NYC, music and more

Coming up this week : NYC, music and visits...

So THE Mrs. went to New York for a couple of days, just to see the Big Apple. She claims that the whole city is megalomaniac, and I guess she is right. I really don't like New York, but she didn't find it as annoying as I do.

While she was spending time in NYC I have bought a guitar. Since we have a federal vacation almost every week (This week is Presidents Day), the stores have sales events every so often. This time I have decided to use one of those events to save up to 80% on guitars and accessories. I didn't want a classic guitar, but I wanted to upgrade to an acoustic guitar. I bought a beautiful black guitar with all the needed accessories for not very much!
Then on Saturday I had a friend come over with his guitar and we played together for a couple of hours. Just music and beer. How juvenile!

I am anxiously waiting for the middle of next week, when Dani and Maayan will come and visit us in Boston. We are slowly starting to fill our visits' calendar. Luckily for us we have a high-tech inflatable bed that is very comfortable.

The science is moving forward as usual. Last week was five full days of work, all science, with a better understanding of the system I've been working on. Let's wait and see if this week will be as productive, if so then I'm really on the right track.

For all of you who forgot - Sunday was both Valentines Day (internationally) and Family day (ex-Mother's day) (in Israel), so if you forgot make sure to wish your parents a happy delayed family day and make sure you buy your loved one something nice. Just because.

and on this mushy note, I'll end this post.

Toes and the Super Bowl

So another week has passed, and one of the most important days of the year for Americans has arrived. Super Bowl 44 just ended with a win of the New Orleans Saints. The streets emptied out around 18:00 this evening and just a few people roamed the streets in a frenzy to get some more beers or snacks for the game. Quiet was all around as the Saints pounded the Indianapolis Colts.

And now for something completely different - I have been conducting my own small private research in the last several weeks. Riding the T every day for long periods of time has made me observant of a very special thing. This special thing had me watching the feet of people riding the T. Not ALL the feet on the train, and I am not talking about legs(!), I have been watching the feet of people who have to ride the train standing up. It's really amazing to see how EVERYONE uses their toes the exact same manner. Apparently, toes exist to keep us in balance. People falling forward will instinctively push down with their toes and people falling back will try to wiggle their toes to keep balance. This has been observed for people of both sexes, all ages and all races. I now believe that toes are the most useful body organs for people riding the T. Therefore, the results of my small research - You don't have to use your arms to stay standing, only toes.
So remember that when you lay in bed and ponder on the origin and role of TOES.

Now for the weekly update - things have been going well this week. It just WOOSHED by as I worked on my samples, ending all of a sudden. Yes, weeks are getting shorter as my science progresses. But I must admit that it's pretty fun.

I think that THE Mrs. has settled in nicely. She is very independent in getting around Boston and in scheduling different activities for herself. This makes me happy to see her trying to find her niche.

So, your "take home" lesson here should be - Keep your toes in good condition, you never know when some strange guy will check them out on the train!

Yes, I know I'm late...

Unbelievable, me, late! Yes, I know it is a Monday and I should have updated the blog yesterday, but the movie we were watching (Inglorious Bastards) ended at midnight and I was too tired to write, so... only a few hours late.

This week we have experienced crazy weather, it plummeted from a nice and warm 12 degrees to an extremely cold -25 degrees (counting in the wind chill) withing two days! I guess I can now understand this strange Fahrenheit scale. If 0 Celsius means water freezing than 0 Fahrenheit means that humans are the most uncomfortable they can get and they should not be outside.
THE Mrs. and myself even went grocery shopping at -17 degrees and it was a harsh experience. Luckily our winter coats we bought here do a great job in keeping the cold away from our torsos.

We celebrated TU BESHVAT with friends at our place last Saturday, it was the first time we had friends over for dinner and it worked out nicely. We had dry fruits and ice-cream for dessert and we really enjoyed the evening.

As for work, it progresses nicely. I spent 3 days last week making 18(!) different samples so I'll be able to use them this week in my collaboration. I really felt like a robot in a manufacturing plant, repeating the same actions over and over again, but now it's over (or should I say - for now) and I can use these samples for research.

Dani is in the States (and Maayan will join soon) and will visit us in a couple of weeks, which will be great to have house-guests. I just hope we will have good weather and can show them around the place.

Just cruising along

Another week has gone by, and time really flies. I have started to organize a collaboration with another lab at MIT and hopefully this will speed up my research. I have taken a two-day course in powder X-ray diffraction (after I did not take a course for ages!). I measured some samples and participated in lab clean up. This was my professional week in a few lines. But this week just disappeared! I mean, it started last Monday and... woosh... it is over. I know time flies when you are busy, but this is ridiculous, it goes by too fast and it's hard to keep in pace. Well... I guess this is the routine now, and time will just zoom by.

I finally received the official approval on my PhD. Yes, it took quite a long time but at last I have my PhD.

THE Mrs. is getting settled in pretty nicely. The house is fully furnished (or so I think) and she is starting to join different activities.

So, since time went by so quickly, I didn't have a chance to collect fun/interesting/nice/strange or other stories to tell you and I will hold it off for next week's post. That's all for now.

