Seventeen

Last week marked our seventeenth anniversary. Tonight we went out for a celebratory dinner. We decided we wanted a unique Arizona experience, so we went to Lon's at the Hermosa, a restaurant set in an old hacienda. When we arrived at our table, there were a dozen long-stemmed pale pink roses waiting for me. Just lovely. We had a leisurely meal with appetizers, salads, entrees, dessert...mmm.... The restaurant itself is beautiful, the food was wonderful, the staff was competent, but not stuffy, and of course, the company was great. Just a perfect way to celebrate 17 years.

Thanks for putting up with me for so long, Greg.

Sunlight and Shadow

This has been a busy weekend, but so fun that I'm sad it's over. Philip was in from St. Paul. It had been over a year since I'd seen him, so I enjoyed sharing a few meals with him very much. Kirsten and Aaron drove in from Los Angeles. It's always great to see them! We went on a couple of day trips - to the Boyce Arboretum (and a scary bar on the way back), and also up to Flagstaff, where we went to Sunset Crater and Wupatki National Monument. I miss all you guys already!

I can't head up to Northern Arizona without a few lame attempts at capturing the natural beauty. I posted a few photos to my Flickr stream, but I thought I'd post a few here, too.

Snow and lava flows at Sunset Crater:

Wupatki Pueblo at sunset:

Sunlight and shadow in the Painted Desert:

Stress Relief

I haven't had the time to make a to-do list in three weeks. This is agonizing. I usually prepare very detailed to-do lists every week. Because I teach 1 physics lecture, 3 astronomy lectures and 4 astronomy labs, as well as supervise 3 adjunct faculty and 8 teaching assistants and their 27 combined sections at two different institutions, I have a lot to keep track of. I haven't been able to spare the time it would take on a Monday to write the damned list. For the past three weeks, I've been walking around in a panic that I've forgotten something important. It's only a matter of time. Gotta make that damned list!

But tomorrow afternoon I will forget all that. I have a three-day weekend ahead. I've worked really hard to catch up so that I can spend this weekend with the friends who will be coming into town. I shall eat too much good food in wonderful company, and I will allow myself to relax...at least til Tuesday morning.

Frontiers

I spent my Friday afternoon giving a talk about Pluto. The talk was for a program called New Frontiers for Lifelong Learning, which is geared towards retirees. I was so happy to be asked to present to this group. My department is very involved in public outreach, mostly geared towards elementary school students. But what better way to foster a love of learning in children than to encourage the adults in their lives to remain learners, too? I think I even managed to convince them that Pluto is not a planet! And I fielded great questions about the Hubble Space Telescope and retrograde motion and moons... gosh, I'm such a geek.

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Speaking of Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft was launched on its mission to Pluto last January. The fastest spacecraft ever built, it's passing by Jupiter this month - just 13 months later!

Important Dates

NIN - Live: Beside You in Time - DVD - February 27, 2007

NIN - Year Zero - CD - April 17, 2007

You've been warned.

Breakfast of Champions

I'm at a coffee house. I have a chocolate croissant and a 16-oz Pepsi. I think I'm ready to write the talk I'm giving on Friday. Woo!

2006 Review of Books

Last year, I read forty-four books. Not my best year, but not too shabby. Here are some of the standouts, in the order in which I read them:

• Archangel - Sharon Shinn - This is the first of the Samaria books, which deal with a world in which angels are real. Despite that description, the books are definitely science fiction, and I enjoyed this book enough to seek out a great deal of Shinn's other works.
• Spin - Robert Charles Wilson - This is a very strong book. The characters are all quite intriguing and the extrapolations dealing with the science were fascinating.
• Memory - Lois McMaster Bujold - Thanks to SarahP, I tore through the whole Miles Vorkosigan series this summer. Although I would not recommend this book as a jumping off point for a new reader, I found the character development in this book to be the most beautiful. Bujold is soooooooo very good when it comes to creating characters to love. There is not a wasted character in this entire series.
• A Sense of the Mysterious: Science and the Human Spirit - Alan Lightman - This is a collection of essays, some more autobiographical than others, dealing with science as a human pursuit. As I've noticed so often in my students, the perception of science and scientists is cold, stolid, rigid, passionless - nothing could be further from the truth, and Lightman does a good job of conveying this.
• The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party - M.T. Anderson - If you have not read this, drop what you are doing and go to a bookstore or a library NOW! Really, I'm hard-pressed to come up with a better writer right now than M.T. Anderson.

I'm looking forward to what 2007 will bring!

Urp

I just ate a chocolate chip cookie the size of my head. Oof. Bad Lisa.

Ew!

