old friends

So guess who I ran into at Space Weather Week? Ok, yes, Gorilla Boy is here, but that's beside the point. I ran into Jen Gannon! She did her grad work in the physics department at Colorado, and now is at SWPC (which everyone says, "Sweep-C"). We had dinner tonight catching up, swapping gossip - OK, I gossiped, I'm the one who kept in touch with UVA folks (she says, "Hi!"). Anyway, it was an interesting day, and I'm beat. I still have work to do - maybe I'll get up early...

tip math

Ok, a quick moment out of the conference - I'm about to go through the list of posters in this session to see who I want to talk to, but I've got plenty of time and need a little solitude before delving back into a large group of people I don't know.

I just had lunch down in the hotel restaurant - note, don't do that. We get a free breakfast buffet, fine, but the lunch buffet was 12$ and not great food, in fact, quite bad Chinese food. And there I am, a single diner, and the waiter took that as leave to disappear. I have blogged about dining alone before, and let me just say, that as someone who enjoys having a nice meal by myself sometimes, it's ridiculous how variable the service to someone on their own is, especially as my tips are much more variable when I'm by myself. In a group the default is a 20% tip, and he who deviates from that either forces someone else to step up, or leaves a message diluted by the number of people who gave the requisite 15-20%. So really, it's the single diners to watch out for. When I'm out on my own and the service is good, I'll tip more like 30% because I appreciate the effort, but bad service cuts me down below 20%, and I almost never do that. I did at lunch. I had an empty water glass and a hankering for hot tea, and it was almost ten minutes before I even saw my waiter in the room, and no one else came around to fill the water, either, except after my waiter finally brought me tea, and then I didn't need it. Although, I feel like I stiffed the guy with a 2$ tip on a 13$ bill, but that's just over 15%, so he probably didn't notice. Junk.

Whew! Are we there yet??

The answer is: yes. Somehow I survived - it only took me eleven hours to get from DC to Boulder, CO. I guess the good thing about connecting through O'Hare is that when your flight into O'Hare is delayed, you can be pretty sure that your flight out will be, too. It was the Super Shuttle from Denver to Boulder, though, that was the end of me. The big van shakes more than one of those old wooden roller coasters. It was a 45 minute drive. I sent the following email to the family:

From: Astrowahoo
Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 9:40 PM
Subject: I-i-i'm s-s-sh-shaking
To: momola, daddo, merebear, and christopher

Supershuttle? Soooo not the way to travel - my back itches from the
seat jostling my bra strap. I've bitten my tongue. And I can't hold
a book to read and distract myself. All I can do is sit here and
shake.


now it's time for a shower and some sleep.

What's the verdict?

Meredith's comment reminded me that at the beginning of this month I'd set up this Blogger page to test out the alternative to googlepages. It's got the automatic comments, and labels - easy blog searching! But the picture pages are still more easily run through google, so until they stop letting me edit they're definitely at google. What do we think of this one? (I'm shamelessly soliciting comments here.)

So it's possible that I'm not young anymore. My back was tightening up as I came home last night, and only pure exhaustion (& a stuffed chili dog tummy) kept me from busting out the foam roller. This morning however, I was sorry! I was a sore puppy, and getting my act together in time to get to VA for my 8am meeting was rough. Over the coarse of the day my back eased up and my legs got more sore. Ah well, it gave me something to think about as I sat through a meeting of social scientists - "this isn't physics, it's integrable and too complex to be described by mathematics." Huh, I *earned* that happy hour!

Testing something new.

googlepages has become less than optimal. A project for the next year or so is to go ahead and buy a domain and start coding my own page, but until then, I'm wondering if this won't work better, especially for the pictures.

This continues where I left off here.