The place where lost socks go...

First things first: Once again, just after sunset tonight, look to the Western sky. The two day old sliver of a crescent moon returns to hovering nearby Venus. Very pretty! I am amazed that the clouds of England have permitted me to see the one and two day old moons thusly for two months running!

That duty tended to, here is what I have been up to lately:

Last night, after a yummy dinner prepared by the marvelous cheshcat, I was off for a dip at the Ferry Sports Centre. Swam another mile, which feels wonderful. I am amazed to find that I can already see a difference in my arms from these workouts. Have to remember to stretch more, though. When I last swam regularly (1993 - 1999), I never stretched and, thus, lost much flexibility.

Today has been a very pleasant day. The weather is phenomenal -- warm with clear skies -- making every moment I spend outside a joy. At lunchtime, I attended a meeting of the PGJCC. This god-awful acronym -- don't even try to pronounce it! -- stands for the "Post-Graduate Joint Consultative Committee." Essentially, it is a council that responds to the concerns of graduate students and post-docs here in the Oxford Physics Department. There are six graduate student members, one to represent the students at each of the six sub-departments, and there are two post-doc members, each representing the post-docs at three of the sub-departments. That's right -- yours truly represents the post-docs of Particle Physics, Astrophysics, and Theoretical Physics. Ooooh, I can feel the power going to my head already! Actually, the meeting was pretty good, and I brought up issues that have been of concern to me since starting my post-doc here. Foremost of which was the isolation that we have from each other -- heck, I don't even know the vast majority of the people I am supposed to represent! Fermilab, for all its bureaucratic flaws, did a good job of organizing interaction time for its post-docs, and I made suggestions based on my experiences there.

Other than the meeting, work is going pretty well, too. After finishing some electronics work on the cryostat, we mounted an old proto-type detector onto the experimental plate of the Kelvinox-400. When next we cool down, I should actually be able to make some measurements. So things are proceeding apace... and are very exciting! Wish I could say more about where this is all heading, but it is best not to do so in a public forum. Those of you who have requested private e-mail can probably expect something on this topic in a couple of weeks time.

In the evening, I crossed the road to get to a bell ringing lesson at St. Giles. I ascended into the bell chamber for only the second time, and watched the #5 being tied so that it would be silent during my lesson. I need to take a picture of the actual bells; those old things ave quite a beauty to them! The process of tying a bell is different from what I would have expected. I'm sure that resourceress -- rope-goddess that she is -- would have an easy time of it! After practicing on #5 for the better part of an hour, I ascended again and I untied the bell so that it would sound during practice.

Over the course of the practice, I rang several bells. I rang rounds and called changes, as well as practicing my dodging. However, I spent a very sizable part of the practice ringing on the tenor -- usually covering as the lower five or six bells rang a method. I am starting to feel a fair bit of affection for the tenor. This is the oldest bell in the tower, as well as the heaviest. It was cast in 1632 and bears the inscription "FEARE GOD HONAR THE KING" on it. It is an F-sharp bell[*] and has a mass of 13 cwt (or "hundredweight"). To translate units, that is 1456 pounds of bell that I was swinging about less than an hour ago! Being so heavy, it is a challenging bell to control. I don't always have it right, but I can say that it feels so fantastic when I hit my groove and it all flows smoothly! Alas, I suspect that my affection for the tenor is likely to mean little to her; with a life so much longer than mine, I must only be a flash in the pan -- just another in a very long line of lovers!

By the way, for anyone who is interested, the bellringing webpage for St. Giles church can be found a picture of the ringing chamber can be found here. There is also a picture taken inside of the ringing chamber, though it is not terribly impressive, I'm afraid! Especially since you cannot see the horrendous patchwork carpet!

Off to Skullcrusher Mountain now, to spend a little time with my beloved cheshcat before the evening is out...

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[*] There is a very, very obscure Green Lantern reference here. I will be extraordinarily impressed if anyone other than ashnistrike knows what it is.

