And the last from UNH trip.

I swear this is the last of the photos from the trip up to the University of New Hampshire. The leaves were starting to change colour, but I can't wait till it makes there way down to Boston.

And some more...UNH edition

So there was quiet a bit of free time, and the leaves were starting to turn, so there are a few more photos...

Some more from the trip to New Hampshire

Some more photos from the trip to UNH.

A clear snail?

So the other day I saw this snail while walking. What first caught my eye was the colours on the shell. Then I saw that the bit sticking out looked clear. Maybe this i common among snails, or something that happens while they sleep, for example maybe hide their body and excrete some sticky clear stuff... I suppose I should wikipedia or google this.

Not sure but it looks like at least on this website they also got pictures of snails that have clear parts on their bodies.... I'll have to do more research.

A new cafe.

I've started working at another cafe as well, this one use to be a bank, Block 11. It's really kinda neat inside as they seemed to have tried to keep the structure in tack. You can even work inside of the vault! 

A different walk to work...

Since I'm still writing up, so don't have a "job", but am in the states instead of Oz, I've started using the cafe as my office. The only rent that they charge is a pot of tea and a scone from time to time. On my last walk to work post I think I showed lots of spiders. I no longer see quiet so many strange and at least to me large spiders, but I do get to see lots of flowers.

more from the train

Not bad for the little phone.

Some photos from the road, or rail, that I took while on the train... I have no idea where we were on the route when I took these, but I thought they were pretty good for using my phone, and not just shooting through glass, but while the train was moving... You can really tell in the top photo where there is a bit of reflection from the lights inside the train. Oh well, it was a beautiful journey and now that the fall colours are slowly starting to show, it's becoming absolutely beautiful!

Egg on face.

Today I feel like I have a whole cartoon of eggs on my face. I went up to Durham to give a talk at UNH only to discover that some how I had gotten the wrong date, they had me scheduled for Wed.... At least I was early, but two days early? That's maybe pushing it. I had wanted to do a "dry run" of finding my way around up here and see the area, but not like this. It is a very nice town, and a cute university. It looks like they've taken it straight out of a picture book on what universities are suppose to look like. The town itself seems quite small and filled with university students. It very much reminds me of Northfield MN with St. Olaf and Carlton, except with out the smell from the cream of wheat factory. Anyway, not much I can do now except hope that no one minds too much.


 Trip try 1...

It was a rainy day in Boston and I figured that I shouldn't have gotten out of bed, maybe next time I'll listen to my inner voice. 

Tom's Shoes

Just in case you've missed this company...

New library... at least to me

So today we went and got Library cards at the local public library. I have to say I'm disappointed. The library has very few books that are on my current reading list. The libraries in the network have very few of the books I have on my reading list, and none of them are in e-book format. On top of this, the library website is incredibly difficult to search in. I wanted to find a humorous book, so I searched for the key word humour, and nothing came up.

Finally I found in the pull down menu for subject I was able to find humour fiction and non fiction which came up with a total of ~20 books. Not a great selection, and I know that I saw a few others that I've already read and should be in those categories. In this age of google searches, I've gotten use to the idea of an easy search. I can type in funny books to read and come up with pages and pages of suggestions. Why can't the library tap into this? Why not have a google search of their web site which just has lists and lists of books and the descriptions from the publisher? They really seem antiquated and need help entering the digital age.

Anyway, there is my angst against the library. Maybe some day I'll grow to love it.

Coffee shop work.

So not much new in my world, but I did find a great place to work and they have all my favourite teas! 

Just a few more from NY

This was from the Subway I have to say, I love public transport and wish that more places in the US had it widely available.

Once again the planetarium. It was just the coolest place, even if we didn't get to see Neil degrasse Tyson. There were four of us there, three physicist and me a space physicist with a degree in astro physics and planetary sciences, he is one of the biggest rock stars we know and we were giggling all the way to the planetarium dreaming about meeting him and did we know anyone who might know him so that we could ask him to lunch without it being too weird. We might need to get a life. 

A random empty street in NY. I realise that NY Was much quieter than normal, but it was the quietest city that I had ever seen. It was very odd. 

Curvy procrastination

I found a new site that is filled with frustration, mindlessness, but everyone in a while you end up having to really think. It's Cury from Flaming Lunch Box. It's kinda like a jigsaw puzzle, but a bit different, you already know where the pieces go, just not what orientation they should be in. I've found it as usefully as a procrastination tool as angry birds (those stupid pigs just won't fall over!!!) Any way, back to work... or just maybe one more game of curvy.

Geeks hit Broadway

Who would have thought that science grad students could make it to the stage on Broadway... Well maybe predictably the NY times reviewer found it tedious and started with saying who cares about word problems and who cares about the play and then seemed to try to use as many GRE words to show that he is smart. You can tell he also never really hung out with us science grads

Elliot and Molly meet uncute at the university computer lab, and soon he is offering to work up a data-mining algorithm to help her with her experiment about the binding of yeast proteins. (I know, pretty hot, right?)

That is pretty hot! I met my partner in the physics TA office and he tried to help me learn to love Green's functions, and now tries to help me on a daily basis with determining the correct statistical methods that I should use to analyse my data. I think the main thing that the reviewer missed about the culture of grad school and academia is that your research is your life, and someone coming in and not only being interested in what you do, but wants to help you (without the likely hood of getting an authorship on a paper), shows that they care for you... or at least think you're really cute, or happen to be the only girl they see outside of the course for non-majoirs that they have to TA. Grad school love is similar to any other love, but instead of quoting Shakespeare, they quote XKCD, instead of writing a sonnet they write a data analysis program, instead of reading Daniel Steel novels, they read PhD comics. A romantic dinner in Grad school is when someone brings you a pre-heated cup of ramen noodles or makes sure to grab you some of the leftovers from the seminar because they saw you weren't there. I haven't yet seen the play, and I hope I get the chance too, but I have a feeling that the audience for this might not include the reviewer, and may be limited to people who probably can't afford to trip to Broadway, the graduate student. I wonder if NSF has a grant that might fund a field trip...

New York New York...

Some more photos from the other weekend, I'm still getting back into typing and it seems to keep slipping my mind.

Boston Whale Watching

This weekend we went Whale watching out of Boston Harbour. We got to see three whales and a turtle.... lots of fun!

Trip to NY over the 9/11 weekend

When we first decided to meet up with friends in NY this last weekend, it didn't dawn on us that Sunday was 9/11. The city however was incredibly quiet, and we had a blast. We walked across the G.W. Bridge, we went to the planetarium, we walked through central park, saw the Guggenheim, ate at Katzs deli, went to a blues club, and had desert at a friend's friends's place in Manhattan. It was a busy weekend, but I can't wait to go back and do it all again.

Sailboats

Ah how I love sail boats. They are always so much fun.