A Pilgrim and a Stranger

No, actually, just Dan and Eva, for all y'all trav'lin' throooooough this werisom blog. (I think that's the song we were just finishing.) Here's a picture from our Thanksgiving gathering (thanks Jonina!) to go along with our Christmas letter for the year.

Dear Friends and Family, December 17, 2007
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Dan continues to build experiments in the Yale Physics department, where he was promoted to associate professor this year. The grant-writing, student-managing, and conference-attending continue unabated, but this year he can now brag that one of his experiments collected new data on the Dark Matter of the Universe. He was even quoted in Discover magazine—in which he drops big names, like Copernicus (but they haven’t even met). To relax, he plays basketball and his guitar, which he’s had for one year. He is pretty good already, and Eva likes to sing along.
Eva spent the spring semester teaching a survey of Western Art and working on her dissertation on triumphal processions in Renaissance multi-block prints. In the summer, she took Intensive Latin, which somehow inspired nausea and the need to constantly snack. Then, despite a growing girth, she made research trips to Venice, London, and Berlin, where in addition to seeing loads of artwork, she was able to enjoy with abandon gelato, scones with clotted cream, and German cake and schnitzel. She has now returned home, where she has decommissioned her normal wardrobe and spends time writing, nesting, and sleeping, in alternate preparation and denial of a proverbial bundle of joy the stork has scheduled for an early February delivery.
Both Eva and Dan happily anticipate the arrival of a bambino in the household but wonder how the cats Calamity and Cyrano will adjust to a demotion to second-class citizenship. So far, they adopt oblivion, and anyway all can be forgiven with the mystical appearance of the laser pointer.
May this small letter find you happy and healthy in the holiday season. We hope that you come to New Haven to see us! Less satisfactorily, you can visit and comment on our humble blog, to see (only) slightly more frequent updates but also a few pictures: www.evadan.blogspot.com .
Love from Eva, Dan, and “Primo Chidler”

XENON Experiment in the News!!

Check out:

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/dec/the-6-most-important-experiments-in-the-world/article_view?b_start:int=2&-C=

They gave me a nice quote about dark matter.

- Dan

NOW more pictures

OK, I was interrupted posting. Here are more pictures from England:
Greenwich, which for a while was my home in London, and of course is the home of zero degrees longitude. On one "day off" from my research I spent some time in the park which holds the Royal Observatory.




Another day I traveled to Hampton Court, a lovely brick castle filled with history but also wonderful formal gardens. My friend Samantha came down to explore it with me. My excuse for visiting was Mantegna's series of paintings the Triumph of Caesar, which was displayed in a disappointing manner, despite its location in the orangerie, but it was still worth the trip.






The next day Teru (Samantha's husband) joined us in London and Greenwich, and we snacked in the crypt of St. Paul's, visited Borrough's market which was a feast for all senses, and then they cooked me dinner, which was much appreciated. Here they are en route to St. Paul's, and contemplating a wealth of cheeses.




This is hardly a complete travellog, so I'll just add a few more pictures, of my trip to Kew Gardens--which had an exhibit of Henry Moore's sculpture at the same time among the Victorian greenhouses...and with my friend Sarah K at St. James' park...and with my friend and patient hostess Freyja in Berlin...and some wondrous cakes we had together, near the Charlottenburg. Those cakes were, along with the Gemaldegalerie, and a Campagnola engraving, highlights of my trip to Berlin. I had a Black Forest cake--chocolate and cherry and cream--

Pictures from London, Oxford, and Berlin

My research trip involved three cities, several museums, and hundreds of artworks. I spent most of my time in London, at the British Museum print room, seeing long prints, and taking many notes but not too many pictures. Here's the British Museum courtyard which I got to know really well, and which I think is successful as a postmodern merging of the architectural styles of the building, but which is way too loud when it is crowded (all the time).

If only we were in town for Halloween

This is what we'd be--the Arnolfini's! I'm doing research in London and Berlin for a month, so I'm afraid I'll just have to imagine the idea of a wondrous top hat on Dan and volumes of green dress on me. Of course, this might be funny only to art historians, but there is debate on whether Mrs. Giovanni Arnolfini is pregnant...

