to let me paint it. Now to look for some matching chairs...

Hi ho, hi ho, it's off to work we go (I've not been as productive as the dwarves lately.)

After a mere four days of research, I've ordered a new computer. When I ran my plan by the professor administering the grant, he thought I was spending dangerously too little. I tried to reassure him that since we bought our last computer for the group, six years ago (which is pretty much the stone ages, in computer years), the type of machine we needed was tip-toppity top of the line. Now, computers are insanely big and fast, and we still use the same digital cameras as six years ago. It's like we still build the same size pyramids, but now we get to use cranes and premade bricks, and don't have to have slaves drag stone blocks over logs. But, just to make him feel a little better, I threw in a second hard drive, at 250 GB. That's a quarter Terabyte, people. Although that's so much space it feels like we'll never use that, I know that it will fill up quickly. To use another rather contrived analogy, putting video data on your computer is like packing your station wagon for camping. The car looks sooo big, and only two of you are going, but still you manage to fill the entire car and have to hold the firewood on your lap. Um, well, that's what happens when we go camping anyway.

I've been struggling to write a paper for the past two weeks. It has no official due date, which isn't helping matters. Nobody really cares if I work on this or go cook myself a terrific meal. (Which must explain why we've been eating so well lately.) I also can't figure out what my point is, exactly. That has not stood between many an academic and his paper, but, you know, it's hard to know when to stop if you're don't what you're trying to accomplish.

Computer woes

I'm having computer problems, again. After the massive rebuild, my machine hummed along happily for a few weeks, but now is suffered what has been deemed a terminal illness. It is much worse, I think, to lose a work computer than to lose a home computer. I tend to back up most of the stuff I care about, which at home means photos of my family and friends, and at work means videos of students doing physics. But it's really lowering my efficiency to not have all my documents and articles and notes easily accessible at work. For right now I've borrowed a laptop, but it's not available all the time, so we (i.e. me and my advisors) will have to figure out a better solution for the longer term.

But enough grousing. Let me tell you about my wonderful weekend. We went camping with three other couples. There was a bit of hiking and canoeing (not by me, of course, because I just sat at the campsite and read all day) and much socializing and eating. The weather was quite cool, but bearable with two layers of long underwear. And having some time away, even though it was only two days, was a nice break between the end of the spring semester and the start of the summer semester. I don't think we'll go to the Pennsylvania State Parks again, though, because they have a no alcohol policy, and really, what's the point of camping if you can't sip some whisky after dinner?

I finished grading student exams yesterday, so now I have a whole three and a half months stretching before me that can be filled up with just research. I'm working on two different projects this summer, one which focuses on Teaching Assistants and one that focuses on introductory physics students. I'm going to two conferences, one in Maine and one in North Carolina, where I will present a total of three posters and give two (short) talks. I need to write two papers and, of course, have a lot of brilliant ideas, but those are awfully hard to schedule in.

What are your big summer plans?

Phi, the physics wonder cat

Every time I go to download pictures on to my computer, so that I can post a few here, I find that Andrew has used the camera to take several dozen pictures of the cat. His dedication to her is probably even greater then mine, for when she meows at five a.m., I'm inclined to lock her in the living room so I can get me some more shut-eye, while Andrew gets up and feeds her, then lets her outside.

Some further testimony to his devotion to Phi:





There you have it, ladies and gents. A styling cat with a devoted photographer.
More news soon.