Coffee from a Reusable Ceramic Mug

Alexander Litvinenko, the former Russian KGB colonel, speaking at Frontline shortly before he was poisoned in a London restaurant. Why is his murder already slipping from the headlines?

So, my laptop has had a little problem lately, ok, more than one. First, I am receiving complaints from other Sype users (AKA Matthias and Mom and Dad) that my computer is too slow to run well with Skype video. That, and it, literally takes 5 minutes to boot up and download my e-mails, and once in a while, she just screams ‘too much information’ and shuts off. I have been patient with her though, and she does a great job at organizing my brain otherwise.

The bigger problem for me was that the monitor was loose. It’s been loose for a while, and it’s not a big pain, but it needed to be fixed. Being the super-genius I am, I decided that I can fix it. (note to self - don’t try to fix your own laptop). So anyway, I ‘fixed’ it. Now, the monitor has two stable positions - all the way open and all the way closed!

Life is trying to tell me that it’s time for a new laptop. I went to Dell and compiled a few configurations. I am going for the least heavy power machine I can find; the laptops are such bricks these days. I have gotten down to under 5 lbs, and I think that is as lite as I am going to get. Any input from the peanut gallery on things to consider when purchasing a new brain would be appreciated - that means YOU, my geeky friends.

For those of you who already knew as much, it has been confirmed; I am a ‘pure nerd’ according to the nerd/dork/geek test. Here’s the break down from the website. I’m am not clear on how the scoring breaks down as adding them up doesn’t bring on to 100% of a human being - I like to think of myself as super human!

Pure Nerd
86 % Nerd, 26% Geek, 30% Dork
For The Record:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.

A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.

A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.

You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.

I suspected as such…. PS- the jetlag is kicking in as it’s 11:30 PM, I have had two naps today, and I am wide awake!

Here is a great photo! Matthias gave a talk a little over a month ago at a fancy-smancy conference here in Deutschland (I’ll leave the name out so no one finds us via Google). They had a professional photographer take pictures of the speakers during their talks. It looks, to me, as though Matthias is setting someone straight in this photo - in Italian, with the appropriate gestures (note the crazy eyes). I think he looks handsome!

I never really left Germany, right? It feels like I was here yesterday. I got in yesterday morning, Matthias and I went to Kaminski for lunch and then out with Sarah and Cliff for dinner. Just a normal day in Regensburg.

It’s nice to be back. The German language skill seems to be functioning well enough at the moment. The true test will be at lunch today with some coworkers of Matthias.

The jet lag is not killing me, yet. I passed out at 11:30 (literally, I got out of a warm bath and lost the ability to move) and didn’t move until 6:00, when I was wide awake. I brought my ‘feel bright light’ with me to help set my internal clock. It is a visor with these bright lights on the brim that shine into your eyes. It is supposed to help fight seasonal effectiveness disorder and can be helpful against jet lag. I wore it on the plane yesterday morning too. I think it helps. I am learning that eating at the normal meal times in the place where you are and taking your vitamins at that time helps as well. We’ll head to the gym today as well because exercise is a BIG help in the adjustment.

I am in West Virginia in a little resort. I’m sure the place was fabulous about 20 years ago, but it’s just a nice, quiet place now. I am here for a professional development workshop. There is a lot of really useful information, but it’s a lot. Until now, the procedures at work seemed more of an oral tradition than a rigid system of guidelines. Being the government, though, there are actually many guidelines. Now I am figuring out how to find out what they are. Still, most of us learn how to do our jobs from our colleagues.

I am one of the youngest people here, which seems to be the typical situation these days. I guess my fellowship has given me a sort of short cut into the position I am in. I am trying not to annoy anyone with asking too many questions, but I have so many, and I want to know the answer! I am starting to learn that a lot of people around here assume that they know a lot more about what is going on here than they actually do. It takes the old-pros to explain things properly, and the people in my division have told me that once I figure out how things work around here, I should tell them how it works. I have been told that it’s great that I ask such good questions, so hopefully it’s making a good impression. I keep seeing a lot of people who are as lost as me but they don’t ask questions - that would drive me nuts. I get the feeling that the older folks enjoy the energy the fellows bring in. There is another fellow here as well, and a few people who run divisions at work were interviewing us about the program today; of course, we took the opportunity to tell them how great it is.

I took advantage of my location last night and got a massage at the spa here. It was really relaxing. I kind of spaced out for about 30 minutes afterwards. I love massages like that. The time has been pretty relaxing, and I feel like I am getting to know a lot of people from the foundation here. There isn’t anyone here from my division, so now I feel like I have a lot more contacts. I just hope I can retain the names.

I am looking forward to heading out from here tomorrow and getting on the plane to Germany! We already have two meals booked with friends. Saturday night, in an attempt to fight my jetlag, we are having dinner with Cliff, Sarah and Cliff’s sister and her boyfriend at L’Osteria. I miss that place. I can’t wait for good Italian food again. Some time next week, Matthias and I are going to a talk about the recent Nobel prize in physics, in German. I hope my German-brain turns on properly once I arrive back in Europe. If not, I will get an hour or so to reflect on life; I did that a lot in my first year in Germany.

I was just checking out my friend Lis’s website - Glowlite Candles. She recently opend a cute little shop in Glendale (that’s part of Phoenix fo rthe non-locals), and I really like her stuff. She even made it into the local paper with the grand opening. She is also on EBay, and I only just found her there - I am not very Ebay-savy.

