Day 58: Happy November 31st!

Note #1 for the astute: Yes, I skipped one day when incrementing my "100 Days of LJ" counter. The reason for this is that I decided to save yesterday's entry for the, as yet incomplete, tale of the conclusion of our Buenos Aires trip. When it is finished, it will be the first time that I ever backdate an entry, but I decided to do things this way because I would prefer to keep all of our notes on the trip contiguous.

Note #2 for the astute: Yes, the subject line to this entry does say "Happy November 31st!" As noted here, it was necessary for me to stretch the month of November by a few days in order to accommodate the bi-monthly games party at the Event Horizon. As a reminder, the party will be taking place on November 33rd (also known as December 3rd to those with less imagination), which is this coming Saturday. If you are on my LJ friends list -- or trusted by somebody who is -- you can consider yourself invited.

---

Yesterday morning, cheshcat and I returned to the Event Horizon after an eighteen hour door-to-door trip. Wow, it's winter up here, huh? Snow and all! I think I miss being in late Spring. Ah, well. cheshcat took a nap to recover from the overnight flight from Buenos Aires to Miami. I jumped into the pile of mail that had built up over the three weeks that I was in Argentina, as well as the 1100+ e-mail messages that had arrived in my InBox during the week-long vacation in Buenos Aires. By now, all the important mail has been dealt with and the e-mail has been beaten down to only a dozen or so messages.

Other than getting settled back into my life, yesterday was largely uneventful:

In the afternoon, I went into the lab to listen to a colloquium on the Supernova Acceleration Probe (or SNAP), which is a proposed space telescope that would make very precise measurements of the so-called "Dark Energy." SNAP is a project that I would be very interested in working on if it ever gets funded. In today's climate, I tend to be a pessimist about such things. Next week's colloquium looks even more interesting; it is a talk that compares and contrasts the process of producing science fiction with the process of producing science, specifically theoretical physics. Hopefully I will be able to attend next Wednesday.

In the evening, after I got the emission inspection done for cheshcat's Infiniti (big excitement there... ho hum), gyades and polymorphism and cheshcat and I went out to get Mexican food for dinner. After three weeks of being a vegetarian in the "land of beef," I was damn tired of eating only salad, pizza, and pasta. So a burrito and nachos was a very nice change of pace... as was having some spice in my meal. Following dinner, the four of us went out to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I thought it was okay -- not great, but okay -- and I think that I probably had the highest opinion of it out of everyone in our group. The ride home was largely dominated by a discussion of how the movie could have been much better.

Once we arrived home, polymorphism and I made a midnight shopping run, inspired by the revelation that I was out of antacid and needed some pretty badly. When we got back, gyrades and cheshcat had both already gone to bed. We talked for a little while, then I went upstairs to collapse from my very long day.

Probably the biggest news of the day was on the job front. While going through my eleven hundred e-mails, I noticed a request for an interview for a position at McGill University (in Montreal) working on observational cosmology. And, even more exciting, I received an offer for the post-doc position at Oxford University, working on a dark matter detection experiment. So, as of now, I have three upcoming interviews (Penn State, TRIUMF, and McGill) as well as two offers (U-New Mexico and Oxford). That's five replies out of the first six applications that I sent. Not bad! I did note that the Oxford offer does not include relocation expenses. Hey, nw1 -- how much does it cost to relocate two people and their stuff from the States to England?

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today has largely been dominated by work and productivity, though tonight I will be going to Poly Karaoke with polymorphism... and cassiopia will be taking the train up from Urbana to meet us there!

Day 58: Happy November 31st!

Note #1 for the astute: Yes, I skipped one day when incrementing my "100 Days of LJ" counter. The reason for this is that I decided to save yesterday's entry for the, as yet incomplete, tale of the conclusion of our Buenos Aires trip. When it is finished, it will be the first time that I ever backdate an entry, but I decided to do things this way because I would prefer to keep all of our notes on the trip contiguous.

Note #2 for the astute: Yes, the subject line to this entry does say "Happy November 31st!" As noted here, it was necessary for me to stretch the month of November by a few days in order to accommodate the bi-monthly games party at the Event Horizon. As a reminder, the party will be taking place on November 33rd (also known as December 3rd to those with less imagination), which is this coming Saturday. If you are on my LJ friends list -- or trusted by somebody who is -- you can consider yourself invited.

---

Yesterday morning, cheshcat and I returned to the Event Horizon after an eighteen hour door-to-door trip. Wow, it's winter up here, huh? Snow and all! I think I miss being in late Spring. Ah, well. cheshcat took a nap to recover from the overnight flight from Buenos Aires to Miami. I jumped into the pile of mail that had built up over the three weeks that I was in Argentina, as well as the 1100+ e-mail messages that had arrived in my InBox during the week-long vacation in Buenos Aires. By now, all the important mail has been dealt with and the e-mail has been beaten down to only a dozen or so messages.

Other than getting settled back into my life, yesterday was largely uneventful:

In the afternoon, I went into the lab to listen to a colloquium on the Supernova Acceleration Probe (or SNAP), which is a proposed space telescope that would make very precise measurements of the so-called "Dark Energy." SNAP is a project that I would be very interested in working on if it ever gets funded. In today's climate, I tend to be a pessimist about such things. Next week's colloquium looks even more interesting; it is a talk that compares and contrasts the process of producing science fiction with the process of producing science, specifically theoretical physics. Hopefully I will be able to attend next Wednesday.

In the evening, after I got the emission inspection done for cheshcat's Infiniti (big excitement there... ho hum), gyades and polymorphism and cheshcat and I went out to get Mexican food for dinner. After three weeks of being a vegetarian in the "land of beef," I was damn tired of eating only salad, pizza, and pasta. So a burrito and nachos was a very nice change of pace... as was having some spice in my meal. Following dinner, the four of us went out to see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I thought it was okay -- not great, but okay -- and I think that I probably had the highest opinion of it out of everyone in our group. The ride home was largely dominated by a discussion of how the movie could have been much better.

Once we arrived home, polymorphism and I made a midnight shopping run, inspired by the revelation that I was out of antacid and needed some pretty badly. When we got back, gyrades and cheshcat had both already gone to bed. We talked for a little while, then I went upstairs to collapse from my very long day.

Probably the biggest news of the day was on the job front. While going through my eleven hundred e-mails, I noticed a request for an interview for a position at McGill University (in Montreal) working on observational cosmology. And, even more exciting, I received an offer for the post-doc position at Oxford University, working on a dark matter detection experiment. So, as of now, I have three upcoming interviews (Penn State, TRIUMF, and McGill) as well as two offers (U-New Mexico and Oxford). That's five replies out of the first six applications that I sent. Not bad! I did note that the Oxford offer does not include relocation expenses. Hey, nw1 -- how much does it cost to relocate two people and their stuff from the States to England?

Anyway, that was yesterday. Today has largely been dominated by work and productivity, though tonight I will be going to Poly Karaoke with polymorphism... and cassiopia will be taking the train up from Urbana to meet us there!