I didn't see cheshcat at all today. And, actually, this is a good thing. The fact that we both had enough separate things to spend our weekend time on is a strong indication that our lives here are beginning to be fleshed out and substantial. By the time I woke up this morning, she had already left Skullcrusher Mountain. By the time she came back home, I had gone off to my evening plans. By the time I returned again, not long ago, she was asleep.

I will leave cheshcat to describe what she has been up to in her own journal, but here is what I have been doing this weekend:

Friday evening, C&M came over to play games. Before cheshcat arrived, we played two games of Ra... and M won both of them. In fact, of the six games of Ra played under this roof, she has won the last four of them. After cheshcat arrived, we broke out the Puerto Rico set. It was a very close game, but I won with fifty-five points (C came in a close second with fifty-two).

This morning, I lay in until 10:30am. Then I walked into town to pick up a rental car for the weekend. Afterward, I headed to the sports centre and swam another mile. Then I used the rest of the afternoon productively, taking the car to pick up cat food from the vet and make a large grocery run.

In the evening, I drove to Milton Keynes to meet parallelgirl. Bruce Cockburn and Billy Joel kept me company on the drive out. It was the first time this spring that I have gone driving in England; so I only now noticed that the large yellow meadows of the rapeseed fields are once again in their glory. With the car windows down, the directions blew away... but, thankfully, I remembered them well enough from writing them down to make it there sans incident.

I had never been to MK before, but she suggested that we connect at a place called Xscape. Milton Keynes itself appears to be a drab and soul-less city... but Xscape is somewhat mind-boggling. In addition to the standard assortment of shops, pubs, restaurants, an arcade, a movie theatre and a bowling alley, the place has indoor rock climbing, indoor flying / skydiving, and an indoor ski slope (!).

We started off by riding a ferris wheel. Which, unlike everything else, was actually outside. Then we swung by the viewing room to watch people fly, driven by giant fans. I will to try it at some point, but it costs between thirty-five and forty quid for two minutes of flying time. Just a bit more than I wanted to pay tonight! Keeping up with the voyeuristic approach for a little longer, we went to go watch the indoor skiers make their way up and down the slopes. Eventually, we started getting hungry and made dinner our next stop: We each enjoyed a delicious aubergine and goat cheese burger! Then we played a couple of rounds of air hockey and bowled one game. The bowling alley was filled with funky lighting and loud music, which was both amusing and distracting. I also did not have my bowling ball or bowling shoes, which are far from here at the Event Horizon. With all these factors in play, I did not have much hope of reaching my 150 average and, as such, went into the game without much thought to the score. In the end, I reached 116... so it could have been far worse. Next, we rode a virtual simulation of a fighter plane flight. Cute. Then, thirsty from dinner and the heat of Xscape, we popped into a very loud pub to procure drinks and attempt conversation. My voice is still recovering. Finally, realizing that it had become quite late, I explained the physics of supernova relic neutrinos and then we went our separate ways. Roger Waters kept me company for the drive back; in fact, he very nearly amused me to death.

Overall, quite a good evening. Good food, good company, good conversation, and good activities. My mind is still unboggling itself from the spectacle that is Xscape, but it will recover in time.

Now time to go climb into bed and join cheshcat. No doubt, she will be gone before I wake up in the morning, but we do have plans together for the afternoon.

( ...that I like living in Oxford )

Anyway, here is a quick rundown of what I have been up to this week:

Work
Took apart the electronics for the Kelvinox-400 cryostat and rebuilt them in a way that made sense. Mainly to eliminate things like ground loops and 50 Hz noise. Don't know what a ground loop is? Consider yourself lucky! As the old saying goes: Love my job -- hate the ground loops! Also used the radioactive cobalt-60 source to calibrate one of the thermometers via nuclear magnetic orientation thermometry. The method is very closely related to the experiments done to prove parity non-conservation in the 1950s[***], which won my quantum mechanics professor -- C.N. Yang -- his Nobel Prize. Now that the cryostat can reliably be made cold, we are getting its electronics and thermometers nicely sorted so that we can move on the next stage in this work. Which, unfortunately, will only be discussed via private e-mail and personal discussions -- not in the public space of this journal.