Megalomaniac furniture (or each one alone)

What a week... Or finally arrived to Boston and I took a couple of days off to get her organized. Yes, I know, I could have let her rest a bit before starting all the orientation and official stuff, but what can I do, if it can be done today I cannot postpone it to later times. So we made sure she visited the bank, the health care facility, the stores around the house and more.

I got back to work on Wednesday and learned some more life lessons - the prerequisite of being a professor is being megalomaniac and egomaniac. The real question is how is your interaction with the people you meet, and even more important the people you work with. Some professors have crappy manners with their students, postdocs and workers - they will always be badmouthed and on the long run their science will be hurt. The smart thing is to have great relations with your workers, this way you can reach the status of a scientific god. At MIT, as everywhere, professors divide into these different categories. I currently work for a professor of the second type, a professor with the biggest ego I have ever seen, but loved by his students. I guess that is the reason for his success and fame.

This weekend THE Mrs. decided that we need furniture. Apparently a sofa, a bed, a chair, TV and a dining table are not enough. So we went and bought a desk, an office chair, a coffee table and two end tables, a rug, two nightstands, a mirror and a dresser. All the furniture arrived with a need to put them together, most of them arrived in a flatbox and required a long time to build them. It got pretty late, but as I said in the beginning "if it can be done today..." I had to finish building all of them. By the time we went to bed the house was newly furnished, with a totally new look with all the furniture built to perfection.

Now (try to follow my way of thinking)... If I can build furniture well (and I can), you may refer to me as a carpenter... which will make my son the son of a carpenter... The son of...ME!!!

Yes, I can also be a megalomaniac egomaniac!

:)

Or finally here - a short update

Hi all. Today's post is going to be a short one. Or has arrived last night, after some trouble with the flight from Israel, but she made it at last.
It was extremely cold this weekend (got down to -18 degrees this morning) and I hardly gave her time to rest. Today, despite the cold, we went to town to get her a coat, boots, ear-warmers, and some more 'heat keeping' cloths. She was pretty overwhelmed with the cold weather, but I'm sure she'll get used to it in no time.
We have just returned from a friend's house, and again walked outside with the temperature feeling lower than -10 degrees.

Except for that, it was a nice week. Work kept progressing at a slow, yet agreeable, rate. I have the next few days off, and I will have to work harder now if I want to achieve the same rate of progress and still have time to spend with Or.

Well - As I said, only a short update today. Next week I'll let you all know how Or is getting settled in. That's all for now.

Another year - another post

The new year has arrived, and in Boston there is a tradition of "First Night" events that take place during the last day of the year. This year was no different, even though it snowed on the morning of December 31st, many events took place around the city. Concerts and shows were everywhere. I did not go to these morning and afternoon events because I helped a friend move (from the forth floor to the first floor of a house with no elevator, this because he and his wife just had a baby). Yes, it was quite a sight - four Israeli doctors of chemistry working as movers, carrying stuff down the stairs. It was pretty tiring but we moved his whole apartment in an hour and a half.

I went to the Boston Commons park in the evening to watch the Parade, the fireworks and the ice sculptures that the TV news kept telling about. When I arrived to the park I found out that there where only three ice sculptures and that I have seen all of them on TV. I really expected to see more sculptures than what the TV presented, alas, there where none (you can see one of the sculptures of Da Vinci creating the Statue of David in the picture).

The Parade was nice, and long, trying to imitate a Brazilian carnival but with American patriotism. Among the floats of dancers, bands and puppets, the Boston police, the fire department and other emergency services also presented and got a big round of applause from all the proud Americans who seem to really love their emergency services guys. (I wonder if that would have worked in Israel, since we don't seem to like or appreciate our police officers and fire fighters). But the Americans have a soft spot in their heart for those guys.
At the end of the precession joined a protest against Israel and for the Palestinians in Gaza. This was not planned by the organizers of the parade, but a very large group of Palestinians and Americans carrying the Palestinian flags and signs calling to Free Gaza just joined the parade and, thus, were given a very large exposure. I guess that is one of the reasons that Israel is not very popular. Our foes know how to expose their views and ideas, while you do not really hear the Israeli side of the story. (But that really carried me off the new year's story, so back to it...)

Later came the fireworks, which were pretty standard, and they even had some problems of fireworks that went off too early and fell to the ground while still burning. But the area of the mortars was cleared from the audience and no one got hurt. You can see one of the successful pictures I took (there weren't many).

I thought of staying in the city until midnight for the second fireworks in the harbor and I took a stroll to the harbor (which is much further than it appears to be on the map). When we got there it was way too early and there was nothing to do but wait. I did not survive the wait and at 11pm I decided I have waited enough and went home to see the fireworks on the TV. It was very similar to the ones I've seen in the park and I was happy that I did not wait in the harbor.

That's it. That was my new year's eve. It started snowing again on Saturday and it snowed until this evening (Sunday). I still decided not to sit at home for such a long weekend and I went to work on Saturday, which was a great idea since MIT was empty and quiet, and the city was also pretty abandoned due to the snow, so I had a relaxing walk to the train (the T) in the evening after work with white all around and silence in the air.
For those of you who wonder how MIT looks like - here is a night picture of the main building.
I'll try to take a picture tomorrow with the grass all covered with snow, but I can't promise.

Any way - I wish all of you a happy new year, may all your wishes come true. Bye, until next week.