December Exploits of those Wacky Epsilons
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December Exploits of those Wacky Epsilons
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Maxwell quote of the day:
Here are some thumbnails of our spectacular Christmas at Dell's (click to see them full-size) :
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Next year we'll do 'em all this way...
| This morning Maxwell was irritated with me when I got him up at around 10:30 (boy can he sleep!), so he told me leave because he was going to get himself dressed. Being that I have never seen him successfully don shirt or pants much less both I was quite surprised when I returned a few minutes later to find him dressed an struggling with the velcro on his shoes. When I remarked that he hadn't put socks on he declared that he did not want to wear them. Since he was the one in charge of dressing I could do little but agree. |
| Spending Christmas with 23 familymembers at the Elias's in Tahoe has been a whirlwind experience. Bob taught Amir & I sportsbetting and craps at the Hyatt. Packie finished off a sixpack of O'Doul's in one evening, being unable to drink the real stuph because of the bloodthinners he's taking for the clot in his leg. Santa Claus, an ordained monk who lives in incline and has legally changed his name, came and gave us all presents from Dell. Ken read an instruction booklet, took $195 profit from the craps table, and then we took a shot of tequila. Kristen & Julie have watched all 12 hours of the extended version of the Lord of the Rings. Alora & Brittan learned to ski. And Dell has fixed us dinner, every single night. |
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Now that we've recouped here in Tahoe for a few days I think it's time to tell the tale of our journey hence. Pictures, as they say, are worth a thousand words - ergo I shall make judicious use of them . . .
We drove through the afternoon on I-85 to I-65 to I-10. We planned to do most of our journey on I-10 to avoid the snowstorm happening further north. Having never done most of this route there were many new things to see along the way. Our first stop was in the evening in New Orleans - still a ghost town since Katrina hit last summer. It speaks well for our species that so many have chosen to abandon such a poorly positioned and poorly maintained city. We drove down Canal St., which has been given an unconvincing facade of reconstruction. It seems that only the sketchy people have remained and it is on the two police cars on every street corner that keep them from assaulting the few tourists who come out of sheer morbid curiosity like ourselves. We decided not to stop for souvenirs and got back on the highway to drive overnight into Texas.
 Cara at the Alamo. All the women at the Alamo were spared by Santa Ana and his men, and the tales they spread of the heroic defense of that mission inspired thousands to join the revolt against that Mexican despot that eventually led to Texas's independence.
 Downtown Fredricksburg, in the heart of Germanic Texas. We stopped for winetasting and lunch. Texas wines are diverse and some surprisingly well made. Texans have also developed a unique Pepperwurst which includes jalapeños which we enjoyed for lunch.
 South of Flagstaff we encountered our first snow of the trip which yours truly could not resist stopping to play in.
 Zara learns to walk in the snow with dad. Believe it or not, I am sweating from the hot Arizona sunshine.
 Alora & Brittan enjoy climbing the fake ruins near the watchtower on the Canyon's south rim.
 Brittan enjoys the view down from inside the watchtower.
 The four girls are waving in the lower righthand corner of this shot I took from the top of the watchtower.
