San Diego roommate reunion

I've just returned from some wonderful travels! I'm going to try and blog about them all in the next few days or so.

It all started when I flew to San Diego for a great reunion with some of my roommates from BYU. We weren't all there, however. Angela and Becca, we missed you guys lots!

I flew in Monday, and Amy and Christy picked me up at the airport. Every time I go to California, I always think the same thing: why don't I live here? The weather is perfect all the time, why go anywhere else?

Well, anyway, over the course of the next few days, we did lots of fun things including going to the San Diego Zoo (my first time), eating pizza on the beach at sunset (why don't I live in California again?), going to Disneyland (and eating lunch at the Blue Bayou!), and going to Sea World (also my first time). Here are some pictures.

Me and the flamingos at the San Diego Zoo. Part of my usual series of pictures that Amy calls "Elizabeth in Front of Something Interesting." I guess it's true, I do take a lot of pictures like that. Ha!

Amy, Auburn (plus Maren), and me at the beach. It was really bright. I cheated and kept my sunglasses on.

Seth was pretty much Christy's best friend during the trip. It was cute and funny. (He never wanted to ride the rides with anyone else!) Here they are on the Bug's Life caterpillar ride at Disneyland (California Adventure? I don't really know). I think this picture is super cute.

Amy and I on the Buzz Lightyear ride (my first time on that ride/game). I was just shooting randomly, I have no idea how I got any points.

We celebrated Amy's birthday by going to brunch at this delightful little outdoor cafe overlooking the beach. (I think it was in La Jolla?) And Seth is pretty much one of the cutest kids ever.

Brunch.

Also went to Sea World. I thought the turtles were really cool. (Again, "Elizabeth in Front of Something Interesting." :) )

Christy, Amy, Auburn, and Maren in the walk-through shark display. Cool.

Me, Auburn (and Maren), and Amy hanging out. The lighting wasn't the best for pictures in there.

We even saw Shamu. (I wish I had taken pictures at the dolphin show. The theatrics cannot be described in words. Haha!)

The next morning I managed to wake up early enough to go to the temple before flying out. (Auburn told me she was sure she'd come out the next morning and find me still asleep. Yes, clearly she has been my roommate. :) I even surprised myself in this instance.)


It's been far too long since I've seen these great friends of mine, so I'm happy that we were able to reunion this year. As Amy said, you know you're good friends when you can not see each other for eight years (as was the case with Amy and me) and your conversations start right back up as if you'd never been apart. I'm so lucky to have been roommates and friends with such great girls! Let's hope it's not so long between the next time we get together! :) Thanks again for the great time!!

Smarter Phone

So I recently got a smarter phone. It's a Samsung Fascinate. I chose it because it seemed decent enough and I could get it for free by renewing my current contract. So why not? I've been putting off getting a smart phone because I probably spend too much time online as it is. Though typically when I travel, I curse the world that I don't have one. I'm traveling next week (first San Diego, then the Great Utah National Park Tour of 2011*), and not bringing my laptop (shocker I know), and decided it was high time.

Besides the fact that I've just been needing** one for some time, I thought it would fun to be able to update my blog (and Facebook) with pictures from the road, since I won't have my laptop and will be away from civilization.*** And good to have access to email on the road. And, I'm sure, comforting for you all to know that I'm not stuck in Blue John Canyon preparing to cut off my own arm.****



* I'm still searching for a killer title for a trip that will be most epic.
** i.e., wanting
*** They have cell phone reception away from civilization, right? j/k
*** Although Aron Ralston recently became one of my new heroes, I definitely don't plan on reenacting his fateful hike. (Unlike other morons in the world.)

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!

"Wait Wait...!" Taping

In the last few years I've become a bit of an NPR junkie. One of my favorite shows is "Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me!" a news quiz/comedy show that airs Saturday morning. (And I'm subscribed to the podcast in case I'm not able to catch it.)

The show normally airs from Chicago, but occasionally they take it on the road. This week the "Wait Wait..." cast was in Baltimore, so we were lucky enough to have the chance to attend a taping of the show. Of course, I was so there! I bought my tickets the day they went on sale, like two and a half months ago. Woooo!! So excited.

