Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Chimney Based Archeology

After moving into our new house this spring, we discovered a lot of idiosyncrasies of the previous owners. A bizarre refusal to clean their carpets, judging from the fact that I had to vacuum each carpet three times, emptying the canister ever 50 square feet or so, before the vacuum stopped filling up. A do-it-yourself attitude towards wiring that makes no sense at all. Painted over wallpaper. A lack of cap on the chimney.

Now, the previous owners, having installed gas logs into a beautiful wood burning fireplace, which they subsequently painted white  for no good reason, apparently never used the fireplace, or did so without opening the flue. Because they were unbothered by the debris falling down the chimney due to said lack of cap. We became aware of this lack of basic chimney hygiene when some birds moved into our chimney.

There was fluttering and squawking of baby birds. And occasionally the sound of battle as a squirrel would try to raid the nest and the parents reacted. We could hear it all through the chimney, and I had witnessed the squirrel go in from the outside.

Today, our chimney was being swept. Out came the nest and the bird poop and lots of leaves.

And one very dead, mummified squirrel.

I guess we know who won the war.

~AMPH

Monday, December 30, 2013

The Word became Flesh

This Christmas season, as is appropriate, I have been meditating on the wondrousness that is the Incarnation. And the more I think about it, the more amazing it is. That God, the Creator of the universe, would care for his rebellious children, who actively destroy themselves, each other and the creation they were made stewards of on a regular basis, and care for the so much that he left Heaven, that He sent His Word, which is Himself, to the creation, to become a part of that creation by being born into that creation by a creature that he made, to live as one of those creatures and then to be killed.

This is love beyond comprehension. The all-knowing, all-powerful Creative Word bound himself to mortal, sinful flesh. He let Himself be bound in space and time, who made space and time, to a single cell, that grew into a bundle of cells, which attached itself to the flesh of a woman, and grew to be a tiny, fragile, powerless baby. The Word that separated the light from the darkness, who called forth creation from the depths of chaos, who breathed life into humanity, bound himself to 8 pounds of water and protein and bone and fat that could neither move nor speak.

Wednesday, December 25, 2013

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good morning!

I never learned to be a proper adult in the matter of not waking up before dawn on Christmas. I hope I never lose that excitement.


I also get to see the presents and stockings before they are destroyed.  My dear husband, brother-in-law and friend from college put out most of the presents last night after I went to bed, so I came down to presents under the tree where before there had been none. It was wonderful. 

Now I am getting breakfast in the oven, and getting ready to awaken everyone else with Handel's "Messiah". Traditionally I should use Bach's "Christmas Oratorio" but I can't locate my cd of it. 

Later, we will eat roast goose and stuffing and plum pudding. Yes, really. 

Merry Christmas!

~AMPH

Sunday, December 22, 2013

Advent: Remembrance and Preparation

This past month has been the season of Advent. I had been planning on doing a whole series of posts on Advent, but I found myself far more contemplative this year, and wasn't sure how to put a of lot of my contemplations into words. But now that we are coming into the last few days, I thought it was as good a time to share as any.

Every year, liturgical Christians observe the season of Advent, which is a time of prayer, preparation, and remembrance before Christmas. We remember the longing of the people of Israel waiting for God to send them the Messiah. We also look forward to the second coming of Christ, when he comes again in glory. As we read scripture and prayer and make preparations for Christmas, we remember that we should also always be preparing for when Christ comes again. He came the first time in weakness, to redeem the world from the power of sin and death. When He comes again, he will come in power to reclaim His own, and rule the peaceable kingdom.

The hymn "O Come, o come Emmanuel" has always resonated with me. It is one of the older surviving hymns, sung to an antiphonal melody. It is based around the prophecies in Isaiah, and the longing of God's people for a Savior. I think it resonates because the prophecies are now half-fulfilled. The Son of God has appeared. He has given us victory over the grave. He has shown us the path we should follow.  But we are still waiting for Him to fling wide heaven's gates and close Hell's forever. For Him to disperse death's shadow, so it is no more. We are still waiting for the new Heaven and new Earth. But we wait in faith, sure that in our flesh, we shall see those prophecies fulfilled.

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.
R: Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
shall come to thee, O Israel!
O come, Thou Wisdom, from on high,
and order all things far and nigh;
to us the path of knowledge show,
and teach us in her ways to go. R.
O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
who to Thy tribes on Sinai's height
in ancient times did give the law
in cloud and majesty and awe. R.
O come, Thou Rod of Jesse's stem,
from ev'ry foe deliver them
that trust Thy mighty power to save,
and give them vict'ry o'er the grave. R.
O come, Thou Key of David, come
and open wide our heav'nly home;
make safe the way that leads on high
that we no more have cause to sigh. R.
O come, Thou Dayspring from on high,
and cheer us by thy drawing nigh;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night
and death's dark shadow put to flight. R.
O come, Desire of the nations, bind
in one the hearts of all mankind;
bid every strife and quarrel cease
and fill the world with heaven's peace. R.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Master Present Wrapper

Every year as I wrap presents for Christmas, I think of my sister and marvel. While I am usually good with three dimensional geometry, making my own knitting patterns and dress patterns, she is the gift-wrap extraordinaire. I mean this quite seriously. She was able to run a side business in Christmases past wrapping people's presents for them.

Don't get me wrong, I can wrap presents and they will come out looking decent. I'm miles above my husband in wrapping skills, for example.

But my sister makes the gift wrap ladies at high end department stores look like amateurs. Her folds are perfectly straight and symmetric. There are no errant wrinkles. This is made more impressive by the fact that she does not require tape.

It all started with our granny and our aunt, daughter of said granny. They reuse wrapping paper, which is a fine, green endeavor as far as it goes, but slowly, carefully slitting tape significantly slows things down at a family Christmas party. Our first lesson in present wrapping was "do not wrap in tissue paper".

My sister took it one step further. She just dispensed with the tape and wrapped presents with paper and ribbon and they still looked better than mine.

Needless to say, every year I try to live up to her exemplar wrapping skills. Or get her to wrap presents for me.

~AMPH

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

When grammar lessons work too well...

your eye starts twitching at people saying things incorrectly.

Growing up, my dad made sure that we, the children, knew certain grammatical things. If speaking of something was not, but we wish were so or posing a hypothetical, you used the subjunctive ("I wish I were a hamster" or "If she were a hamster, would her husband smell of elderberries?"). You used "fewer" for things you could count (like grocery items) and "less" for things that were continuous or semi-continuous (fluids or minute granules like sugar). There was a lesson about the different between "lend" and "loan" that I never learned very well**, probably because it came up infrequently. But most of all, we learned that "impact" was not a verb. A tooth could be impacted or something could have an impact. Those were the two acceptable uses.*

I may have learned the last lesson a little too well, because my right eye has literally started twitching when people use it incorrectly. Yesterday, someone on the radio described Sherlock Holmes as 'impactful' and my eye started twitching. It has not yet stopped twitching, on and off, a full day later.

This may be a problem.

~AMPH

* Slowly "impact" seems to be morphing into an acceptable verb in the same way the subjunctive case is being lost. I refuse to acknowledge either, because I am a curmudgeonly old schoolteacher grandma in a 24 year-old physicist's body.

**Apparently, my sister learned this one, but none of the others. Lend is a verb, loan is a noun. I can lend you a loan, but I cannot loan you anything. It makes as much grammatical sense to use loan as a verb as it would  to use chair as a verb.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Teaching Milestone: A Rate My Professor Page

I have prided myself, after I got my first semester of teaching student feedback, on being a good teacher. Not a great teacher by any means. But I know the material, I prepare for class and I try to help the students as much as I can. Which is apparently going above and beyond the call of duty for a TA (and some profs) at my university.