Extra-Curricular (i.e., evenings)
Monday: Already wrote about. Swam laps and then watched Babylon 5 with cheshcat

Tuesday: cheshcat and I met wolfpeach at the pub[****] for a relaxed evening out. It is nice to have another friend in Oxford, and one who falls into the poly, gamer, geek mould, too! Good food, good conversation, good company, and games! Played a couple of rounds of Lord of the Fries while a bad open mic blared in the background.

Wednesday: Went back to the Ferry Sports Centre and swam another mile. I can't easily express how good it feels to be back in the water. Ever have something that you miss terribly... but don't realize how badly you missed it until you have it again? It's like that.

Thursday: Had a lesson on handbells at St. Giles and then rang tower bells with the usual practice. I have actually reached the point where I can ring the 1-2 part for a plain course of Plain Bob Minor on handbells. Which, while not nearly as interesting as ringing tower bells, is some nice progress.

Tomorrow, Friday, cheshcat and I have tickets to see Playhouse Creatures at the Old Fire Station theatre... and Saturday evening we are having C&M come over to hang out and play games. At least that's the plan. As we all know, the best laid plans...

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[*] Cat food in this country costs three to four times what it does in the States. If it weren't a violation of Her Majesty's Customs laws, I would bring twenty pound bags back from the US each time go to the Event Horizon.
[**] And also a current friend. Known in this journal as EO-W.
[***] Don't worry if this makes no sense to you. Seeing as how I've provided no explanation, are odds that you don't understand what this means or else, if you do, that you are a particle physicist.
[****] "The pub" meaning, in this context, Far From The Madding Crowd. Oxford has, for all practical purposes, an infinite number of pubs. In my year here, I have been to nine: The Bear, The Mitre, Eagle & Child, Far From The Madding Crowd, The King's Arms, The Gardiner's Arms (North Parade), The Gardiner's Arms (vegetarian version), The Royal Oak, and the Dew Drop Inn.

Mondays have a bad reputation, but today was a pretty good day.

At work, JI and I are tearing apart the cryostat electronics so that we can put them together in such a way as to eliminate ground loops.

At lunchtime, I met cheshcat -- who was between job interviews at the time -- to have lunch with her in the Covered Market.

In the afternoon, I left the office for a bit and took a walk... just because the weather was so gosh-darned nice and I wanted to be outside. Don't worry -- the tornado will hit on Wednesday.

In the evening, I went to the Ferry Sports Centre and swam a mile. From 1993 (when I was training to be a lifeguard) until 1998 (when I started living in Japan half-time, which disrupted any normalcy of schedule), swimming had been my primary form of exercise. I don't believe I have swam laps since 1999 or 2000... and it felt oh-so-amazingly good to get back into it. I recently learned that there is a sports facility very close to Skullcrusher Mountain -- less than a ten minute walk away -- so I plan to make swimming a regular part of my weekly routine from here on. Honestly, after so much time away, I had not expected to make it a full mile tonight -- in the so-called "fast lane", no less! -- and am rather pleased that I did.

At night, cheshcat and I had dinner, and wound down the day by watching another episode of Babylon 5. We are about two-thirds of the way through the second season and things are beginning to heat up. Spiffy!

Now I should be asleep, as it is after 2am. The cats thought I was going to sleep and climbed into bed to cuddle. But, of course, my body is not cooperating despite me laying down and making it all nice and easy for it to doze off. So I am writing a LiveJournal post instead. Hooray. I could go read some comic books, but then I run the risk of getting hooked for hours if they are good. I'll try sleeping again soon, because I know that I will regret this wakefulness tomorrow morning if I can't catch some Zs soon...

Today is July 2nd, the halfway point in the year. We are currently midway from New Years Day to New Years Eve. My goodness, where has [the first half of] 2006 gone?

