Friday night Mullings
Two weekends from now is the opening of the Stephen Hawking Centre at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (at right; click for more flickr stream). It will soon house three times as many smart people attempting to turn coffee into theorems which might in 30 years escape into a different form as (currently) indistinguishable from magic. That same weekend may see Stephen Hawking at the public opening, though if I were he, I would find something better to do that weekend.
I, however, am not he, and I am taking a tour. You could also if you're free Sunday the 18th; let me know if you sign up for something around the 3pm slot and we can meet up.
They are also hosting two free public talks on the evening of Saturday the 17th (which I'm waffling on; but there are still apparently tickets still available for both as well.)
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I have a fairly unplanned Labour Day Weekend, which means it is going to go by in a flash. I'm going to do some cooking, play some games with friendly peeps, go to a potluck, and possibly go for a long bike-ride on Monday if it isn't storming.
Dan is away until next Thursday; he is currently in Luxembourg, which my father tells me officially speaks Luxembourgish (and Wikipedia backs him up).
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This evening I talked to my folks. They recently had a distant cousin visit from out west. She brings news of the History of the Allens. Apparently, my relatives who settled in Watertown, NY in the mid-1800s came there via Medford, MA, where they lived since the late 1700s, when they emigrated from England (not Scotland, as my father had believed). In the early 1800s the Medford Allens founded a Unitarian church, which subsequently schismed into a competing Unitarian church just across the street. And there is an Allen Homestead in Medford, which this distant cousin had visited. And that's all the detail I got this evening. I hope to extract more from my folks, as it sounds like there's potential for some juicy stories, or at least some amusing coincidences given that I was, y'know, living in Medford for a year. (A year which ended exactly 10 years ago last Monday! Hey, we've lived here for 10 years now. I can barely believe that!)