My student reviews are generally favorable, with the occasional "She goes to quickly" complaint, which I ignore because I give students several 15 second counts on each problem to speak up. They rarely do. They typically go something along the lines of "She knows the material and cares about the students. She does a great job teaching". Occasionally I get one where the student was clearly...not all together there. I once had a full page going on about how the student sat in the back and dreamt of strawberries. And occasionally I get cool compliments. Last spring one of my students wrote that I was, quote "one awesome motherfunction". Yes, motherfunction. Verbatim.

Last week, I discovered that one of my students had gone the extra step and created a "Rate My Professor" page for me (I'm not officially a professor, but that has never really stopped them from referring to me as such). I was given the following rating

Friday, December 13, 2013

Christmas Cookies: Gingerbread People

Now that finals are done, and the fall semester has come to a conclusion, it's time to bake Christmas cookies!


Cookies? Do I get to lick the bowl? PLEASE?!

Every year for as long as I can remember, Christmas has involved the mass production of cookies in my family. For one thing, they are delicious tradition! For another, my mother used them as end of the year 'thank you' gifts to the various people and business we interacted with through the year. Church people, the dentist, doctors, car mechanic, if we knew them and liked them, they got a plate of at least 5 different Christmas cookies. I aim to continue the tradition.

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

I've become...my grandmother?


I'm told most women worry about turning into their mothers. This fear has never really been big for me, since my mother is a lovely, saintly woman who could cook our L.L. Bean boots into a delicious stew if the vegans ever destroyed our meat supply. Her sense of style is unparalleled, and far seeing. The worst thing you can say about her is that she is too nice. I think I have heard her yell-yell twice in my life. The only thing I didn't want to develop was crying during movies, but that is apparently not up to me.

In my family, my sister and I worried about turning into our grandmothers. While each of them could be wonderful*, they each had their personality quirks/little habits that we did NOT want to begin exhibiting. Such as my grandma's habit of tickling knees or putting ice cubes in milk. Or my granny's 2+ pack a day habit or insensitivity.

But I seem to have inherited my granny's love of antiques. Last week, on the quest for champagne coupes, I visited a little antiques store I found on a different crystal-related mission. There, I found 5 (which was the minimum number I need) lovely coupes.


Tuesday, December 10, 2013

A long weekend of work

This weekend was the longest I have to deal with the whole semester long, because it was UNDERGRADUATE EXAM WEEKEND for the TAs. And yes, we do think of it in all caps because it consumes our entire weekend. This semester it was particularly long for me because I was given the (dubious) honor of being Head TA, based on seniority, proven ability to take responsibility, and because the head prof likes me (as a TA).

My responsibilities technically began several weeks ago, arranging the schedule for who was proctoring what (and implicitly when and where), notifying and/or reminding the other TAs that they needed to reserve the weekend for EXAMS and dealing with a couple of special situations that arose.

But this weekend was the show, so to speak. Our department asks a lot of its TAs for this one weekend of the semester, and for the most part we are willing to give, albeit with a bit of grousing.


Thursday, December 5, 2013

Rewards of Teaching

Today, as I do nearly every semester, I held a final exam review session for my students (or any student who wants to attend). The first year I did it, I had about 5 students attend. The second semester, I had about 80 students attend. Last semester I had to cancel due to a combined lack of classroom availability and inlaw presence. This semester, I had reserved the largest classroom in 'my' building (the one where I take classes and do research), which sufficed before. It hold about 65 people officially, and can accommodate about 80 people if they bring in chairs from the atrium.

The session was scheduled to begin at 9 am. When I walked in at 8:50 am, they had run out of normal chairs, atrium chairs, and room on the floor. I had to step over people to get to the front of the room. And they kept coming, at a rate of about 5 people a minute.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

New Carpet!

Today began the official house reconstruction, post shower flooding. We had had a carpet rep come before Thanksgiving, and today was the install date.

It is amazingly fluffy, it made me feel like this*. Its twice as thick as any other carpet in the house. It is lush. It is cushiony. The installers were incredibly polite and tidy.

This was Penny's reaction.



Honestly, that's kinda what I wanted to do, but I had too much 'dignity' or something. 

Next up, drywall for my ceiling!

~PhysicsGal

*I am unclear on the legal issues surrounding animated gifs of copyrighted materials, even if they have achieved meme status.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Super Easy Chicken Cacciatore

Usually, I am a fan of making everything from scratch. Its half the fun of cooking, after all. But some nights, I get home too late, or very tired, I'm not above accepting some store-bought pantry help. Hence, this insanely easy, even my husband could make it, chicken cacciatore.

It honestly couldn't be simpler. Take boneless, skinless chicken breast (or thighs, but they take longer), and cut them into roughly 1 inch cubes. Optionally, brown them slightly in olive oil in a hot dutch oven for a minute or two. Pour on a jar of tomato sauce, cover, and let simmer 30-45 minutes. Letting it go longer won't hurt it, this is just the minimum time to let it cook so the chicken is done. Serve with hot noodles, or just a loaf of crusty bread, and parmesan.


Enjoy!

~PhysicsGal

Monday, December 2, 2013

Breaking the Thanksgiving Silence

Sorry for the long silence. We went to visit my family up North (in Yankee land? I'm in Dixie, what's the not-Dixie part called?) for Thanksgiving, and even if they had wifi, I would have had no time to blog!

The drive either direction was long, as it always is, but made more tedious because of Thanksgiving/perpetual city traffic around DC one way and Thanksgiving/stupid college students who don't know how to drive in heavy traffic so they crash the other way. Dear Husband drove, as I drive too slowly and my car gets about 60% of his mpgs. Penny came along, and slept the whole ride.

It was wonderful to see my family, and get to hang out with them for a few days instead of my more recent drive up, stay a day, drive back type trip. We also got to trade Christmas gifts, wrapped, so we both saved a bundle on shipping costs.

I hope to resume regular posting later this week, but I am so tired from travel that I can barely think straight, so I will not try to write a coherent theology or physics post.

~PhysicsGal

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Penny in Boots

Winter is coming...

which means it is getting cold, wet and dark around here. It makes me glad that I won't have to trek across campus much more in the near future, or stand out in the near-freezing rain waiting for the campus shuttle.

There are some lovely things about this. Baking or cooking has the welcome side effect of warming up the kitchen, and a little of the dining room. Casseroles and stews are back on the menu.  I get to pull out the quilts and afghans that languish in closets so much of the year. 

 I get to watch my dog wear boots. 

If you have never stumbled across the videos of dogs wearing boots for the first time, welcome to the internet, and allow me to assure you they are hilarious. 

Penny is small enough, and has enough chihuahua in her, that the vet recommended we get her boots for when it is cold and wet. We are not doing it because we are mean, but because we want to prevent frostbite. The fact that she is unbelievably funny while wearing them is just a happy side effect (for us). 

She is not exactly happy, but she is pretty docile while you put them on. As soon as you set her free, she is determined not to wear them anymore. The first time we put them on her, she wobbled over to a carpeted area and immediately worked them off. Ditto the second time out.

The third time out was even funnier, because she actually kept them on for a little while. She managed about 10 minutes, intermittently walking funny, just standing there  and trying to get them off.

I'm hoping eventually she stops fighting them, so she can enjoy whatever snow we get this year, and keep jogging even when it is freezing. 