Eva and Dan, a Bridge at Evening, Venice

Pictures of the two of us together are rare--here we took turns playing photographer. Isn't he handsome? Isn't she lovely? Aren't we lucky to have wandered in Venice together? Siamo serenissimi.

Venice and Verona

Right after our Cape Cod adventure, we went to Venice, where Dan just came for a couple days, had a conference in this magnificent palazzo (now an institute for science, art, and music) right next to the Accademia bridge. I stayed for two weeks to do library and museum research, first in Venice, and then in Verona, Mantua, Ferrara, and Padua. We took a few pictures in Venice (including what is now our traditional tourist-shot pose with the Tetrarchs).


In Verona, the highlight of my trip was the opera performance of Aida in the Roman amphitheater. The thought of the accomplishments of Western civilization--architectural and musical wonder--all converging in a single space lit by thousands of candles and accompanied by at least 6 harps, was quite overwhelming. At which point our camera decided that it had truly lived, and could then die. (So I have no pictures of the delights of Mantova, Ferrara, Padova.) But I had come for research, so I did as much as I could, and luckily seeing mostly canonical works which have been captured on film by far more talented photographers than I. Here's the top of the Castle, now a museum, and my view of the Arena before the sun set.

More Selections from Cape Cod

Our vacation this year, inspired by a conference of Dan's near Hyannis, was to Cape Cod. We went on a whale-watching trip with a gaggle? mole? cluster? of physicists; blueberry-picking with our friends Twig and Carole, then rented a cottage and spent time (never enough, for me) on the beach, with my Mom, sister Angela, her bf Jon, Dan's brother Gabe; and one day my sister Jonina and her husband Aaron came down from Boston to join us in the frolicking. Here are some photos.

Pictures from Karlsruhe and Baden-Baden

From Dan's trip: the pleasant streets of Karlsruhe--a whimsical fountain



And from Baden-Baden, a house of all wood from 1599. See his post below.

Happy Birthday to Mike/Dad

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to you,
Happy Birthday to Mike/Dad!
Happy Birthday to you! And many more.....
Older and Wiser, eh?

xoxox from Eva, Dan and Gabe on Cape Cod! Wish we could send you a scallop!

Dan's July 29 trip ins Schwarzwald und Baden-baden

Yesterday we had a day off from the conference, and had our choice of conference-sponsored excursions. I opted to visit Baden Baden and the Black Forest, and about 30 of us met at 9 AM to catch a bus.

We had an English-speaking tour guide, who had a few choice things to say about each town we passed through, and who managed to herd the physicists around without constraining us too much. I didn?t know
anyone else on the Baden Baden excursion, but made several new friends on the bus and at lunch.

Baden Baden is a very high-end town, with a casino, theatre, modern art museum, and many top-end restaurants and hotels. And high-end shopping. The locals were all well-dressed.

First we visited the casino in the morning, when they do tours. It is full of gambling during the afternoon and all night. It is easily the fanciest casino I have ever seen, with wooden paneling everywhere, red
walls and floors, rococo decoration, statues, gilt mirrors, and such. It dates from the 18th century. To enter during gambling hours you must have a coat and tie. I was wearing jean shorts, a t-shirt, and sneakers, so the tour guide used me as an example of how one should NOT dress when going to the casino. The place would fit right into a Bond Film.

We then went over to the art museum, where they had an exhibit on Warhal, Rauschenberg, Twombly, Kiefer, and Lichtenstein. I liked the Lichtenstein and Kiefer the best. The Kiefer was very dark: one of his was a life-size model of a wedding dress pierced with large shards of dirty broken glass. Hmmm.

Then it started raining very hard and we went for lunch in town. The town was very quant, as you might expect. After the rain died down we walked up to the local castle, and then back to the bus.

