Life at the GBT

The Green Bank Telescope -- my new workplace!

Hey all! I'm now about a month into my new postdoc at the Green Bank Telescope, and so far, so good! A lot of my time so far has just been getting familiar with everything -- attending meetings (whether I know what they're talking about or not), reading the various guides to observing and proposing for time on the telescope, and meeting lots and lots of new people. I've taken a tour of the telescope, and I'm going to be starting my formal training on dealing with the telescope and doing support work next week, which will be roughly half of what I do here (the other half, of course, being SCIENCE!).

For the past couple of weeks, I've also started getting back into my own science work. A project I'm on got some observations recently on the VLA, so I was going through data for that for a bit, and I'm starting to work my way through the referee report of a paper I wrote last fall. The paper in question came back to me right at the peak of my "Gah! Gotta finish my thesis!" push, so even though I've had the report for a while now, I only recently started to make corrections on it. So it feels pretty good to be thinking about science again.

My new house!

Green Bank itself is quite different from New York City, as you can imagine.  It's a very small town and is literally situated in a National Forest, and the entire area is beautiful. There is a lot of good hiking -- a couple folks from NRAO took me out hiking one Sunday for a hike up one of the nearby mountains, stopping for lunch at the top, and we saw a trio of bears on the way back down! (Momma and two cubs, so we kept our distance.) There are also regularly large numbers of deer in the field in front of my house, so that's rather neat, as well. Springtime is (hopefully) here, but we  can apparently get snow into May, according the the people here! For a while it seemed like the weather couldn't make up it's mind, it snowed one day and was gorgeous the next.

View from my back door a few weeks ago,
when there was still snow!

We *are* in the middle of the Radio Quiet Zone. This was established back in the 50's to keep the radio noise around the telescope as low as possible. This means there is NO cell phone reception or radio reception or wifi ANYWHERE in the surrounding area. I cannot have a microwave, wifi, or even a wireless phone in my house. It takes some adjustment -- honestly the thing that's throwing me the most is the lack of microwave and not being able to reheat leftovers in 5 minutes. That and the fact that, while there are a couple convenience stores in town, to do a *thorough* grocery store run I have to go at least an hour away. This past weekend I went to Lewisburg (1.5 hrs away) to go grocery shopping and go to the movies (I saw Zootopia -- fun movie!).


I am renting a house(!) about a mile from where I work -- this is the first time I've lived without a roommate, and I now I have a 3 bedroom 2 bath house all to myself. This is quite a change from my shared NYC apartment. I've set up one of the bedrooms into a guest room, and the other I am making into an office for myself. Well, that's the goal, anyway -- it's still kind of full of the boxes I haven't unpacked yet. I've unpacked all the *critical* stuff -- clothes, stuff for the kitchen, books, CD's and DVDs -- but I admit I'm being rather slow on the unpacking of things that I don't need on a daily basis.

That's all for now, just a short update. So many new things in my life right now!

A New Start!

Post-defence celebrations!

Many important things have happened since the last time I wrote here, the most important of which is: I successfully defended my thesis!  The defence itself went well, as did turning in the thesis, but the week prior to each was rather stressful, trying to get everything done. Not only that, the week prior to my defence I was feeling rather under the weather, and to top it off, on Wednesday night my computer DIED. And I hadn't backed up my slides and notes sufficiently. So I basically had to redo the majority of the slides for my defence which was NOT NOT NOT fun at all. As you can imagine, I was in a bit of a state. But as I said, the defence itself went well. The morning of, I actually found that a friend of mine had left "before" and "after" gifts for me on my desk -- the before was a stuffed snake toy (in reference to this amazing essay), and the after was a flask of whiskey. Both were very much appreciated and helped calm my nerves.

Not only did I defend, but I have also been hired as a post-doc at NRAO's Green Bank Telescope, in West Virginia, where I will be starting in late March! I'm really looking forwards to the new position, and I expect to learn a lot.  I've been joking that this will make me a "real astronomer" since I'll actually be working at a telescope and taking actual observations.  While I am an observationalist (as opposed to a theorist), all my data for my thesis has been from radio observations. So, while I wrote numerous proposals, got approved for telescope time, and had to figure out the details of the runs, I didn't actually do the observations myself --- I sent off  the relevant info to the VLA, and they scheduled the observations and sent me the data back. Even though I've been out to various telescopes, the only time I actually controlled a 'scope and took my own data on was on a class trip to MDM observatory in Arizona, and was for a class project, not my research (though it was a great experience). I am also not counting the observations I've done teaching labs or doing outreach, since those experiences aren't taking data for research so much as showing people the stars and explaining the awesome stuff that exists in the sky.