 Driving over the mountains toward Tahoe on US 50. We arrived in Tahoe on Friday morning just in time to enjoy one of Dell's fabulous pancake breakfasts. We were all tired and glad to finally be there. Nevertheless, we were so happy to see everyone that we didn't collapse until the evening. And then we slept hard! A word of advice: If you ever have to drive across the country, do it in 2 days or do it in 7. Three or four days of constant overnight driving after playing all day is tough. |
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19 December 2006
On the road again . . . Today we end our silly adventures in Alpharetta and head back westward. There is a snowstorm planning to hit I-40 later in the week, but we have chosen to take the more southerly route along I-10 - seeing the sights and safe from the snow. As a parting gift half of us seemed to have picked up a cold, which should add to the fun of the drive. Zara really loves dogs. Alot. Especially feeding them, which makes the love quite mutual even though we often have to remind Zara to be gentle with Maggie and Lucy. She has also discovered how much fun it is to blow one's nose with a tissue or 12. Needless to say, Nanny has moved her kleenex boxes to higher locations. Nothing beats pulling a couple empty boxes out of the recycling and using them to slide along the kitchen floor though. |
 Maxwell, Alora, Zara and Brittan get silly at Nanny & Poppy's. |
| We've been visiting Packie alot at the hospital these past few days, and today he is finally getting released. The blood clots haven't been 100% absorbed yet so he still has to be very careful, but his coumarin levels have gotten high enough to make clot bits dislodging quite improbable. Coumarin is an anticoagulant medicine which works by inhibiting vitamin K metabolism, but is itself rather quickly metabolized by the body. This is why a long hospital stay is required to build up the body's coumarin level to a theraputic level which can then be maintained via medication. |
| We saw many old friends at Scott & Meredith's Wedding, but we probably spent the most time talking to Tim, who loves playing with the kiddoes. Tim used to run track with Cara and I back at Chattahoochee, so I told him about my plan to run the Brasstown Bald Buster. Turns out, Tim had run the race before because he thought he could beat the record 24 min time for this 5K (a distance where records are usually more like 15 mins). Brasstown Bald is at 4,784 ft the tallest point in Georgia and the Buster is a run straight up it - "a little 'ol 5K with just one hill". Needless to say, Tim was not able to better the record, hated the race, and said I was crazy for trying to run it. Tim was right - the road we ran up Brasstown Bald was steep and at no point along it downhill. I have been training on a stationary bike instead of running while my knee heals, but even that was not enough for this race. When after 15 minutes I had not yet reached the first mile marker, I realized that I would have to consider a time less than an hour rather than between 30 and 40 minutes as realistic for this race. I decided that since the slow jogging was killing my calves, I would switch to a modified Sherpa method of hill-climbing. Sherpas who carry huge loads on their backs up the Himilayan mountains maximize their efficiency in terms of speed and blood oxygenation by taking a few steps and then resting for a second or two. I modifed this to run 20 yards or so and then walk slowly for a few steps. Even though I finished the first mile in over twenty minutes I still finished the race in 58:51 by using this Sherpalike method. |
We got all dressed up for the occasion too.
Tim and I express our pleasure at Scott's nuptials.
Scott & Meredith took a limo from the wedding; ergo no car to decorate ...
... and some people claim I have no artistic side.
| When I was in High School and we read A Seperate Peace in English class, I thought the whole story was rather unbelievable. The kid breaks his leg and then dies from a blot clot in the leg that moves to his heart. Pretty ridiculous right? Tonight, however, my brother is at the hospital with a large blood clot in the ankle he broke a few weeks ago wrestling with his friend Rob. Mom & Dad are going to visit him but we are going to Scott's wedding rehearsal. |
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Driving across the country has become rather old hat to us. The past few days we found ourselves driving from Sunnyvale to Alpharetta to attend the wedding of an old friend of ours, Scott Vasey. He's marrying that cute girl we met for the first time last December, Meredith. They are both teachers at the middle school where they met here in Alpharetta. We left Sunnyvale on Monday afternoon after the girls' band evaluations (both went well), and drove through the night. A snowstorm had hit northern Arizona and New Mexico the night before so the roadside on much of I-40 was snowcovered, a rare sight in the desert. We took a break in Albuquerque to spend Tuesday doing a little exploring, ostensibly to do some winetasting. The second vineyard we stopped at, Ponderosa, was started and run by a GA Tech grad (EE '63) so we got to talking ... the guy makes ~25 different wines and has followed much the same trajectory I have set for myself: taking classes at UC Davis, starting small, etc. No doubt he will make a great resource further down the road.