We then spent about 2 hours driving through the rain, south through the Black Forest. It was pretty hilly, the trees were impressive, and we drove through lots of little quaint towns. We got out at an ?open-air museum?, sort of Greenfield Village-like with houses moved there from all different parts of the Black Hills. Most were 16th or 17th century,
and still in great condition. We got a tour from a terrific English-speaking guide, and got lots of details about the houses. Most of the houses had thatched roofs, and were built entirely of wood (no iron nails, just wood) except for the kitchen, which was stone to try to avoid burning the place down. Smoke from the kitchen was diverted to flow throughout the house, for warmth, preservation, and insect repellant. The coating of soot throughout the house helped to preserve it, which is part of the reason the houses are in such great shape. The ceilings were not higher than 7 feet, and the rooms had lots of little
nooks and crannies for Bibles, horseshoes, and other good-luck charms. At the very top of the highest room was mounted a deer?s skull, killed when the house was built, also for good luck. Next to the house was a separate small stone house, where they kept their valuables just in case the main house burned down. Outside the house was a trough for water, diverted from a nearby stream. Inside the trough were fish. (To eat, you ask? No, to tell if the water is OK. If the fish die, then you shouldn?t drink the water.) There was also lots of space in the house for livestock (horses, sheep, oxen). And get this: when the house was chosen for the museum in 1964, there was still an old lady living in it, still using the kitchen in the original manner. She moved with the house and lived in the house at the museum for a year before she got tired of the crowds and moved away.

There were many old houses that I didn?t have time to see. There was also a mill, which they ran for us. Also there was an abundant exhibit on cuckoo clocks.

So I liked the outdoor museum quite a bit and recommend it if you are ever in the area.

- Dan

Now to post pictures.

Tagged by Heidi McKay--I'm It!

OK, I've been tagged! Yay! Here are some lists, with specifications to keep me from going overboard:

4 Jobs I've had:--during college or just after
Filing medical charts
Chester Children's Choir assistant
Assistant in the Quaker collection at Swarthmore
Deepwood Historical Estate tourguide

4 places I've lived:--associated with disasters
Fairfield CA during the '89 earthquake
Philippine Islands, between Marcos and Mt. Pinatubo
Providence, RI during the nightclub fire (I wasn't there)
Venice, Italy during a winter of 18 incidences of aqua alta (high water, i.e. flooding in the streets)

4 places I've visited:--that are off the beaten track that I recommend:
Alberobello, Italy
Escalante national Park, UT
Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson, Great Salt Lake
Florence, OR

4 places I'd rather be now:--visiting loved ones in
Karlsruhe, Germany (hi Dan!)
Oxford, England (hi Samantha and Teru!)
Oregon (hi Mom, hi Daddy!)
Nauvoo (hi Nana!)

OK, media-time:

4 TV shows I like:--OK, we don't even have a moniter, so these are totally out of date...
The Muppet Show
Get Smart
um...I think I would like design shows, like when designers compete or create makeovers of homes and fashion for regular people...but maybe they are actually bad. I've never seen any, so maybe they are better in my head. I can't think of anything else now. Dan watches Detroit Tiger's games online...

4 movies I could watch over and over, besides Cold Comfort Farm:
The Incredibles! (I'm a big Pixar fan and can't wait to see Ratatouille again)
Roman Holiday (Audrey Hepburn is so stylish, even more so in Breakfast at Tiffany's)
Spirited Away (Miyazake is an animator genius!)
Children of Heaven (OK, I've only seen this once, but I recommend it. If that doesn't count, how about Babette's Feast, which I've seen 2-3 times.)

4 websites I like:
The Sartorialist Blog--fashion on the streets, in NY and Europe, especially good at men's fashion
Web Gallery of Art--good public images of paintings and you can send postcards!
Babyname Voyager--requires Java--or the Social Security website of Popular Names.
Shopping, among others: Zappos, IKEA-usa, or Baden-usa (a new discovery--thanks Freyja!)

More about me:

4 Favorite Foods:--that I like to order in restaurants
Thai Green Curry
Steamed Vegetable Dumplings
A big bowl of mussels to share with Dan
Gelato

4 hobbies--which I have dropped but want to pick up again, eventually...:
playing the Lute
printmaking
reading classic novels
tennis

4 things I am neglecting while taking intensive Latin:--oh well, it ends on August 10!
violin
harp
dissertation
housework

OK, that was a good break from Latin that required no pictures. OK, I tag...um...my sisters, Joni and Angela. As soon as they get themselves a blog. Hurry up.

Intensive Latin and Dan's Travels

Intensive Latin, meeting even on Independence Day, has occupied all the time that I am not eating or sleeping. The house is a mess, the garden weedy, my musician's fingers have lost their calluses, and Dan is away visiting family with the camera in tow. 6 weeks down, 4 more to go. It is finally beginning to sink in, and we've moved from grammar charts to sight-reading funny little plays about greedy old men, pius daughters, weddings with thieves, flute players, and cooks. And every hero is visited unharmed by snakes in his cradle as a baby. Much better than hic, haec, hoc (the first 5 weeks)! Dan says he would have gone mad.

