Happy birthday to me!

Hello hello one and all. I am ancient, a quarter of a century old this day. Well, a few days ago, but who's counting?

Been an interesting couple of weeks, with a fair amount of awesome and a bit of stress. All in all, I've been stressed, but in a good mood. In concert, this is a strange state of affairs. I'm stressed because I have research for my thesis to do, research for the Ultra-Peripheral Collisions group, thesis to write, homework to do, test next week, jobs to apply to, wallpaper to remove, and painting to do once said wallpaper is removed.

Ignoring all of that, the past week has been fantastic. I went skiing again the weekend before last with Polly, Laurel, Morag, and Morag's boyfriend Sam who was in town. We went to a place just on the other side of the Jura mountains, about a 40 minute drive (if that) from where I live. The snow was surprisingly good considering it was approximately 340 degrees and sunny that day. I think I wore too many layers.

Skiing was fun because I actually tried SKIING for the first time in about 8 years. I've been on ski blades -short skis about three feet long that are amazingly fun - for a long time. Turns out skis are about the same, only you have to let the ski do the turning rather than your own muscle power. I decided to rent because it was a novel idea and not too expensive. Also I was teaching Morag and Sam how to ski and it was much easier to give an example than explain with words what to do.

We started out on the beginner slope which, like all beginner slopes, was impossible to learn on because of all the off-balance people with high optimism falling down exactly where another beginner is trying to turn to, thus causing panic resulting in hilarious puffs of snow. That and the people coming down from higher up at approximately 186,000 miles per hour really didn't help matters. However after the requisite number of falls, bruises, and annoyed knees, both Morag and Sam started to get the hang of it. After a few runs with them I decided to go up with Polly and Laurel. Polly is more or less on my level, at least on the blue and red runs, and Laurel, though still a beginner, improved mightily and handled the blue runs well (in spite of large numbers of munchkins in a row following ski instructors).

We had a good run and got down to the bottom to discover that Morag and Sam had evaporated into thin air, and we didn't see them again for the rest of the day until we caught them at the ski return. I felt bad because they could have handled a more advanced run I think. Oh well, nothing for it. They were somewhat annoyed, but we did check several times to see if we could find them, and we did go to the ski lodge to wait... I'M NOT DEFENSIVE! NO YOU SHUT UP! :P

Skiing was fun, but the real highlight was on the 20th, my birthday, where said people threw me an awesome birthday party. Polly provided transportation and an apple pie (the closest thing we could get to a chocolate cake on short notice in the nearest grocery store), Morag made party hats (from scratch, the girl's a wizard at crafts and, well, everything else), Sam cooked sausages (though he had to leave to catch a plane early), and Laurel made some of the most amazing hamburgers I have ever tasted. I'm rather nuts about these burgers now. Take meat, chopped onion, cayenne pepper, salt, garlic, and a bit of Worcestershire sauce, mush it all together, and cook. Top with toppings of your choice. I found Heinz ketchup in the market. I was excited because Europe, they try bless them, but they just don't do ketchup right. Too much sugar. However, the DO do mustard better than we do, so I got the best of both worlds and mayo which is good anywhere in the world but Whole Foods (don't try organic vegan mayo substitute ever).

We ate a truly prodigious amount of food, cut the "cake", then watched Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit! This was highly entertaining. For those of you not familiar with Wallace and Gromit, go find one of the films and watch it. I suggest The Wrong Trousers, but all are good (though I haven't seen A Close Shave).

I'm quite lucky to have made such good friends in only a few months. I've had infinitely more fun here than I would have otherwise without them. Life is good (if stressful a bit).

Ciao! Pictures of skiing and birthday party are below!

The Magnificent Birthday Cake!

Birthday hats! Morag and Laurel made these. Mine is the second from the left.

As you can see, we are an incredibly sexy bunch.

And here is the group. Left to right: Polly, Morag, Me, Laurel. I don't think Polly and Morag knew we were making faces. To be fair, I didn't really either, but I'm surrounded by women, so I had to have that sort of a look on my face. Also I look fat in this picture, but only because I had just eaten a massive amount of food and am leaning back a bit.

Skiing, at the beginning of a blue run in a nice little tree area (the run, sadly, didn't continue in trees)

Polly and I a little further on the run I think. Maybe just a little higher. I think off to the left is where the above picture was taken.

Laurel and I. She was easy to notice on the slopes if we got separated, so she was Polly and my rally point.

And here he is, the main event, the one you've all been waiting for: a ski lift. Also I'm there! you might notice me as the loud person in front.

A thorough bout of warm

Hello everyone, sorry for a bit of delay between this post and last. Been busy. Have classwork, a test next week, need to keep typing my thesis, doing homework, doing my analysis work, and remove the wallpaper from my room because my landlady wants me to paint it. I'm sure there will be a post on my painting adventures, especially since I anticipate it will be amazingly cold in the room since I don't want to use wallpaper remover in a sealed environment.

