franciversary

Today is our six month "franciversary" (yup, six month anniversary of living in our apt. in France). To celebrate, we did a little bird watching, I planted a few things in front of our place, including strawberries, mint, rosemary, thyme, some flower bulbs, and our landlord's fig tree. Then we had a nice dinner.

What have we learned and accomplished in six months? 

- Well, a big thing is the little bit of French, enough to have some minor conversations. 

- Ski to enjoy the winter.

- I've learned to drink espresso and like it.

- Cooking and shopping for food has become a real pleasure.

- Not owning a car is awesome.

- Slow down, look around.
- The only thing missing in my life is a cat, but there are enough sitting on window sills to tide me over a little longer.
- People here are really happy and that makes me happy.

Santé!

yea, science!

A big day for physics, CERN made it's first 7 TEV collisions. (You'll have to ask Derek if you want more information as that's about the best I can offer). I do know that it has been a long time coming- its taken careers worth of planning and fixing, the world's largest collaborative efforts, lots of hard work, waiting, and tons and tons of coffee. And no, no giant black hole swallowed the earth as far as I can tell. Congratulations to all those physicists out there! Now when are you getting up to 14 TEV?

CERN offered a live web cast of the days events- a slight delay in the AM that was quickly resolved and interviews from the control rooms. I have to admit, I got sucked in and spent the better part of the day glued to the webcast. Here are some screen capture shots I made from the broadcast of the first collisions:

If you'd like to read more, here is the official  CERN press release, a good place to start.

Left: Atlas control center at first collisions. Right: CMS detector (the one Derek works on).

Above: First collisions recorded by CMS detector.  Photograph: Marzena Lapka, Date: 30 Mar 2010