Dan is in and out all month, having visited North Carolina, San Francisco, and later Germany and Washingon DC. I envy the time he is spending with his great family, including a long-lost branch, and especially the Mexican food he is enjoying out west. I just haven't been satisfied with the Mexican food out here. Anyway, I hope to have pictures to share when he returns.

Back to reading about the Roman's love/hate relationship with Hannibal and the Elephants.

Fourth Anniversary--flowers

We went up to visit NW Mass and SW Vermont for our fourth anniversary. We were so smart to get married around a 3-day weekend. We visited, among other things, Edith Wharton's cottage in the Berkshires, shown here with some inspiring tulip display. Dan is shown next to a statue of his ancestor General John Stark, who routed the British in the Battle of Bennington. We were also caught in a tremendous thunderstorm in the Green Mountains--here is soaked hiker Eva.

Garden Results

Dan and I worked on the front yard, which had before last week been a strange 2-level conglomeration of mostly grasses, some weeds, and some randomly placed flowers. Last week we finally took charge and bought some shrubberies from a sale by the Friends of Hammonasset. Though I don't have a recent "before" picture, if you are super diligent and don't blink you can find a picture of our house on TV on a program called something like "Best places to Live in the US." Pizza was the reason for New Haven's inclusion in the program, but they interviewed our neighbors and showed our street. Our dear homelet got a split second of fame (I saw it at our neighbor's, since we don't have a TV). OK, now I have to figure out how to add a picture.