Anyway, I turned in my thesis on January 15th, and defended on January 29th. Since then, I've moved out of my apartment in NYC and shipped a bunch of stuff down to WV, where it is in storage. I stayed with my parents in Baltimore for a week, and now am in Cambridge in the UK visiting Benson. I'll be here for about a month, then going back to Baltimore until I move to Green Bank. I haven't bought a new computer yet -- I kind of want to wait until I've gotten to my new job, to see what kind of set up I will have there and what kind of computational needs I'll have. For now, Benson has kindly given me his old computer (very similar to the one I had that died) that he is no longer using, having upgraded about a year or so ago. So I can just use this one until I've decided exactly what I want/need to replace my old one. Happily, I did back up *that* computer regularly, even if I hadn't backed it up sufficiently close to the crash to save my slides, so I have all my work. The only thing I lost was the slides and notes. Which, well, was enough.

I've been having a lovely time in the UK. It is always good to see Benson and spend time with him, and it's been lovely to just relax and not worry about work, to take a real vacation. This past weekend, some good friends of ours -- Dahlia and Paul -- were in London for *their* vacation, so we met up with them twice! They came into Cambridge one day, and we went into London another. When in London, we went to a great restaurant -- Dinner by Heston Blumenthal -- which we all REALLY enjoyed a LOT. They take historical British recipes and modernize them somewhat to make an absolutely fantastic menu. We all got different things so we could try as much as possible, and split several of the appetizers and desserts. It's hard to chose favorites, since everything we got was fantastic, but I'd particularly recommend the roast marrowbone and meat fruit appetizers and the tipsy cake for dessert. The mains it's harder to chose one thing -- the duck breast was amazing, the ribeye was an extremely flavorful steak, and the halibut was a really well made dish.

Anyway, again, I've been having a great vacation. And I am both really happy and kind of sad about finishing my thesis -- it was so much work, it's very strange to be done with it. Even if research goes on and ever on, and I will be continuing my work on parts of it, having one big written work describing everything I have worked on is an odd experience. Here is 6 years of my life in 231 pages, right?? But for now, I'll relax a bit longer and then start on my next big experience!

Life update (and Soylent review)

Hi all!

It's been ages and ages, I realize, but I never intended to let this blog die. I've just been in the midst of writing up my dissertation and job hunting. I'm going to be defending my thesis in a couple of months, likely in late January/early February, so that's been my main focus for a while now. I haven't gone on any really interesting trips since the last time I posted, and while I have been cooking some and have been to some awesome restaurants (most notably Eleven Madison Park last May!), I haven't been doing nearly as much foodie stuff lately. The most interesting thing I've done food-wise lately was cook borscht (which turned out really well, admittedly) and to try out Soylent. If you aren't familiar with the product, it's basically a drink designed to replace food -- it's balanced so that if you consume nothing but, you still fulfill all your nutritional and caloric needs without needing to cook or prep anything.

But Jennifer, you say -- you LOVE cooking! AND eating delicious new things! Why on earth would you replace food with something like that? Well, for one, I love to try new things. And I really like the *idea* behind it -- making it easy to get all your nutrition from one source in a relatively inexpensive manner (~$2.30 per bottle right now, cheaper in powder form) seems like a good idea to me. And if I'm ever going to replace food with something else, now is the time -- like I said, I'm in the middle of writing up my thesis. I'm *busy* and when I'm not busy I'm frequently *tired* and don't feel like cooking up something complicated. If you compare the frequency at which I've been cooking for the past six months ago to any other six month period of my life since moving into my own place (albeit with roommates, but also with a KITCHEN) during my junior year of undergrad, you'll notice a SHARP drop in how often I've been doing so and a SHARP rise in take-out and super-simple instant type dinners which require minimal effort. Also, it's named after a famously cannibalistic product which I find, frankly, hilarious. Know thy audience, I guess.

