Posted by barb on Nov 14, 2005 in
Random Thoughts So, I’ve been on the Prozac for over a month now, enough time for the drug to have taken full effect, but I don’t notice much of a difference. Fortunately I don’t feel the heaviness in the morning that usually accompanies fall and winter mornings (imagine you’ve been out drinking all night, only to get back into bed at 5 AM, and then you have to get up at 6 AM for an important meeting at work – you know that heaviness that you feel at 6 AM? Yeah, I usually feel that *every morning* in the winter). Unfortunately, I still feel like crying most of the day. My evenings have consisted of huddling under blankets in front of the TV. Much of my work day is spent daydreaming about crawling back into bed when I get home or crawling under the desk to hide from the world.
I think I need to ask my doctor to up the dosage…she’s supposed to call me some day this week.
This also explains why blogging has been so light lately – I can hardly get myself moving during the day, let alone trying to come up with something meaningful or witty to write about here.
Tags: health
Posted by barb on Nov 13, 2005 in
Movies Went to a couple movies this weekend:
- Dreamer
3/5 stars
Cute feel-good movie, though no surprises if you’ve seen the trailers
[IMDB link for Dreamer]
- Good Night, and Good Luck.
4/5 stars
As Andrew said after the moive, “TV was sure different back then.”
In 1953, Edward R. Murrow, a respected CBS newsman, chose to broadcast a couple shows dealing with Senator McCarthy and his communism witch-hunt. Needless to say, at that time it was dangerous for anyone to speak out against McCarthy, and there were lost of white knuckles in the CBS newsroom.
The film was very well done, and one of the first with George Clooney where I felt that he wasn’t just recycling Dr. Ross from ER.
[IMDB link for Good Night, and Good Luck]
We also spent our evenings this weekend re-watching the Harry Potter movies – I am sooooo looking forward to The Goblet of Fire next weekend!!
Tags: reviews
Posted by barb on Nov 6, 2005 in
Pictures,
Travels Despite tired legs from walking all around Cambridge yesterday, Andrew and I headed off on foot this morning across the Charles River and into Boston. Our first goal was Quincy Market, and from there we went to the New England Aquarium.
At the aquarium we decided to take in an IMAX show, too – Sharks 3D. I’ve been going to IMAX shows since I was in third grade. My family bought and maintained a membership to the Minnesota Science Museum from that time, so that we saw every IMAX film that came through the museum. Twenty years ago, IMAX films were few (at one time, our museum had already shown something like 20 of the available 25 films). Even 10 years ago, there weren’t that many IMAX films, and they were still generally educational. Sure, the filmmakers would use the unique medium to its fullest – zooming in on a landscape, following beavers through a lake into their den – but the films largely told a documentary-like story. What I’ve noticed lately, though, is that the IMAX films, while still marginally educational, focus more on just showing pretty pictures than on telling a good, consistent story. Sharks exemplifies this new trend. We got lots of cool footage of sharks, as a friendly sea turtle gave a tour of his neighbors. The turtle started out by telling us that he wanted to show us that sharks aren’t just mindless killers in the sea, but then when we saw the footage of the great white shark the music might as well have been the Emperor’s theme from Star Wars.
< getting off the soapbox >
From the aquarium, we grabbed a quick lunch at Qunicy Market, and then walked to the old City Hall and meandered through two of the old burying grounds.
Another tiring day with lots and lots of walking, but also a lot of fun.
By the way, be sure to check out Andrew’s pictures, too – Andrew’s Cambridge/Boston Flickr Set
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Nov 5, 2005 in
Pictures,
Travels 
With the conference behind me, Andrew and I have a full weekend to play in Boston and Cambridge. Today we walked to Harvard to check out the Natural History Museum (and Peabody Musuem, which are both in the same builing). We walked through campus to get to the museums (that’s Memorial Hall in the picture – Felicia’s there, too, if you look very closely).
The Natural History Museum had a nice collection of minerals and the requisite room of stuffed animals and skeletons. There was also a room full of glass flower models. A fun surprise was the Day of the Dead displays in the Peabody Museum.
After that we walked to the MIT Museum. There was a fun exhibit of kinetic sculptures by Arthur Ganson (very hard to get a good picture of, though, given that the museum doesn’t allow flash photography). There was also an exhibit on Harold Edgerton on his work creating pictures of fast processes (like the milk drop pictures, and pictures of cats lapping water, etc.). Definately a fun museum for the nerds in the family.
I’ll post all my pictures later – I’ve got some of them up on my Flickr “Boston Pics” set
Tags: museums, trip report
Posted by barb on Nov 4, 2005 in
Memes, Etc.
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If I were a Springer-Verlag Graduate Text in Mathematics, I would be Frank Warner’s Foundations of Differentiable Manifolds and Lie Groups.
I give a clear, detailed, and careful development of the basic facts on manifold theory and Lie Groups. I include differentiable manifolds, tensors and differentiable forms. Lie groups and homogenous spaces, integration on manifolds, and in addition provide a proof of the de Rham theorem via sheaf cohomology theory, and develop the local theory of elliptic operators culminating in a proof of the Hodge theorem. Those interested in any of the diverse areas of mathematics requiring the notion of a differentiable manifold will find me extremely useful.
Which Springer GTM would you be? The Springer GTM Test
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Tags: dumb fun, geekery
Posted by barb on Nov 4, 2005 in
Pictures,
Travels We went to the conference banquet last night, held at the Boston Museum of Science. It was pretty cool, because we had the museum to ourselves, so we could really see most of the exhibits with a minimum of children (the local participants brought their children, but there weren’t too many of them). We also got to go through the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibit. I’ve made a Boston Pics set on Flickr. Here are a couple of my favorites:
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Nov 1, 2005 in
Pictures I have a great view from my hotel room – here’s the Boston skyline this evening:
Tags: trip report
Posted by barb on Nov 1, 2005 in
Random Thoughts I’m heading off to Boston for the Six Years of Science with Chandra meeting. Andrew is coming up to join me for the banquet on Thursday, and then we’re going to play in Boston over the weekend. I’m not sure what my internet connection will be like (I’ll have my laptop, but it doesn’t seem to be picking up wireless signals very well). That means I may not be around to approve comments. Have a great week, everyone!
Posted by barb on Nov 1, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts I hope everyone had a great Halloween. We had a good one. There were about 67 trick-or-treaters at our house. This year I had 43 books to give out, and they were a big hit. I had 6 left over (unlike last year, when I ran out by 7:30 PM), so I now know that next year I should keep it to about 35 books (though it’s not a problem to have left-overs…I’ll just save them for next year).
Surprisingly I only remember one Darth Vader this year. I think the best costume I saw was early in the evening, a little girl was dressed as a pirate, complete with hat and boots. Her baby brother was also in a pirate outfit.
Here are the pumpkins I carved this year:
And I gussied up the house a little:
Felicia and Patrick watched the trick-or-treaters:
Me? I dressed up as a saloon girl:
Tags: halloween
Posted by barb on Oct 30, 2005 in
Pictures,
Random Thoughts Have I mentioned that I love Halloween? Yes? Well, I’m going to say it again. I LOVE Halloween!!
Everyone in the house gets into it — that’s Felicia and Patrick. Felicia has a witch costume, and after Patrick saw it, he wanted to get into the act, so I gave him my cat ears so he could be her familiar.
And I carved my pumpkins today – I’ll post pictures tomorrow with the candles burning.
Tags: build-a-bear, halloween