The place where lost socks go...

Monday -- Dropped Cabaret Girl off at the airport. I had arranged for elision and langs_place to drop by while we were gone, as a surprise to cheshcat. However, traffic intervened and so Chesh and I had to leave twice more (for various errands that were suddenly urgent) to give them time to arrive. Despite this last minute complication, the surprise went off well. We all went with The Moof for Mongolian BBQ stir fry then home to watch the excellent movie He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not. Due to the lateness of the hour, Elision and Lang slept over.

Tuesday -- Went to the monthly Food For Thought session at the lab. This month, rather than a speaker, we had a discussion on the future of the lab. Very interesting. Then went home and spent some mellow time with cheshcat. We watched an episode of Smallville and I taught her how to play GO.

Wednesday -- Before work, we jumped through complicated scheduling hoops to arrange a visit from resourceress later this month. After work, I drove north for a date with langs_place. Spent time talking and cuddling on the couch, then went out for a movie. On the way, we dropped by her office and I got to see her workspace for the first time.

Thursday -- Decided against going to a meeting because I really needed some mellow time. Instead, spent the evening at home reading, petting cats, etc. The Moof and I played an intense GO game on an 11x11 board. This time I won, with the final score being 18 to -2. We do seem to be pretty evenly matched at the game, with each of us winning about half the time. I'd like to play a full sized game at some point soon, since 11x11 seems to be the norm of late.

Friday -- cheshcat and I had a date. We went out to see a play at the Noble Fool Theatre in West Chicago. We saw Vikings: A Musical in Two Axe and it was as deliciously cheesy as the name would suggest. Very funny and we got to see a blood eagle performed on stage. I've been seeing a lot of theatre this year -- Vikings was the eight show so far -- which is a good thing. We liked the show enough that we splurged on the soundtrack afterwards. When the play was over, we went home to make dinner, then watched three more episodes of Smallville with The Moof. I've been spending a lot of time in front of a TV set in recent weeks, which is not a good thing.

Saturday (today) -- After sleeping in, langs_place and elision came over. Elision and cheshcat sat in the living room, doing work on laptops. Lang and I got bagels for everyone, then headed to the lab to ride our new bikes around the ring. This is the first time that I have really ridden a bike since 1991. Having a largely absent father and an overprotective mother, I was never taught to ride when I was a child. My attempts to learn as a teenager resulted in two nasty spills, so I had not attempted to ride for the past thirteen years. I am quite pleased to report that today's efforts were far more successful. The Tevatron ring is about four miles in circumference. We started near the high rise and made the first half of the trip with only two stops -- one because I was getting a bit unsteady, and the other to adjust a slipping chain. By the time we got to DZero, halfway around the ring, Lang and I were both winded, so we stopped and rested for a bit. Then we made the second half of the trip in one continuous ride. With vivid memories of 1991, I had been quite prepared to fall and had worn a lot of the protective gear that I usually bring to demonstrations. To my surprise, it was not necessary -- I did not take a single fall. After riding the two miles from DZero to the high rise, I was quite happy. Then I rode around the parking lot practicing turns until the felt somewhat comfortable. Finally, worn out, Lang and I drove back to my place to drop off the bikes. Her advice during the ride was much appreciated, and I feel pretty certain that I would not have made such rapid progress without her help. After lingering at the Event Horizon for a little while, we headed to Lang's home, where she is currently preparing dinner -- chicken (for Elision and Chesh), quiche, and potatos -- as I write this. Chesh and Elision will arrive soon and, after dinner, we plan to watch The Importance of Being Earnest. I am definitely on an Oscar Wilde kick ever since seeing the production of Lady Windemere's Fan last month.

Saturday: Got up and went to the lab. Escorted a gaggle of high schoolers -- and some parents -- on a tour of the magnet facility. Came home and was met shortly thereafter by langs_place. We went into the city to buy bicycles at the Working Bikes Cooperative.

In a nutshell, Working Bikes is a volunteer-run collective that recovers landfill-bound bicycles, repairs them to working condition, then sells them (at a low cost) to fund shipments of bicycles to developing countries. I was duly impressed by Working Bikes -- it looked like they had at least one thousand bicycles for sale. After an hour of browsing, Lang and I had each picked a bike that we were happy with: She had a Schwinn Suburban and I had a Univega. Each cost about $50. I haven't owned a bike in many, many years -- so I am quite delighted with my new purchase.

Afterward, we dropped in on B&C, who happen to live a short distance from Working Bikes. Though longtime friends of Lang, I had never met either of them -- only heard much talk. So it was good to finally spend some time, get Thai food, and chat. We called it a night fairly early and went home. After a short bike ride down my street, we retired to bed at a reasonable hour (for once).

