Me: :-{)} <---- haha beard

Livia: :-) <-- no beard, so much hotter

Me: :-{)}}}}

Livia: Hm... this one's a spirited one. Don't worry, we'll break him yet...
:-{)}}}} + beating x 100 ----> 0:-)

Me:
  O                            O
-----                        -----
  |    + beating x 100 ---->   |
 / \                          / \/\
/   \                         \
  ^            ^               ^
  |            |               |
healthy    some army         broken
legs       presumably      non-dancing
            involved          legs


At which point she backed off.

Oh yeah, I guess I should have told you that I agreed to take a few lessons in um, swing dancing. During the month of January. And perhaps that there’s someone now who can actually get me to do things like that. ‘Cause I kinda like her.

(Sick!)

For the curious, we met about a year ago through the Graduate Christian Fellowship here at MIT (we’re both grad students there), and started dating this past summer, about the same time I quit posting on this here web-blog.

And to Rachel and Mom, no, there is no making out; that is against the rules. And yes, she now likes the beard (HA!).

State 1:

• Go in late, come home early. Take days off.
• Twiddle around at work, reading news sites or blogs.
• Uninterested in astronomy.
• Hang out with people on weekends.
• Really slow progress on research.

State 2:

• Go in somewhat earlier, stay late. Go in on Saturdays.
• Fairly productive at work.
• Interested in my research.
• Withdraw from social activities.
• Lots of productivity.

I don’t like either of these extremes. I don’t want to spend all of my time working, to the detriment of socialization. On the other hand, it is not cool to be a State 1 slacker either. I have been in State 1 for several weeks now, and I think my collaborators are going to start wondering soon why I’m not contributing very much. I need to strike a balance.

Um, this doesn’t mean y’all should stop trying to distract me from work. I would take that personally. :)

We had two performances, both in the Cathedral of Lausanne. It was my first time singing in a cathedral — in fact, one of the few times I’ve gotten to sing in a venue with really nice acoustics (ok, Dabney Lounge at Caltech was pretty good).

When we weren’t performing or rehearsing, we played tourist. I toured Lausanne, Montreux (which has a nice 12th-century château), Evian, and Geneva. Yussanne came out from London to visit! Here are pictures.

It was cool to actually have time to hang out and socialize with kids in the choir. Some of them are pretty cool. Even though we spend 5 hours a week together, we spend most of it singing and there isn’t much time to get to know people, especially outside your section. Plus, I’m usually hungry and grumpy from a long work day. :)

Oh, and I gave an astronomy talk too. When my advisor heard that I was going to Switzerland, he set me up with some of his buddies at the Observatory of Geneva, and I presented a little talk about our current research. It went pretty well, I thought.

I’ll be trying again in about six months. Hopefully I will not be so stressed out the next time around.

I don’t really know what’s up with the Victoria’s secret bag. But the stuff inside it was pretty awesome. Chocolate, coffee, Jelly Bellies (yessss), rum (”Break open in case of emergency”), and more. Oh, and some really nice flowers. We didn’t have a vase, so I put them in the bottom part of Ali’s hookah.

I have been totally stressing out about this exam, even though I know I shouldn’t. I was feeling stressed and tired and kind of isolated when I got this, and it totally made my day. Still tired and stressed, but it’s nice to see that people still care for me, even though I’ve been neglecting them.

P.S. The exam is on Tuesday, from 2 to 4, if you feel like putting in a good word with the Man Upstairs.

What? Only me?

Here’s how bad I am at posting on my blog: we have submitted another paper to the Journal since then.

Both these papers concern quadruple quasars. They’re not actual groupings of quasars in the sky; each is a single quasar whose light is bent by the gravitational field of a foreground galaxy in its line of sight. This lensing effect causes the four images. These two papers report that the ratios of the brightnesses of the four images are different at optical wavelengths than in X-rays, which signifies that there’s something complicated going on. We draw some conclusions about dark matter and the structure of quasars. It’s fun stuff. You should check out the papers; if nothing else, they have some pretty cool pictures.

You might have noticed the new picture up on top. I took that a while ago from a construction site in the North End. Here’s the full image.

I kind of like the contrast between the desolate foreground and the bustling city lights. Of course, when I take cool pictures, it is totally not on purpose. :)

In other news, I upgraded the software, so things look a little nicer, etc. Peace out!

“Thankee!”
“You’re welcome, Kinky.”