Arts as Astra

The weather reports keep telling us that it will clear up tomorrow. They've been saying this since Monday, but it's still raining.

I've been working out in the hotel fitness center every morning, and I run into the same group of astronomers there. And the same cheery hotel staff wish me a good morning. This morning, I got up late, and ran into a bunch of friends heading over to the convention center as I was heading back up to my room to shower. It's times like these that I wish I could become invisible at will.

I went to dinner last night with mjperson at this sushi restaurant where plates of sushi drifted by in front of us on little boats, and you would just reach out and grab whatever looked good. It was yummy and amusing. The restaurant was called "Afloat Sushi," IIRC. Then I wanted tangy frozen yogurt with mochi for dessert, but I was overruled and we had gelato instead. It was a shorter walk in the rain and I had delicious dark chocolate and raspberry gelato, and all was good.

I seem to post only when I'm traveling or something, and then mostly to gripe. In keeping with that, here I am blogging from Pasadena, where I'm staying for the week for a conference.

I was looking forward to this trip, in the sense that California is a great place to go in the fall and winter because it's sunny and warm. This morning, I looked out the window, and it is RAINING. I feel robbed.

Then, after checking in at the conference registration desk, I went in search of breakfast and coffee, and there was nothing open within a 2-block radius of the convention center, to which I can only exclaim, WTF?

Still, I'm actually still in a reasonably good mood and looking forward to a fun conference. I've come to realize that preparing a poster is much less stressful than preparing a talk, because you can fiddle with your talk and mess with it up until the last minute, but with a poster, you gotta be done long before you even step on the plane. So hey.

I am coming down with a cold. Good thing I gave my talk already.

Sun Sep 5 02:30:38 EDT 2010

I'm writing this over "breakfast" at Heathrow Airport. Although defining
meals as breakfast/lunch/dinner seems kind of futile when you are traveling
across multiple time zones. I thought about having sushi for breakfast,
but thought better of it and went for a good old fashioned hot English
breakfast. But with coffee instead of tea. Mmmmmmm.

Did you know that Heathrow has a curfew that doesn't allow planes to land
until after 6am? We got in early and had to sit in a holding pattern for
a bit.

The plane ride was fine for the most part, although I continue to be unable
to sleep on planes. I dozed off for a couple of hours at best. I have
had moderate success with medicating with booze to help me sleep, but
they aggravate the dehydration I already experience, so I'm avoiding that.
I remain convinced that airplane seats are designed to be maximally
uncomfortable. Really, whose back is comfortable curved like that anyway?

The next leg of my journey will take me to Gothenborg (or perhaps Göteborg),
Sweden. This is the first time I am traveling to a foreign country as
an adult without any working knowledge of the language. I don't even know
how to say, "do you speak English?" in Swedish. Heck, I don't even do a
good Swedish chef impression, nor have any møøse bytten my sister.

I have a good three hours to kill here. Let's hope my laptop bettery
holds out, because while I brought the US-to-European power adapter,
I failed to bring the one for Britain.

So I went for a run kind of late last night because I failed to get up early enough to do it in the morning. I followed my usual 3-ish mile course through our residential neighborhood. There I am, jogging down the main artery into our subdivision, when a SUV full of giddy teenagers drives past me, loudly mocking and hooting at me as they go by.

Now really, WTF?

It's not like it's the first time it's happened. I figure, they see a dumpy, overweight, middle-aged woman puttering along, engaged in what seems to them a completely pointless activity, and they lack any impulse control whatsoever and so they let loose.

My only consolation is that someday, they too will be dumpy, overweight and middle-aged, and we'll see who laughs then.

Got back yesterday from a week's vacation in Pennsylvania.

In the meantime, our neighborhood was hit by violent storms including a microburst that left the street littered with fallen branches and without power for two days. Our canoe was blown clear across the yard and into a tree, giving it a major dent which may or may not be repairable. The tree will probably survive. This is the third major storm we've had this year that's left us without power for days at a time. Our neighbors are talking about buying generators.

We spent yesterday re-packing the kids' stuff for a week of sleep-away camp. Despite spending the day mostly puttering around the house, by evening I felt as tired and stiff as I had every other day this past week, the difference being that I hadn't spend yesterday walking around an entire city. Then I took my temperature and it was 100F. That explained it.

This morning I got up early and with the help of judicious application of ibuprofen, I was able to see the kids off on the buses to camp, waving cheerily at them. Son the Elder was quite cheerful as the bus drove off, but it was a little hard to tell because his nose was deeply buried in the 6th Harry Potter book. Son the Younger looked a little mournful, but I fully expect he cheered up as soon as I was out of sight.

I am spending today "working" from home and trying to catch up on everything. I didn't bring my computer with me this trip, but I did cheat and check email occasionally from my iTouch. I'm way behind on news. I found out about Sen. Ted Stevens' death in a really roundabout way, for instance. Anything else I missed while being away?

+Been getting lots of paper-writing done
-I hate writing papers, it makes me crabby

-Still haven't heard back about the job I interviewed for
+I guess that means I'm still in contention for it?

+Made it to week 8 of couch-to-5k
-Running is taking up more of my free time
+Lost about 20 lbs over the last 8 months
-My pants keep falling down

+Kids have been at Camp Grandma/Grandpa this week
+Got to have a couple of hot dates this week
-Didn't get any more work done than usual

I was driving home late last night, and got caught in a massive downpour on the Beltway. Traffic slowed to a crawl, but I forged on, figuring I only had a couple of exits to go. I came around the bend and was treated to the sight of a typical Beltway Backup with red lights to the right and white lights to the left. I always find the sight beautiful in some baffling way. But this time the red lights were sparkling with the blinketty-blink of hazard lights and twinkling with rain. I'd have stopped and stared for a while, but the Beltway is never a good place for that and it was late. By the time I got home the rain had slowed to a drizzle, and I got in safe and sound and dry.

1) Picking 7 lbs of blueberries

2) Picking 2 quarts of raspberries

3) Getting sunburned while fruit picking

4) Going to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

5) Being asked by someone at one of the booths on Mexico, "Where are you from, originally?" after just having left the exhibit on Asian and Pacific Americans. After I responded, "Chicago," he said, "Oh, I was just wondering if you knew Spanish."

6) Convincing Son the Younger to go see fireworks by buying him earplugs

7) Seeing fireworks, but not on the National Mall

8) Being asked by yet another person where I was from, originally

9) Son the Younger telling me he didn't need the earplugs after all

10) Coming in to work today, despite it being officially a holiday.

11) And if I'm going to count today as part of the weekend, I might as well mention that we lost power this morning because of a suicidal squirrel.

Gah. Just realized I left a few relevant items off the resume I submitted for a job application today. Well, hopefully the items I did remember to include are sufficiently impressive. The closing deadline was today, so not much I can do about it now...