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Christ the King Sunday Mediation

Today is Christ the King Sunday, which is the last Sunday in the liturgical year for Christians who keep the liturgical calendar (some denominations ignore everything except Christmas, Easter and Pentecost).

This is the Sunday where we celebrate something that, in some sense, has not happened yet. Christ has triumphed over the grave, he has ascended into heaven, the gates of death and hell are broken, but we still live in a sinful world. The Kingdom of Heaven may have  broken in on the world, but we are not yet living in the new Heaven and new Earth.

Christ the King Sunday looks forward to the day that we are living in the new Heaven and the new Earth. The time when God shall dwell among us once again, when the lion shall lie down with the lamb, when the swords shall be beaten into plowshares and the faithful live in the City of God.

The life of a Christian can feel as futile as raking leaves in the fall. No matter how hard you try, you know you are always going to sin. You are never going to feed everyone. You can never bring everyone to Christ. You can never live up to your own expectations, let alone the expectations of God.

This Sunday reminds us of our goal. We are running a race, and this reminds us of the finish line. It's out there, and it will be wonderful. No more sickness, no more death, no more tears. It lets us end our year on a high note, and then we slide gently back into the hope and expectation of Advent.

~PhysicsGal

Saturday, November 23, 2013

Shower Saga Update

Now that all the damage has been done, and the insurance company has finished its investigations, it is time to begin repairs. Firstly, to get our lives back and our house in order, but also to release from captivity the portion of repair money the insurance company is holding hostage until we demonstrate we are using the money for repairs and not for... I'm not sure what else we would use it for. Parachute pants?

It is turning out to be surprisingly difficult to locate a drywall person to repair our ceiling. Anyone we've been able to get a recommendation for is either too busy to take a small job, or has retired. So the search for a reputable drywaller continues. But we were able to get recessed lights put in (not technically part of the repairs, but if the ceiling had to be open, may as make the best of it) and we will get carpet installed in short order (Thanksgiving makes next week too short, but hopefully the week after). 


There is two awesome things about the recessed lights. One, I get way more light over my stove and all my food prep areas. Two, I got rid of the ugliest, most useless light fixture that was off center with the rest of the light fixtures. As a bonus, the electrician found and removed some wire that had gotten nicked, most likely during the removal of the ceiling, and was a fire hazard.

So, I have found the silver lining in  a very wet cloud.

~PhysicsGal

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Penny, one year later

Wednesday marked one year since we met Penny and took her home with us. We were happy before, but we didn't know how much we were missing until she came into our lives.

Sitting in her chair. Dear Husband only thinks it's his. 

Wednesday, November 20, 2013

Refractive Index: Ninja Fish

It's been a while since I promised to explain the Ninja Fish, and here it is, at long last. 

This is for you, sister. Sorry I couldn't get it animated.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Chicken Pot Pie

Chicken pot pie is the pot roast of the poultry world. Everyone has their own recipe, usually based on a family recipe passed on from mom or grandma. It is comforting, warm, and homey. It can be as simple or as fancy as you want. It combines all necessary elements of a meal into one delicious dish (carb, protein, vegetable, gravy). It is a special level of awesome.

My chicken pot pie is pretty basic as far as ingredients go. Chopped or shredded chicken, carrots, peas and onions in gravy, baked under a crust. However, mine strays from tradition slightly in that instead of just sauteing my onions, I let them caramelize to a deep mahogany brown.

Sunday, November 17, 2013

An Orgy of Cooking

After nearly a month of being unable to really cook, first because I was down a hand and then because of the great shower disaster, I tried to make up for at least a week of it, all this weekend. I was, in fact, so busy cooking I forgot to take pictures!

It began on Friday night, after an afternoon of joyous grocery shopping. I rubbed a bone-in/skin-on split chicken breast with a dry brine* and let it sit, uncovered, in my fridge for a few hours before roasting it on a bed of stuffing with some carrots and serving with a caesar salad as a starter, and mini desserts from Whole foods for dessert (pecan tarts for Dear Husband, cheese cake drops for me. I have perfected neither). After weeks of take out and frozen dinners, it tasted like heaven, and it had a lovely presentation to boot.

Friday, November 15, 2013

The end of a long series of long weeks

After nearly a month of insanity in one form or another, life is finally returning to normal. My house is quiet, and workmen are not traipsing in and out on  a daily basis to find more destruction. When different workmen start traipsing in, it will be to repair things. My fingers are as healed as they are going to get, only slightly scarred and with minimal loss of sensation. My qualifying exam is past and gone and I never have to do that again.

 For the first time in a month, I went grocery shopping and *didn't* head for the ready-to-eat or frozen food sections. I could stock up on dry goods in the cheaper dry goods/bad produce store and replenish my fruits and veggies and meat that were lost in the great shower disaster at the good produce/high-falutin' dry goods store. Errands on Friday has become my little routine and it feels so nice to have it back.

Jogging has been going well, although running in the cold is highlighting my need for winter running tops. Old cotton shirts get really cold once they get damp, so I foresee a nice athletic fabric jacket-shirt in my future.

And of course, I can finally clean my kitchen and get it somewhat back to normal, at least until the ceiling is repaired.

Overall, from here on out looks a lot less stressful.

~PhysicsGal

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Pictures of Happiness

This week has been a rollercoaster of events and emotions, ranging from frustrated and angry to relaxed and happy. I'm going to focus on the happy things, because the frustrating things aren't going to go away anytime soon, except maybe my house will be quiet today if they can remove the last of the blowers/dehumidifiers that are kicking me out of my kitchen, making my house too loud to enjoy, and messing with the thermostats so some rooms are toasty warm and others are so cold there is condensation on the walls.

Anyway, happy thoughts.

As I mentioned in my last post, Dear Husband got his much belated birthday gift of a comfortable recliner, which he loves and Penny loves (and I love it too, but I have to wait to get my own).

This is the face of doggy comfort.


Tuesday, November 12, 2013

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days...

Yesterday was one of those days, and it kinda carried into today.

It started out with the Servepro guys ripping out even more of my shower, and intimating that my beautiful tile floor might need to be ripped up (bad). Then the plumber came and finally found the tiny, tiny leak that was probably the cause of this whole thing, including the destruction of the shower pan. It started to dry out immediately (good).

While they were destroying my shower, I worked on my next research project, and did the whole 11 page integral and sent it off to my PI to check over while I started on the next step, which is looking like it will take at least 30 pages (not counting scratch work) to complete. Believe it or not, that counts under the 'good' column. It took me months to learn how to do this kind of integral, and now that I did, I seem to be able to do them with just a little concentration. If only that were the hard part...

Then we found out that the recliner we had ordered for Dear Husband as a much belated birthday present was finally in to be picked up. So we made the trek out to the warehouse, and it turns out to be one of the best purchases we've ever made.  It is soft. It is like sitting on a cloud.

It put Dear Husband into the calmest, happiest mood I have ever seen. He was as close to zen as I think is possible for him. And just to complete his day, Penny finally shared his chair. Before, she would sleep in his arms, but not at his side. She preferred between me and the armrest for that. This is also the most zen Penny I've seen.

I will post photos seperately, as my phone has decided not to share pictures tonight.

To round everything out, I found the wool to make my Christmas stocking, and it was snowing earlier. Progression from "worst" to "best" complete.

~PhysicsGal


Sunday, November 10, 2013

Shower Saga, Part 2

The great shower disaster of 2013 continues. After removing the shower base, which helped a great deal, and ripping up my laundry room floor because the blowers blew the water under that floor too, it has been determined that in addition to the shower pan leaking, there is a leak in some weird pipe that we don't know what it connects to. It's a drain pipe, not a supply pipe, but it seems to be draining a wall, not anything visible, like a sink.