Following in the tradition of Bugs Bunny we made a wrong turn at Alburquerque and got a bit lost - eventually stumbling upon an old volcano. The picture above is ~1/3rd of a deposit made by a hot spring we found along the road. Unfortunately it was the only picture our camera deigned to take that afternoon. This soda dam included some salt deposits which we noticed from the deer tracks which led to scratched out portions. We unsuccessfully tasted several parts of the dam before Brittan figured out which parts were salt. Next we found our way into the Valles Caldera, where there was quite a bit of snow and roads I would not choose to travel on again. In Los Alamos we met a man who has been there since 1944 and was involved in the Manhattan project as a nulcear chemist. He worked at LANL for a long time thereafter, but now makes wine. Surprisingly for a chemist he uses CO2 rather that Argon or Nitrogen to protect his wines from oxidation which leads them to be a bit acidy. Leaving Los Alamos we drove the next 20 hours straight to Alpharetta in order to make it to the annual Quinta de Noval port tasting at Hinton's Wine Store where Dad is a member. We went 3 or 4 years ago too, when I was just becoming interested in wine and it was interesting to see how much my knowledge has progressed - this time I was able to correct the guy from Noval when he conflated Muscat (a Vitis vinifera varietal) and Muscadine (a Vitis labrusca varietal). Tonight all of our Alpharetta family got together at my parents (where we are staying) for a lasagna dinner. It was a happy surprise when Scott joined us and we caught up on his recent adventures and the travails of wedding planning. Soon he stole off to the basement to play with Alora and Brittan however, and the three fell quickly back into the imaginary games they have played since the girls were Zara size. Cara also got some birthday presents, having turned 27, one of which was a new digital camera - watch her blog in the near future to see these loverly pixtures . . . |
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Last night Alora & Brittan played in the Cherry Chase Christmas Band Concert and I have posted the cacaphonious performance on YouTube. They are to the right, third row back, but nearly impossible to pick out in the grainy video of our sometimes working/sometimes not camera. Nevertheless, the sound quality is almost just like you're there...
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| I am quite glad to say that my work with the LST Installation is basically finished. As Maxwell would say, Woo-hoo! Below is the EPICS panel display of my main contribution, temperature and humidity sensors to monitor the environment around the LST modules: |
Also here is the first cosmic muon in the new LSTs:
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Zara has in the past week or so has really started talking alot more. "pease" coupled to a pointing finger yielded such positive results she has undergone the usual toddler explosion of phrases. Some examples:
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| Francis Galton said "whenever you can, count" - a fairly good motto for life. |
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Last night we took the kids to sit on Santa's lap, an activity most enjoyed by our two children who were well aware of its fakeness. I have never been a big fan of lies, but this particular myth presents all children with the opportunity to question the reality society has presented them with and as such is a good exercise. (I will confine comments about other seasonal mythology to more polemic outlets.) Nevertheless, my tolerence does not extend to presenting false evidence, so I won't label packages we get the kids as being from Santa, although Cara sometimes does. This is an issue upon which we have agreed to disagree. Just to annoy her I sometimes admonish Maxwell that he won't get any presents from Santa if he is naughty. Of course he won't get any presents from that imaginary person if he is good either, but the converse of my statement and the promise it offers are no doubt still pregnant in his mind. Cara also knows from experience that if she validites Maxwell's assumption I will do my best to invalidate it. But such are the games we play...
But seeing Santa last night was not nearly as fun as seeing the fish and winetasting. Santa, you see, was just a small part of the merriment at the Monterey Bay Aquariums's holiday members night. For three hours last eve the aquarium was open solely to members and a concerted effort was made to secure further donatives from us. Entering the main hall we were greeted by a string trio and glasses for tasting at the various booths local vineyards had set up throughout the aquarium. There was also Ghiradelli and juice for the younger set, and a craft room on the second floor. Authors and artists of aquarium-related wares also plied and autographed their merchandise. We had opted to skip the $30 a plate formal dinner that preceeded the free event, but the attire of many there belied their attendance. By 10 o'clock when things started to wind down, the kids save Zara were openly admitting their tiredness. Zara was too busy giggling as, sitting on my shoulders, she bounced her belley into my head. Nevertheless, all four quickly fell fast alseep on the carride back to Sunnyvale. |