This weekend I went to a BME Halloween party at Bertha’s place. M. and I biked out to west Davis all gussied up (I just wore a thrift-store polyester dress and zombied-up my face, and M. was dressed up as the walk of shame), and in true Sara-fashion I thought I knew where we were going, but I was wrong! Fortunately, we did end up at the party after surprisingly few wrong turns. The party was pretty fun, and almost everyone came out in costume—Bertha and her roommate were dressed up as Calvin and Hobbes, which was super-fun, and definitely the best costume there. In the BME department there are quite a few students (well—compared to in medPhys or in my undergrad physics programme) so I still have quite a few classmates that I have yet to get to know. Also, quite a few significant-others came along, so it wasn’t entirely BME kids.

I’m off to another IEEE MIC meeting this week, in San Diego. I think that it will be fun to spend a bit of time in a “real City” after having spent the last few months in cute&quaint little Davis.  

Also, I’ll get to see Chris! After being in a new town for a few months I’m really looking forward to seeing people that I’ve known for longer than 3 months. Oh, and also, Chris is possibly the coolest 64 y.o. that I know too (just thought i should add that).





 

Well, I’ve gotten more photos of the trip into Lassen Volcanic National Park (courtesy of Edward and Michelle) so feast your eyes on these.

This past weekend I went camping with Michelle and Edward. Not just wussy car camping though.  Instead, we went hiking through Lassen VOLCANIC National Park. It takes about 4 hours to make it to the park from Davis, so we left early on Saturday morning. Once in the park, we decided to hike around Butte Crater, up the cinder cone (800 steep feet of scoria), and then onto Snag lake. The scenery was surreal. At the beginning of the hike, the cinder-cone dominated our view. Once we made it up the cinder cone the view of all of the volcanic stuff (yes, that is the correct term) was amazing. We hiked a total of 9 miles the first day, and decided to spend the night on the edge of Snag lake. Instead of sleeping in a tent like normal human beings, the three of us slept outside under the stars. The view was amazing, but it got a bit cold during the night, When we awoke in the morning, our Nalgene bottles were frozen solid, and there was ice on the edge of the lake (we all guess that it went to about –5’C over night) . In the morning we took it easy, before hiking the final 6 miles around Snag Lake and then back to Butte Lake.  Northern California keeps on surprising me!

The picture is of Michelle and Edward, still happily asleep. The white stuff on the ground is frost.



 

Tonight I went to see Lenny Susskind give a public lecture at UCDavis. The lecture was in the ballroom of the ARC, and I knew that it was going to be interesting when he got to the second slide. On it, there was a picture of Darwin, a picture of a tree and a picture of Woody Allen, among other things. It was a really interesting lecture by a prominent physicist and I must admit that by the end of the talk he had me convinced on the subject of the anthropic principle (the wikipedia link is below, for those of you that aren’t Neil and want to see what’s up with the anthropic principle)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Maybe it was his use of an example of fish-icits and cod-mologists, but he was pretty damn convincing. Other highlights include:

At one point he was explaining the Cosmological Constant, and ended up talking about Weinberg. He decided to explain that Weinberg was the most famous living physicist. He then took it back, and said that Lee Smolin was the most famous living physicist (I giggled). Susskind then explained to the crowd that it was a joke, and they laughed awkwardly….probably because they were sociology majors who didn’t realize that physicists too can be catty.

During one question, he decided to use Ice-Nine as an example, and told everyone to go and read Cat’s Cradle. I’ve been telling everyone to read Cat’s Cradle for almost a decade now. Sheesh, read it already.

I thought the question period was going to be interesting. I was hoping for some super smart turns of words, and maybe a bit of action. Instead, it was all philosophy students who had theories about physics that made me cringe. Though, the first question was stated so incoherently that Susskind interrupted the questioner and stated that he “didn’t speak the language of philosophy” and then the questioner stammered “I understand science” and left, crying, I think.

Well. I guess that is all for now.

The end of my stint as a "social-leper" is at hand... or is it?

It is Sunday, so I'm in the lab happily soldering away and listening to
The Clash.

This weekend I went indoor rock climbing with some of my new Cali-friends, and I also went to a BBQ Birthday party. The rock-climbing was pretty rad, though my arms still hurt 2 days later. I'm beginning to realize that parties in Davis just spontaneously turn
into dance parties. And then turn into normal parties later. And then back into
dance parties. And everyone keeps their pants on.

I can also blather on and on and on about a fellow from LA who was telling me about how he is a "scenester" and how this involves wearing jackets, and band pins and clapping your hands at the right moment in the song. I think that everyone should be proud of me for politely nodding, and saying absolutely nothing at all.

I think that nodding and holding my tongue might be new skills I can work on while I’m here.

But other than that it was a lovely weekend.