So we have a call into yet another plumber (courtesy of our warranty company) to come find/fix the precise leak so we can FINALLY move onto the repairing portion of our program. Its a little quieter upstairs because the blowers are behind closed doors, but still dry and annoying. The drying company is getting twitchy, though they are being paid so I don't know why.

The bright side of this today is that it spurred me to do ALL the laundry. And fold it. And iron it. And actually put it away. I can't actually put the sheets and towels away because there are blowers in front of the linen closet door, but they are ready to be put away as soon as I can open that door again. I usually stop somewhere around the folding step, and iron as needed.

I seriously hope that this thing can get to the 'hire contractors' stage, because I am beyond ready to be a construction zone, and not a disaster zone.

Saturday, November 9, 2013

Optics: Index Refraction: Eyeglasses

Eyeglasses are an example of the usefulness of refractive index that most people are familiar with. Although contact lenses are slowly making glasses less public and more the thing that gets you safely from the bathroom to the bed at night, everyone knows someone who wears glasses.

If it weren't for the index of refraction of materials being different, we couldn't make eyeglasses. This is because the difference in the index of refraction leads to a bending of light at the interface between materials, known as refraction. How much the light bends depends on the ratio of the two mismatched indices, and is encapsulated in a fundamental law of optics called Snell's Law*.

Snell's Law


This is useful because it allows us to make converging and diverging lenses. A converging lens is one that brings all incoming light to a tight focus; a magnifying lens is an example of a double converging lens, as any child who used one to light small fires can tell you. A diverging lens takes incoming light and spreads it out, rather than bringing to to a focus. This makes them useful for correcting short sightedness.

Friday, November 8, 2013

Optics: Refractive Index, Part 1

The refractive index of materials is one of the most obviously useful optical phenomena I can think of. We've been taking advantage of it for thousands of years, because that's how long we've used lens of some sort. The refractive index is why we have binoculars, telescopes, microscopes, eyeglasses, and why people who have really bad eye sight, like me, don't have to wear coke bottle lenses any more. Its what makes a straw in a glass of water look like its bent and that fish you are trying to catch ninja-style look elsewhere than it is. The fact that it is slightly different for different colors of light lets us use prisms to make rainbows.
High refractive index dispersive lens

So, what is this thing and how does it work?

Thursday, November 7, 2013

Shower Saga, Part 1

Technically, this should be part 2 with part one here, but I didn't want to go back and change the post. 

Our ceiling is still dripping (the grout in the shower pan is acting like a giant sponge, slowly releasing its water), so our house is still full of dehumidifiers and blowers, which are starting to make it very warm, because they have been running so long. We finally got the insurance adjuster to come, and the good news is they will cover everything but the shower. I did my best to argue for it, but in the end I think it will be ok because instead of sending work crews, they send a check that covers fair market price for all the work they agree needs doing, which in this case includes the cost of professionals completely repainting my downstairs ceiling. We just finished painting it, and a relatively small section was damaged, so once the dry-wall people fix the hole, I don't think it would be too terrible to just repaint that section myself, and put the money to a new shower. 

A friend at school was able to recommend a 'good and reasonable' tile guy through a friend of his father-in-law (sometimes I love the South. Everyone has Connections). He'll come and bust out our shower base on Sunday, and when we decide what to do with the shower replacement I'm 99% sure I'll go with him. Finally things are moving towards the repaired stage of things. 


While I definitely wish that this had NOT happened right now, I am looking on the bright side, and I am learning a lot. Hopefully we can keep moving slowly but surely on this, and get it resolved quickly. 

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Drip...Drip...Drip

Well, the situation has improved slightly. My house is as arid as a desert, and most of the areas that yesterday were soaking are dry.

But it's still dripping from my ceiling.



That's water, seeping through my kitchen ceiling right next to/above my fridge and stove. The shower pan is still leaking water, probably because they filled it with grout in some 80s bright idea, and then stuck little tiles on it. Grout is not water proof. It acts like a sponge. And it is now, having filled to the point it cracked and over-flowed, releasing it's water in a slow, torturous drip downstairs and a slow seeping upstairs.

The blowers and dehumidifiers are still in place to hold the seepage at bay and keep the water damage as contained as possible. The constant noise is getting on my nerves.

The only way to stop this is to remove the shower pan, which requires destroying at least the shower floor, which we can't do until the insurance adjustor comes.

Which means at least another day, and more like two, with all the noise and the dripping and not knowing when I'll be getting my kitchen back. Between all the sheetrock dust blowing around and the water dripping right where I make food I'm not comfortable cooking, so its take out for us.

I am trying to stay positive and calm. Hey, great excuse to install recessed lighting and replace the out-of-date shower! Calm and happy people are more likely to get what they want out of customer service rep types (at least in my experience). But being stuck waiting for all the parts to come together so we can get moving on repairing things is getting on my nerves.

Luckily, Penny is always there to make me and Dear husband smile. For example, reading the news of a morning on my notebook.

Because the cute dog should take up more digital and mental space than a drippy ceiling. 

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

My kitchen is missing its ceiling...

because the master bathroom's shower was poorly designed and now that it is 25 years old developed very small cracks in the grout which let water build up in the pan until it over-flowed and flooded my upstairs carpet and then my kitchen ceiling all in 48 horrible hours. 

It all started Saturday night as I was going to bed, and the carpet under a runner in the hall outside our bedroom door felt...squishy. Underneath, it was soaking wet. It was too late to call a plumber/the home warranty company, so I called as soon as I could Sunday morning. At this point there was just water in the upstair's carpet. I felt the kitchen ceiling--no signs of wetness/softness. Plumber diagnosed a problem with the shower basin, said we needed a restoration company/contractor,  not a plumber. So I called the insurance company, filed a claim, got the ball rolling to have an adjustor come out and assess the damage so a restoration company could take care of the (then seemingly minimal) damage.

All the water, as of Sunday night. 
 I left Monday morning, and everything seemed hunky-dory. The upstair's subflooring looked like it was drying, we weren't using the guilty shower, everything should be fine.

I came home to this
Approximately 3 ft in diameter, and has a tail that runs to the wall.
 and about two gallons of water on my floor, and a sodden kitchen island. I quickly mopped up the floor, got a bowl under the dripp, called the insurance company to tell them of the new development, the warranty company to send a new plumber, and after getting some help from a neighbor shut off the water supply to the house (it's out by the street. Never would have occurred to me to look there) tried to assess the damage. Ceiling squishy and wet. Upstairs no wetter.

Plumber came out, confirmed the first one's opinion, but with more detail. There are tiny, tiny cracks in the grout (which is not waterproof, I learned) which were letting water pool in the pan beneath, which had finally hit capacity and started to overflow. No way for us to know until it ran over.

Insurance company sent out water damage control people that evening to clean up and try to dry everything out. They started out trying to conserve as much as they could

 
 Ended up having to revise that plan when the dry wall just kept bending and collapsing.

That's a good 25-30% of my kitchen ceiling gone, and its still dripping/dusty.

Then they  set up a squadron of industrial blowers and dehumidifiers upstairs and down. 




There's another 2 that you can't see here.
 They are really loud, and they need to be going 24/7 until everything dries out. It sounds like a wind tunnel. Its pretty constant, which lets us sleep, but it is wearing, and Penny is terrified of them.

Dear Universe, when I said I wanted to redo the kitchen and the shower, I didn't mean right now.
 