I swear, I just found boogers on an assignment I have to grade. This is college, people! Argh!

The first week of classes

Perhaps if you've failed my class two times, we are not meant for each other. Move along.

I'm sorry that you are a senior and desperately need an override into this class where we are already violating fire code due to crowding. Perhaps you should go back to your counselor and ask why they advised to you put this 100-level course off til your last semester.

I'm sorry math isn't your friend. Prepare to get chummy.

Your telescope's clock drive emits a frequency that attracts bats to mate with it?

Stressed

Going to the conference last week left me behind in my prep for the Spring semester, which starts on Tuesday. There have also been some events beyond my control that are affecting my prep, and it all just makes me cranky. I'm a mild control freak, and I hate hate HATE the fact that I can't clean this particular situation up on my own. Argh. Feh. Blah.

Home

I presented our paper at the conference today, had yummy clam chowder with Carl, and chatted with a retired physician/aspiring mystery writer on the flight home. It's good to be home, although reality will hit tomorrow with all the classroom prep for next Tuesday.

Almost there

Today was more mellow. I decided to sleep instead of attending the morning talk. My body thanked me. Then went to a session of talks about intelligent design, which was so well-attended that we hand to change rooms from one that seated about 50 people to one that seated over 300. The talks were good and the q/a period was only moderately painful.

For lunch, Carl and I walked the half hour each way to go to Salumi, where we ate bread, cheese, various salamis, and gnocchi that was being made by an old lady working at the front window. I spent an hour and a half wandering through the posters and that was followed up by two talks - one on the Stardust mission results and one on high-redshift supernovae and the accelerating universe. Both of those were excellent talks. I harassed various grad students from my university about not being at the posters (mean Dr. Lisa!) and then had dinner with Carl and Dr. Bob, which was really nice.

Tomorrow is the last day of the conference and I'll be presenting a poster. Whee!

Blur

• Particle physics lecture
• Judged four grad students
• Quick hug from Robert as we both rushed to talks
• Talks on Tunguska, Einstein, dust in galaxies
• Planetary formation lecture
• Piroshky Piroshky with Carl
• Intelligent design talks
• Hundreds of posters
• Free cookies
• Judged four undergrads
• Talks on covariation in intro physics courses
• English pub with Carl, Ravi, Seth, Karen, and Greg

Two more days to go. Whew!

Judgment

Today was the first full day of the conference. I actually made it to the morning talk; I can wake up for an astronaut - Kathryn Thorton gave us her overview of human spaceflight. I'm also an award judge and I interviewed eight undergrads today (1 male, 7 female).

Along with the AAS meeting, a wedding show was being held at the convention center. If I might be somewhat judgmental, those two demographics have very little overlap.

Who are these other people?

Oh, it's like some astrology convention or something.

My most profound judgment, though, was that the tomato soup and Flagship Grilled Cheese sandwich from Beecher's make a damned fine lunch, and Carl and Ravi agreed.

I'm a geek

I took the Monorail to the Science Fiction Museum today. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

Oh, it's definitely winter

On the flight to Seattle, I noted the reason why the Eastern U.S. has no snow - it all fell out West. Whoa. No snow in town, but lotsa rain.

Ate crepes at the Public Market, indulged in asian fusion tapas with Carl, and got some work done. Oh, and I fell madly in love with my hotel room. It's fancy. There's even a switch which lowers darkening shades on the big wall-sized window. Good for sleeping, but I'd hate to obscure my view of Elliot Bay during the day. I don't know how I ended up in this room, but as I type in my fluffy white robe after a bubble bath in the soaking tub (separate from the glass shower stall), I'm sure enjoying it.

Winter request

For those of you who think that winter never comes to Arizona, here are a few pix from our weekend in Flagstaff:

That mountain has a rock on Mars named after it:

Glittery snow:

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I don't usually ask for love, but I have a cold and need to catch a flight to a conference in the morning. Please send healing vibes to my eardrums!

Lakes on Titan

Nature presents an article today outlining the best evidence yet for liquid on the surface of a solar system body other than the Earth. Here is the link to the Cassini news release.

In with the new

Greg and I are celebrating the New Year up in the crisp cold clear air of Flagstaff. There has been much good food, warm beverages, and walking through the snow. Flagstaff is a mellow place to ring in the New Year - I am very content to be here.

I set some modest goals for 2006. I came close on some and succeeded in a few others, so I can't complain. In fact, I'll roll over a few of the goals into the new year. This upcoming year will see some big changes, and I'm both apprehensive and optimistic, if that makes any sense at all.

I hope that you all look back at 2006 without regrets and look forward to 2007 with hope and dreams. Happy New Year!