Sunday: The earlier part of the day featured calls to Mom (for Mothers' Day, of course), the Kiddo, and resourceress. After cheshcat and Cabaret Girl returned from Michigan, we headed out for Italian food at Bucca. My vegetarianism was temporarily forced on CG and Chesh; we shared a meal of eggplant parmesean and ravioli (plus chocolate cake). Yum! Chesh commented that she still finds it odd to watch me eat eggplant. After all my years as a carnivore, I can understand why.

After dinner, we rented some movies and came home. Chesh and CG have been in the living room working on grading and other faculty-prep work. Meanwhile, the Moof and I played GO in the family room. Tonight's game was 11x11 and was relatively closer -- he won 23 to 17. Ah well, next time! I find that I really enjoy having the Event Horizon be a community center, even for a small community. It's nice having work and games and whatnot going on at once. This reminds me of my college years, when my closest friends all lived on the same dorm hall. I suspect that we'll see more of this over the summer, as both Chesh and I will be here (as opposed to AZ or traveling) for most of the time.

Soon it is off to bed, for cuddling with cheshcat and then sleep.

After work today, I spent a little time at my place with langs_place. She had forgotten some things at my house when she went to work this morning. Since that meant that she had to return to my house, that was fine with me.

After Lang left, I spent most of the evening beating the Event Horizon (our house) into shape. This is the first chance that I've had to do this since returning home from Utah. It's been a very busy past few days -- it's been May Day, whatdaya expect?! -- and so the place has really needed some work.

Now, with that mission largely accomplished, I'm going to go shower off my rather disgusting self. Then it is off to the airport to pick up cheshcat. She will be in town until the very end of May, which is a very happy thing, indeed. It promises to be a very fun month.

In between Florida and Utah, I got to enjoy one full week at home! Doesn't sound like much, I know, but when sandwiched between two 3-week trips, I'll take what I can get. Here's the week in review:

( Sunday Night )

( Monday )

( Tuesday )

( Wednesday )

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

( Monday Morning )

And that there is the news! Not a bad week at all, if I do say so myself...

Life is what happens when you're too busy to write it down. And there's been a lot of life happening lately. My last entry has me arriving in Florida; meanwhile, I've finished my weekend in FL, spent a week back home, and have been in Utah for a couple of days. Here's an update of what's been going on:

( SCUBA diving )

( Drag Shows and More in Key West )

( Flying in Style )

...and then I was finally back in Chicago. langs_place had cancelled my taxi because she wanted to pick me up at the airport herself. We headed back to my place so I could greet my lovely kitties before the two of us retired for the night.

That's all for now. Tomorrow I'll cover the week that I had at home, which was both packed and enjoyable!

It is currently four o'clock in the morning. In seven hours, my ride will pick me up at my hotel and I will start the journey home. Before then, I still need to pack and shower. And sleep. Why is it that I never seem to sleep enough before travelling?

Anyway, I will leave Malargue on Wednesday morning, but I will not return to Chicago until Sunday night. Tomorrow, three of us will drive 420 kilometers from Malargue to Mendoza. We will dally for a day in Mendoza, just being mellow and seeing the Mendozan sights. Then, on Thursday, we will all go our separate ways -- I will fly to Buenos Aires. Last time I spent time in B.A., back in November, I got to participate in a demonstration held by the MTDs -- very cool! Thursday night, I fly from B.A. to Miami. When I arrive in Miami on Friday morning, I will drive down to Key West and have a weekend with C&B. Sunday evening, I finally make the last leg of the journey, back home again, where langs_place will be waiting for me at the airport.

I like this way of doing things. Breaking up the long trip into parts is less strenuous, and it also means that I get to see more places as I transit from Malargue to Chicago. I am especially looking forward to the weekend in Florida.

I suspect that I will be out of electronic contact (LJ, email, AIM, etc.) between now and Monday.

Okay, time to pack..........

I just got back from a late night walk around Malargue. Ye gads, it is misty out! This is supposed to be a desert? Wettest desert I've ever seen. Okay, I've only been to two other deserts (the Sonoran and the Sahara), but still...

One consequence of the mist is that I cannot see any stars. I brought a star chart and binoculars with me, but three of the five nights since I arrived have been cloudy. So much for quality viewing. So far, I've gotten to look at Crux (the Southern Cross), as well as alpha and beta Centauri. These cannot be seen from the North, so I had never seen them before my first trip here, in November. When the sky clears up, I want to take a drive out to the Pampa with my binoculars, to do more extensive viewing.