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Setting the Table

I've been putting off posting this for a while. I've been putting off even writing it, because I feel unqualified to offer an opinion. A small side effect of grad school I suppose.

But I feel compelled to write this. God has put this on my heart and I can't shake it.

When did the church forget our calling? When did we decide it was ok to become dictators to/slaves of social norms? When did we stop being a church of outcasts and forgiven sinners, and become the church of the middle class and 'good' people? When did we decide that we were going to ignore our call to 'the least of these', the tax collectors, the prostitutes, the criminals and the untouchables? When did we decide that we were better than everyone else and could act so high and mighty?

I know there are lots of churches who run soup kitchens, homeless shelters, prison ministries. And these are good ministries which deserve to be applauded. They are doing good work.

But if a pregnant teenager walked into your church, would she be greeted the same way you would greet a family of 4? Would the homeless man in the dirty coat be offered a cup of coffee just like the guy in the $1000 suit? Do you tell your child to stand by the gay child at school, or do you tell him to stay away?

When did we forget that we are the same as them, except that we know we have been forgiven solely by the grace of God? Is the blood of Christ sufficient only for our lying, cheating, hating, murdering, lusting, idolatrous soul, but not theirs?

If you are yelling at anyone but other believers who have defiled the church, you are not demonstrating Christ's love to the world. Who does Jesus get angry at? The Jews who turned the temple into a market. Who does Jesus show compassion to? All the sinners the 'good' people hated. He protects an adulterous woman from being stoned. Just talks to the woman living with a man who is not her husband, and offers eternal life. Eats with the tax collectors and prostitutes.

If you say that you would never do something so horrible as that, whatever sin you find particularly abhorrent, remember that in the eyes of God, a sin is a sin. Full stop. No nice gradation. Hating someone is the same magnitude as killing them. Looking at someone with lust is the same as fornication. Every day, in word, thought and deed, we sin and fall short of the glory of God. Why should I be acceptable for only lusting, and the pregnant teenager be reviled for actually fornicating? Only because we can see her sin. Secret sins are ok, so long as we keep them secret. But that is an entirely human perspective, not one of God. God sees everything, and my sin is just as deadly as her's. But Christ's blood is sufficient for me, and it is sufficient for anyone else. The quality of mercy is not strained.

The church needs to stop yelling, and start setting the table. The first literally, the latter both literally and figuratively. We need to stop turning our backs on the people who have the most claim on us, for Christ's sake. We need to offer comfort, protection and love. Not hatred and signs and things to throw. What if instead of screaming at women going to abortion clinics, we offered a coffee, a listening ear, a different path?  Defended the teenager being bullied, for whatever reason? Stopped the drunks behind the bar from beating up a guy who looks different? Gave as much to Salvation Army to help save people and get them back on their feet as we did Starbucks for a cup of over roasted coffee with over priced milk and sugar?

What if we learned to eat with the tax collectors and prostitutes?

I think it would look a lot more the like the wedding feast of the Lamb than we like to admit.

Friday, November 1, 2013

Why the Sky is Blue

So today I finally return to the world of physics and optics posts with a classic question that gets asked by children to their parents and qualifying exam committees to their examinees alike*. Why is the sky blue?

The first part of the answer is fairly easy to find with a judicious Google search: Rayleigh scattering!

In optics, several types of scattering, classified by the size of the particle doing the scattering, whether the collision is elastic (the incoming photon leaves with the same energy it started with) or inelastic (it loses energy in the collision to the thing its colliding with). Rayleigh scattering, named after Lord Rayleigh who did a lot of work in optics near the end of the 19th century, is scattering that is elastic, and the scattering object is smaller than the wavelength of the incoming photons**. The degree to which the incoming light is scattered is inversely proportional to the fourth power of the wavelength. So a longer wavelength photon will be less scattered than a shorter wavelength photon.

Sunlight is broad spectrum thermal light. For this discussion, we only care about the visible portion of the spectrum, which is roughly evenly distributed in incoming intensity. Once the sun's light hits the earth's atmosphere, it will encounter diffuse gas in the upper layers. The wavelength of the light is on the order of 10-7  m, while the atoms it encounters have nuclei on the order of 10 -14 m, 10 million times smaller.
Not to scale
When the light strikes a nucleus, its component wavelengths get scattered according to the rules of Rayleigh scattering.


The red end of the light spectrum gets scattered in a roughly forward direction, while the blue/purple end of the spectrum gets scattered off to the side.  Most explanations end here, but that leaves most people wondering why the sky isn't purple.

The answer to that part of the question has nothing to do with Rayleigh scattering and everything to do with the human eye. As you can see in this link, the peak color sensitivity of the human eye is in the green (550 nm is green, 700 nm is red, 475 is blue). This is one reason why you don't see blue and purple laser pointers--our eyes don't pick them  up all that well. (Red laser pointers are the most popular because they are dirt cheap after cd players became consumer items, and because a poorly made green laser pointer emits UV laser light.) So when our eyes are presented with a little green, and a lot of blue and purple light, what we see is  blue tinged with green. If you don't believe there is green in it, go ask a painter to paint the sky for you and see if they don't include a dash of green. .

And that, my online friends, is why the sky is blue.

~PhysicsGal


*Yes, this was one of the questions in the oral portion of my qualifying exam.

**I will mention this very briefly for purposes of this post, and discuss it in greater length in a later post: light exhibits both particle-like and wave-like properties.  We can speak of photons (particle-like) being scattered elastically, but also of photons having a wavelength and frequency (wave-like).

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Piercing: Why I enjoy perforating my ears

*This post is dedicated to my mother and my dear husband, who will never understand my desire to poke holes in my body.*

Piercings and tattoos seem to be one of the most divisive topics in fashion. Either you like them, and even if you don't have any admire them, or you hate them, and can't understand why anyone would poke holes in their body or in-bed ink into their skin.

My own anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a bit of a generational and gender divide on this. Members of my parents generation, at least the ones I know, seem to be largely anti-piercing in toto and tattoos are for sailors and rebels, therefore not for nice young women. My generation on the whole seems to be more accepting, but I find women are more understanding than men. I'm not sure if this is something deeply meaningful, or if it has something to do with the larger percentage of men who have a fear of needles and blood.

I've been fascinated by piercings and tattoos for a long time. I got my ears pierced (just standard earring piercings) when I was 8 after years of begging. When I was 10 or 11 I got a second set (it was all the rage circa 2000), but a bad reaction to a pair of cheap earrings ended up closing all those piercings. I redid the original 2, and then had them close up after I forgot to put earrings back in after an MRI. Got those re-pierced.  At the end of high school I got my second piercings back, and got my cartilage pierced. The latter I eventually let close in college when I started wearing headscarves full time and it just got in the way, even though I loved it. I had promised my mother that I wouldn't get a tattoo until after I graduated, or I probably would have gotten one as a substitute. After I stopped covering my hair, I didn't get the piercing back because I was looking at a wedding in the near future followed by a job search in a bad market. It didn't seem worth getting it back only to have to take it out again.

After I got diagnosed with PCOS last year, I needed to do something for myself. After getting my symptoms under control, I went and reclaimed my cartilage piercing and got my third set of lobe piercings (though they were just barely on my ear lobes anymore). Yesterday, as a reward to myself for passing the qualifying exam I got my fourth set which sit in a little valley in my ear where I have always wanted earrings.


So, why? Why on earth do I like putting metal rods through my ears? Why would I do it other places and in-bed ink in my skin if only I didn't want to upset my husband?

