Sarah Phillips

Memorial Day Milonga

On Memorial Day, Gary and I drove down to Norfolk to an Argentine tango milonga held every Monday night at Station 2, a really cool restaurant located on Granby Street.  I was really looking forward to this milonga, because I have not had the opportunity to dance the tango or hang out with any of the members of our tango group since Gary left for San Diego (I really have been working hard on all the stuff I need to finish to graduate!).  I have really missed dancing with Gary as well, so I was happy to have the chance to dance again!

When we arrived, we were surprised to find the restaurant completely empty except for our group of tango friends!  As it turns out, there was a mis-communication about the Monday-night milonga.  Originally, the restaurant was going to be open on the night of Memorial Day, so the milonga was going to be held as planned.  But then the plans changed, and the restaurant was going to be closed!  The message did not get through, so we didn't know.  Our friends had arrived a bit early, just before they closed, and so they graciously decided to stay open for us so that we could dance!  The restaurant owners are really cool people.  Unfortunately, the kitchen staff had already gone home, so the kitchen was closed.  But they had plenty of good wine and we brought in a couple of pizzas from a place down the street.  And then we danced the night away!

The restaurant is absolutely lovely inside.  The building was a very high-end jewelry store in the Gilded Age, and it shows in the lovely wood used for the interior, along with the glorious ceilings and staircases, all illuminated by large chandeliers.  There are even balconies, and one is over the stage area.  I have tucked in a picture of it on the right.  The bar is really cool; you can see it in the background of some of the photographs above.  The restaurant has adopted Queen Elizabeth I (that is her portrait on the sign) and the Renaissance period she ruled in as their inspiration, so the dance floor is painted with a map of the Virginia coastline that has a portrait of the Duke of Norfolk during her reign and various sea monsters swimming in the waters of the Atlantic.  You can see the floor and its sea monsters pretty well in the photographs of the dancers.  I really liked the flying fish!  There are murals on the walls depicting the Virginia marshes that have cardinals and other birds in them.  A mural is just visible at the base of the staircase in the picture on the right of the dancers.   It is a lovely place.

So, we all danced, and laughed, and ate well into the night.  I enjoyed quite a bit of fun tango!  I have really missed it since Gary has been gone.  I should not be quite so studious and get back into going regularly and enjoying the dancing more often.  I certainly enjoyed getting to see everyone again (and dancing with most of them).  The photograph on the left is of Minnie and Juan as they moved around the floor, and the one on the lower right is of Mercedes and Alan.  In the upper right-hand photograph, you can see Juan and Kathy in the background, and Gary and Mercedes in the foreground.   Gary even tried out a few new things with me that he has picked up while in San Diego.   

 

Lou offered to take some photographs of Gary and I dancing, so I have several great pictures of us dancing!  Part of the problem of being the photographer is that you are rarely in the pictures, so it is cool to actually have some pictures of Gary and I to put into this webdiary.  Thanks Lou!  :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We danced and danced.   Sadly, though, the night ended all too soon and we had to go home.  However, there is always next Monday!  :)

 

Jlab Run-A-Round 2005

This afternoon was the Jefferson Lab Run-A-Round!  This is a cool event where everyone at the lab (and their families) can register to be in one of the races and then attempt to win a medal for their physical prowess on the race course.  There are lots of race categories: ones for different age groups, people carrying kids or pushing strollers, and even a category for people who just walk the race course.  The new Jlab tee-shirt design for that year is unveiled before the race, and after the race there is a big picnic and an awards ceremony. Claire and I decided to take pictures of the cool event, so we did not register to run this year, but we ended up doing a bit of running anyway, as it turns out.  Mark ran in his age division, and even wore a really cool tee-shirt emblazoned on the back with the flag of South Africa.  The number in the photo belonged to my friend Vince, who was walking the race with a bunch of our friends.

People gathered all in front of Cebaf Center, the main building at Jefferson Lab as the time for the race approached.  The new tee-shirt design was not the one that I voted for, so I was disappointed about that.  However, I like the nice navy blue color.  I had forgotten that race participants get one free for entering the race, or maybe I would have been more motivated to enter!  :D The races are all done simultaneously; when the start signal is given, everyone starts the race, no matter what division you are in.  As you reach the finish line, your number is recorded and then matched with the division you registered for.  So, the beginning of the race has lots and lots of people starting off down the flag-flanked central road, as well as people pulling wagons and pushing strollers!