The taping was at the Meyerhoff, where the Baltimore Symphony usually performs. My friend Kate (also a big fan) went with me. We had really awesome seats. Box seats with super comfy chairs! (Individual chairs, really plush, could spin all the way around and rock.) The people behind us took this picture for us. (Seriously, how awesome are those chairs?!)

The taping was SO much fun!! It was really cool to see the people I've only heard on the radio, and to see them interact with each other.

Each week they have a special guest, usually someone famous. When they are visiting a city, they try and get a "local" celebrity. I was hoping they would have Marin Alsop, but they didn't. The guest was Baltimore native, John Waters, best known for making cult films that are a bit out there. (He was also behind the original Hairspray movie.) That might have actually been a better choice because hearing him talk about Baltimore was sooooo funny.

During the show....interview with John Waters.

Close up.

After the show they selected an audience member to come down and answer one question (complete a news-related limerick). Because he got it right, everyone in the audience won a prize! That's right....we all got a free NPR/"Wait Wait..." tote bag. Ha!

The show airs this weekend! (Check local listings for times. :) Saturday 11am on 88.1 here in Baltimore!)

Weekend Fun

What a great weekend! I feel like this weekend was a little bit of a reward for all the conferences I've been to over the years where I had to sit in meetings all day instead of going out and having fun.*

This weekend one of my B'more friends had a conference to attend in DC. The hotel room was paid for by school and her roommate bailed, so she invited me to stay in the (already paid for) extra spot. So I got to have fun in DC all weekend, while she had to sit in meetings all day. (Sorry Lauren!)

We arrived Friday night, and I spent the evening with a former B'more roommate, Amanda. We had dinner with some of her friends and got cupcakes at Crumbs Bakery afterward. (I'm not really into this whole cupcake craze, but these are tasty! And all the flavors!)

The next day I went down to the National Mall and went running. I haven't gone running for awhile, and ran for over an hour, which felt simultaneously great and exhausting. And running on the Mall is so fun. I made my way over the the Tidal Basin/Jefferson Memorial so I could see the cherry blossoms. So pretty! Here are some pictures I took.

The Jefferson Memorial is my favorite!


(Why yes....I did go running right before I taking this picture.)

While at the blossoms, I was able to meet up with my friend Larissa who was down from NYC to visit a friend and go to the blossoms festival. So fun to see her, even though it was brief!

From there I went to my friend Tiffany's house (old roommate from Austin). We watched both sessions of General Conference there. Afterward we got custard with some girls from her ward and then watched both Final Four basketball games while eating Italian take out. (We were rooting for VCU and Kentucky....and were disappointed by the outcomes of both games, but they were both exciting games!)

Lauren's conference ended Sunday at noon, and we went over to a church building in Alexandria to watch the Sunday morning session of General Conference, but were foiled when it turned out they were not showing it. Nooo! We decided then to just go straight back to Baltimore. We hit horrible traffic leaving DC, and tried finding a detour. After a few wrong turns we finally got on our way (and the route was prettier than the original one anyway, and no traffic!). Finally we got to Baltimore. I'll catch the morning session online later, and watched the afternoon session on my laptop.

Fun weekend! And it's starting to warm up today. Yay spring!



* But don't feel too sorry for me. I'm usually able to find time to have fun when I go to conferences.

April Fools

I've never really been one for April Fools jokes, neither for receiving nor giving. (Although if I had kids, I might do meatloaf-potatoes cupcakes.) But I do appreciate the occasional funny things that the people at Google or NPR do as April Fools jokes.

This morning I arrived at my office, which is in the Physics and Astronomy building at Johns Hopkins. (Across the street from STScI.) I came through one of the back doors, which then leads into the back of the main atrium, which I cross to get to my office. As I walked across it, I noticed many, many red plastic cups, each about half-full of water, set out all over the atrium. I thought it was kind of random, but my first thought was "Oh, some physics class must be doing an experiment."

When I got to my office I mentioned it to my officemate and his fiancee (also an astronomer, she's visiting this week). They quickly reminded me that it was April 1, and they had concluded it was an April Fools joke. Of course they had to be right! I hadn't even thought of that. Of course, I also didn't realize how far the cups extended. I went out to check it out some more. Here are pictures. By that point someone (janitorial staff?) had cleared some away so there were paths to allow people to get from one side to the other. Initially they covered everywhere. I took some low-quality pictures with my cell phone. We were musing about when they will (or won't) be cleaned up.