First of all, I like the way it looks. I don't wear make up, and most jewelry gets in my way. Fancy, sparkly tops take too much effort to keep looking nice. Piercings let my ears be silvery and decorated and I don't have to think about it once the piercings are healed. It doesn't matter how frumpy a day I'm having, my ears are shiny.

As an act for beauty, I don't see ear piercing (or tattoos) as being fundamentally different from the hundreds of ways women and men have sought to be beautiful through the ages, whether it's wearing a corset that distorts your rib cage, having overly elaborate hairdos you had to sleep sitting up for, or wearing toxic pigments. Dieting, in all its insane forms, is an attempt to modify the body. There are women in my parents' and grandparents' generations who can't walk flat foot from wearing high heels for so many years. Elective plastic surgery* is the most extreme and gruesome form of body modification, though somehow more socially acceptable.

Secondly, and this is a personal reason, definitely not applicable to other people who do body modification, it gives me a sense of control and power over my own body. I've had a series of long term health issues over the years, each of which made me like my body was in control of me, and not the other way around. Although I believe in psychosomatic unity, there were (and are) times when I feel like a soul trapped in a dysfunctional and rebellious body, that forces things upon me that I don't want. Piercings (along with cutting/growing my hair, etc) are a way for me to reassert that I am in control of my body, to say that *I*, the sentient soul herein, is capable of making choices and directing something about my body because I want to, not because I have to.

Lastly, and kinda branching off my second point, I use my piercings to mark victories. The first time I got my cartilage pierced celebrated the end of high school, most of which I completed from home, because I was unable to go to school, and marked the beginning of college, which I was hoping I would be able to do. It's piercing and my third pair marked the fact that I had come to terms with my new  illness, that I had it under control, and could now carry on with my life. This latest set marks a victory of something that had been terrifying me for months, the qualifier. They are like notches in a sword handle, a reminder that I can conquer.

Now, I know that no one who sees me in the street and sees my nine earrings knows any of this. They don't know my deep personal, aesthetic and philosophical reasons for poking holes in my ears. A lot of people tell me they don't really notice, since I don't wear particularly flashy earrings and my hair can cover them. What an observant, random person on the street sees I don't know. I don't dress like a punk or other stereotypical piercer. I also don't know what they think about the fact that I wear full floor length skirts, or that I am only 5 feet tall. Quite frankly, I don't care. I have never dressed to please others (though I do know how to dress appropriately on special occasions), and I don't intend to begin worrying about what people think of my appearance.

~PhysicsGal

*Reconstructive plastic surgery is a wholly different, and wholly admirable beast

Monday, October 28, 2013

Taco Night!

Every now and then, I get a hankering for tacos. Which is strange mainly because they aren't a childhood comfort/fun food for me. I can't remember ever having tacos as a kid, but in college taco bar Wednesdays provided one of the few genuinely edible meals in the week, at least if you weren't the kind of person who could live off frozen pizza and chicken nuggets. And thus did I come to appreciate the lowly taco.

A year or so ago I found an even better way to make tacos than with the usual ground beef. Stewing beef and a crockpot or low oven and a lot of time. Yes, it means that taco night is no longer a quick I-forgot-to-plan-supper meal, but it has its advantages. No browning-meat grease splatter. Stewing beef has an extra beefiness compared to ground beef. It clings to the taco sauce a million times better than ground beef, and it stays in the shells instead of falling out.

And of course it couldn't be easier. Put chunks of stewing beef into your slow cooking vessel of choice, plus taco seasoning and enough water to cover it 3/4 of the way. Stir it a bit  to make sure the spices are mixed in, and then let it cook for hours, checking occasionally to how its coming, or cover it completely with water and just let it go. Its done when you can stir the meat with a fork and it just falls apart until it looks like this:

Now THAT is tender meat
Then its mostly a matter of assembling your tacos however you like. I like a using a low carb tortilla, a dab of refried beans, guacamole, tomato and lettuce if I have it on hand. But the beauty of tortillas is customizability. And so easy to make low carb. Enjoy!






Sunday, October 27, 2013

I passed!

Not much to say here, other than I passed my qualifying exams and am now officially a PhD student!

I am unbelievably excited, relieved and grateful to all the people who helped me study, or prayed for me.

~PhysicsGal

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Marriage and Football

I was walking with a few of my fellow qualifying exam sufferers the other day when the subject of weekend football watching came up. My classmate was complaining that his girlfriend complained when he tried to watch football on the weekends, and I commented that I just ceded the television during football season. He joked that my husband had trained me well, and I rebutted that weekends = football was one of the first things I learned about my then-boyfriend, now husband. I was told he was lucky.

I have heard all the variations on this. The guys who complain that their wives never let them watch football and force them to watch HGTV. The women who call themselves 'football widows' and complain they never see their husbands during football season. There are of course the couples who are both passionate about football, but I have met one such couple in my entire life, so I can't say if that's really any less stressful.

I am not a football fan. I was never interested in sports growing up. Professional sports seemed pointless, and football particularly stupid, just a bunch of large men imitating rams and slamming their head together to get a non-ball shaped ball from one end to the other. Dear Husband on the other hand has been a football fan as long as he can remember. "Go Eagles" may or may not have been his first words. When football isn't in season, he pines for it. When it is on, he watches as many games as he humanly can, and reads about the rest. Given this dynamic, why am I not complaining every weekend from August to January?

Part of it is,  I knew what I was getting into from the get-go. I knew he was a die-hard football fan, and that football trumped everything else viewing wise. It took me a little while to accept it, and it sometimes irks me, but I can accept this as part of who my husband is. He'll still talk to me, help with things on commercials, pay attention to me and if a game is just terrible he'll sometimes watch something else with me. I never feel abandoned, or second place to football. I've known guys who treat football with religious reverence. Talking to them while the game is in play is sacrilege on the scale of gossiping loudly during the Lord's Prayer. I may lose the ability to watch my shows on the big screen during football season, but I've never lost my place to it.

So I'll sit with my husband, and watch football with him. Then I might go do my own thing, or sit with him and read while he watches. And so our house is at peace, even during football season.


Friday, October 25, 2013

Defeating the Wimpy Scientist Stereotype

Normally, I don't watch reality tv. Its like pop culture potato chips if its good, and just painful if its not. But when  a friend mentioned that Bill Nye the Science Guy was on "Dancing with the Stars", I had to see this.

Sadly, Bill Nye got eliminated week 3. He is a somewhat stiff dancer, not being able to do all the lithe movements the judges look for. That's not what I care about. 

In the 2nd week of the competition, he fell at the end of his dance and tore 80% of his quadricep tendon. Thats 80% of the tendon that connects big muscle on the front of your thigh to your knee. That is unbelievably painful. That's the kind of thing that sends football players to the ground.  Immediately after doing so, he got up, and stood in front of the judges before limping off and finally admitting he had hurt himself.

After hearing the doctor describe the damage and summarize his condition as "those few strands of tendons hanging on for dear life", Nye asks, "Well, what if I immobilize the knee entirely...and create some crazy choreography, peg leg fashion?" The doctor looks taken aback, and slowly responds with "Do I think you're going to be able to do much, no, do I think its going to hurt, yes, do I think you run the risk of worsening that tear or rupturing it completely, absolutely." and basically suggests a wheelchair.

And Nye went ahead with it anyway. Leg totally immobilized in a brace, lots of physical therapy treatments notwithstanding, he was obviously in  a lot of pain just standing up. Although he lost, the judges and the other dancers were in awe of the fact that he got up there at all.