Claire and I walked after the racers for a little distance with my friend Ameya, but as we were taking photos, we suddenly realized that the fastest runners were already almost back to the finish line!  We sprinted on back to be there to take pictures of the runners as they crossed the finish line.  I even manged to get some photographs of my friends as they finished!  Here on the left is a photograph of my friend Bob reaching the finish line, as first in his division!  :)  I also managed to get a pretty good photograph of my friend Lisa at the finish line, which is the one on the right.  Lots of my friends ran in the race!

While I was taking these pictures, I managed to get a picture of Claire, who was standing on the other side taking photographs of the incoming racers, just like I was.  You can also see her in the background of the pictures of Bob and Lisa! :)

Some of the most energetic finishes were by the people who were doing the entire race carrying a kid or pushing their children in strollers (or wagons).  I took the picture of my friend Tim pushing his son in a stroller as he came down the home stretch, and the other photograph is of Mark (another Mark, not the one from South Africa!) making a stunning finish by enthusiastically pushing the stroller across the finish line in style!  :D

I got a cool photograph of one of our public affairs people, Debbie, as she neared the finish line.  She is always helping me when I need Jefferson Lab photographs located for things, such as this diary!

The walking contestants came in a few minutes later, looking significantly less out-of-breath.  :)  I took a picture of Paul triumphantly coming down the home stretch, and one of Vince and a group of our friends all finishing the course together.  Aidan and I met up with Vince as he went to get his tee-shirt, and then we all went to enjoy some food.

After the race event, the picnic started!  There was lots of food: all sorts of sandwiches, veggies, chips, ice cream, beer, and more.  It was great!  Everyone hung out and relaxed while we ate.  I took this photograph of Claire and Mark while we all were eating and hanging out.  It is so funny that while I was taking all these pictures of her, she was also taking ones of me at the Run-A-Round!  :D  There were lots of people at the picnic, so I had the chance to see lots of my friends there.  I don't know what the little girl's name is in this photograph, but I remember seeing her cross the finish line with enthusiasm!

The awards ceremony took place during the picnic.  Lisa and Mark both received medals, as did my friends Peter, Bodo, and Bob.  It was really fun to see them get their medals!  I took this photograph of the Jlab photographer, Greg, taking a picture of one of the happy medalists.  :)

Sadly, I ran out of disk space, so no more photos...  But it was a great day and a really fun event!  Congratulations to everyone!  :)

Hunger and Annoyance

After doing an entry yesterday about the cool parts of being a physicist, I am dismayed that I find myself now fussing about a bad part, which happens to often be the bad part about most careers: long meetings!! 

This meeting was about blessing the paper by the collaboration for the release of our results, which is very cool, but which also means that it will be a long and boring meeting of nitpicking of little details of language, which is all very necessary, and is not the part that I am annoyed about.  Here's the problem: because of the multitude of time zones the collaboration members live in, the meeting ends up being over lunchtime at Jefferson Lab.  This is really annoying because it is a bit too early to eat beforehand and enjoy it at all, but I end up being starved if I don't have the chance to eat something before the meeting starts.  I did not have a chance to get a snack today, and now I am famished.  A two-hour or more meeting through lunch?!!?  And to top it all off, we have another of these meetings over lunchtime on Friday as well!  There are some sacrifices that no one should be asked to make!!

Of course, it doesn't help that I am one of those people who gets hungry every three hours and now have a headache from lack of nourishment.

Let's just say that it was not the hungry people at Jefferson Lab who made the meeting keep dragging on, either.

Humph.  Rant ended.  I am going to go and find some yummy soothing chocolate to nourish my soul with now. :)

The Cool People In This Field

One of the coolest things about being in physics is all the other cool and intriguing people you work with and meet.  Yesterday I spent a few minutes chatting with my friend Michael, who has been here at Jefferson Lab for some months now and works for the University of Manitoba and TRIUMF part of the G0 collaboration as a post-doctorate.  He is originally from northern Germany, and he is about to head to his homeland for a visit, so I requested that he send me a postcard from his home town to add to my great collection of pretty postcards sent to me by my friends from all over the world.

We spent a while talking about hiking, an activity that we both very much enjoy.  I am always impressed with all the various things that the people around me do in their free time!  Anyway, the majority of his hiking has been in Europe and the western part of the United States, while my hiking has mostly been in the eastern part of the USA, mainly in New England and in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia and North Carolina.  So we traded stories on places that we have hiked through and suggestions about where the other should go on their next hike.  I plan to do some wildlife photography on one of my next hikes, so we will see how that goes.  Maybe I'll get lucky and have some cool moose photographs at the end of the summer!