It has been cold here. Obnoxiously cold. Just cold enough that it's unpleasant to go outside, but not really cold enough to justify avoiding it. The up side is, I went with a few friends (Morag, Laurel, Polly, and Polly's boyfriend Panos who was visiting) to an indoor/outdoor warm water spa. The place warranted many misapplied uses of the word delicious owing to how not cold we were (except when we had to go from warm pool to warm pool outside in the -8 C weather).

The place was about an hour and a half drive around lake Geneva, and Polly kindly offered to drive. Aside from an accident that turned it into a two and a half hour drive because apparently everyone and their mother was out on that road for reasons unknown. Probably all the ski resorts in the alps. We stopped for lunch at what amounts to a swiss truck stop, which means it included a buffet, sandwich stand, and kwik-e-mart. They were getting good business owing to the traffic on the road.

The resort itself is in Val-d'Illiez, which I had never heard of, and is located not far from some nice ski slopes. Morag had found a deal where two people got 5 hours for 30 CHF, so we got 3 vouchers and enjoyed a niiice loooong soak in the pool sized bathtub. There was also a steam room, sauna, and a sort of in between thing that I can't remember the name of. The steam room was my favorite. There was a pool outside as well (leading inside so you didn't have to be out of the water in the cold if you didn't want to) that was also heated nicely (all the pools were at 35 C, I can't really be bothered with the conversion, but somewhere around 80 F).

The bushes around the pool outside were awesome as well. Steam from the pool blew into them continually and formed massive inches thick frost formations. We occasionally threw frost balls at each other because it amused us.

There was also a natural hot spring feeding a man made river that was 10 degrees colder than the pool and smelled of sulfur to boot. However to get to the hot tub down river, one had to go in the river (or walk in the freezing air). The other hot tub was about the same as the pool, but less crowded. All places had shallow spots where bubbles rose up periodically forming a nice tickling massage, and here and there were spouts that alternated shooting water at high velocity. These last ones were a favorite for all, except Polly who was literally (and hilariously) blown away by the spout any time she tried to get under it. Made for a good neck massage if you could stay under it (admittedly difficult).

We spent a far chunk of the day in the pools, but we also spent time in the steam room and sauna, alternating between that and the ice bath... The ice bath was more a manly test of endurance between Panos and I than anything else, except for Morag and Laurel who just went in nonchalantly to show us up. We never could get Polly in. Unpleasant as dunking yourself in ice water is, it does feel good after a few seconds once you get out (in much the same way that running a marathon feels so good when you stop), especially if your core temperature has risen from steam rooms.

We had a good time and may go back. 5 hours was a little much and the 3 hour tickets weren't too expensive for a once in a while thing. Next weekend, however, we are going skiing! I'm excited as I love skiing very very much.

Hope everyone is well!

Ciao

Politics and skiing

Greetings one and all! Been an interesting week and a fantastic weekend (though sadly I forgot my phone/camera so I don't have pictures for you all, which is most unfortunate).

This week, the temperature has been dropping and dropping and it has been COLD. We got a nice bout of snow at the beginning of the week before everything decided to warm up briefly, then turn to ice that has yet to really melt. But the snow was nice when fresh!

Work wise, I have been getting an education in science politics (as opposed to political science). I had an abstract for a talk that was due, well, today. It was going to be on my work at ALICE specifically, covering the experiment's detectors and the basic physics of what I'm doing. The talk was aimed at biology, chemistry, and physics undergraduates at the Nebraska Academy of Science. I say was because during the approval process, I was stonewalled by one particular member of the physics board. ALICE has been getting more and more obsessive with what people are publishing under their name. This is understandable when it comes to avoiding substandard papers and the like, but this was a talk that could be given to tourists.

Well, this particular nameless board member (nameless because people from ALICE have heard of this blog so I'd rather not dig myself into too big of a pit even if they're unlikely to read it) though that this was going to be a talk at a conference of particle physicists, presenting the latest ALICE results. He tore into my abstract berating it up one side and down the other and added a few choice statements about my pessimistic attitude that "there will be nothing new presented" because surely my work will advance by April! Clearly he didn't read my description of the conference. When I explained it to him he did back off somewhat, but still wouldn't approve it until we talked later.

All of this was done on very short notice (I found out in late January that I would be giving this talk) and upon telling me that we needed to discuss it, he then proceeded to ignore my emails until the weekend was upon us and the problem, for him, went away. He is less than my favorite person right now. Apparently he has a bit of a reputation for dismissing students out of hand. I'm a little frustrated at ALICE in general for a few things at the moment, and this didn't help my opinion.

