Doors close, doors open, etc.

And that is to say, I'm pretty sure that God wouldn't end the Tour de France without beginning the Democratic National Convention. And I'm not talking politics; I'm talking great television. Oh, this is a riot. There's singing, there's dancing, there's thumb raising. Right now representatives from the fifty states are casting votes for John Kerry and taking advantage of the camera time to educate viewers at home about every famous person ever to have set foot within their state boundaries. (Aside: the guy from Texas just called Madame Secretary "Mr. Chairman". I think that might have been a party foul.) Anyway, three states have laid claim to the title "entertainment capital of the United States". Actually, New York one-upped California and Nevada by calling itself the entertainment capital of the world. However, they also claimed Bill Clinton as one of their own, so what are we to think? I'm telling you, this is great television. (Aside: shut the hell up, Wyoming.) (Aside: a woman is talking on her cell phone during the benediction.) OK, I am making fun, but I actually am having a good time watching the coverage. Matt isn't, though. He thinks it's all politics crap. And maybe it is, but it's fun and it's exciting. Not unlike the E! True Hollywood Story of Drew Barrymore.

On Monday Matt and I went out on a date. We used a gift certificate to Soho that my parents gave him as a birthday present. We chose a night when a jazz band that I had already heard in concert was playing. Since Matt loves jazz and I'm not such a fan, we thought it was a good compromise to see a group that I already knew that I liked. The dinner was excellent. After hearing Jess' review, I ordered crabcakes, and they were soooo good. They were the best crabcakes I've ever had, I think. They came in a creamy horseradish sauce. Yummy. And the music was good, too. I admit that I got bored at around 9:30, but it ended at 10:00, so I wasn't bored for long. In any case, I was thrilled just to go out on a Monday night!

Today has been a good day. This morning Helen and I ran the entire distance between the East Beach beach house and Stearn's Wharf, and then back again. I'm not sure how long that is, but I think it's between two and three miles. I know that is no great feat for a lot of people, but considering that we started off in June by walking three quarters of that distance and running the remaining quarter, we're doing pretty well. And today my advisor and I resubmitted my LAST paper. I have been working on these papers for years. Years! And now they are all done. I'm pretty sure the journal won't get back to us until after I'm gone, so they are officially out of my hands. That makes me very happy.

OK, I guess that's enough.

Matt and his parents at the FDR memorial

Meagan's graduation from Vanderbilt

JR's first microwave popcorn. She was pretty freaked out.

Since I've got nothing to do...
 
maybe I'll post some more pictures. Let me see.

This picture shows Jess and Dr. J painting wedding invitations. It was a fun day. We painted for hours and had many strings of invitations hanging to dry in the living room and kitchen.

Here is the kitchen drying line.

Do you remember back in high school when you saw Titanic (or refused, on principle), and there was Leonardio DiCaprio, and he was all, "Woo! I'm king of the world!"? And then a decade or so later you went to see Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and Harry was riding that hippogriff thing and you were sitting in the audience all "Oh my god, he's king of the world!"? Well, that's how I was last week. King of the world. I had more energy the beginning of last week than I have had in the year 2004. I didn't mind going to work, I didn't mind working on papers, I didn't mind helping in the lab. I didn't even mind going to group meeting. And I had a great time reading the glossary from an immunology textbook at Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. I got up before 6:00 on Wednesday to go running and then took a six-mile bike ride on Thursday.

But now this week is here, and it's all gone. Where did it go? I hate work. I cannot bear to work another second on this paper. It's a different paper from last week (we resubmitted last week's paper, thank goodness), and I hate it. It's a paper that I never wanted to write in the first place. It's a paper based on what was by far the most painful part of my thesis to write. I thought that this would be over, a year and 6 days after I defended my thesis. Well, it will all be over no later than August 31, that I promise. And the thing is, I'm stubborn. If I told my advisor that I didn't think that all of this effort was worth it, I think she would agree to just let me publish what we have in a less prestigious journal, and just end the process. But I can't let myself do that, even though I have plenty of publications, which I don't even care about since I am not going to be a professor. I don't like to produce shoddy work, and I don't like to disappoint people. And that, dear potential future employers who might be reading this, is why you should hire me.

Weekend update
 
We are not going shopping today, after all. We are going tomorrow afternoon. Helen had some stuff to do this afternoon that she forgot about, so we rescheduled.
 
In other news, Thursday night I broke the shower. I kicked the little stick thing that you pull on to make the water come out of the shower head, and it broke off. Stupid thing was made of plastic. Apparently, you can't just replace that piece. You have to replace the entire spout. And that isn't really a big deal--it's a $10 purchase at Home Depot. Except that our plumbing seems to be nonstandard or out of date. We bought the replacement last night, but its half-inch threaded piece is too small for our shower. Matt has been gone for the last hour and a half trying to track down a bigger one. And here he is. Without a replacement spout. But with bagels and cream cheese. Bye!
 
(Cool use of color, don't you think?)

Matt's graduation

This is a picture of the National Cathedral that I took last March.

Friday, again. Woo!
 
Yesterday I took a six-mile bike ride with Helen, and it was fun! I was kind of nervous before we left because I'm not so keen on riding a bike in traffic, and I haven't ridden a bike at all since I moved out of the Bee-yatchwood (how on Earth does one spell that?) five years ago, but it was a good time. There were a couple of decent hills, but the traffic wasn't all that bad. It took us about 45 minutes. I'm sure Lance Armstrong could have done it in 42 or 43, but I don't think we did too badly. Speaking of Lance, is anybody else watching the Tour de France coverage on OLN? Matt and I have gotten pretty into it. And by that I mean we usually turn it on for a half-hour or so in the evenings. And by that I mean we turn it on for a half-hour every couple of nights. Still, though, we're big fans.
 