This photograph of me was taken a couple of years ago when my youngest brother Stephen, his girlfriend Ashley, my then boyfriend, and I climbed up Mt. Lafayette via the Old Bridle Path and then hiked along the Franconia Ridge Trail (a part of the Appalachian Trail) in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.  I have included a map of the trails so you can trace our route.  The Appalachian Mountain Club (here's the link for the New Hampshire Chapter) maintains a lovely cabin on the trail for the hikers to stop and eat, refill their water bottles, and even spend the night.  Interestingly, the name of the cabin is the Greenleaf, which happens to also be the name of the bar in Williamsburg where the physics graduate students meet to hang out after the physics department colloquium talks on Fridays. :) It is a really nice hike, and I would recommend these trails to anyone who likes to hike.  Maybe I will tell Michael about it the next time that I see him...

Claire is Here!

I finally have had the opportunity to meet Claire!  She has arrived at Jefferson Lab to participate in the HUGS program here, along with her friend Mark.  They found me in my office attempting to format some tables in LaTeX, so I had the opportunity to chat with them for a few minutes.  It is kind of funny that we were both here at Jefferson Lab at the same time and somehow never managed to cross paths before, but now that I have met she and Mark, I am confident that we will have a great time while they are here in Virginia.  They are both really cool, and I am looking forward to hanging out with them when they are not in the HUGS lectures.  These next few weeks are going to be fun!  :)

Accepted!

Yay!  I have been accepted to attend the Gordon Research Conference on Nuclear Physics in mid-July at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine.  I will be presenting a poster there on some of my research, so I guess that this means that I actually have to hurry up and finish everything.  :) 

I have heard that this is a good conference, so it should be fun.  Everyone that I know who has gone to it has enjoyed it and feels that they got a lot out of it.  And it will be fun to be back in New England for a few days...

A Weekend With Family and Friends

This past weekend my mother and brother Matt stopped in to visit me for a few days.  I had been wondering where I could take them that they would enjoy while they were here, since at this point they have visited more places around here than I have!  My mother and I decided that my brother Matthew would really like to go to Chippokes Plantation State Park, since they have a farm museum there with lots of antique tractors on display, and my brother collects and restores antique tractors.  With that destination in mind, we set out on Saturday morning to go and enjoy the museum.

The trip to get there from Williamsburg is not long, but it requires crossing the James River.  The commonwealth of Virginia actually has a cool little ferry that takes the cars across to Surry county.  As an aside, I thought that this was the only ferry in the entire area, but apparently somewhat further upstream is the Hatton Ferry, which is one of the last two remaining poled ferries in the United States. Pretty cool!  Anyway, we drove up onto the ferry and enjoyed the little fifteen minute crossing.  I love ferries!  One of my favorite parts of the journey to Prince Edward Island, Canada during the summer when I was a little girl was the ferry trip to the island.  I took these photographs of my mother and brother as we went across.  As the ferry from one side is crossing the river, another ferry is also bringing cars from the other side.  So, when we passed each other at the middle of the river, I took a picture of it.  Behind the ferry is Jamestowne, the first permanent English settlement in America and a national historical park.  After the ferry passed by, I took another photograph of historic Jamestowne.

After we landed, we meandered through Surry county until we arrived at the Chippokes Farm Museum.  The plantation is one of the oldest working farms in the United States, as well as having lots of cool biking trails and the plantation mansion to tour through.  The farm museum has lots of antique farm equipment, as well as old blacksmithing tools and a sawmill.  It was really interesting to see how tasks like gathering wheat has changed over the centuries with inventions of  things like mechanical reapers.
That evening, I had the opportunity to spend some time with lots of my physics friends at the wedding of my friends Xiaochao and Alexandre, who both work at Jefferson Lab.  Vince and I went and enjoyed watching the happy event.  Best wishes to you both!

My family and I had the opportunity to enjoy another of Virginia's state parks located on a river on Sunday, when we went to the York River State Park.  It is a lovely park, and it also has an area on the beach where the erosion from the river exposes fossils that fall from the sandy little cliffs to the beach below.  We wandered along the beach for hours, checking out all the fossilized shells.  It was very cool!

While he was here, Matt taught me all sorts of things about the brakes on my car.  I may get to knowing all about everything on my car yet...

Unfortunately, they left all too soon to head up to New Hampshire.  I took a photograph of the motorhome along with my little car just before they left.  Dad and Mom traveled all sorts of places around North America in this motorhome, and now that my father has passed away, my brother drives my mother around in it.  I am very impressed by this.  I don't know where he learned to drive something of that size! 

I had a great weekend with my family and friends.  Hopefully I will get to go visit Mom and Matt in New Hampshire soon...

Star Wars!

YAY! :)  After the long wait, Star Wars Episode III is finally here!

Keoki and I slipped out this afternoon to go and see Revenge of the Sith.  I am an enthusiastic Star Wars fan, so I could not wait.  I was not disappointed this time!! 