100 things about Eva

1. I love making lists like this! Dan and I had a great time on Monday night together brainstorming these lists, and even though our fourth anniversary is upon us, we still learn about each other.
2. I had always thought I would marry someone I'd been friends with for a while. With Dan, it was love at first sight. Now I'm a believer.
3. My favorite colors are red and pink--mostly red, because I am particular about pink...it has to be light, never hot or neon.
4. I am an Oregonian through and through. That's right, I love the rain--it turns everything silver.
5. When I was in elementary school I wanted to be an artist--and sometimes a famous violinist, dancer, doctor, or astronaut.
6. One of the hardest lessons of adulthood for me was that I cannot continue to cultivate and improve on all the things I love to do.
7. I still fancy myself an advanced violinist and harpist. But it is increasingly difficult to keep them up, especially since my sister Joni is studying viola at music school. I still think I could get in to music school if I tried, but maybe I'm just dreaming.
8. My whole family is musical, thanks to my untiring mother. In my house, we had a nasty little saying: "no reading for fun until practicing's done." What kind of family is that, where we all love to read so much that it had to be a reward for practicing? I am grateful to her efforts, because making music is one of the loves of my life.
9. I have a competitive streak, and I'm territorial. I don't like it when other people copy what I am doing.
10. I'm ABD! (right now that is About to Begin the Dissertation.) I'm the first person in my family to pursue a Ph.D, though my brother is about to start a program in biology and I have a cousin studying linguistics. I think that's great--but I do want to finish first. That competitive streak helps keep me going. Plus, Dan's family oozes academics.
11. I love art history for many reasons. For one, all of the books I read are full of pictures.
12. I've always liked going to art museums. I love that now it is part of my job.
13. I went to Swarthmore College and majored in music and art history. I loved my years at Swarthmore.
14. Thanks to its Quaker traditions and to Wilfred Owen and Benjamin Britten, I have embraced pacifism.
15. I didn't know that art historians existed until I went to college. Luckily, I thought I wanted to be a professor and get my Ph.D since high school, so I've been gearing up for this for a while.
16. I love dancing--all sorts--but at Swarthmore my harp shared a room with the Gamelan and I ended up dancing with the group for three years. Balinese dance is my favorite--the flowers, the mannerisms, the costumes, the narratives...
17. I also love ballroom dancing with a good lead. Dan and I had a great time taking ballroom and salsa together, even though Dan had never taken a dance class before.
18. I swore when I was ten that I hated cooking and my future husband would just have to do it. I think this is because of several cooking-related mishaps that my family never let me forget, such as the time I burned peas in a microwave. I'm now tolerable at cooking (especially since I stick to just vegetarian dishes), but lucky for me, Dan is a better chef than I am.
19. I do like baking muffins and pies, however.
20. I only like to clean the house when playing music really loud at the same time. Pink Martini, Cuban music, or big band jazz works well.
21. In general, however, I prefer Classical music--and Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and 20th century. I consider myself to be hard-core about this. Telemann, 12-tone, Takemitsu, I can take it.
22. I love music history and theory.
23. I have a really really hard time choosing favorites. I was about to list my favorite composers, and the list included Schubert, Brahms, Bach, Britten, Prokovieff, Ravel, Beethoven, Josquin, but it was hard to stop. I also can't pick a favorite author, poet, movie, let alone artist. It just depends on the occasion. I like too many!
24. I could also never choose between violin and harp. Though perhaps because I have no memory in which I was not a violinist, it is closer to my personality than is the harp.
25. I played the lute in college, thanks to my friend Samantha, whose birthday is today and to whom I owe so much. (I could write 100 things I like about Samantha. Maybe I will try.) I want to take it up again. Perhaps Santa will bring me one.
26. I have always been a cat person.
24. I am very loyal to my opinions. Because cats are my favorite animal, I thought (at age 9) that Garfield had to be my favorite comic, even though it is pretty stupid. Luckily Calvin and Hobbes came along. Tigers are pretty close.
25. I am a huge Muppet fan. Any pop culture I may know came from the Muppets.
26. My favorite cult movie is Cold Comfort Farm. I'm engorgingly in love with it.
27. I like 1930's design. Fashion, architecture, cars, silverware.
28. My favorite season is summer. Maybe because my birhtday is in August; but I love going out without a coat, wearing sandals and skirts, picknicking, lounging...
29. Also, my favorite foods are summer berries--from strawberries to raspberries to blueberries to blackberries.
30. That said, here in CT, the most beautiful months are May and October.
31. I like making crepes on my birthday, and Angel food cake is my traditional gateau.
32. While I'm talking about food, my favorite ice cream is black cherry, sometimes strawberry, but in Oregon, it is Tillamook's Marionberry Pie ice cream (almost as good as the real thing)!
33. I can roll tortellini, gnocchi, and orecchiette.
34. I like to eat seasonally. Like wintry stews and cornbread in winter, delicate greens in spring, etc.
35. I gave up read meat from age 12-20, and still eat mostly vegetarian.
36. I love spicy food--Indian, Thai...but I can also, like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottontail, have bread and milk and blackberries for supper.
37. OK, now I need to exercise. My favorite sport is Ultimate (frisbee). I jog only reluctantly, to improve my game.
38. I am a sprinter. My shortlived nickname in middle school was "speedy gonzales."
39. My Dad taught me to play chess when I was 5 or 6. At that age, I would make up narratives and interpersonal relationships between the characters, for fun but also to win. I lost the bishop of my Dad's good set in the bushes when I played with it outside. We found it later, much faded.