Tomorrow we're going shopping with Helen. Buebbles, by the way, is in France. Well, he might be in Germany now, for all I know. He had a conference in France and then was catching up with Dr. J and Big T over the weekend. Anyway, tomorrow we're going to Target and Old Navy and another store that I had never heard of (Babies R Us?) because one of Helen's co-workers is having a baby, and her shower is coming up.
 
Other than that, I will sleep and read. That's what I like to do on the weekends.

A big day

Today is Bastille Day, the first anniversary of my PhD defense, and Tobias' birthday.

Happy birthday, Big T!

Another doctor in the family

Congratulations to Chris Santangelo, who defended yesterday!

It's Friday. Why go to work?

I am working from home. And guess what. I am getting work done. I haven't turned on the TV all day. I haven't read at all. OK, I haven't read a book at all. I have read some CNN, Salon and a few blogs. But that's part of my regular workday routine. I also spent some time on the phone with Megan, which was very nice. But the point is, I'm working. I'm working on papers. These are papers left over from graduate school. These are papers that we submitted a really long time ago to Physical Review B and were slammed by the referees. No, that's not right. One was almost fine, but with one huge conceptual error, and the other was slammed. People in the physics community have tremendously little respect for the quantum Hall effect in three dimensions, I'll tell you that. But I'm almost ready to resubmit both of these papers, and that will be that, and thank GOD. I cannot work on this project anymore. I absolutely cannot.

In other work-related news, I think I have made myself obsolete. This past week, I inadvertently passed all of my projects onto the grad student in our lab. Yes, there is some genius behind that strategy, but I also wonder what I'm going to be doing for the month of August. Whatever it is, I bet it won't work! It's interesting that all of my grad-school friends who are now postdocs are unhappy with their jobs. We all seem to be having similar experiences with low morale. Is that the nature of the postdoc position? I dunno. It probably works for some people. I think I'll go take a nap.

Ten Things That I Will Not Miss About Santa Barbara

1. The stupid timer on our stove, which does not work, but buzzes loudly and annoyingly at random times.

2. The lack of storage space in our apartment

3. The price of gas

4. The price of rent (but that probably won't be much better in the DC area)

5. Transferring helium

6. Pushing around heavy liquid nitrogen dewars

7. UCSB Parking Services

8. Attaching teensy-tinsy gold wires to little grey chips

9. People who wear flip-flops and scarves and mittens at the same time.

10. The day-long trip to visit any of our family and most of our friends

Ten Things That I Will Miss About Santa Barbara

1. The high ceiling in our apartment

2. Our two free off-street parking spaces

3. Pretty, pretty State Street

4. The purple trees

5. Guacamole, or so I'm told, and Mexican food in general

6. The ocean

7. Big Wednesday

8. My church jobs--choir member and newsletter editor

9. Not needing air conditioning and sleeping with the window open at night in the summer

10. Our California friends

I'm sure there are lots more.

Matt and JR are sleeping. I am working.

That doesn't seem fair. But, to be clear, I am working on my church newsletter, which is fun work. Except that I'm now formatting the calendar, which is my least favorite part. It's also typically the last thing I do, since I have a hard time saving the fun stuff for last. Jess and I used to edit the newsletter together when she still lived in Santa Barbara, and she usually did the calendar. Bless her for that, I say.

I am having a great July 4 weekend, and I'll tell you why. Yesterday, for no apparent reason, my advisor called me in the lab and told me that she thought I should warm the cryostat up and enjoy a long weekend, and then work on paper revisions next week. Maybe she has lost faith in my abilities as an experimentalist, but that is A-OK with me. I mean, it's not like she'd be the only one. And after next week, I'll have, what, seven weeks left? Something like that.

This morning Matt and I had breakfast at a bagel shop that we discovered this past week called Manhattan Bagels. It wasn't bad. One of the things that east-coast natives typically find less than adequate about California is the quality of the bagels. This place was an improvement over most others that I've experienced in Santa Barbara, but I tell you, it was no Bagel Basement, which is where Megan and I used to get bagels at Dartmouth.

Tonight we're having a pre-Fourth-of-July barbecue with Helen and Buebbles. It's also to celebrate their first anniversary, which is Monday. We're making kabobs, corn, salad and jambalaya-style rice. I think it will be good. Matt and I know next to nothing about cuts of beef or how to prepare them, so I called my parents while we were at Albertson's this morning. They were full of advice, which I appreciated. I think Matt was less appreciative because he only heard the parts of the conversation that I repeated to him. He ended up standing next to me for a good five minutes holding two pounds of top sirloin something-or-other and waiting for me to get off the phone. Eventually he gave up on that and completed the shopping trip while I chatted with my parents about clothes, my sisters' jobs and my parent's a**hole neighbor. I'm pretty sure that a good time was had by all.

And this afternoon we prepared the meat, I baked a cake and Matt made banana bread. Matt also cleaned the shower and bathroom sink, while I worked on the newsletter. It's been a productive and pleasant Saturday, the first day of a three-day weekend! Not being at UCSB makes me very happy.

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!