Summer 2006
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31 August 2006
Happy Birthday, Judy!
24 August 2006
Shocking news from the world of astronomy! Well, not so shocking actually. Even though there was a sliver of hope last week for the now-called dwarf, today it was announced that Pluto is a planet no more. I'm not crying over the loss of Pluto from the ranks of planetary greatness, since after all UB313 is bigger than Pluto and further away from the Sun. My fellow grads at PSU Astro will be having a celebratory drinkathon tonight at Hélène's place, where Amanda will be concocting eight planet-inspired drinks (I guess the ice on the drinks can be called "plutos"? or maybe Kuiper Belt Objects... meh). I haven't had a chance to read blogs today, but I'm sure that the news of Pluto's demotion is all over the place. But no matter what anyone writes, I believe the best reaction was written by Mike Eracleous on an email to the entire department: "The IAU vote is now in. Pluto has been demoted to a dwarf planet. Tensions are running high. Plutonians are obviously not happy because this development will have a major impact on interplanetary trade. Terrestrial legislation favors trade with 'certified' planets by means of reduced tariffs and other incentives. However, our industry relies on Kryptonite and Dilithium that are mined exclusively on dwarf planets. In fact Apple computers, our most valuable technological tools, will degenerate to running Windows if the supply of Kryptonite and Dilithium is interrupted. Moreover the paving of the road behind Davey lab will remain unfinished. Not to mention that construction on the 4th floor of Davey will have to continue for ever and the chemists will never move out. Delegations from Pluto, Ceres, and 2003 UB313 are meeting as we speak to decide on their next move. I just hope that cooler heads will prevail..." Wasn't that just awesome? :-)
24 August 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Luimary!
22 August 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Ángel!
21 August 2006: 3:15pm
I had a very weird and scary experience this morning... I haven't taken any migraine pills in a long time, opting to just sleep off the migraines and take the pill as a last resort in case of a really really bad one. Well, last night I got a migraine, and I was afraid I would wake up today still with the migraine, so I took a migraine pill (Maxalt). When I woke up today, I could barely walk without falling over. I was very dizzy. Things looked fuzzy and some things in my field of view looked duplicated. I spent about ten minutes trying to log in to my laptop and then I wrote three complainy emails (one to Vanessa, one to John, and one to Cole). Since I could barely control my hands and my eyes were betraying me, the emails were pretty much incomprehensible. I can barely understand them when I look at them now. I tried to get breakfast, but I ended up just making a mess in the kitchen, and had to pretty much crawl back to bed to try to sleep off the weirdness. It was a very weird, very scary feeling. It's very hard to explain because it felt so weird, and I was seriously scared. I just woke up a little while ago and I'm slightly woozy but I can at least control my movements. And things don't look double or fuzzy either. This was seriously the scariest migraine pill trip I've ever had. The pills weren't expired or anything, and I hadn't taken any other medication at least six hours prior to taking that migraine pill, so I have no idea why that happened. Something like this has never happened to me before with any migraine pills either... Well then, I guess I have yet another migraine story to tell the neurologist when I get a chance to see one...
