Last night I made a favorite recipe, Israeli couscous with roasted tomato sauce. There's something about it (probably the roasted garlic/tomatoes) that pretty much immediately triggers a pleasure response that precludes all rational thought. Since it's not nice to be selfish, here is the recipe. The only change I make is to cook the couscous ( Read more... )

In a few short hours I'm off to the airport, heading to Utah for Smallsat. Here's hoping my plane doesn't prematurely leave the runway.

Also, Juno launches today, hooray! It's been a year since the JPL Planetary Science Summer School when we did an Io flyby mission study. Safe travels, Juno...

I'm always on the lookout for useful and space-efficient things, and so a few days before my trip to Vancouver I picked up a 1-liter Source Liquitainer Bottle at MEC. I figured it would be useful to be able to carry the collapsed bag in my carry-on through airport security and fill it as necessary at drinking fountains, and also to take it on any ( Read more... )

I got back from Vancouver on the red-eye this morning. There were two flights departing for Toronto within 45 minutes from each other, and the one that wasn't mine got all the small children. Score! I mean, kids are awesome ( Read more... )

Conference season is fast approaching. Next week I'll be at IGARSS (Vancouver), and of course there's Smallsat (Utah) in August. There are a lot of interesting-looking IGARSS sessions, although since it's large enough to be a multi-track conference, we'll see which talks I'll actually manage to attend. I've also never been to Vancouver before, ( Read more... )

D and I saw The King's Speech downtown last night: good movie, very nice performance by Colin Firth. We walked by 335 Yonge afterwards to observe the demolition - the entire North-facing wall (along Gould) is gone as well as much of that half of the building, exposing a great deal of damage inside. Apologies for the poor quality cell phone camera ( Read more... )

Tomorrow (November 17th) the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is holding a TSA Oversight Hearing. A commenter on Flyertalk has helpfully compiled a list of senators on the committee, with phone numbers. If you're registered to vote in Massachusetts, note that John Kerry is on the committee. For my California friends, ( Read more... )

I've finally had some time to organize my thoughts about the JPL Planetary Science Summer School (PSSS). First, mad props to to my advisor for suggesting I apply for this -- it seems mostly geared toward scientists, and I was one of four engineers there, out of 19 attendees.


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Security on flights to the US has increased a lot since the last time I flew out of Pearson. According to The Star the first full-body scanner arrived in January, and today the CATSA screeners were directing all the passengers first through the metal detectors and then through the full-body scanners. I opted for a physical pat-down instead ( Read more... )

D got back last night, and today we spent a lovely morning on the balcony with coffee, bagels and fruit while watching planes go by. I love eating outdoors when the weather is good ( Read more... )