Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

We’ve had two, count ‘em, TWO sunny days in Regensburg!! Ok, for those of you in Southern California or Florida, it’s no big deal, but it feels great here! I can actually walk around with my jacket open! oooh

Matthias and I celebrated a warm beautiful day with a long bike ride along the Donau (A.K.A. the Danube) yesterday. We relaxed by the river in the sun for a little while. It was lovely.

Astronomical significance of March 20, 2006 (1:20 P.M. EST):

Today is the Vernal Equinox. That is the time when the sun crosses over the Earth’s equator on its northward journey in the sky. If one imagines that the Earth is still while the sun revolves around it, than the sun is slowly progressing northward from the Winter Solstice to the Summer Solstice. If you were at the equator during the moment of the equinox, the sun would cast no shadow. Needless to say, the day was sacred to the ancient cultures able to experience this phenomenon.

The modern (Gregorian) calendar is based on an accepted placement of the Vernal equinox, and the Christian holidays are built around it. Easter, for example, occurs the Sunday after the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox. The Hebrew and Orthodox (Julian) calendars are slightly different.

Here is some all-too-detailed information on Easter and modern calendars:

1. The modern, Gregorian/Western Calendar year is 365.2425 days long. The Julian (Orthodox) calendar dated from the time of Julius Ceasar is 0.0032 days longer.
2. The first major attempt to try to organize the practice of Easter was attempted in 532 C.E. by the Nicene Fathers at the Council of Nicaea near Constantinople. The main point of this meeting was to get Christians to celebrate the Easter on the same day (something that, apparently, wasn’t happening at the time). They accomplished this by proclaiming the equinox to be on March 21. They also overtly assured that Easter would not lie on Passover because being different then the Jews was a big issue at the time (hence the Sunday sabith rather than the Saturday Sabith).
3. The Council of Nicea laid out some basic ground rules for calculating Easter, and it worked pretty well, but by 1582, the fact that the Julian calendar was just slightly longer than the solar year, the timing of Easter was getting a little screwed up. In reality, the equinox can occur anywhere between March 19th and March 21, so this also made things a bit more complicated. The effect was that the theoretical moon in the “Easter Calculations” didn’t match up with the location of the real moon at Easter.
4. As a result, in 1582, a ‘better’ calendar, meaning more accurate to describe the locations of the sun and moon, was developed. However, this calendar is also not perfect, so there was a ‘leap-day’ added every four years to make the calendar work. There is also a little known lunar correction to this calendar as well.
5. For the astronomical junkies, the Gregorian calendar as well as the Hebrew Calendar follow somethings called the the Metonic cycle. This is a 19-year cycle which marks 235 Synodic months (The amount of time between one full moon and the next). In other words, over 19 years, the lunar and solar sycles align.
6. The Metonic Clycle is named after a 5th century B.C.E mathematician who lived in Athens, but the Babylonians, as always, also knew about it.

OK, I’ll shut up now.

Finally, I uploaded photos from the trip to the US. See photos like this

and others by clicking on the great photo of Adrian’s face. I took a whopping one photo of my D.C. interview, but luckily I went back with Adrian, Maria, Lucus and Denis two days later.

The “Rice’s Flee Market” is a great flee market near my parent’s place. We went there and said hi to Jim (my cousin Tara’s husband) who was selling their awesome hair pieces. I always thought the concept of fake hair was weird until she gave me some. Now I think it’s cool.

The BCCC photo is from a fabulous garden in Bucks County Community College. I used to train with my Karate teacher in this garden. I was actually there looking for him, but surprisingly, he wasn’t there. I have always been able to find him on Saturdays at the college; I guess it’s the end of an area. Instead, I slept in the garden in the sun for about an hour; this resulted in a beautiful sun burn! It was about 70 degrees, so I had to lie in the sun!

Baltimore was awesome! Not so much because Baltimore is a great city, but because Adrian, Maria (with Lucas), Denis and Tweed were there! Actually, I saw about 1/4 mile worth of Baltimore downtown, so I can’t say much about the city.