Ultimately I wrote a different, more generic abstract that I just finished submitting. It will cover basically the exact same stuff, but I won't be able to use ALICE results, even past ones that have already been approved. Politics sucks, stay away from it. As much as is possible.

Fortunately, the WEEKEND was amazing! I went to a ski area called Les Contamines with the two other people in my office, Matt and Davin (pronounced Dave-in) and a friend of Davin's named Barbara who is from Italy. All four of us are decent skiiers (though Matt apparently had only been once before, he managed some black runs just fine). Les Contamines is apparently a famous ski area (maybe some of you have heard of it, I hadn't) and it certainly was worth the hour and a half drive.

Let me say this, in lieu of the pictures I wish I had taken. I have grown up hiking and skiing all through the Cascade Mountain range in Western Washington. My mother tells a story where a friend of hers was raving about some mountains, possibly the Blue Mountains in Idaho, and how gorgeous they were. My mother looked at them and though "I mean they're pretty, but they seem kind of ordinary." Later she realized that they were in fact considered a very pretty range, it was just that she grew up in sight of the Cascades that they seemed merely reasonably nice. The mountains near my home, as those of you in Seattle know, are absolutely stunning. The Alps in winter leave them far behind. I spend most of the drive just staring out the window at them. I had seen them in Summer, and they were pretty enough, but covered in snow from top to bottom, each tree an iced needled pointed towards the sky with the sun glinting on every facet of each snowflake was absolutely breathtaking. The Alps are incredibly steep as well, and these mountains are fully capable of looming up suddenly as you round a corner in all their grandeur.

That was just the drive to the ski resort.

Les Contamines reminded me a bit of Whistler, but that is just because Whistler is the largest ski area I've ever been to, and also a world class ski resort. This place was immense! We took a gondola ride and a very long quad-chair before we got to the mid-point lodge. From there, a number of lifts are available depending which way you ski down. The top of the mountain took three more lifts to get to, and we went straight to the top. The first half hour of skiing consisted of getting to the top of the mountain! Hehe.

The conditions were among the best that I have ever skied in, though it was very cold at -15 centigrade, which amounts to around 23 degrees Fahrenheit. Enough to make any exposed skin hurt when flying down a mountain. I brought my ski blades (they're about 3 feet long for those who haven't seen them) and I can do pretty much any run with them. I had them waxed and the edges sharpened at REI during Christmas Break, and they absolutely flew! They turned well on the few icy patches too, which was great. We did one particular run a few times because Matt, who was getting a great high out of the fact that this was his second time skiing and he was managing the top of the mountain without much trouble, enjoyed it so much. It was a decent red run.

The difficulty system here is slightly different from the states: they have green, blue, red, and black. Red is sort of a hard blue rather than much harder than some blues at Steven's. The blacks were a little overrated as well, at least the groomed ones were. There were places where the powder was thick that provided some challenge, but that's just because the ski blades, though amazing on moguls, have technical difficulties due to lack of surface area that result in face-ground interactions. Especially when I don't see the powder before I ski into it. But I only fell once, and that because part of the slope gave way so I'm not ashamed to admit it. :P

We stopped for lunch at one of the many lodges up there and had some sausage and fries with some good mustard. That was good, but then we had some vin chaud, which is among my favorite things now with skiing. Take a strong red wine (doesn't have to be particularly high quality, and in fact if you use a high quality wine, it's a waste of a good wine) and heat it with orange slices, cinnamon, some sugar, and cloves. I don't know of you boil it or not, but my instinct says no. It is a delightful warm delicious thing that Switzerland and France both do very well, and very much hit the spot after that cold.

After lunch some difficulties set in, however. Barbara lost her lift ticket and had to go back down to get a new one, and everyone else's goggles started to freeze up. Going inside and removing excess clothing, though among the best feelings in the world, does cause the delicate balance between keeping warm and fogging goggles to be upset. I had to go back inside to apply the anti-fog (cat crap for those familiar with the stuff) because, as it turns out, when applied in the cold to already iced goggles, it doesn't work very well.

So after a couple of frustrating runs, we all managed to figure out the goggles and had a blast for the rest of the time. Barbara joined back up with us after the bout of fixing goggles and it was all smooth skiing from there.

The last bit was actually among the most fun runs. You can ski allllll the way down to the base where the gondola starts, even skiing right through some cabins that would be very nice to rent for a week at some point in the future when I have money. The run was fairly shallow, but quite narrow and had no railing or anything on the side that lead off into trees, and there were a lot of people on it at the end of the day when the lifts were about to close down, so dodging the falls and slips while avoiding the edge made for a fun run. I mean that actually, I did have fun! Hehe.

We returned the rental gear (everyone but me had rented) and went to a pub near the gondola for more vin chaud before listening to Guns N Roses on the way back to CERN. One of the best ski sessions of my life!

Hope life is good with all of you back home!

Ciao!