Anyway, they recently updated the product so that it's no longer just in powder form -- originally you had to mix it up yourself whenever you wanted it, but now it comes in conveniently pre-made bottles which I can grab on my way out the door if I'm in a hurry. They're 400 calories a pop, so in theory you can drink 5 bottles a day to get your full 2000 calories, but I maybe have one or two a week at most, when I'm tired and hungry or in a hurry to get somewhere and need food fast. Good for a quick breakfast or snack. I bought a 12 pack a little over a month ago and recently received my second one last weekend.

Taste-wise, it's kind of like a cross between unsweetened soy milk and those last liquidy dregs of oatmeal that collect at the bottom of your bowl, in that it's got a bit of thickness and texture. It tastes fine. A bit bland, but really, I like soy milk, and that's the closest thing to it, I think. Thick soy milk with a hint of oatmeal. Fine for a bit, for a meal here and there, but if I lived off the stuff I would get cravings for actual flavor pretty fast. 

Anyway, that's all for now, this was meant to be a quick life update mainly. No promises for future update schedules because right now my dissertation writing is the most important thing.

Going the Distance

So, I just realized (today) that as of maybe a week ago, Benson and I have been dating for over 10 years now. We've never celebrated dating anniversaries or anything, and I don't know the exact day we did start, to be honest, just that it was a few days before the Superbowl, which is a thing that I can look up. (I just remember being super giddy and seeing the Superbowl up on a screen in the student center, so I can't really get much more specific then that. Kind of random how memory works sometimes.) We've been doing the long distance thing since graduation, which means of that 10 years, 6.5+ of them have been long distance. 

So! To celebrate/brag/give support to other LDRers on this occasion, here are some date suggestions and general advice for things that we've done long distance. I don't claim uniqueness or creativity for any of these, by the way... I've definitely looked at ALL the articles online on doing stuff long distance. 

- Talk. Skype. Call. Figure out what times of day work and just schedule when you can make time for each other, and make this HIGH priority in your life, even if you are going crazy with homework or presentations or paper writing.

- DON'T talk. You have a ton of work to do? So do they? Just put Skype up in the background and work on your stuff in companionable silence where you can occasionally glance up and smile at the other person and listen to them working while they try and figure out why their code isn't working, dammit, and you wrestle with trying to find the bit in this stupid paper that is relevant to your research. It doesn't even need to be work, just hang out and browse the internet together. Leading to...

- Youtube videos, articles, and general internetness. Just, if you are doing nothing and interneting or listening to music on your own (or simultaneously on each end of the line), if you find and interesting article or video... link it or play it back and forth. You know how the "oh that reminds me of this other thing" chain goes. Similarly, things like Podcasts and audiobooks and music *CAN* be listened to at the same time over Skype. 

- Music! You can play music together and sing separately/together. Just rocking out to Bohemian Rhapsody together or putting on some Sondheim and singing along to Sweeney Todd. Benson and I have also gone another route a couple times -- he plays the violin, so he's played some jigs and reels on his end while I danced to them on this end.

-Games. Games with remote co-op like Monaco or Castle Crashers or Portal (which we often do over Steam, which has the nice chat and voice chat options). Or Vassal is a free system where you can download and remotely play many different board/card/dice games, including straight up cards. We often play cards, or games like Pandemic or Ghost Stories. We've also both just gotten our own physical decks of cards and played things like Cribbage or other games where you don't have to actually interact extensively with the discard pile and it doesn't really matter if you are playing with 2 separate decks. You can also just separately play games and recommend them to each other and discuss strategy, of course. But I'm assuming that "tell your partner about things that interest you and you think they might like" is pretty much understood in a relationship, long distance or not. Actually, it can be pretty darn fun to watch your partner play something you've already done as you wait for something awesome to pop up so you can watch their surprise and delight. (Stanley Parable, I'm looking at you. Benson literally just watched me play that game as I DEVOURED it and he kept laughing at me as I worked through it and was being boggled and bemused at different parts of the game. It was quite fun.) Online puzzle games are also an option -- we have finished all but a few levels of the NotPron online riddle, and are currently working on the Tim Tang Test. We've both worked together and separately on the puzzles. We keep the solutions as we get them in a file in Dropbox, naturally. Also, good to note that screen sharing can be quite useful for solving puzzles and things like that. 

