Minnesota Trek: The Undiscovered Storm
I'm packing up to go home now. The end of the semester is officially done. I thought I was done, but then found out that I had a student who needed to make up his exam. We took care of that yesterday, so now all grades and papers have been handed to the proper authorities.
I'm sick again. It's the same thing as mid-semester: asthma and allergies going into overdrive. Unfortunately, this time, things took an interesting twist. I ended up with conjunctivitis in both my eyes. Normally I would take this to mean, "Stay home and rest." However, my advisor had a researcher visiting from Japan to talk with us about my project. (They were discussing other things, too, but this was a non-trivial part of the reason for his visit.) I wasn't sure what to do, but he was only here for 2 days, so I basically went in and met with them. I did not shake his hand when I met him, but explained I'd not been feeling well and didn't want to get him ill. We talked about ideas for my project. I have some things I'll be trying to work on over the next few weeks. It was fun to talk about different ideas and approaches to this type of research. And even though I have a lot of stuff to learn, it has become very apparent to me that a degree in physics along with a healthy dose of applied math are definitely good starting points for what I'm doing.
Unfortunately, the poor fellow didn't know how cold it was up here (well, by Japanese standards...by our standards, it was reasonably warm). We met again yesterday for dinner, and I had offered to take him to the light rail. Instead, I took him directly to the airport because I couldn't stand the thought of him waiting in the cold for the train. The last thing we want is for someone who is visiting to get hypothermia.
So today I'm heading home. Hopefully I will get there before the bad snow kicks in. It looks like we'll be getting up to 15 inches in Fargo, and Minneapolis may end up with an excess of 20. I have a lot of things I plan to do over break (probably too much), but the top of my list now reads, "Sledding." Hopefully it will be on a sled rather than in my car.
I'm sick again. It's the same thing as mid-semester: asthma and allergies going into overdrive. Unfortunately, this time, things took an interesting twist. I ended up with conjunctivitis in both my eyes. Normally I would take this to mean, "Stay home and rest." However, my advisor had a researcher visiting from Japan to talk with us about my project. (They were discussing other things, too, but this was a non-trivial part of the reason for his visit.) I wasn't sure what to do, but he was only here for 2 days, so I basically went in and met with them. I did not shake his hand when I met him, but explained I'd not been feeling well and didn't want to get him ill. We talked about ideas for my project. I have some things I'll be trying to work on over the next few weeks. It was fun to talk about different ideas and approaches to this type of research. And even though I have a lot of stuff to learn, it has become very apparent to me that a degree in physics along with a healthy dose of applied math are definitely good starting points for what I'm doing.
Unfortunately, the poor fellow didn't know how cold it was up here (well, by Japanese standards...by our standards, it was reasonably warm). We met again yesterday for dinner, and I had offered to take him to the light rail. Instead, I took him directly to the airport because I couldn't stand the thought of him waiting in the cold for the train. The last thing we want is for someone who is visiting to get hypothermia.
So today I'm heading home. Hopefully I will get there before the bad snow kicks in. It looks like we'll be getting up to 15 inches in Fargo, and Minneapolis may end up with an excess of 20. I have a lot of things I plan to do over break (probably too much), but the top of my list now reads, "Sledding." Hopefully it will be on a sled rather than in my car.