The website is still up and coming, but there are some nice sets of candles up these already. Since that time of year is sneaking up quickly again, I thought I’d give everyone a site to visit for nice candles and accesories to add to their web-shopping list. I’ll be bugging her soon for some orders.

I had forgotten how beautiful the sun is on the edge of the sea. I was in Virginia Beach this morning at sunrise, and it was so nice to listen to the waves and watch the sun come up. I was there for work, but I had some nice time to myself.

Matthias and I got tickets to go to Phoenix for Christmas, but because we are limited in our schedule by the gods of the frequent flyer miles, we could only get return tickets a few days later. We might just come back to DC and spend soem quality time alone after Christmas. Maybe Virgina Beach would make a nice hide-away!

Alan and Kira are here for the weekend! They spent the week in Philadelphia for a conference, spent a weekend in Amish country, and then they came here (to see me, I like to think). Today they ran about touring the city seeing the sites while I puttered around at home and worked with Matthias on trying to sort out our Christmas plans.

I met up with them in the evening in old town Alexandria. There was a miracle this evening; Alan actually showed up ON TIME to meet me. For those of you who know Alan, you know what a feat this is. I was quite impressed, though I suspect it’s Kira’s influence - way to go Kira!

We had dinner at a great Italian place called Ristorante Geranio. The food was awesome and the portion sizes reasonable. I highly recommend it.

After dinner, we headed into the cold evening to begin our ‘city camping’ trip. We started with Ghost stories. A company called Alexandria Colonial Tours hires actors in period costumes to lead ‘ghost tours’ of old town Alexandria. Larry (our guide) did a great job of creeping us out with the tails of murder and revenge in the seventeen and eighteen hundreds. Granted, ‘Larry’ is not the creepiest name, but he did what he could with what he had. He also gave us some stories about daily life at that time, which was, apparently, very dirty and smelly, in general. The tour ended in Christ’s Church grave yard where our guide abandoned us.(aren’t all churches Christ’s?? - did I miss something?)

By this time my feet were freezing! so we headed to the nearest place and had a hot drink and Smores!! Hence, the night felt very much like camping but in the city! We were just missing the silence, the stars, the trees, the dirt and uncomfrotable log that always seems to be involved in camping trips.

I think the sugar made us a little rowdy. You see, while Kira was at the Air and Space Museum earlier today, she found the Galaxy Grabber! They are these little robotic claws that make a great sound when you squeeze them! Plus, they are something that is really effective at annoy the person next to you. For example, Alan got to play ‘Stop hitting yourself’ with Kira’s arm….this is always a favorite game of big brothers. Alan and I also noticed that you can grab your favorite friend’s nose quite well with them. What a great gadget. We found numerous things that we could pick up with it (and sometime throw at one another), not to mention all of the pieces of clothing that we could yank on. We were the envy of everyone in Alexandria - they all stared at our grabber-action as they walked by.

On the way home, we got to learn a valuable lesson about the metro system. If you need to ‘use the facilities’ while in the metro station, the manager is required, by law, to take you to a restroom they have at the metro station. Who knew? If any of you are ever here and have the need, remember this important fact.

After a whole moth of trying to save some cash by setting up a land line and just using a prepaid cell phone for emergencies, I give up! I was willing to put a little extra energy into saving a few buck a month, but it looks like all of the effort is really won’t make a difference in my bill. I got my first bill for the landline, and although I signed up for a plan that costs $15 a month, the bill will, somehow be $30 every month! I actually had to call the customer service to get them to explain the completely unreadable bill so I could break down exactly how ‘the man’ (I don’t just blame Verizon) is ripping me off. You’d think, with a PhD in physics, that I’d be able to actually understand the mathematics of a local phone bill. I had to pay extra for extravagances such as 911 access, a dial tone! ($6 a month), not getting my number published (why would they charge me for NOT publishing?) and a bunch of other random fees, taxes, etc. All of this doesn’t include ANY long distance service. So, I canceled that yesterday, and I got myself a cell phone with Cingular. That will run me $40 a month and I get long distance, caller ID, etc. If there is anyone out there who didn’t get the bulk e-mail with the new number, just send me a shout out.

I digress… Matthias is on his way back to Germany now. It somehow feels better here now that he’s been here. I am going to visit him in Regensburg in just a few short weeks, so the separation won’t be too long. He left me with a fabulous lunch today; he made a lovely pasta. He used lots of olive oil because the cheap pan I have burns the food otherwise, but it tasted wonderful!

I found a great piece of furniture just before we went to the airport today. It was in the basement (yes, by the dumpster). It is totally junky, BUT some clever person has draped the inside with the top of a crazy quilt! As crazy quilts remind me of Ruth (see previous post), I just had to check it out. It makes a great TV stand! It makes the place feel cozier too.

A quick note on progress at work. I got a ‘crazy’ letter today. You see, one of the benefits of working in the NSF is that some interesting people send us mail sometimes. Anytime it contains anything about astronomy, it comes to my division. Apparently, the pass these off to the newest people get to handle them. I looked in my mailbox today and I took out the abstract. I think most of the words were actual words….(words aren’t my strong point). A lot of the words made sense by themselves, but he strung them together in really strange ways. It was tough to try to read. Luckily, I don’t have to write a response this time. It makes for interesting reading though. Just for future reference, if you start to go off the deep end, don’t send your letters to my division for the next couple of years. or, if you do, at least attach some cool pictures.