-Many many movies and TV shows. Download the thing, Dropbox it, get on Skype and IM and count down from 5 and press play at the same time, then mute them and chat on IM about the thing as you watch. We usually have multiple TV shows that we've got in the Dropbox so that depending on our mood we can go comedy, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, etc. We keep up with a number of shows (ie Game of Thrones, Agent Carter, Hannibal, Mad Men, Doctor Who, Mushishi, etc), but also glut on old shows we're interested in (ie. Farscape, The Wire, Twilight Zone, Arrested Development). Movies are generally for weekends where we have more time, and keep those in the box as well. 

- Books and stories. You can read the same books at the same time, separately, and discuss them, of course, like Benson and I did on the Game of Thrones series. You can ALSO just take turns reading back and forth chapter by chapter, like we're currently doing with Dune. Also, short stories are great for this. I've read Benson a bunch of fairy tales before bed, and am now going through Kipling's Just So Stories for short stories. 

-Write/be creative.  As per the previous suggestion, Benson has been reading to me from Burton's Book of One Thousand and One Nights. And from that, we're working on a grand index together, summarizing the events of each story, which level of story it is (meaning, tale within a tale within a tale and which tale it is within), and where Scheherazade breaks off the story each night and which night it is. We're keeping the master file in the dropbox and splitting it up by story. I imagine this could work for other types of things, too.

- A wild and crazy blast from the past: Actually write letters. Physical letters. We've not been doing this one since Benson moved to England, but let me tell you personally, the joy of getting an actual physical letter is well worth the 49 cents it costs within the US. And you can do stuff like write in cyphers or with constricted writing that you don't tell your partner what the key or rule was and they have to figure it out themselves. Or make crosswords and word searches for each other. Or send sketches. Or puzzle pieces. Or care-packages of goodies, of course, though this is more expensive.

- Cooking. What? Yes. Cooking. We've only done this a couple times, usually on special occasions like Valentine's Day, and it takes some planning. But. Choose a recipe, and each of you buy the ingredients. Then set up your computer in your kitchen so you can Skype. Start sautéing, or chopping, or prepping each ingredient at the same time. Alternatively, you can just eat and/or drink together without syncing to quite that degree.

- Time Zones suck. But sometimes it's totally worth it to go sleep deprived for certain things if you are both eager to do the thing together. This is why Benson got up at 6am to watch the Breaking Bad finale with me while I watched it at 1am here. And yesterday we did the same thing for the premiere of Better Call Saul. And when our time zone difference was a little less dramatic we'd do stuff like watch the State of the Union together.

There are many other things you can do, of course, but this is a good selection. But I feel that making the relationship and time together a priority is the most important thing for making things work. Within that, you can be pretty creative. Keeping positive, planning out visits and things to do together in the future, also good. And for us, Dropbox and Skype are apparently the key to our relationship. Thank goodness for modern technology!

Beautiful Cars update!

Just a quick picture -- my Dad hasn't sold the car yet, so I got to drive it around the park last month when I visited home. It was quite a treat!

Beautiful Cars and Driving Lessons

Chatting with my parents on the phone today, I discovered that my dad is selling the gorgeous old convertible, that he inherited from his dad, on eBay. I think I last drove this car more than 10 years ago, the first time I learned to drive stick shift, right after getting my drivers license in high school. Now, I say the first time I learned stick because I re-learned how to drive manual and got a heck of a lot more comfortable with it about 3 years later, in college, on a different car -- still learning from my dad, but on a Honda from the late 90's(?), rather than on the gorgeous old Mercedes from the early 60's that he was rather (and rightfully) protective of. The second time, on the Honda, I got comfortable driving it every day to and from the girl scout camp where I was working all summer. The first time, on the Mercedes, it was just around a parking lot, around a cemetery, around a park -- not on any major roads -- after I had already gotten comfortable on an automatic. That time it was mainly so that I'd get the theory down and be ABLE TO DO IT rather than be comfortable with it, I think. I've written before (even just in my last entry) about my dad's insistence (and my subsequent gratitude) that everyone should know how to drive a manual transmission car. 