43. I like classic children's toys--jump rope, blocks, hopscotch, marbles.
44. I love brio trains.
45. I collect lullabies.
46. I am grateful for my Scandinavian heritage. The design, the culture (maypoles, sagas, vikings) and history, the people...this justifies my addiction to IKEA.
47. I am 1/8 Icelandic. I've been to Iceland twice. The first time I saw my great-grandmother's village, and hiked the volcano that (much later) destroyed her house. Ha!
48. My favorite cities are Reykjavik, Venice, Modena, Portland, OR. I also like L'Aquila, San Francisco, Boston, Paris, Antwerp...
49. The best hiking is found in Southern Utah. That landscape is part of my blood.
50. I don't much like camping, however.
51. I am God's gift to mosquitos.
52. I learned this during my childhood years in the Philippines. My Dad joined the Air Force to pay off med school. For me, it was eternal summer, the greenest green rice-paddies, the juciest mangoes, typhoon days from school, earthquakes, geckoes, terrorist scares, baskets galore. For my mother, I bet it was rough. I remember lots.
53. I went to six different elementary schools. Well, one of them was a middle school (5th grade) then we moved and I went to an elementary school for 6th grade, then back to middle school for 7th.
54. Middle school was horrible but defining. I had crooked teeth, thick glasses, straight A's, and therefore few friends.
55. High School was just a long recovery from middle school--braces, contacts, growing out the perm...
56. In HS I was co-editor of the Avatar, a literary and arts magazine.
57. Once I skipped class (or more likely an assembly) to pursuade a local business that in exchange for a few Avatar magazines, I could prune their overladen rose bushes for an Avatar-related event. I then proceeded to decorate the school library with hundreds (OK maybe 150) pink roses.
58. Wearing flowers in my hair is one of my trademarks. For HS graduation, I wore long pigtails with daisies; for a concerto I performed I wore little cream-colored roses; perhaps someday I'll wear fruit like Carmen Miranda.
59. I have donated 10 inches of my hair to Locks of Love, twice.
60. My favorite item of clothing is a skirt I made when I was 14. I still wear it and am in denial if it is wearing out.
61. I am intimidated by sports coaches, weight machines, tax forms, and cafeterias.
62. I hate having anything go bad in the refridgerator. It is a matter of respect. If I let the vegetable go uneaten, its life it gave for me was in vain.
63. I attended the 6th World Harp Congress.
64. I have gone skinny dipping. Multiple times.
65. I like to play games based on personality...like everybody born in May stand up. (This list could be an incriminating tool for such games.)
66. I hate long complicated riddles. Just tell me the answer, and be done with it.
68. I am not ticklish. (Dan is. Bwah ha ha! Actually we have a non-tickling marriage agreement.)
69. I cannot whistle--OK I can make a few notes. Not much.
70. I like singing harmony with a small group.
71. Caroling is my favorite Christmas tradition.
72. I also liked dressing as though for St. Lucia's day, and bringing my family Swedish Cinnamon Twists.
73. I like long white nightgowns.
74. I like waking up before everyone and eating berries in my nightgown on a porch or balcony.
75. I am a morning person. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day; I work best before lunch.
76. I don't stay up late very easily. I and everyone around me finds it horrid when I must.
77. I am a weepy person, always have been. When I'm tired, grumpy, angry, overjoyed, inspired, moved, I cry. It's very strange.
78. I wear my heart on my sleeve. Therefore, I am a terrible actress. (or liar. or surprise-keeper.)
79. I like formal dinners with good conversation.
80. I also like being silly with Daniel. We've shared many laughs over the silliest things.
81. I have always wanted to attend a masquerade ball. I once went to a masked party for carnevale in Modena, dressed as "la Primavera". It was disappointing, but I had fun dressing up.
82. I like Halloween. This year I was the dead Cleopatra (complete with asp) and last year I was a sea cucumber.
83. My interest in prints goes back to an art camp I attended at age 12. Who knew I would write/begin my dissertation on Renaissance prints?
84. I was voted "most likely to become a mad scientist" in fifth grade. I've always liked science, and I'm glad I married a scientist so I could continue to learn without actually spending much time at it.
85. I took a semester off between MA and Ph.D to fix up a fixer-upper house. It was a great break from academia, and I am now a handiwoman who likes electric drills, new paintbrushes, and spackle.
86. On my first project my sister (and her now-husband) came to help me paint the patry. We used oil-based paint and tried to clean up with soap. (I didn't know what mineral spirits were.) Panic and chaos ensued. I've learned tons while working on this old house.
87. Such as, do you know how much atrocious wallpaper there is in this world?
88. I love mythology. I could name the exploits of the Greek gods (at one time) like other kids knew dinosaurs or basketball stats.
89. I think Miss Manners should be declared a national treasure.
90. I like celebrating holidays, including those not of my culture or religious tradition. I'm an "additive" celebrater of Passover. Pass the matzoh-ball soup.
91. I know how to row a gondola. Actually, the boat I learned on was called a Sandolo.
92. When Dan insisted that we go on a gondola ride (I was going to take him the very next day) I knew he was going to propose. The ring was a huge surprise, however.
93. I like it when my cat Calamity sleeps at my feet. I don't like it when she sits on my face when I am asleep.
94. I talk to strange cats in Italian.
95. I love to attend (and help plan) weddings.
97. Two of the best compliments I've ever been given: after a talent show in which I played the violin and everyone else lip-synched, my violin teacher told me that I was courageous.
98. Another was a neighborhood kid who said recently, "you know what I like about you, Eva? You're just like a kid."
99. I never really wanted to grow up. Really, I'm pretty much the same person that I was when I was three.
100. I am grateful to learn and live surrounded by a wonderful world!