It was great to just be in the same space with friends who know you so well that they give you a lot of suggestions about how to live your life!! I love that! Plus we got to catch up on who is doing what, where and how. The summary is that we are all doing pretty well and enjoying the blessed lives we have.

I have been told that Matthias and I MUST see much more of Europe while we live there. If not for our sakes, then for the sake of all of my friends who live in the U.S. and can’t drive to Prague on the weekend. We will carry out our mission to the best of our abilities. Hopefully, I will not disappoint the world travelers so much at our next reunion.

Weekend photos to come…..

So, the big news first. I got called back to D.C. in 3 weeks for placement interviews! What this means is that I made it past the job interview. When I come back, I basically need to find a place to work. Most likely, that would be at the NSF (National Science Foundation) in the astronomical division.

Matthias and I are happy, but now our brains are processing how we are going to make this happen. Matthias told me that I should call the Max Plank Institute and tell them that they are stupid because they lost the chance to hire me. (I love him for saying things like that)

I am at mom and dad’s house in Bucks County Pennsylvania. I still have jetlag so I have been up since 6:00. It is beautiful here at the moment! It was in the 70’s yesterday. I ended up arriving at the train station an hour earlier than I told my mom (who was to pick me up), so I laid on the ground for an hour. The sun peaked in and out of the clouds, and I was warm and totally relaxed. It was amazing to be outside with out long underwear, a jacket, scarf and hat!!

Today already looks just as wonderful. The birds are chirping and the sun is bright. I think I’ll try to wake dad up to go out an get a coffee with me.

Tomorrow I am off to Baltimore to visit Adrian, Maria, Lucus, Denis and Tweed during their conference with the American Physical Society. I hope the weather stays this great.

Ok, I had to write one post while I am physically in D.C. I head out in 10 minutes to catch the bus up to mom and dad’s.

The interview was a great experience. I was strangely very relaxed in the morning. I’ll find out today if it was a good or bad thing. Either way, I had a great day yesterday. I had another great meeting in the afternoon with astronomers at the National Science Foundation who would be really interested in having me if I get the fellowship. We’ll see what comes of it.

I had dinner with Seth last night and was not the best company as the jet lag slapped me upside the head about an hour before we met. Seth was his usual, bubbly self (most of you don’t know Seth, but that was a joke) He’s going to send me a few websites he writes for. It sound like he has some funny and interesting stuff to read. He got an interview on ESPN radio because of one blog! That’s cool.

Random fact learned while in D.C., the movie ‘Dodgeball’ grossed $114.3 Million.

Signing off in D.C.

My yoga teacher Gary summed up part of the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali very succinctly once in the following way.

1. Wisdom comes from the awareness of your own suffering
2. With the awareness of your own suffering comes the desire to end it
3. For that, one must take action
4. In this action, you discover what is important and what is not important in life
5. The unimportant things lose there hold on you and fall away
6. Finally, you heart naturally turns toward the important things in life that (coincidentally) help to end your suffering. You begin to deeply value the important things.

I am trying to keep this natural process of ending suffering in my mind as my body is helping me discover what doesn’t work in my diet. I thought I would be dying by cutting most of the bread and pasta out of my diet, but actually, this week has not been that bad. It feels like once I realized that these two things sit in my stomach like a brick and make me sleep poorly, my desire for them decreased significantly.

What I am learning from this experiment is how certain foods affect my body and mood… when I have a bad night of digestion (I am usually not so friendly the next morning as some of my loved ones can attest to). I can still eat bread, pasta, chocolate or whatever, but now I have the “awareness of my own suffering.” Knowing full well what certain foods will do makes it easier to look for alternatives (usually healthy stuff - the “important” mentioned above) and look away from the refined sugars and chocolate that I have so often used as comfort foods (the “unimportant” mentioned above).

Of course, we’ll see how long the epiphany lasts, but I am always happy to learn something new about my body. Kim, an American woman we met at the gym, said something today that summed me up very well. She asked, “are you one of those kinds freaks who does weird experiments with your body?” Sarah answered for me, and she said, “that is exactly the kind of freak she is.” I whole-heartedly agree. It is the most suitable label I have yet found for myself! Thanks Kim