Tomorrow is aphelion, the point at which the Earth lies at the furthest point in its orbit from the Sun. Perhaps that explains why today was so gosh darn hot... probably the hottest day in Oxford so far this year.

To cool down from this pre-aphelion heat, I went for a swim this afternoon. Yesterday, which was almost as hot, EO-W pointed out to me that there is a semi-public open air pool in Oxford. So today I went to investigate... and to go for a dip. It was a very welcome way to cool down from all this heat, since air conditioned homes (and offices) are not commonplace in England!

Now, to be fair, I have lived in Arizona, and I must admit that this heat pales in comparison. However, said heat is also coupled with humidity and the aforementioned lack of air conditioning. So, yeah: pool = good. Wasn't it just over a month ago that I wrote about shivering in my office???

Arrived in Boston early this morning, circa 6am. The last leg of Nomad's USA tour has begun.

Since posting the previous entry, I finished up my trip to Arizona on Thursday and spent Friday in New York City with Mom. Both nights were spent in transit: Thursday on a red-eye flight from Phoenix to NYC, Friday on the all-too-familiar drive from New York to Boston. I have now visited, on this one vacation, all four states that I lived in.

Highlights from the rest of the Arizona include several hours spent at the poolside, alternating between reading a book of David Eggers short stories, swimming alone, and swimming with cheshcat. This was the first time that I have been swimming this summer; goodness, how I have missed being in the water! When I lived in Arizona, I made a regular habit of reading by the poolside until I got unbearably hot and sweaty, then jumping in and swimming around to cool off. This time, I did part of my reading in the poolside chair, and part sitting on the steps in the water... which was a nice variation on the theme. The big surprise of the day was this: I learned that if I spend over three hours in the Arizona sun in the middle of the day on the day after the solstice, I can get a sunburn. For the first time in my memory, I have been sunburned, with red over much of my upper body. However, the burn is more of a fascination than a nuisance, as it is practically painless. Having genes that evolved for five thousand years (or more) in the desert still comes in handy. In a day or two, I expect all the red to have turned into a nice brown.

After leaving the pool area, cheshcat and I went to lunch with BN, and then I spent time at the Ash Avenue Comic Store catching up with watchmelaugh as cheshcat ran errands. When she picked me up again, we went to get crunched by our chiropractor, who is also a friend that I had not seen in nearly a year. Then we spent the evening listening to music at the local coffee house with elven_sailor7, who I had not seen in about two years, and her husband. When finished at the coffee house, we grabbed our bags and headed out to Sky Harbor to catch our red-eye flight. All in all, I had an excellent two days in Arizona, where I got to partake in most of my favourite activities from the years that I lived there.

Once we landed in New York, we rented a car and drove to Mom's place. Mom had a very elaborate breakfast ready, after which we napped to recover from the night spent in the air. In Arizona, I had been able to get to most of my favourite activities in two days. In Illinois, where I spent more than half of this vacation, the extra time enabled me to get to many of my favourite past-times there, too... including the Event Horizon party and day trips to Urbana-Champaign and Bloomington-Normal. With only one day allocated for New York City, where I have lived in or near for 70% of my life, I had no pretense that this visit would be particularly comprehensive. Too many things to do and too many people that I know. Instead, this visit had the more modest goal of spending some quality time with Mom. On Mom's suggestion, we did ride the ferry into Manhattan and went to see Madame Tussard's wax museum. Then, on cheshcat's initiative, we headed to the crepery on fifteenth street and eight avenue to get dinner. Unfortunately, it looks like Rue de Crepes may have gone out of business! Instead, we ate at a Thai place on the same block, which was a consolation prize but the food was still quite yummy.

The ferry ride back was quite pleasant, with the smell of salt and fish subtly riding on the cool night air. When we arrived back at Mom's place, we packed our bags and set out at 1am for our drive to Summanulla, resourceress and sunastria's home in the Boston area.

