Time Sure Flies When You're Having Fun

Time really does fly when you're busy! I'm not doing so well at keeping this blog updated. I've been busy and outside of a few awesome events, I live a boringly great life. That being said, I can't believe we're almost two months into 2015 already. It seems like so much has happened in the past several months.

I started dating someone. That's been fun.

Mom came out to visit for Thanksgiving!

I passed candidacy which was one of the most terrible and rewarding thing I've done in my academic career so far. That's including my Master's defense. But Woo! I passed!

Christmas and New Years has come and gone.

I had to have my tonsils removed as a 28 year old. That is probably one of the worst things I've ever had done.

I've been snowed in or wind chilled in several times. Thank you, Chicago winter.

The nephews came to visit for Valentine's Day!

I finally got to meet Brandon Sanderson and he signed all of my books!

I'm sure a lot more has happened, but it seems like I've had a lot of quiet time since Christmas. Some of that is thanks to me being perpetually sick for most of the month of January and having my tonsils removed the first week of February. Let's just say I've had enough quiet time that I've been able to easily keep up on my required reading for school/work as well as read 30 books for pleasure.

Other than the being sick part, it's been nice. Now that I'm done with candidacy, I get to be a normal person when I get off work and I have this wonderful thing known as free time. Hence all of the reading. It helps balance out the science and it keeps me sane. Books complete me in a way that TV and movies will never be able to. Which is good because I've learned that I've gotten terrible at keeping up with tv shows and movies lately. And oddly enough, I'm okay with that. Bring on all the books!

I'm still book blogging and it has been amazing! I've read SO many great books and have met so many awesome people to talk books with. Outside of blogging, I joined a book club that some of the post docs go to. It's been fun and has gotten me to read several books that I probably wouldn't have picked up on my own.

As I said, I live a rather boring life, but I love it! I love the science and the books and just everything about it. I love living in the Chicago area and I need to take more advantage of that outside of taking everyone who comes to visit out for deep dish pizza.

I'm going to try harder to keep this blog updated. My goal is to post at least once a week. Some weeks will be easier than others. There's a lot of stuff going on this year. I'm already lined up to go to several conferences and apparently this year is my ten year high school reunion. I can't believe it's been ten years! Honestly, I don't think I'm going to make it to the actual reunion because I'm pretty sure I have a conference that same weekend, but it's an important milestone nonetheless.

So while I hope that I have fun things to share about life, there will be weeks where the most exciting thing is a new author or band I discovered or how I've finally perfected cooking a certain food. I'm going to write about things that are of interest to me. Blogging is as close to journaling as I'm ever going to get and I'm okay with that. So here's to my goal to keep up with it. This is going to be fun.

Relocations Are Hard

Relocating is difficult. You pack up everything you own (which is always more than you thought you had) and you move somewhere where you don't know where things are and you don't know anybody. 

Leaving Maryland was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I came to love the area and made lots of awesome friends. Unfortunately, life is about changes and this newest change is going to be awesome career wise. Not to mention the knowledge I'm gaining working at Argonne. 

I have now officially relocated to a small Chicago suburb named Lisle and I'm loving it so far. Argonne is super awesome, in case you were wondering! Guys! Food is super cheap in the Midwest! My first grocery bill made me cry tears of joy. I'm also loving my new apartment even though it is considerably smaller than my last one.

So as is the tradition with every new apartment, I'm going to post pictures so you can share in the amazingness too. That and several people have made several inquiries about when I was going to stop neglecting my blog. Matt and Grandma, I'm looking at you.

So remember when I said you don't realize how much stuff you own until you have to pack it up and move it? That seems to be my experience every time I move except this time was so much worse since owning furniture compounds the issue.

See. I own a lot of stuff. Good thing I love all of my crap. A huge thanks goes out to Mom and Ryan for helping me unload the moving truck. Mom and I are pretty sure that Ryan unloaded more than 50% of the truck by himself since he could take two boxes at a time and still be able to see over the top of them.

Now comes the fun part where you see a huge pile of boxes transform into a habitable living space.

Quite the transformation, right?

I'll be honest, I'm super proud about the current decor of my living room.

Is it sad that 65% of the boxes were books and movies? I REGRET NOTHING!

Apparently, there is a rogue picture frame without a real picture in it. I'll have to fix that.

The kitchen is super small like my last one. At least, I know how to deal with this, right? Right?

