Successful defense of PhD thesis, my committee even had a bunch of useful comments and generally nice things to say.  Biggest stress surrounding it concerned the chair connecting remotely from Oxford who had trouble with the video link, and another committee member who completely forgot, and who we called at home to remind him of where he was ( Read more... )

Seeing as how the news is filtering out other ways already, figured I should post to say: Yay! I'll be taking a Hubble postdoctoral fellowship to UCLA in the Fall, which is particularly exciting as it comes with a lot of autonomy and my own research budget to work on... whatever I want to do. Staying local also means that we don't have to start ( Read more... )

Just realized how very settled into southern CA I've become.  Took a break at lunch to walk over to some of the local shops, and it didn't strike me as weird anymore how the palm trees are wrapped in lights or the carols are playing while it's sunny and 80 degrees.  I remember that felt so bizarre back in my first year.

Just submitted the first of an armada of postdoc applications, this one for an NSF Fellowship to take to UC Santa Cruz.  Icky one to start with, given it's pretty long, needs a comprehensive educational outreach plan, and has a ton of additional forms to fill out.  Bureaucracy and forms from a government fellowship, who would have guessed ( Read more... )

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A heads-up for anyone on my F-list who's a fan of Robert Jordan...  I wonder how finished the last book in the Wheel of Time series is.

I might be bored with
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Snagged by
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Perhaps I'm behind the times, but I just found out that Loreena McKennitt is on tour for a new album.  Looks like most places in the US will be getting a visit between mid-April and mid-May.

On an unrelated topic, Red Bull tastes absolutely horrid.

They don't mix.  At least, not when both wielded by Sarah at the same time.

Yesterday she accidentally tipped the entire contents of a fresh cup of sugary tea into her USB keyboard (fortunately a detachable and not the laptop itself).  We rapidly yanked the power, popped all the key caps off, and dissected the keyboard so we could mop all of the tea ( Read more... )