Why am I awake at this hour, anyway? Tonight, I am not on shift. However, I slept until 9:30pm, so I knew that there was no way I would sleep tonight. Interestingly enough, there seems to be a lot of oddity going around with regards to sleep. I know that daurdabla had trouble falling alseep tonight. And lately, elision has been having trouble sleeping, as has langs_place. resourceress is staying up later than she normally does, and Cheshcat is frequently up late. Maybe it's an epidemic.

Wow, this has been a busy day! It's after 8pm, I've been up for over twelve hours, and this is the first bit of free time that I've had. I don't normally give this sort of play-by-play, but here is what today has been like:

8am: Wake up. Thanks very much to the radio-controlled travel alarm given to me by langs_place.
8am - 9am: Shave, shower, and walk to conference hall.
9am - 10:30am: Collaboration meeting talks.
10:30am - 11am: "Break." At a meeting, this isn't time to relax, per se. It is time to be social and have informal discussions while drinking the morning caffeine (I brought some Awake for that purpose, since I don't like coffee).
11am - 1pm: Collaboration meeting talks.
1pm - 2:30pm: Lunchtime. Which is a lot like "break."
2:30pm - 4:30pm: Collaboration meeting talks.
4:30pm - 5pm: More break. These informal discussions are considered, with good reason, to be an important part of doing collaborative physics projects.
5pm - 7:45pm: Collaboration meeting talks.
7:45pm - 8:30pm: Procure dinner at convenience store, get stuff from hotel room.
8:30pm - 9pm: First real break of the day. That's where I am now, checking email and LJ and the web.
9pm - 2am???: Data taking shift with the fluorescence detector (FD). Each month, the FD is run during clear moonless nights (about two weeks per month). Four people need to run the FD remotely from the central building here in Malargue. The shifts alternate, with two people on one night and off the next. Tonight I get trained for these shifts, and work until the moon rises around 2am or so.

And, of course, tomorrow morning I wake at 8am and start a similar process again.

It is busy, but actually I'm having a great time. I am understanding much more of the talks than I did last time, in November. I'm seeing people I met before, and volunteering for some hardware calibration work later in the month. Fun stuff. After all, I do this work because I love it, and I really am having a great time today.

Okay, time to run. I go on shift in ten minutes...

[Addendum -- 3/16/2003 3:30AM: So much for going to sleep at 2am. I'm on shift with the FD until just after dawn. At 6:30am, we shut the FD down, so I'll be done by 7am. I can stay awake for the morning talks, which start at 9am, or I can sleep six hours and wake up at 2pm, just in time for the afternoon talks. I'd like to stay awake, but tomorrow I'm busy until about midnight, so I probably should grab the sleep.]

After the movie last night, which was very good, resourceress and I were headed home. I knew that I had about thirteen hours left before leaving, so I was composing mental lists of what needed to get done in that time.

We get home at 11pm, park the car, walk in the front door and......... SURPRISE!!!!!

The Moof and elision and langs_place were waiting in ambush to throw me a surprise party. The party, conceived and initiated by resourceress, was soon joined by M&C, who brought an enormous cake with them. Also, to avoid leaving out somebody uber-important, cheshcat was on the speakerphone to join in the birthday greeting! As the late night party went on (until 3am), calls from Mom and the Kiddo also came in.

Overall, lots of unexpected fun. Less sleep occurred last night than I expected, but that is more than okay. This year's birthday is being upgraded from "so-so" to "surprisingly good."

Okay, time to shower and pack... Limo will be here in two hours!

It started on Friday evening. I was on the phone with langs_place when it occurred to me that I had not played any games in quite some time. It had been three weeks since my last two-player game (GO, of course), and about a month since my last multi-player game (Settlers of Catan). Such a deficiency must not be allowed to continue, and we made plans to have a Games' Night on Saturday, hosted by Lang and elision.

So, on Saturday evening, the Moof and resourceress and I went to Wheeling to play games. The Magnificent also showed up. We ordered Tai food from "I am Siam" and selected a game. With six people, the choices were Wise or Otherwise, Settlers of Catan, and Illuminati. We almost went with Settlers, but the expansion set (necessary for more than four players) was incomplete. So Illuminati it was. This was fine with me, as I have not played a complete game of Illuminati in a few years.

I ended up drawing the UFOs, which are always fun to play. It was a rather long game, lasting nearly five hours. I bear some responsibility for this; I nearly won after about three hours, but a bone-headed money transfer kept me from having the needed funds. By the time it was over, elision had been knocked out of the game, Lang had nearly won twice (foiled only by automatic failure dice rolls), and the Magnificent had nearly won once. Eventually, I ended things by stealing a large arm of langs_place's power structure, giving me the number of groups required for a basic victory.

It was a really fun evening. And now that everyone here finally knows the rules for Illuminati, I hope that we can get to play more often. Once every few years is just not enough...