100 things about Dan

1. My earliest memory is when I was 2 or so, on a family vacation to Florida. I remember throwing an enormous beachball into the waves, and it drifting out to sea. Very traumatic.
2. Another very early memory is falling down some (carpeted) stairs.
3. I played a lot with blocks and tinker toys when I was little. There are pictures of some pretty fantastic structures that I built.
4. I learned to read when I was 3, from Uncle Scrooge comic books that my dad had collected. I am still a connoisseur of old Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge comic books from the '50's. I had many imaginary friends.
5. I also learned a lot of words by copying them on an old manual typewriter, one at a time, from a "Superfriends" dictionary.
6. I read a lot when I was a kid. My parents didn't have a TV, so reading kept me entertained. I went through many many stacks of books from the library.
7. I didn't go to kindergarten. Meeting the principal before starting first grade, I told him that I had built a "hovel" in my back yard, which, I am told, impressed him with my vocabulary.
8. I grew up in Dearborn Heights, a suburb of Detroit. This is "Ford Country", and most of my friends' parents worked for Ford or the automotive industry in some way or other.
9. My neighborhood was working-class, with sidewalks in front of all the houses. Every other house on my street had one or two kids near my age.
10. I was the neighborhood Dungeon Master, and I can still recite obscure Dungeons and Dragons facts and statistics.
11. When I was 11 my parents got me a puppy (a miniature schnauzer who I promptly named "Fritz"). He was lots of fun and very sweet, but kind of dumb. Before that we had a toy poodle named "Cupcake". He was a rather spiteful little dog, as I remember. Probably because I chased him around a lot, or perhaps because he thought his name was humiliating.
12. I was an only child until I was 12, when my brother Gabe was born. I followed his progression month by month and read all the baby books. I would baby-sit him for $1/hour, and that's how I got my spending cash all through high school, and gained much experience in changing diapers.
13. I was definitely the class nerd, with big thick glasses. I was very nearsighted until getting Lasix a few years ago. Eva and I both had it done (it is amazing!). I did it first (the guinea pig).
14. In second grade I wanted to be a paleontologist (I knew all the dinosaurs), but then by fourth grade I wanted to be an architect. I had discovered graph paper, and used it to draw building plans.
15. I decided that I wanted to be a physicist when I was in fifth grade, during a science fiction-reading phase. I flirted with the idea of being an economist a bit in my first year of college, but decided that I'd rather be a mediocre physicist, pursuing larger truths, than a good economist, studying how people behave. Immature, I know, but hey, I was in college.
16. In any case, I've always planned on being a college professor. I've always felt that ideas, pursuit of truth, and discovery are noble pursuits, and being a professor lets you pursue truth for a living.
17. My job is my dream job, but I have a long way to go before I'm especially good at it. The responsibilities weigh me down, the multitasking is extreme, and I make a lot of mistakes. But sometimes I discover something new (if obscure), and that's pretty exciting to me.
18. My parents are both academics. My dad is a philosopher (philosophy of language) and my mom is a historian (Russian history).
19. Favorite chore: filling/emptying the dishwasher. It's well defined, you can easily think about something else, and it doesn't take too long.
20. Least favorite: yard work, especially during allergy season.
21. My favorite color is green. It was yellow when I was young, then I realized this was too girly and switched to green. In high school I switched it to blue, but then I came back to green in college
22. My eyes are green (so are Eva's).
23. I met Eva when I was in graduate school, at a party thrown by my fellow graduate student Carlo and his wife Becca. I didn't expect to meet any dateable girls at the party, but I heard there was food.
24. I like to cook, and I'm learning new recipes all the time now that I can cook for both of us. I particularly like to make spaghetti, fish stew, a north african lamb dish, and key lime pies.
25. I love to play chess, but I am depressingly bad at it. I can waste hours online playing other mediocre opponents.
26. For last Christmas, Eva and my dad teamed up and got me an acoustic guitar. I have wanted to learn to play most of my life, but could never justify buying one until now. I would love to someday learn to play as well as my dad.
27. When I was 10, I lived for a year in Helsinki, Finland, and went to a Swedish-speaking public school. By the end of the year my Swedish was quite good, but it has atrophied ever since.