I can't claim to be a car person in the sense of knowing tons about different cars or having a big mechanical aptitude -- I don't really know anything more technical than how to (and this is just in theory because I've never done it, only watched) change a tire or change oil. However, I *am* a car person in the fact that when I see a gorgeous car, I stop and look and drool a bit (usually figuratively, that, but only usually). I appreciate how beautiful they can be, and how lovely they are when they are running just as they should, and when a lovely car in the street, or on a television show to which I am semi-guiltily addicted, or on a website I'm browsing, or wherever, I can't help but stop and admire it. And I truly enjoy driving (though not in heavy traffic, no one likes driving in traffic). Give me a nice, hilly, up and down country road; or the twists and turns of CA-1 up the coast; or honestly just the car radio and a bit of lightly traffic'ed interstate through Pennsylvania to let loose my thoughts, and I'm content. I drove about 1400 miles from Cambridge to Manchester, to Edinburgh, to the Isle of Skye and back one over a period of a week this past summer. Parts of it were miserable, with stop and go traffic, and of course driving for LONG periods of time -- especially driving manual -- left me stiff and with a sore left leg. But the parts where I was flying through the Scottish countryside? Or driving around Skye's coast, occasionally stopping and admiring vistas? Those parts were utterly fantastic. Partly because of my love of travel and seeing new sites, but also partly because of that feeling of "WHEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!"

The number one purchase I think about if someone asks me what I'd do if I ever won the lotto (not that I actually ever play the lotto unless my grandfather gives me a scratch off ticket) is an increasingly detailed dream car. And the image of that dream car is based off of this one. This car -- the one that my grandparents used to drive up to our house when I was little; that's been sitting in my parent's garage since I was about 16 -- old enough to be thinking more seriously about learning to drive and getting my license and whatnot. This car has been around all my life and all my formulative years regarding car beauty. This dream car that I shall purchase first thing with my imaginary lotto winnings, in case anyone is interested, is a sporty little convertible with has a body shape that looks suspiciously like this car -- only with all the amenities that one wants in a car like air conditioning, a working radio, a clock, and an actual back seat. My dream car is is a lovely shade of silvery-blue; is one of those cars that can be driven either in manual or automatic -- because manual is FUN in the right situations, but you sure don't want to drive one uphill in a city with stop and go traffic; is a hybrid -- because the other car, the *automatic* car, that I learned to drive on was a Prius, and I like to be environmentally conscientious and gas prices are only going up and yes in this fantasy I've already won the lotto but still. 

Anyway, I am kind of hoping my dad doesn't sell it before I visit home at the end of the month, since I'd love to take it out for one spin in the cemetery or something, just because DAMN. How often do you get to drive that kind of car? (Damn in the "ain't that fine" sense, not in the "cursing the world" sense). Like I said, I don't think I've been allowed to drive it in 10 years -- it rarely came out of the garage, for one thing, except for the occasional 'Fall leaf drive' and other quiet meanderings through the park. I certainly don't begrudge him of it if he sells it off before that, though -- I mean, I certainly could have asked before this to drive it again. I'm pretty sure I even have, a few times, but again, he's been protective of it and I'm not on the insurance or anything as a driver and I haven't had all that much stick practice in the past few years. But. It would be nice. And I *have* been practicing my stick shift lately, even if it was with the opposite hand and on the wrong side of the road. So maybe. We shall see. Either way, it will be sad when it goes. It's a lovely car. But hopefully it will go to someone who will appreciate it, who will fix it up and take it nice places, and who will keep it in good condition, and will be able to spend time enjoying it.

Travelogue: Scotland

Eilean Donan Castle

Having never been to the UK before, I really wanted to see some parts of it that were a bit further afield. So it is important to grab opportunities to travel when they come. Last week, there was a mini nova conference near Manchester, just the local astronomers around the UK which they hold every 6 months or so, kind of informal but a good opportunity to see other astronomers who focus on novae and even some of my collaborators that I rarely see face to face. This was actually held on my birthday -- I made some comments to Benson about this, saying that the ONE DAY I knew I had to work ALL SUMMER without taking off was, of course, the day I'd most want to NOT work and take off and celebrate. So, anyway, the day prior, I rented a car, then woke up at 6:15am on my birthday to drive 3 hours to the conference (with Benson navigating/snoozing in the passenger seat -- he just worked in a nearby library the whole day while I was chatting with folk).