So yes, he was a stiff white guy scientist, but he also shatter the perception of scientists as wimps (his background may be engineering, but he inspired so many kids to be scientists, he deserves the title). It's about as standard as stereotype as the social awkwardness and glasses. It's used frequently on things like The Big Bang Theory when the writers get lazy. And while I will readily confess scientists can have trouble with small talk around non-scientists, and a lot of us have vision correction of some sort, we are not wimps. Squeamish sometimes, but not wimps.

Scientists are tenacious. We have to be. We put in long hours, with weeks and weeks of frustration all for the hope of a few days of good data, or one right answer. Some will work years before seeing the fruit of their labor. And we will work through anything short of a coma. During the shutdown, memos had to be sent out to the scientists that they weren't supposed to work on their own time. Some of my colleagues have worked through medical conditions that most people stay home in bed or in the hospital for. I've worked with migraines, hand braces, and on crutches when I couldn't stand upright (which when you are doing experimental biophysics is challenging.)

We are not wimps.

So thank you, Bill Nye, for not only introducing us to how cool science is, but for showing we can tough it out with the best of the jocks.

~PhysicsGal


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

Cooking with 1 1/2 hands: Soup

After Sunday's experiment cooking with Dear Husband, I knew that would not be tenable long term until the fingers on my left hand heal.

 So I decided to tap into my experimentalist side. What can I do in the kitchen? Lift things with my right hand if they are balanced or light enough. Hold light things in my left. I could cook anything that could be cooked on a cookie sheet in the oven, or anything that could cook slowly in the few pots that wont move on my stove.

The epiphany occurred when I realized I could brown things in the oven, on the cookie sheet, instead of in a frying pan. Not the most efficient, but it works, and thats all I need at the moment.

So today I set out to make a minestrone-type soup. Lately, I've been wanting soup, despite never really liking soup before. I now deeply regret not liking soup when I lived in NJ, the land of delicatessens and their marvelous homemade soup. No one makes soup in NC, even if its cold.

Step 1: Accept help from the grocery store.


Yes, that is store bought, prepackaged mirepoix. I ditched the celery, because I never liked the taste of celery. I normally avoid these things like the plague, but right now chopping isn't in my tool kit.

Step 2: Brown ground beef on a baking tray. Parchment paper makes clean up one-hand friendly.


Browning ground beef in the oven works shockingly well. If I ever need to do large batch browning, this is my new method.

Sweat veggies in heavy bottomed pan, add beef stock, diced tomatoes, spices, and add in the ground beef. Let simmer for however long you like. Bam, a filling, satisfying soup.

I can't say that this is how I will cook soup from now on. And I honestly hope to never have to cook one handed again after this period is over, but its nice to know I'm not totally helpless and can work around it. Now, just need to keep this inventive streak going...


Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Ever have one of those days...

when everyone who knows you looks at you in confusion and pity?

I was not up to my usual form today. I'm still exhausted from the written qualifier, and desperately mustering my resources to study and conquer the oral qualifier. I got a bit of leaf in my eye on Sunday and so my eye is irritated and so I'm wearing my glasses, which I never wear and are out of date. My hair has been terrible since I had to start washing my hair one handed. It was cool and I was lazy so I wore my awesome geeky physics sweatshirt, which is huge on me. I'm-wearing-my-husband's-sweatshirt huge.
I'm not good at selfies...

Now, I'm not usually a high-fashion Pollyanna. I could not care less what Milan says I should be wearing this year. I usually wear full floor/ankle length, handmade dresses and skirts, with plain knit or tee shirts, but I look nice and I usually get compliments. My hair is usually frizzy/wavy, but its nicely pulled back and pretty. I can be  a cynical snarky person, but I am usually pleasant and friendly if I run into you.

Pretty much every conversation went something like this. *confused look as they approach* "You look different" I'm wearing my glasses *actually get close* "You look/[sound] exhausted. How'd the qualifier go?"

And then they would walk away to leave me to my misery.

I started teaching magnetism today. This is usually the best time of the semester for anecdotes. The unit for magnetism is the Tesla. You can easily get a good 10 minutes discussion of Tesla. MRIs, the weakness of the earth's magnetic field, the inefficacy of those magnetic wrist bands, there's tons of cool stuff for me to babble about and flesh out even the most untalkative classes.

Today? Got nothing. Mentioned earth's magnetic field, mentioned MRIs. Took maybe two minutes total. My students starting giving me looks of pity I was so clearly out of form.

Hopefully I can pull myself together before Friday. This is not how I want to convince my professors I am worthy to be their colleague in 4 years.

Monday, October 21, 2013

Autumn has finally arrived!

People who have lived here longer than me tell me that it's been autumn for a while now. A few trees started turning back in September and we haven't hit 90 F in quite a while.

It started to look light autumn (to me) last week. We got down into the 50s at night, and the trees have started to drop leaves in earnest, taunting my did-not-grow-up-with-deciduous-trees husband to the Sisyphean task of raking leaves before the tree is remotely bare, or they at least have all turned.


This is pretty much what our driveway/backyard looked like before and after.

But its not really autumn to me until it starts getting chilly inside. Until I want slippers  and extra blankets and to really snuggle with Dear Husband and Penny for warmth when watching tv in the evenings.
How could anyone *not* want more cuddle time with that face?

And it finally happened. Yesterday morning it was chilly when we woke up, which for us meant the indoor temperature was less than 70 (specifically, 68). Not enough to turn the heat on yet, but enough to make me dig out a pair of socks and wear a sweatshirt. This morning, it dropped to 40 F outside, and inside it hit the magic number--64. I got to turn on the heat! It rolled out of the registers and over my feet.

Autumn has finally arrived, let the snuggling abound!



Sunday, October 20, 2013

Cooking with One hand and a Husband: Quiche

So, I am for the time being operating with basically one hand. There are some low intensity tasks for which the three non-burned fingers on my left hand can manage (typing, holding paper, scratching Penny's ears) but cooking is not among those tasks because food is heavy and wet.

But food must still be made, because take out options are limited and boring when you are limited-carb. Things that can be made one handed are also extremely limited. So I co-opted by helpful but completely not-a-cook husband of mine to  help. I knew I would need something simple. Something that involved minimal prep, minimal knife skills, and foolproof cooking I could monitor (oven, in other words). I had some left-over cooked bacon, and knew that I could get a good pre-shredded cheese mix at the store (I am not a friend of graters at the best of times, and my husband has a gross/awesome story about the time he grated the cheese for his family's pizza night). Quiche seemed like a perfectly doable one hand and a husband meal that could stretch for 2 or 3 days.

The crust seemed like it would be easy enough with the food processor. Oat flour, a little whole wheat flour and salt go for a spin, while my husband cut butter into chunks. Problem, he's never cut frozen butter before (I keep a stock of stick butter in the freezer, and a tub of local butter in the fridge). Butter kinda goes flying. I tell him I need it in roughly 1 cm cubes. When he walks away, putting the knife by the sink, I have roughly 2 teaspoon slices. I grabbed the knife back, and was able to chunk the butter enough to go into the processor.

I call him back to chopped up the cooked bacon. He is aghast that I am using the same knife that just cut the butter to cut the bacon. I tell him to just chop while I finish with the crust. Food processors are wonderful things. I dump the dough into a pie plate and tell him to smoosh it out into an even layer, since neither of us wanted to deal with him learning to use a rolling pin (I ended up doing this task one handed). I asked him to  beat together 4 eggs and 2 cups of milk. He repeated back "3 eggs?" "No, 4 eggs, 2 cups of milk"

"My dad always said if you can't crack an egg with one hand, you can't crack an egg" he quipped as he cracked eggs into the bowl. He then realized the downside to this method, which is that it gets a lot more egg on your hand.