This movie was so much better than the last one!  I really enjoyed it.  I even borrowed this photograph of Obi-Wan from the Star Wars website as a sign of my approval.

I have to stay here at work late now, but it is so worth it...  :)

Fame and Fortune, Here I Come!

Or at least some local limelight!  Claire and I are in the Jefferson Lab newsletter On Target this month!  There is an article on how we are part of the Quantum Diaries, and an article about me and how I got into physics.  It is kind of funny to see myself in the newsletter.  :)  Pretty cool!

Endless Writing

These last few days have really made me start to feel like the writing process is endless.  I am working on three technical reports simultaneously, in addition to my thesis (which I have been neglecting in order to finish these, which is not as bad as it sounds, since what I have written for these will pretty much go directly into my dissertation).  It should not be so bad, actually, since I am actually finished with one of them, but I am in the seemingly endless cycle of tweaking things in it.  They are all things that have to be done, like revising the label size on the y-axis on this-or-that plot so that it is more readable or making sure that I consistently use the same notation throughout the entire paper, but these little revisions eat up a lot of time very quickly.

It's okay though, just not terribly exciting.  But I will be through them all pretty soon.  And I have to admit, it makes me really happy to see all the work I have been doing compiled into a nice polished form.  It makes me feel like I have managed to accomplish something!  :)

Things will be getting more interesting soon anyway.  We are finalizing things to bless our results for release for my thesis experiment.  Yay!  :)  Claire will be arriving here for the HUGS program soon, Gary is coming out here from San Diego around that same period, and my mother and brother will be coming through to visit me as well.  So, if I can just get through all this writing....

Taunting Claire...

Claire said that she enjoyed the flowers that I posted for her (especially since she was dealing with a recalcitrant group of 21 little dots), so this weekend I took these photographs just to taunt her a bit, and make her more eager to come and enjoy the Virginia summer sunshine!

These are all photographs of the flowers that cover two rosebushes at Gary's house right now.  Aren't they lovely?  I do not know what kind of rose these two bushes are, but they are quite stunning.

I hope that you feel properly taunted now, Claire.  Let me know when you will arrive at Jlab, and if you need a ride from the airport!  :)

Green Spots

A couple of weeks ago, I found that I had some at-least-a-year-old seeds in my house from a previous attempt to have an herb garden, an attempt that did not work out so well since when I left to go home to New Hampshire it never rained once while I was gone and they all dried up.  I decided that the seeds are not doing me much good in the little packages, so I might as well give them a chance to grow.

So, I tossed them into some pots and have been watering them diligently for the last week and a half or so.  And then, this past weekend, tiny little green spots appeared in the pots!  I was pretty excited about it, since I don't really have much of a green thumb, despite all my yearnings to have a lovely garden.  In the last few days the little green spots have gotten large enough that they can be identified somewhat (I forgot to label  the pots as usual...).  In the first photograph you can see all my little basil seedlings that are destined to make lots of summery tomato dishes taste wonderful if they reach maturity despite my pathetic attempts to help them out.  And in the second photograph, you can see my little thyme seedlings just poking up through the soil.  I also planted some oregano, parsley, sage, mint, and rosemary.  We will see how they all do in the coming months.

I love seeing the plants grow and mature.  My family always had extensive vegetable and flower gardens, and I loved watching the plants grow in the summer sunshine (and stealing the yummy and succulent pea pods from my Grandmother's vegetable garden).  Someday I hope to have a rose garden and a little herb garden of my own.

I am excited and hopeful.  Maybe this is the year when I will finally be able to have a little herb garden, even if they are all in pots!  I feel particularly hopeful because the chives that I planted last year and have tended throughout the year are doing well and are blooming.  Maybe they will all be blooming in a few months...

Congratulations Stephen!

My youngest brother Stephen just graduated, with honors, from Mississippi State University (my Alma Mater) with his undergraduate degree in physics!  I am really proud and excited.  It seems hard to believe that my little brother is a college graduate now... I'd better get going and graduate before he catches up to me! :D

He is going on to graduate school in electrical engineering in the fall, at MSU.

The picture is the one on the graduation card I got him to congratulate him on his big achievement (it is a really cool Avanti card; I loved the photo of the dog).  I thought that it was appropriate!  :D

Congratulations, Stephen!  :)

Feeling Somewhat Clever

I am feeling pretty clever today because I replaced the headlight bulb with no trouble or snags or anything at all!  I had never had to replace a burned-out bulb on my car before, and although I was confident that it should be about as easy as replacing any burned-out bulb, I was almost scared that it seemed too easy somehow.  The hardest part was prying off the old bulb that had been there so long that its gasket had sealed to the mounting without messing up the alignment of my headlight.