17 August 2006: 2pm
Ok, the most bizarre thing just happened to me. I had asked my mom to go get me a copy of my birth certificate so that I could have an extra copy and go to the DMV and get a MD drivers license. A couple days ago she told me she mailed it to me via Priority Mail. Well, today, after running late for everything, thus making me clumsier than usual and bumping into every piece of furniture in my apartment and dropping everything I held in my hands, I eventually was able to leave the house and come to work. On my way out I checked my mailbox and there was a little Priority Mail package there. The package was from my mom but it was all lumpy and bent into a somewhat square-ish shape. I thought that maybe my mom sent me something along with the birth certificate. Well, when I finally got to the office, I opened the package. My birth certificate was there, completely crumpled up because of the smushing of the package... and there was an additional wrapped square package. I thought "Ooo! I wonder what mom sent me!" so I opened it. It was a 3-CD boxed set labeled "Danny Rivera - Colección de Oro", plus one more CD titled "Alfredo Zitarrosa - Grandes Exitos". My reaction: W.T.F.?!?!?!?!?!? These CDs are of oooold Puerto Rican salsa music, probably from the 60s -- music that I absofrickinlutely hate with a passion. Why would my mother send me such a thing?!?! Is she playing some kind of prank on me?!?! Immediately I called her and asked what's up with the Danny Rivera CDs. She said she had no idea what I was talking about. I explained to her what had just happened, and she said that when she mailed me the birth certificate she *only* mailed the birth certificate and nothing else. I ask her then how did these CDs get inside the package and arrive here. She first speculated that perhaps they were already inside the Priority Mail envelope and she did not notice them. Uhhh... Impossible. I explain to her as calmly as I could that it is IMPOSSIBLE that she could not have noticed such a thing in the envelope, because it's not just one CD but rather a 2-inch thick boxed set. It is impossible for her to have sent me a flimsy little piece of paper and not notice that there was this huge square lump in the envelope with it. She says the envelope was flat when she sealed it because it only contained my birth certificate. Then how the f@#k did the CDs get in?!?! Did someone at the post office decide all of a sudden that a Danny Rivera boxed-set collection needed a new home in Maryland and *OPENED* my personal, private mail and stuck it in there, to arrive at my house while crumpling my birth certificate??? Isn't that a bit illegal, this whole thing about opening someone else's mail??? Needless to say, I'm pissed off, freaked out, and weirded out. I mean, seriously, WTF? My mother said she'll go to the post office and ask the postmaster to see if he knows or remembers anything about that. I await her next call to let me know what happened -- unfortunately, she won't go today, so I have to wait a day or two for the explanation. Dammit... UPDATE: My mom called this evening and told me she called the post office and asked about the situation. The postmaster in Guayanilla told her that the mail gets sent directly from there to the distribution center in San Juan, without it being "handled" until it reaches San Juan. So, whoever inserted those CDs into my package must have done it in San Juan. Also, this is aparently not the first time that a postal customer has complained about extra things appearing in their packages, or things disappearing from packages, and the guy my mom talked to was almost certain that this happened in San Juan. Well, I guess mystery solved... but still, my mom was mailing me a *birth certificate*. If instead of putting extra stuff in my mail they would have taken out stuff, some random person in San Juan would have my birth certificate now, and that's just wrong. Did anyone say identity theft? Hellooo??? The post office in Puerto Rico, San Juan in particular, needs to do something about this, because as the postmaster said, my case is not the first one -- and it will most likely not be the last. And things more important than a few CDs could be at stake here...
17 August 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Luzmary!
16 August 2006
You know, if this was an actual blog instead of a pseudo-blog, I could post more useful things, and comment on news stories. For example, it seems that Pluto will be keeping its 'planet' status. Also, Andrea Dupree (my advisor at the summer REU I did at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) emailed me today to ask me if I would like to contribute some ideas into a list of things you wish you knew before grad school that the Women in Science group at the CfA is compiling. I sent her a long email with my thoughts on this (which she liked), and if this were a real blog instead of a pseudo-blog, I could make a post about this and share my "wisdom" with the world. Oh well... And also, my wiki administrator duties are coming along just fine, and the wiki will go live sometime soon (maybe even tomorrow!), so then I'll finally be able to link it from here. The actual content might be visible only to the collaborators (or maybe it will be universally visible -- but it will definitely be write-only for the group members), but still, I'm administering it and I'm kinda proud of that. And John has a new professional research page that not only looks good, but also has great content and excellent organization. Sigh, I want to redesign this website. It's sooo Web 1.0. I want a new Web 2.0 redesign, like what John did with his new research page. And I want to turn this pseudo-blog into an actual blog. Sigh. If only I had the time...
