Well it has certainly been a long time since I posted in here. Lots has been going on since then!
For the first 2.5 weeks of June I was at CERN doing a test beam. That means we brought our equipment over there and tested it in the beam line. There are of course always things that will go wrong when you move equipment from one place and set it all up in another, and I know this very well. However I was NOT prepared for what happened. Really I don't think there could have been a better example of Murphy's Law. Absolutely EVERYTHING went wrong. But eventually we got a bit of data, after lots of 15 hour work days (one day even 17 hours) and frustration.
Then it was back to PSI for a couple weeks. Most of my time in the summer is spent supervising a couple of the students who come from the US. This summer one of my students is a native Spanish speaker, and is not exactly fluent in English. It has been a challenge but I definitely think he is improving his English. It does mean that things move a little slowly though because it takes a lot of time to communicate. Luckily one of our post-docs speaks Spanish and can serve as translator when the English breaks down.
The next adventure was vacation!!! I met my sister for a wonderful 1.5 week vacation. We met up in Paris and spent 5 days there, then took the TGV to Geneva and spent one day there, touring CERN and seeing a bit of the city. Then we flew down to Rome for another 5 days. It was very hot. And we walked. A lot. An average of 10 miles per day (my phone has a pedometer). My sister's feet were literally covered in blisters. Curiously, mine were fine other than one small blister and my heels cracking from being dry, but that's just normal summer for me.
I came back to work on Monday and found out one of the students managed to flood our lab while I was gone; luckily nothing really seems to be permanently damaged. Best case scenario really, because they certainly learned a lesson and nothing is lost. But I think from now on I'll take my vacations when the students aren't here. Last year while I was on vacation (sitting by the pool in the French countryside just outside of Toulouse) one of the students almost set the lab on fire. Who knows what would happen next year...
So now I'm back at PSI for a couple weeks. I seem to never stay here too long though. :-) First week of August I will be down in the mountains for a summer school run by PSI. Should be pretty nice. Lectures in the mornings and early afternoon, and then free time in the mountains in the late afternoon and evenings. It will almost feel like vacation! The next trip will be for a conference my group has organized, also in the mountains here in Switzerland, but a different part. That's at the beginning of September. After that I will go for a long weekend with some friends to Porto, in Portugal. I love living here in Europe where you can get around for so cheaply! Then I have another meeting, this time in Ljubljana, Slovenia, at the end of September. Then mid-October I have a meeting in KS. I'm hoping on that trip to be able to swing by Cincinatti to see my sister and spend a week or so working at KU, in order to see my Lawrence friends.
After that things will calm down a bit in terms of travelling. I'll still be plenty busy though. I have to take my comprehensive exams sometime in January or February, so I'll probably schedule that right after Christmas and just go to KS before coming back to Swiss-land. I'm trying not to think about that too much right now because I'm pretty much terrified that I'm not going to pass those. I've been away from course-work for too long and am really going to have to buckle down to remember all that stuff. And I'm not really the "studying" type.
But it will all be worth it after that, because that's when the most awesome vacation will be. At the end of Feb/beginning of March I'll be going to Colombia (that's right, the country) with some of my friends (one of whom is from there) for 3 weeks! It will be fantastic I'm sure and a really good way to relax (and hopefully celebrate) after my exams. (I have a lot of phrases in parentheses in this paragraph.)
Wow this post is long.
Anyway, the last bit of fun stuff for this post is that despite eating gelato and/or pizza at least once per day on vacation, I lost 2-3 pounds! And that means that for the first time in years, I have made it to under 180!!!! I've felt for a while now that I've been stuck, hovering just above 180. I'd get close to it but then bounce right back up. So I feel like I've sort of broken through a wall now. It's an entirely mental thing, but it makes all the difference really.