As predicted at the end of the previous entry, I finished up Tuesday by hiking a couple of miles in light drizzle at the Morton Arboretum -- taking breaks to read comic books when the rain let up -- then lost to gyades in a game of GO.

Wednesday morning, I left my most recent life (in Illinois) and re-entered the one before it (in Arizona). Yes, that's right: I opted to spend the Summer Solstice in one of the hottest regions of the country. cheshcat picked me up at Sky Harbor and we went to get lunch with one of her colleagues. Although I came back here frequently -- nearly once a month -- when I first moved away in September 2003, I have not been back for almost a full year.

I miss the desert very much; I liked living here. During the two years that I lived here -- from mid-2001 to mid-2003 -- the life that I put together was not as complete as the roots that I have laid down in the Chicago area. I did not own a house here. Most of my friends were from the Anarchist community, as opposed to the wide range of people (Anarchist, physicist, polyamorous, sci-fi, Pagan, etc.) that I know in Illinois. I did not even have a job locally. Nonetheless, it was a pretty good life. I got my feet wet doing formal Anarchist organizing here. I swam regularly. I organized monthly star parties and did a good deal of private observing on my own or with cheshcat. That's the advantage of perpetually clear skies. And, of course, we rescued our four baby kitties here so that they could be born in our bathtub instead of the harsh, hot outdoors.

Yesterday evening, I went to watch cheshcat teach her summer course. This is a tradition that has been in place for all eight years that she has been teaching. For every course that she teaches, I sit in on one of the classes. This is how I know, first hand, that she is such an excellent teacher! In fact, watching her teach last night is the main motivator for this two-day trip to Arizona. And, as usual, she did remarkably well.

After class ended, I took the car and drove about forty miles North of the city to Four Peaks Road, a dirt road partially up in the desert mountains. There I met winewiskeywomen and two other people from the Phoenix Anarchist community for a small star party. Just like old times! It was good to see winewiskeywomen again, and great to be out in the desert night air, under a clear sky full of stars. It had definitely been too long since I last did this, probably two and a half years. We chatted and caught up on events while watching Jupiter and its four major moons, while resolving double stars like Alcor & Mizar, while zooming in on clusters, and while gazing sans telescope or binoculars at the Milky Way. Overall, a very pleasant evening!

Now then... time to grab a good book and then I am off to the swimming pool!

Been back from Argentina for just over a week now. Here are events worth noting from the past week:

Sat 11/20: Landed in Chicago around 5am. Home by 6:30am. Called cheshcat and resourceress, pet the cats (who were all quite glad to see me) and laid down for a nap. The Boy decided my ponytail was a cat toy. Grrrrrr... Three hours later, I rose to give a Sat morning tour of the lab to some high school students. Afterwards, came home and had a small party, with about half a dozen people over to play games. We played Illuminati for the first time since March; I was the Bermuda Triangle and won via the basic victory condition. We also played many card games; I re-learned Egyptian Ratscrew after a fifteen year hiatus, and polymorphism taught us a slightly skewed version of Pounce (and won). K&R, our two vegan guests, left slightly before dinner, making pizza a much easier choice of food. After dinner, we played Settlers of Catan, which I also won. Then people left and The Moof went to bed, so I chatted with polymorphism until about 4:30am, when I collapsed. All in all, a fun day. Plus, I like it when I hit the ground running after a trip.

Sun 11/21: Started the day with a small picnic at the Haymarket Martyr's grave. Afterward, came home and did yard work with The Moof. I swear, we have an infinite amount of leaves in our yard! In the evening, we rented Superman II, which I hadn't seen in about twelve years.

Mon 11/22: One of those crazy productive days that is also quite mundane and boring. I got a lot done, but none of it is particularly worth writing about.

Tue 11/23: Packed. Flew to Phoenix (see previous entry). Had dinner with cheshcat. It is good to be back in Arizona; I really miss living here...