14 August 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Julián!
9 August 2006: 5pm
After the DMV thing this morning, I've spent the rest of the day running around with paperwork. The paperwork truly never ends here! Gah! But, at least there's a couple of good things that have happened today (aside from the no-migraine thing). First, I volunteered to be part of Ask an Astrophysicist, so starting about a month from now I'll be one of the scientists answering questions from the general public on that website. Ain't that cool? And the second thing is that I've been made administrator of a LISA wiki that we have over here. No link because I'm still fiddling with the permissions and file structure and other administrative things. But it's still cool. I'm a wiki administrator now. Coooool :-)
9 August 2006
Good news and bad news. The good news: I've been migraine-free for the last six days in a row. This is the longest sans-migraine period of time I've had in the past two months... The bad news: the DMV in Maryland sucks big time (not that there's any DMVs that don't suck). Not only are their lines ginormous with only two people working the counter (but really just one person because the other person spent the entire time I was there attending only one customer), but also the woman at the counter had quite a bad attitude. Aaaand, she didn't let me get a Maryland driver's license because I don't have a passport (and my birth certificate went off to Government Land with my passport application two weeks ago), even though I showed her my social security card and plenty of picture IDs. And then I wasn't able to register my car either because that thing that for the last two and-almost-a-half years I've thought was the title of my car in reality wasn't. Sow now I have to send a letter to American Honda Financial to get them to send the title to the MVA (that's what the DMV is called here), so that I can finally register my car. Oh, but if that takes more than 90 days I'll have to take my car for another MD state inspection because nevermind that I inspected it in PA last April and that inspection is valid for one year, nooo, I had to get it inspected here too and the little certificate thingie that they gave me expires in 90 days. F#@k.
7 August 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Zuleima!
4 August 2006
Congratulations to Tamara who just PhD'd! Čestitka, Dr. Bogdanović!
25 July 2006
What's going on in my life, you ask? Too many migraines, lots of paperwork, too many migraines, various boxes full of books waiting for me to unpack them, too many migraines, research badly in need of an oomph of momentum, and too many migraines. Did I mention the migraines? At least I got to spend a few days with John last week when he came to visit me -- but that didn't stop the migraines. Oohh nooo, they don't care that I'm incredibly happy and relaxed when he's here. They just insist on happening, regardless of my state-of-mind. Have I mentioned I've had a lot of migraines lately? I hate migraines.
24 July 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Ailec!
17 July 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Elisa!
9 July 2006: 4:41pm
Italia! Italia! Italia! Italia! Italia! Italy won the World Cup!
6 July 2006
Happy Birthday, Cole!
5 July 2006
Two of the things I hate the most in this world are unpacking and migraines, and this past week both have been happening a lot. The unpacking I understand -- I have to unpack or else my new apartment may as well be called BoxLand or something. But the migraines... argh! Every single day for the past week I've had them; if not as soon as I wake up, then at night after going to bed... I have a preventive medication that I'm supposed to take every day, but I forgot to take it for about a week while I was moving. This was a bad idea, and I'm sure it was the trigger for the migraine-fest I've been having. But now I only have 3 pills left, and no refills. I haven't found a new doctor in MD yet (and my NASA health insurance hasn't been reactivated either), so I called University Health Services in Penn State to see if I could get a new prescription. Well, the nurse didn't feel like getting me a new prescription from one of the on-call doctors, and pretty much forced an appointment on me for July 13 (!), saying it was the soonest she could schedule me. So now I have to go to State College on July 13 for my doctor's appointment, and in the meantime I will have no medication to prevent the migraines that have been happening every day and driving me crazy... At least I still have Maxalts left (that's the medication I take when I get a migraine), and I called in my last refill of that so now all I have to do is email SherryDawn and ask her to go pick it up for me and mail it to me (she's so nice, she's the best). What this means is that I can treat the migraines but I can't prevent them, at least for another week... Stupid migraines...
4 July 2006
Ok, it's official. I'm hooked on the World Cup. Luckily, the whole thing is almost over, so it won't be taking over my life or anything like that. Vanessa and I just watched the very awesome game between Italy and Germany. We were both rooting for Italy. The game was very exciting and well-played, even from my soccer know-nothing perspective. The game was tied 0-0, so they went to overtime, and then in the last two minutes of the overtime Italy scored TWO goals. Yes, two. Two uber-awesome goals within a couple of minutes of each other. It was unbelievable. Vanessa and I were screaming and jumping and now we can barely talk because we screamed so much. And the announcers from Univision made it all the more exciting, with their "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!!" yells. So awesome.
3 July 2006
Happy Aphelion!
