NYC 1, Assateague, NYC 2, and Boston

I've had a couple really fun weekends in the past month or so. Each probably deserves it's own post, but here you go anyway.

First, I went up to NYC for my friend Larissa's art show. (She's getting a masters up there.) It was a lot of fun, and I was so proud of her!

We decided to do a very Hitchockian pose in another student's exhibit of paper cranes. Ha!

We went and saw a musical, Wonderland. Neither of us knew anything about it, but it was on sale at TKTS, so we went. We weren't disappointed, the show was absolutely hilarious!

Larissa and me in Times Square.

Then we ate mac and cheese at this amazing place called S'MAC. (Go there if you're ever in NYC!) It's so yummy!! I was as excited as I look.


The next weekend was camping and bike riding on Assateague Island with Lauren and Emily. Assateague is a National Seashore off the southeast coast of Maryland. There are wild horses! (But don't pet them....signs say they kick and bite and you will be fined!)


We camped on the beach, made tinfoil dinners, and ate a ridiculous number of some of the best/messiest s'mores ever. (And I discovered how awesome headlamps are for camping.)

We ate pancakes for breakfast; and because we forgot something to grease the griddle with, our neighbor campers fortunately were nice enough to give us their bacon grease.

We spent the next day riding our bikes around the island (sooo fun!).


Because I had bought the year-long National Park pass (in preparation for my wild and crazy trip to the Utah parks next month with Michelle!), we decided to venture to Chincoteague. (That park is on the other half of the island that is in Virginia, and only accessible by going around on the mainland) While there we went to the beach (sorry, no pictures) and rode our bikes some more.



And more wild horses.

We saw this baby horse, so cute!

Back on the mainland as we headed out, we found a most excellent ice cream shop. Mmm....

And we decided that if a real bike enthusiast walked past Lauren's car loaded with our bikes, they'd have no idea where we were going to bike. Among the three of us we had a road bike, a hybrid bike, and a mountain bike.


The fun continues. The following weekend I headed up to NYC again. There was a groupon for 50% off bus tickets, so I went up with my friends Kate and Meredith and their friend Niki. It turns out Niki and I are second cousins! We didn't even know it, what a small world! We stayed with Larissa in Brooklyn.

After arriving, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. It makes me feel like I'm in an MC Escher painting.


Larissa and I on the bridge.

We also went to see the Harry Potter exhibit at the Discovery Museum. They had lots of props and costumes from all the movies. It was really cool! (But alas, no pictures allowed inside.)

We saw Wonderland again. It was still just as funny! We didn't know it at the time we booked our trip but we got lucky because the show closed the next night!

The next day we went to church in the building that is shared with the temple (no picture, sorry), and then wandered around Central Park for awhile. It was a foggy, off-and-on drizzly day, so everything was super green.




I would say that things slowed down after that, but it's not true. This past weekend I went to Boston for a teaching workshop (the CAE workshop for those astronomers out there). It was my first time attending that workshop and it was great. I learned a lot! I also got to see/stay with a college roommate (Becca) and her husband, which was fun. I met up with my friend Emily who had been backpacking up the east coast that whole week. We took an overnight train back Sunday night/Monday morning. Turns out sleeping on an overnight train is harder than sleeping on an overnight flight.

Job News

I finally have job news!

This has been a pretty slow job season. I've put out a lot of applications for post docs, some small college teaching positions, and visiting faculty jobs, and have had very few bites. Anyway, about 2 weeks ago I had a campus interview down at James Madison University for a visiting faculty job. The interview went really well and I enjoyed the campus and the environment of the department. The campus is really beautiful (sorry, didn't take pictures). On the way down I took some pictures of the area while I was stuck in a giant accident-induced traffic jam while sitting in park on the freeway. (The back up was so bad it took two and a half hours to go the last 20 minutes of the trip. The trip that had already been almost three hours at that point!) A storm was also rolling in. (I wanted to catch some of the lightning in action out on the horizon, but that's hard.)

Pictures from my car in traffic, at sunset. Beautiful! And this gives you an idea of how rural the area is. (This place is so different from Baltimore, for so many reasons.)


This picture I took (also from my car) on my way home after the interview. This is a beautiful part of the country! I'd love to spend a lot of time outdoors here, hiking and biking.

So anyway. Long story short, a few days after my interview, they called me and offered me the position. (Love the fast turnaround.) I thought about it over the weekend, and then accepted it last week. Hurrah! I have a job!

I'll be teaching general science and intro physics (algebra-based), both for non-majors. I'll also be working a few hours a week in the math and science learning center, which is like a walk-in homework lab. (Throwback to my days working in the physics tutorial lab at BYU!) Plus I'll have resources to keep working on research, which is great. So I'm pretty excited. I think it's a good fit for me, and I'm excited for a new challenge and a new change of pace. (And if it goes badly, it's only a year. ;) But seriously, I think it will be great.)

James Madison University is located in Harrisonburg, VA. It's in the Shenandoah Valley, not far from Shenandoah National Park. If you don't know where Harrisonburg is (don't worry, I didn't either before this), here's a map. It's about a 3 hour drive from Baltimore. (Unless you get stuck in a huge traffic jam, then it's closer to 6.) And two hours from DC.


So I'll be east-coasting it for at least another year. The semester starts at the end of August, so I'll probably be moving down the first week or two of August. And then after the year there....well, watch this space. In a year I'll get to do the job search thing again!

I'll keep you updated as I wrap up my time in Baltimore and prepare for the move!