I must have been in experimental nuclear physics too long, because I am feeling clever for having actually finished something before the time I had allotted for this task slipped by.  I even already knew the caveat about not touching the bulb since the oils on your fingers will shorten the life-span of the bulb!  I was expecting a lot of unforeseen pitfalls or something, and when it was so easily done, I was wondering what I did wrong...

But it works!  YAY!

It is funny how I feel clever for having done this bit of minor maintenance on my car without messing it up, but I do all sorts of amazing calculations, coding on my computer, and interpretation of data each day and although I get excited about it and motivated to investigate into things, I don't usually get the same "heh, I am so clever for managing to pull this off" feeling.  It is just part of my life, unless I do something particularly cool and interesting on that day.  But, then again, I have had many years of training as a nuclear physicist, and absolutely none as a car mechanic, so maybe that makes all the difference.

We'll see how well I do when I change my oil next....

Flowers for Claire

Claire told me (in the comments on one of her blogs) that she has been enjoying the flower photographs that I have posted:

And what I'm really looking forward to is seeing all these beautiful flowers around the place. You've been making me so jealous lately with your beautiful pics, while everything over here is turning brown.

So, I am going to post some more flower pictures so that she can be even more jealous, which will be especially fun since she I know that she will be here soon and be able to enjoy them in person!

This picture is of the big sign that proclaims to all who drive by it that they have located the College of William and Mary successfully.  I love all the vibrant tulips that the gardeners planted around it this spring.  I wonder what they will plant there for the summer months this year?

This photograph is of one of my neighbor's bushes just when it started to bloom.  The flowers look so delicate and dainty.  There is a cardinal that likes to perch in this bush, which always looks really cool since his bright scarlet feathers contrast so well with the snowy white blossoms.

These two photographs are of some lovely trees at Jefferson Lab that just finished blooming.  I think that they are a type of ornamental cherry, but whatever they are, they are lovely.

Right now, all the azaleas are blooming in Williamsburg.  This photograph is of an amazingly bright magenta azalea blooming at Gary's house.  The color is so strong it almost sizzles in the sunlight.  He has several azalea bushes of a bunch of different colors around his yard.  I trimmed off some of the branches of a red azalea to make myself a bouquet for my home.  You can see it on my piano in the picture, along with my very cool Wittner kitty metronome!

Earlier in the spring, I also had the chance to photograph some of his vividly purple grape hyacinths.

I think that I will close this flower-filled entry dedicated to Claire with a series of pictures of the violets that grow in and around my own yard.  Both the purple kind and the white ones grow in the shade under the trees around my home.  The violets always make me think of spring, and their scent is so soft and sweet.

Well Claire, I hope that you have enjoyed the photographs and are now ready to come see all the flowers that are blooming in Virginia! 

Statues at William and Mary

I feel like I need some pretty photographs today, so I will post some pictures that I took a few weeks ago of a set of statues at William and Mary.  I have always liked these statues of a student couple studying under the trees, surrounded by books (and the girl is holding a letter, even).  The statues are just past the sunken garden, tucked on the edge of the woods.  I took these photos just before all the leaves starting coming out on all the trees on campus, but in the summertime the area around these statues is very cool and shady, just perfect for picnics.  When I was studying for my physics qualifying exam, I would often come and study in the quiet shade in this spot.  Maybe this summer I will have the opportunity to have a picnic there again!

Hockey!

Yesterday I had the opportunity to do something that I love to do: play hockey with a bunch of friends.  Things don't really get much better than running around like a crazy person carrying a long stick on a rink with a bunch of other crazy people with sticks.  :D  I had not gotten to play since we finished our season months ago, and I have missed it.  I was really excited about playing again, not just because I love it, but also because I have been feeling rather stagnant since I have been so busy that I have been stuck in front of my computer writing and coding all the time lately.  I was more than ready to be outside running around!

The hockey that I am playing here is called floor hockey (since winter sports involving ice are not as common here in Virginia).  We play in a rink complete with boards and netting to protect the spectators, but the floor is made of asphalt instead of ice, and we run around instead of skating.  We use a certain type of hard orange ball that is made for the game instead of a puck.  Incidentally, when you get hit with one of those balls, it really hurts and leaves an odd, ring-shaped bruise.

The first year that I was in graduate school, the physics graduate students formed a recreational co-ed intramural floor hockey team.  The team is mostly physics graduate students, although we have had some of the physics undergrads and some other friends from outside the department play with us as well.  When we first started out, we were not so good at it.  Only one person on the team had ever played floor hockey before!  However, Josh is an absolutely amazing player and an excellent teacher, so before long we were all catching on.  The team has gotten steadily better over the years, and one year we even won the championship in our league.  We have all had a great time playing. 