Wed 11/24: The day was very similar to Monday, in that we got a lot of AZ-based mundane things accomplished. But, again, not really worth writing about. After a long and busy day, cheshcat and I caught up on Smallville in the evening.

Thu 11/25: Had a very mellow T'giving. The holiday doesn't mean much to me anymore. I've never been patriotic, the big family get-together isn't until Christmas eve, and I don't eat turkeys. So who cares about T'giving? Instead, cheshcat and I had some nice quite downtime alone with each other. Which was perfect. (For dinner, we went out for Indian food...)

Fri 11/26: cheshcat and I took a day trip down to Tucson. We went to the zoo, and we visited the San Xavier del Bac Mission, which was quite beautiful. We went into the city proper for dinner at a nifty little French bistro, followed by a trip to the ice cream parlor for dessert. After all that, we headed over to the ampitheatre to see Tears For Fears perform -- once again, an excellent show. Drove home after the concert ended, taking a spontaneous side trip to see what the "Miracle Mile" was. Finally got in around 2am and collapsed.

Sat 11/27: Got crunched, then got lunch. Went for a swim and soaked in the hot tub. Burned all of nine my TFF albums to a single CD of MP3s, for ease of transport. Helped cheshcat start overhauling her apartment during the day, then went out to see The Incredibles at night. I think we were the last two people who hadn't seen this movie. It was a lot of fun, though.

All in all, it has been a fun and productive week so far. And I still have today and tomorrow left before I have to leave Arizona. I do wish I had more time to visit my old friends here, though. There's been so much to get done that I haven't had time to be social yet...

In the 1990s, I spent four years as a lifeguard. Back then, and for several years afterwards, I swam on a regular basis: At least half a mile, three to seven times a week. I used to be in really good shape. When I started the world travel thing, in 1998, exercise dropped out of my regimen rather quickly.

Lately, I've been thinking about that and realizing this is a situation that needs to be changed. So, today I had a lunch date w/ Jonghee and decided to bike the 2 1/4 miles from my office over to the high-rise building (and the same distance back again). This is the first time that I have used the bicycle as transportation, instead of recreation (remember, I just learned to ride a bike in May). It felt good. Sure, my legs were sore a couple of hours later, but by now they feel fine again. I think that, weather permitting, I will try to use the bicycle for all of my on-site transportation from now on.

Furthermore, it just so happens that September is the month to sign up for gym memberships at the lab: $75/year. I think I'll head down to the recreation office tomorrow and buy one...

HIGHLIGHT: On Sunday, I "stole" a paddleboat with langs_place and used it to cross a lake. On the other side of the lake, we relaxed in a spa and swimming pool.

HIGHLIGHT: On Wednesday, there was a very interesting colloquium on the Columbia Space Shuttle accident given by Doug Osheroff, a 1996 Nobel Laureate and a member of the accident investigation board. The talk also discussed the future of human spaceflight. Doug, like so many others (myself included) seems less than enthusiastic about the Bush plan to get us back to the moon and to Mars.

HIGHLIGHT: On Thursday evening, langs_place and I went to a local carnival. Rode together on merry-go-round and ferris wheel. Rode solo on gravitron and "mega-drop." There was much eye candy to admire, though Lang did point out that most of the aforementioned eye candy was also jail bait. Still, doesn't hurt to look.

LOWLIGHT: Later Thursday evening, there was a snake slithering across the main road. Given its slow motion and the dark, I noticed it immediately before running the poor thing over. This is the first time, in over ten years of driving, that I have killed anything larger than a bug with my car. Needless to say, the entire thing was very upsetting. I went back and pulled over to confirm that the snake was dead. Then I call cheshcat as soon as I could, so that she could help me do an appropriate ritual for it. This made me feel somewhat better, but I was still really shaken up and sad for the rest of the night.

HIGHLIGHT: In about two hours, I will be heading out to the airport to fly to Arizona, there to spend a three day weekend with cheshcat. It will be good to be in my [other] home, to see Chesh, and to go swimming in the Phoenix summer heat.