I'm so proud that I put those shelves up by myself.

The bathroom is super nice even though it could use more counter space and power outlets.

My bedroom! And the thrice-blasted curtains that took forever to hang and resulted in several bruises from falling off the step stool during the hanging process.

And what's a bedroom without a bookshelf? I know. I have a book problem. As I said before, I REGRET NOTHING!

My awesome balcony deck with my newest purchase...

A new grill!!!! This has oddly become a must have item for me and I use it all the time.

Well, there you have it. My new place in pictures. Have I mentioned that I'm not moving again until I'm forced to? Well, I'm not. Here's to several happy years of living in one spot and to this newest life adventure!

Exotic Beam Summer School 2012

The last of my summer travels took me to the Exotic Beam Summer School at Argonne National Labs near Chicago, IL. Unfortunately, I never made it into Chicago. Fortunately, I now have a pretty good feel for the kind of research I'll be doing for my dissertation and the instruments that I will be using.

Welcome to Chicago! Even though I never made it into downtown.

The cool plane at the airport. The airport is named Midway after the battle of Midway. Pretty cool, huh?

 Overall, EBBS was a smashing success. How can you not have fun when you are with ~35 people for 13 hours a day who think and act just like you?

The whole group from the summer school.

The summer school kept us busy. We were going from 7:30am-9:00pm. We had lectures each morning, hands-on activities in the afternoon, and some type of forum/activity each evening.

They had really comfy seats in their lecture hall. I spent a lot of time in that chair.

 Not to mention that they fed us EXTREMELY well! It's every grad student's dream.
We were housed in four bedroom suites with others from the summer school. I was housed with a girl from Michigan State and another girl from Hope College which is also in Michigan.

You know you're staying on a national lab campus when there are whiteboards everywhere!

I was lucky enough to get the room with 2 twin beds and not a double.

At least I didn't have to share the room.

My view out my window was typical Illinois. Meaning it was flat and included a water tower and a parking lot.

There were students from all around the world. We had people from Germany, China, Japan, England, Canada, Mexico, and the US. Most in attendance were nuclear physicists. There were only two nuclear chemists and I was one of them. Want to know what you learn right off the bat? Never go anywhere with out your badge. It's that important.

This is a temp badge. I can't wait until I get my permanent one!

We got to play with some really cool instruments! My favorites were HELIOS and Gammasphere. HELIOS is made from an old MRI magnet and is used to do inverse kinematic experiments at ATLAS (Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator System). It generated quite the magnetic field. The magnet tried to take the earrings out of my ears and my fillings hurt the entire time I was in range. But it was so cool!!!

HELIOS

And it's a good thing I liked Gammasphere. It's the main instrument that I will be using for my research. Even cooler, it made an appearance in the movie The Hulk. Not surprising, but Hollywood got the science wrong. Again. Gammasphere detects gamma rays. Not create them.

Gammasphere

Bruce Banner getting irradiated by Gammasphere.

The Hulk tossing Gammasphere around.

I even got to make a gold target for gammasphere! Mine is the front one!

In the middle of our week, we were taken to a movie in the town by Argonne. We got in free with our Argonne badges which is good to know for when I move there! It was the most interesting theater I've ever been to. They took the whole concept of dinner and a movie to a new height. The theater was filled with high tables and you sat in very nice office chairs. You could order everything from a steak to an alcoholic beverage to chocolate cake. Then you watched a movie while you ate. There were even waiters! It was really cool. I wouldn't recommend seeing Total Recall though. It was okay.

Me at the really cool theater.

My newly made friends from Surrey. The menu was huge so it was hard to make a decision.

The decorations in our theater were very old timey/ Clark Gable-esque.

 I had to laugh at some of the signs I found around Argonne.

Apparently the building got struck by lightning a few year back and it killed all the electronics in the building. I guess they fixed that problem pretty quickly.

Apparently, tornadoes are a valid worry at ANL. They have to go into the shelters for real about twice a year. We didn't have to while we were there but I guess the previous summer school had to.

EBBS 2012 was awesome. I learned so much and made a lot of new friends! It makes me excited to move to Chicago which looks like it's going to happen this next summer. Which is extremely fast! I thought I had two years instead of one but it's going to be exciting!
And by-the-way, I never realized exactly how big the great lakes were until I flew over one!

It took us 15 minutes to fly over Lake Michigan.