Yesterday, Josh and Keoki were teaching me how to improve my wrist shots.  I practiced this for a while, since I am not consistently good at doing them.  Then we practiced some passing, and then had fun just playing.

Of course, today I have a big bruise on my forearm to prove that I was playing hockey yesterday.  I am not even sure how exactly I got it during our hockey practice, but since I bruise pretty easily, who knows?  During the playoffs, I always seem to have a variety of ring-shaped bruises, but it is well worth it!

Hopefully we will be able to keep practicing throughout the summer so I can play more often.

Einstein and His Violin

Last night Vipuli and I attended a concert honoring the World Year of Physics entitled "Einstein and His Violin".  The concert, sponsored by Jefferson Lab and Hampton University, was held at the Ferguson Center for the Arts at Christopher Newport University, and it featured Jack Liebeck as the violinist and Inon Barnatan as the pianist in the performance of four works for violin and piano.

I had never been to Christopher Newport University before, but happily it is very easy to get to from the lab, and Vipuli already knew where it was, so we had no trouble finding our way there.  The Ferguson Center has a really cool series of arches on the front side of the building that interested me, so Vipuli took some pictures of me there.

The entrance hall is also really cool, with a polished marble floor and lots of glass and open space.  The entrance lobby also had a bronze statute of an eagle protecting her young fledglings under her wings that was hidden beneath the staircase.  I chatted with the other Jefferson Lab people who were there in the lobby waiting on others for a while, and then Vipuli and I went to be seated.

The concert started off with an introduction by Dr. Brian Foster, a particle physicist at Oxford University and a violinist.  He spoke about Einstein's love of music and joy he felt when playing his violin.  He also talked about the four works to be played that night, and their connection to Einstein and his opinions about music.  Then the music began! 

Jack and Inon were wonderful.  They played Mozart's Sonata in G major, K301, the Sonata in G major, Op. 78 by Brahms (a piece that Einstein played while at school in Arrau), Nigun from Baal Shem by Bloch, and the Sonata No. 2 in D major, Op. 94a by Prokofiev.  I was enchanted with listening to them.  They were fabulous!  I loved watching how quickly Jack's fingers moved.  I figure that my greatest accomplishment from my violin-playing days was the ability to finally be able to play a few pieces without my mother cringing!  Okay, so I was not really that bad, but I still don't really like the song "Go Tell Aunt Rhody" that much, after having to play it so much early on in my violin lessons.  And, I will always think of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" as having been my first violin song.  :)  I did not take any photographs during the performance, of course, but I got this one off of Jack Liebeck's website.

Watching Inon has inspired me to be more consistent in my piano playing.  I admit that I have not practiced as consistently since my experiment started running and I got out of the habit of practicing every day.  I have resolved to do better!  Besides, music has always been such a large part of my life, and I have missed my daily practice time.

Vipuli and I had a great time.  The music was great!  As we left the Ferguson Center, I paused and took a couple of pictures of the arches that were illuminated by the lights.  I am sure that Einstein would have enjoyed the evening as much as I did.

The King and Queen Ball

Since I don't want my only post of the day to be about the fire, I think that I will post some photographs from an event that Vince and I went to a couple of weeks ago: the King and Queen Ball at William and Mary.  I had meant to post these immediately, but then I got distracted with the pizza seminar that I gave at Jlab.  So I will just post the pictures now!

The King and Queen Ball is an annual event at the College.  All of the students are invited to the dance, and it is usually held in a huge tent located on the Sunken Garden.  However, this year the recent rains had made the ground too soft and mushy, so the dance was relocated to William and Mary Hall.  However, the traditional tents were still in attendance, as all of the food was arranged underneath pavilions glowing with twinkling Christmas lights.  They had some really yummy black forest bars that I found irresistible!

This ball is one of the biggest social events of the year, so there were lots and lots of people there.  Vince and I danced and had a fun time.  The music was extremely loud, though, so loud that I began to get a headache after a few hours, so Vince and I decided to skip President Sullivan's toast scheduled for later in the evening in favor of wandering around campus.  We walked around the historical sections of campus for a while and enjoyed the evening while we decided how we wanted to finish off the night.  We even went and visited the Sunken Garden, since the ball is usually held there.