28. Once, in the playground at the Swedish school, I started rolling a snowball, and decided to see how big I could make it. Pretty soon all the kids on the playground were helping, and I was just pointing to tell the rest where to push it to pick up the most snow. It got to be about 8 feet tall. Later in the classroom, we looked out the window and saw that a snowplow was about to wreck it! The teacher let us run outside and save it.
29. I love reading about history, especially ancient history.
30. For books, I like ones that are well-written but have a discernible plot.
31. I bought my car, a green Ford Escort ZX2, in my third year of grad school. It is still our only car, my bachelormobile, also know as the "Lizard". It is now at 104,000 miles and I hope to keep driving it until it falls apart.
32. I don't understand religion or how anyone could be religious. The claims religions make seem ridiculous to me, and I think that most religions exploit their members. I also think that many politicians exploit religion to attain or retain power.Though the real "opiate of the masses" is professional sports.
33. I am addicted to following professional basketball and baseball, mostly by keeping track of the Detroit teams on Sportsillustrated.com.
34. I am very liberal, especially on social issues. I am a political addict, and am easily entertained by reading the news.
35. I ran cross-country and track in high school. I was one of the better, though not the best, long-distance runners at my school.
36. I play basketball twice a week, Wednesday and Friday mornings at the gym. It is great fun, and I look forward to it all week. My excuse for taking the time to do it is that it is good exercise, and good stress relief.
37. One of my favorite summers was one during grad school I spent in the French Alps, at a summer school in atomic physics. We would go to lectures by (mostly) Nobel Prize-winning physicists in the mornings, go hiking in the afternoons, and eat dinner on a porch overlooking Mont Blanc. One weekend we drove up to central France to watch a solar eclipse.
38. I am a good whistler.
39. I am very ticklish.
40. I like beer (especially India Pale Ales) and red wine.
41. I love watching movies (all kinds, but especially film noir, science fiction, mobster/crime movies, and thrillers).
42. I have a checklist of the top 1000 movies of all time, and have seen about 200 of them.
43. If left unchecked, I will eat dark chocolate until I feel sick.
44. My favorite animal is the turtle.
45. But our cats (Calamity Jane and Cyrano de Pussycat) are terrific and highly entertaining. I am now more a cat person than a dog person (though I like dogs too.)
46. I was terrified of talking on the telephone when I was little.
47. I was terrified of asking girls out until college. I never had a girlfriend until the summer after college.
48. I went to the University of Michigan for college. I got into Cornell, U Chicago, and Berkeley, but they were all too expensive by comparison. At U of M, I had a 3.9 GPA, graduated with "highest honors" and got an award for the best senior thesis in the physics department. It was about measurements of positronium decay. Positronium is a bound state of an electron and a positron (like hydrogen, but replacing the proton with a positron) and lives only 140 nanoseconds before the electron and positron annihilate in a burst of gamma rays.
49. I was valedictorian at my high school. My valedictory speech was about comparing life to a cross-country race.
50. When I got to Harvard for grad school, I quickly realized that I wasn't the smartest person in the class anymore. So I decided that classes didn't matter, and that pleasing your advisor, working hard, and thinking imaginatively were more important. Now the professors at Harvard who taught my classes have all retired, and no one will ever know my grades in grad school.
51. I played soccer in grade school. There were lots of Dans on the team, so I was called "Mac". Another kid named Dan was Polish, and he was known as "Ski". I played right midfield, generally.
52. I like to plan trips and read travel guides. I can stare at maps for hours. So much information!
53: I have been to: Canada, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Hungary, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, Greece, and Japan.
54: I had 4 years of French in high school, but I have forgotten most of the vocabulary I once knew.
55: I have been to all the states except: Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana, Texas, Wyoming, Montana, Idaho, North Dakota, and Alaska.
56. On the weekends, I like to hop in the car and spend the day exploring somewhere new.
57: I like limericks, and have a good collection of them in my head.

Testing the blogwaters

Sing out for the mud and sing out for the frog,
It's ever so jolly just starting a blog!
(blog, blog, blog, ribbit)

Prize to the first commenter who correctly identifies the reference.