Benson and I at Jodrell Bank

All in all, it was a decent birthday (terrible traffic aside) - I had a lot of good conversations with people, talked about science, got some feedback on my research, and so on. But because we were already going up towards Manchester, Benson and I reasoned it was a good time to just keep going north. Which is why we rented the car for a full week and spent a long weekend in Scotland! So, after spending a chunk of Friday afternoon visiting a collaborator at the Jodrell Bank Observatory (the central hub for the radio telescope array eMERLIN, which is spread over the UK -- we got quite a nice tour of the facility, in fact) we drove up to Edinburgh. Our first night was a simple one -- we just checked into our hostel (which was made entirely of shipping containers and absurdly inexpensive), went into town and walked around old town. There, I lusted over the multitude of plaid clothing that was *everywhere* (if you ever look through my wardrobe, you may notice that I have a fondness for it), and, more importantly, went for dinner and drinks. Naturally, I had to have haggis for my first ever trip to Scotland... followed by four shots of whisky (divided by two, though, since Benson and I split them). You see, we deliberately went to a place called Whiski, which I would highly recommend, which has 300 different whiskies available for tasting. Which is a good selection, I think. We actually went back again on Monday night to get 3 more shots. Benson is a BIG whisky connoisseur, so I pretty much let him chose what we got. Between the 2 tastings, we got one whiskey from each of the regions -- Highlands, Lowlands, Islays, Speyside, Campbeltown, and the Islands, plus an extra Lowlands -- I don't quite recall what we got, honestly, you'd have to ask Benson -- but they were all very good. I tend to prefer whiskies that don't have an overly strong peat taste and that are smoother, but I'm also not that fussy or knowledgable about the whole thing. I know more now than I did at the beginning of the weekend though.

The next morning, we arose from our shipping containers,  bright and shiny early, and drove to the Isle of Skye. Which was a lovely drive across the lowlands and highlands, going through a national park at one point. Now, you'll note that I was driving. Benson hasn't really driven since he got his license 10 years ago, and doesn't really trust himself behind the wheel. Whereas, I actively enjoy driving (assuming no traffic). This was my first experience driving in Britain, however, and it took some getting used to not only DRIVING on the wrong side of the road (and through endless roundabouts), but also shifting gears with my left hand. Manual cars are the norm in the UK, and much cheaper to rent, you see. My dad taught me how to drive stick shift when I was in college -- he kept a manual car around in part for this purpose, and had me drive said car to my camp job over the summer every day, so I'd get used to it. So it's a useful skill! I never finished writing up my last summer's activities (whoops) but this came in handy last year when we were in Italy, as well -- we stayed at a friend of Benson's house, and borrowed his grandfathers car. Which was stick. And I was the only one of the four of us that could drive -- which made me the designated driver throughout the Italian countryside, and enabled us to see much more of it than we would have been able to otherwise. So worth holding back a bit more on those italian wines....

Anyway, the Isle of Skye was GORGEOUS. We did a lot of hiking over the weekend, drove all around the island, had lots of delicious fresh seafood (and were even taught how to shuck oysters by the proprietor of the wonderful Oyster Shed), saw a TON of sheep (sheep EVERYWHERE), visited the Portree harbor, and, naturally, toured the Talisker Whisky Distillery. Talisker is one of Benson's favorite whiskies, so we got to sample a few very nice ones, too. We stayed at a lovely little B&B which overlooked the Eilean Donan Castle in the town of Dornie (not on the Isle of Skye itself, but within driving distance). After we spent a very nice 2 days in Skye, we headed back to Edinburgh, to explore the town a bit more in depth. We still mainly wandered -- I bought myself some plaid items as souvenirs, we had more delicious food, more whisky at Whiski, visited the main castle there, and climbed up Arthur's seat for a gorgeous view of the city. All in all, a good trip! Now, we're back in Cambridge again, which means... we should probably start thinking about buying tickets and planning our trip to Greece for the last week of August. Yeah... things to get on soon...

The view from Arthur's Seat