After a while, we wandered on over to my house to play video games on my PlayStation 2.   After we arrived at my house, I had Vince take a couple of pictures of me so I could post them here.  In the first one you can see my china cabinet with the teapot from one of my sets of dishes on it (Old Country Roses by Royal Albert).  In the second one, you can see me standing in front of my piano.  The postcard that is just visible behind me is of cherry trees blooming in Japan near to a castle (Osaka castle, I think) and was sent to me by my friend Itaru went he was visiting his home in Japan.

Then it was time for the video games!  We played SSX Tricky, a snowboarding game, and we had a great time.  I learned a great truth that evening, though: good video game screen shots are a two-person activity.  After Vince had left and gone home, I realized that I had been having such fun playing the game, that I had forgotten to take a photograph of us playing it for this post.  No problem, I thought.  I'll just take a screen shot while I am playing the game...  Well, that is easily said, and not so easily done.  I discovered that it is really difficult to keep your character from crashing into trees and boulders with one hand while attempting to focus a camera and compose a photograph with the other hand.  I somehow mostly got pictures of my other hand or the edge of the television screen...  I gave up on that pretty quickly, and switched to attempting to prevent my character (whose name is Kaori in this case, and yes, it is a panda bear on her back) from wrecking by steering the controller with my feet while I attempted to take a photograph with my hands.  I apparently have very little talent for playing video games with my feet, and so I got some photos of Kaori skidding into boulders and all sorts of painful-looking wrecks.  I gave up on that tactic and tried a new one.  I would guide Kaori to a very high cliff, have her do a jump off of the cliff, and then I would frantically try to take a photograph in the seconds that she plummeted to the icy earth below.  That is how I managed to get the only good photograph, the one with the "51 mph" in the corner.  Clearly, if you want to see some good screen shots of the game, you'll have to go to one of the SSX Tricky game websites, since the pros obviously have some other much better way of doing this!  They have a whole section of screen shots.  I borrowed one, so that there would be a decent one here.

It was a fun night!  One of these days I might get good at virtual snowboarding...

Fire at W&M

Yesterday afternoon, a horrible fire broke out in one of the residence halls at William and Mary.  The fire severely damaged that dormitory, named Preston Hall, and significantly damaged another hall called Giles.  Giles and Preston halls each have seventy-two students who live there, and all the students got out safely.  However, they are all homeless for the time being.  Last night the students were housed at the Governor's Inn, a hotel owned by Colonial Williamsburg, who immediately offered assistance when they learned of the fire at William and Mary.  I borrowed this photograph of the scene from the William and Mary website, and you can see all the smoke rising from the buildings.  Through the efforts of the firefighters, Giles was saved (although damaged), and Preston was kept from being complete destroyed.

I have always found the idea of a fire like this particularly scary.  So much is lost in such a short amount of time...  Yet, it always inspiring to see how people stick together and help one another out in times like this.  Fire departments from the City of Williamsburg, Newport News, James City and York Counties, Camp Peary, and the Naval Weapons Station came to help battle the blaze, assisted by the Virginia State Police, the Colonial Williamsburg Security, and the William and Mary Police.  In addition to the help from Colonial Williamsburg, community agencies and businesses came to the scene to help, as well as the faculty and staff of the College.  People have been donating supplies to help the displaced students, and doing all they can to support them in their time of need.   It is good to be part of such a community, even though it is awful when such things happen.

Congratulations Paul and Julie!

Saturday was a very special day.  On Saturday, two of my friends and colleagues at the lab pledged their lives to one another in a beautiful ceremony here in Newport News.  Paul and Julie are both collaborators on my thesis experiment, G0, and both work at Jlab.  In fact, Julie is my officemate and my analysis coordinator, as well as my friend!  She and Paul are both wonderful people, so I was looking forward to sharing their happiness with them on this day.

The ceremony was lovely.  The hall that the wedding was held in has lots of windows that look out into the groves of trees all around the building, so it was a wonderfully romantic setting in which to have the wedding.  Julie looked radiant as she came down the aisle.  It was wonderful to see she and Paul so happy as they said their vows to each other.  Lydia, who is the daughter of one of my friends in the physics department at William and Mary, played all the music for the wedding beautifully on her viola.  I took this photograph of her while she played before the ceremony started.

After the ceremony, everyone thronged around the happy bride and groom to offer them their congratulations.  In this photograph on the left, you can see lots of friends and family members, including  some physicists from Jefferson Lab, with the couple.  You can also see the laced-up back of Julie's lovely dress really well in this photograph.   Vipuli and I also had a chance to give our best wishes to Paul and Julie, and Vipuli took a picture of me with my very happy friends!