"How do I measure milk?" he asked. I replied that you use the two cup liquid measure, and handed it to him. He wondered why not just use a regular cup.

"That's stirring, not beating," I told him when I glanced at his attempt to combine the eggs and milk. I showed him how to whisk with one hand, trying not to send the bowl over the edge. He finished mixing it with something between a vigorous stir and a light whisking.

I showed him how to layer the ingredients in the crust, and pour the egg/milk mixture over. "That's it?" he asked.

Getting it into the oven, on a cookie tray, he didn't pay attention to the angle and some egg/milk spilled onto the bottom. Not catastrophic, but kinda defeated the purpose of the cookie tray.

In the end, it turned out fine, though the oven smoked a bit. Quiche is a very forgiving dish.


But I may have to look into one-handed meals a bit more. Any suggestions?

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Pride, Humility and Shame

The problem of Christians and shame has been on my mind for a while now. I would say its always been there in the back of my mind, but I really started contemplating it seriously after hearing an excellent sermon from my old pastor when I was visiting my parents last spring. He argued that one of the gifts that we receive when we place our trust in Christ is freedom from guilt and shame. The ultimate price has been paid. Every sinful thing we have ever done has been blotted out in the blood of Jesus. Therefore, we do not need to feel shame, and he urged us to embrace this freedom both for ourselves and for those we meet as part of showing them the love of Christ.

Which got me thinking. What is this source of shame? A lot of people would say its societal. That whole socio-evolutionary view that we developed shame to keep people in line. I've had more than a few people tell me that Christians have done more to instill a sense of shame than anyone else, citing the phenomena of 'Catholic Guilt' as a case in point. While I dispute that we are more to blame than anyone else, it is hard to dispute that the church has a well earned reputation for causing shame as much as it relieves it. So why do we have such a hard time getting rid of something that we aren't supposed to have, and no one wants?

I believe I have caught a glimpse of the problem, from a rather unlikely source. Depending on whether or not you had a Nickelodeon watching child 8 years ago, you may or may not be familiar with "Avatar: The Last Airbender" (the American anime style cartoon, not the awful M. Night Shyamalan movie). I need to do a post some time on why I like this show so much, and I am terrible at summaries, so instead I will direct you to the Wikipedia page if you are interested, which you should be. One of the characters, Iroh,  acts as the moral center and source of wisdom throughout the series. In one episode ("Bitter Work"), Iroh observes, "...pride is not the opposite of shame, but its source. True humility is the only antidote to shame."

This got me to thinking. Anyone with any religious (or western literature) background knows that pride is one of the seven deadly sins, and [less well know] humility is one of the seven heavenly virtues. We usually hear about pride as being bad because it encourages us to set ourselves up equal to God and better than our fellow man. Its a sin because it leads us to build towers of Babel in our own lives, because it gives us the illusion that we can somehow save ourselves or, worse, don't even need saving. Pride makes us echo Satan in Paradise Lost, thinking that is its "Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heav'n". I do not dispute any of this.

But I want to suggest that this is a rather flat picture of pride. It mostly describes how pride insults God, that the main issue with pride not that it hurts us in this life, but hurts our chances in the next. I want to suggest that it damages us just as much in this life. That pride has been the perpetual fountain of shame that we have never been able to stem. Most of us have never tried to cultivate true humility. We usually stop somewhere around the humble-brag stage, where we get caught being proud that we are humble. This is not humility, and leaves the door wide open not only for our own shame, but for shaming others. Far too often we say "Thank you God, that you did not make me that person" instead of reaching out. This is where we get all holier-than-thou and bruise the body of Christ, and prevent ourselves from truly knowing the freedom from shame and guilt that God wants for us.

This is not to say that we should not repent from our sins. But if we did not think so highly of ourselves to begin with, we would not feel the need to wallow in guilt once we have confessed and been cleansed from all iniquity.

What would true humility look like? I'm not sure. I know that it is a lot more selfless, a lot quieter, a lot more generous than whatever it is we are doing now. Humility requires us to look beyond ourselves, to acquire a proper perspective of who we are and what we are here for. I don't think this means dwelling on how insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. In the grandest of grand scheme of things, you were important enough for God to become flesh, and submit Himself to death for you. But I do think it requires us to remember that we are Christ's hands and feet in this world now, and that we should be trying to see a long lost brother or sister in everyone we meet, and acting accordingly.

If only we can let go of our pride, and embrace true humility, we may at last shed the shame that keeps us from knowing, and sharing, Christ' love to the fullest.

Friday, October 18, 2013

I Survived the Written Qualifer

Well, I did it. The written qualifier is over. It was the biggest, most stressful test of my life and through the whole thing I was weirdly...calm. I swear I could feel the peace of Christ just sitting on top of my panic like one of those huge guys in a cartoon sitting on the villain. I got there early of course, and I was just calm. Zen.

I had spent weeks trying to memorize the hundreds of formulas we learned in the past 3 semesters. I thought I had them down cold. As soon as the prof handed me the test, they left. Just walked right out of my head. The only thing I could remember was Snell's Law. Which is a nice, fundamental optics law that was utterly useless to me. I had nothing else. I eventually dragged out the lens makers equation, which also turned out to be useless.

But it didn't bother me. I knew that I didn't have a single mathematical thing in my head to draw on. I just had all the concepts. I would have to explain everything in words. And it didn't bother me. I should have been freaking out. Some of those equations would have been incredibly useful. But I just stayed calm, and kept working. There's a better than 50/50 chance I passed, assuming I don't mess up my oral exam next week.

I am unbelievably glad that it's over. Even with the rest of the exam ahead, I feel like I've passed the major hurdle. I just need to hang in there, brush up on the topics I ignored in the exam and stay calm. I won't know for another 3 weeks if I passed or not, but whatever the outcome, the rest of the semester will be so much easier from here on out.

I'm going to take at least tomorrow off, and hopefully write a good 'real' post or two on not-optics before I have to dive back in and finish off the beast. But tonight, rest.

Thursday, October 17, 2013

The Waiting is the Worst Part...

Well, its down to the wire. In less than 24 hours it will be 75% over. I'll have crossed the Rubicon.

I taught my morning class today, which was a good thing because one of my students gave me the perfect opening to explain Maxwell's equations. Also, this group of students is not particularly shy. All my classes have asked what I did to my hand, this group got up the guts to ask, "So, did you know the pan was hot?" and comment on the duct tape. Engineers, and they aren't dependant on duct tape. What is this world coming to.

I got someone to cover my afternoon session, which was also good because it meant that I could come home and try to relax and drink Emergen-C, since I have a sneaking suspicion that I am coming down with something, and in usual form am putting it off until after the exam. This happens every time I have something big and stressful looming. Right after we closed on the house I came down with a wicked sinus infection. I'm just hoping I can maybe edge it out until after the oral portion as well.

I don't quite know what to do with myself. A part of me says 'study!' and another, I believe less panicky part, says if I don't know it now, I'm unlikely to learn it in the next 12 hours, and I should just relax and let my subconscious organize. I'll glance over some things in the morning, but nothing substantial is going to be learned now. I kinda wish I could just take it and get it over with. At this point I'm most worried by the fact that my fingers have started to regain some mostly pins and needles feeling. I'd rather not be suddenly feeling my burned fingers in the middle of explaining Young's Double Slit. Its not nearly as painful as when they were first burned, but it's enough to be distracting.

I know I know this stuff. I know that I have a lot of people praying for me. Now all I can do is pray and throw myself on the mercy of the Examining Committee.