1 July 2006: 3:48pm
Damn that World Cup... I have never been a big soccer fan nor have I ever followed any games, scores, World Cups or anything. But, my friend Vanessa has been staying with me for the past week until her apartment is ready, and she's been following the World Cup religiously. Though, to be fair, she is as interested in the gameplay as she is in the players' butts and legs and faces, etc... Anyhoo, damn those games, they're addictive. I've been watching the games with her and now I'm like, totally into the whole thing. I don't understand pretty much anything of what's going on because I don't know the rules of soccer, and I keep saying "free throw" when I mean penalty kick, but just watching the games is very entertaining and sometimes stressful. Right now we just watched the first half of the Brasil-France game in the quarterfinals, and it was very stressful right there when the French guy did a free throw and the Brasilians were making a wall of men between the French dude and the net thing. This was stressful. Vanessa is rooting for Brasil and I guess I am too because they're supposedly good. Also, she has a Brasil shirt that looks really good and now I want one too... We really should go now to the mall to get some things that Vanessa needs for her new apartment, but it's halftime and they're 0-0 and we really want to see the game... Like I said, damn that World Cup... 4:36pm: Brasil is playing like crap. The French are all over the place, and the Brasilians are just like "Ooh, here's the ball. What should I do with it?". The game is 1-0, France leading. The Brasilians are just like, all defense, no offense. WTF, mate? Dude, get some strategy or something. Geez! It's as if they're just strolling around, enjoying the scenery. There's about 15 minutes left in the game, and if they don't score they're gonna get eliminated.. 4:52pm: It's over. France won. Que porquería de juego hicieron los brasileños, c@r@jo. Sea la madre, jugaron bien mal, c*ñ*... Of course, as soon as I get into the game and think I'm rooting for some team, they decide to play like crap. Boo! Ok, true, France definitely deserves to win because they played good and Brasil played like crap, but come on... Oh well...
26 June 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Miguel!
23 June 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Robert S.!
21 June 2006
Happy Summer Solstice!
18 June 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños a mi!!! Happy birthday to me!!! Today I become old. I am turning a quarter of a century old today. I turn "peseta", as they say back in PR. Yes, I turn 25 today. Time to be a grown-up, I guess... Nah, that'll be when I turn 30, hehehe...
16 June 2006
I moved! As you may or may not remember/know, I will be doing the rest of my PhD research on-site at NASA/Goddard, so I had to move from Pennsylvania to Maryland (obviously, a three and a half hour drive each way is not a reasonable commute to work). I now live in Laurel, Maryland, in an apartment on the third floor of a garden-style building in a really nice apartment complex. I love my new apartment. It's really big, and I have it all to myself. Me and John spent the last few days packing and loading the moving truck, and then unloading the moving truck once we got here. Oh, and buying furniture (Ikea!). Sometime soon I'll begin unpacking. Gah, I hate unpacking... I couldn't have done this move without John's help. I definitely could not have moved all the heavy stuff up three flights of stairs. He's the best... Now that I have cable and internet (because I got them installed today), I can finally read email and write this update. But I don't think I'll be internetting much in the next few days, because I have to unpack... and John leaves on Monday, so he won't be around to help for much longer :-( I'm gonna miss him... So yeah, now I live in Maryland. I'll let people know my new address via email someday soon, possibly next week.
12 June 2006
Happy Birthday, Mia!
9 June 2006
Feliz Cumpleaños, Luimaricita!
7 June 2006
Greetings from South Padre Island! This week (from Sunday to Saturday) I'm participating in the Gravitational Wave Astronomy Summer School, sponsored by the Center for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at UT Brownsville. The summer school takes place at South Padre Island (as if you didn't get that already from the first few words of this paragraph), which is on the southern edge of the Gulf coast of Texas. It's one of the typical spring break destinations, and it is really cool and weird and interesting to see a bunch of 30+ astronomers and physicists [in training] walking around the island with laptop bags and talking about gee-mu-nu. Cole is one of the professors teaching at the summer school and I came along as his TA. My one duty is to help the students with the problem sets if they have troubles. This is good because it forces me to sit down and think about the problems beforehand, because if I didn't do that, I wouldn't be able to help anyone. So far, I've been here a couple of days and I've learned a whole lot of details about black holes and gravity waves that I didn't know, so this means that the summer school is working out perfectly. Then on Saturday I fly back to Philadelphia, where John will also be arriving to help me move next week -- and in general to spend some time together :-)