Since both the bride and the groom both have ties with Jlab and William and Mary, there were lots of my friends from both places there.  In this photo, you can see Dan and Liz, Kathy, and Vince.  Kathy worked at Jlab, and Dan and Vince are both William and Mary graduate students who worked at Jlab on their thesis experiments.  Liz, who is Dan's girlfriend, isn't a physicist (she is pursuing a Masters in social work), but she has had to tolerate all of us for so many years that I wonder if we  were her inspiration for going into social work! :D

Julie is a very gracious hostess, so she and Paul took some moments to visit with everyone at the reception and address the assembled guests as a whole.  In the first picture, you can see he conversing with Lisa, who is a graduate student in Hall A at Jlab.  Paul is talking to Fatiha, who is a G0 post-doctorate.

Of course there were toasts during the reception!  The groom's men each did a toast to the newlyweds.  I took a picture of Dan giving his toast (which was great, despite the fact that he announced that he had not prepared anything for it) and a picture of Julie and Paul enjoying it.

During the reception, there was a lovely surprise for Paul and Julie.  Several of their friends and family members had compiled together lots of photographs of the them throughout their lives into a fabulous slide show.  The photos were great!  Joe narrated in English, and then Maud (Julie's bridesmaid) would repeat the narration in French, which gave the show a nice flow.  The slide show was humorous and touching at the same time, and everyone enjoyed it immensely.  I took this photograph of Maud while she was talking about the slide show.

The bride and groom had their first dance together as a married couple, which I took some photographs of, and then we all joined them on the dance floor!  You can really see how much Julie and Paul are enjoying themselves in these photographs.  I know that I great time dancing!  Jianglai had come down from University of Maryland to attend the wedding, and he and I danced the night away like crazy people, along with Vince, Lisa, and all of our other friends!  It was really fun to have the opportunity to hang out with Jianglai again, since I don't get to see him very often now that he is back at University of Maryland.  We had a great time chatting and dancing.  I did not get any photographs of me dancing around with him.  That's the problem with being the photographer; you rarely get any photographs of yourself!

Toward the end of the evening, Paul and Julie cut the wedding cake, which had chess pieces on it!  The cake with its lemon-kissed frosting was really yummy.

It was a beautiful day.  I will close with another photograph of them during one of their dances.  I only hope that some day I will have as happy a wedding day!

Congratulations and best wishes to you both, Paul and Julie!  :)

W&M Physics Department Porch Party

On Friday afternoon at 5:00pm, there was a porch party at the physics department at William and Mary.  The porch parties that we have here are department social events organized by the Physics Grad Student Association.  All the physics faculty, staff, graduate students, and their family and friends are invited.  We actually have a really nice porch on the second floor of the building (actually, it is more of a large balcony) to have these parties!

Of course, what would a party be without lots of food?  In that spirit, all sorts of grilled foods and picnic foods were served up: hamburgers and veggie burgers, hot dogs, chips, corn-on-the-cob, all the usual suspects.  And of course, various sodas, beer and water.  I even managed to capture a couple of photos of our intrepid bartenders for the day: David and Pete.  They were kept pretty busy throughout the party! :)

I find the picture of David and Pete particularly funny since David is holding a beer and he does not actually drink beer!  :D

There was quite a crowd there at the party.  I arrived a little bit late (around 30 minutes) since I was delayed in leaving Jefferson Lab, and when I arrived, I am surprised at how full the porch was!  The porch parties are an important gathering place where the new students in the department can meet and hang out with the more advanced graduate students and the faculty.  For the graduate students that are generally at Jefferson Lab (like me), these parties are the perfect opportunity to catch up with friends at the College.  Here on the left is a photograph of my friends Hailong and Keoki, both of whom I usually only get to see at gatherings like this one since they work in the physics building while I am always at Jlab.  However, I also got to hang out with a bunch of my friends who also work at Jlab!  In the photo on the right, you can see Vince, Bryan, and Herry all hanging out.  Bryan is looking at me a bit suspiciously though...  In the picture on the bottom left, Herry, Vince, and Cornel (who works at Jlab too) are hanging out.  On the bottom left, Klaus, Erin (who is eating the corn) and Sabine (whose red hair is just visible) and listening to Mike, one of the professors in the department (in the nuclear group even).

 

These parties also give the professors a chance to hang out!  I captured this moment of Todd eating a hamburger with his children around him.  Todd is also one of the professors in my group at William and Mary.  I'll have to send him a copy of this photograph!  I also took a photograph of Dr. Perdrisat and Dr. Eckhause having a good time.

The kids all seemed to be having a marvelously good time as well!

And finally, a picture of the photographer, taken by Vince.

It was really fun to have the opportunity to hang out with my friends.  After the porch party concluded, several of us went out to an Italian cafe, where we laughed and talked well into the evening.  It was a really nice way to start off the weekend!