Purple is the theme color of my pregnancy

Here I am at about 37 weeks, January 16. I haven't taken "belly pictures" consistently, but I've been getting some requests lately, so here's a glamour shot.

Happy Holidays!

Some pictures from Christmas, with Dan's parents Pam and Mike and his brother Gabe who came to celebrate with us. This year the holidays were spent with Dan and Mike alternating on guitar, Gabe and Dan playing hours of video and board games (sometimes I joined in), Pam making delicious meals and reading the Moomintroll books, and me eating more than usual and playing Christmas carols. We were also lucky to agument our group with our friends Anna, Devan and Emerson, who joined in guitar and song and playing around after Christmas dinner. Calamity Jane and Cyrano were curious about the presents--I wish I'd grabbed the camera sooner when it looked like they were opening them.






The other memorable thing was a rather O. Henry moment when Dan and I opened IDENTICAL Christmas presents to each other--we were each the lucky recipients of both a waffle iron AND a citrus juicer. (See, he makes the waffles and I eat them, so both of us thought that the other should get the waffle iron upgrade.) OK, to be truly like the Gift of the Magi, I would have had to give away all my oranges and him all his batter...Oh, never mind. I found it hilarious and laughed until I cried. I guess we think too much alike...

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...