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Another Day
Oct. 26th, 2010 09:41 pmSo, I didn't get what I wanted done today, because of the #%&%^*# bus.
There are three* bus lines that run from campus to near my apartment on weekdays -- one to the mall, one to the airport, and one that loops around a bunch of apartment buildings. Normally I take the one that loops around, because it is usually lower traffic, and the stop is marginally closer to my apartment than the other two. But today, I needed to hit JoAnne's, since I was out of white thread and cut the white fabric for my costume cuffs wrong. I figured I'd either grab a sandwich out there or have a steak. Also, today was unseasonably warm so I didn't bring my coat. So I waited for the mall bus, which normally runs every 15 minutes at rush hours and is always swamped with students.
Today the $^*$^#@$@ mall bus broke down. So I waited for twenty-odd minutes, watched the next mall bus pass the stop, since it was too full to take on anyone else, watched a second mall bus stop but be too full to take more than a handful of people, and finally got on an airport bus because at this point I didn't care about going to the mall or dinner out. Plus, it was starting to get cold enough that being in a T-shirt was not a fun experience.
On the fun side, we had one of the department's award lectures. Basically, the astronomy department likes to invite people to give special talks named after famous astronomers who used to work here. There's one in the fall and one in the spring -- plus a physics one named after an astrophysicist that sometimes means we get an astronomy talk. This year, we got Rashid Sunyaev, who is famous enough at extragalactic astronomy that even I've heard of him. Anyway, the talk was excellent, since Sunyaev not only did kind of a history of his work on galaxy clusters, but filled in a lot of funny anecdotes about his career as an astronomer. Some of the jokes are old ones in the field**, but it was entertaining and interesting not just for learning about the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and galaxy clusters.
* More or less. There's a couple of buses that run out of town along the road I live on, but it's a good idea to know what you are doing before taking one. Being stranded miles out of town is not fun, nor is asking the bus driver to turn around and head back to campus.
** Seriously, get a bunch of physicists together and tell a story where one line is '...and the proof is left as an exercise to the reader' (also 'it is trivial to show...'), and most likely we'll laugh. It's like, 'assume a spherical cow'.
There are three* bus lines that run from campus to near my apartment on weekdays -- one to the mall, one to the airport, and one that loops around a bunch of apartment buildings. Normally I take the one that loops around, because it is usually lower traffic, and the stop is marginally closer to my apartment than the other two. But today, I needed to hit JoAnne's, since I was out of white thread and cut the white fabric for my costume cuffs wrong. I figured I'd either grab a sandwich out there or have a steak. Also, today was unseasonably warm so I didn't bring my coat. So I waited for the mall bus, which normally runs every 15 minutes at rush hours and is always swamped with students.
Today the $^*$^#@$@ mall bus broke down. So I waited for twenty-odd minutes, watched the next mall bus pass the stop, since it was too full to take on anyone else, watched a second mall bus stop but be too full to take more than a handful of people, and finally got on an airport bus because at this point I didn't care about going to the mall or dinner out. Plus, it was starting to get cold enough that being in a T-shirt was not a fun experience.
On the fun side, we had one of the department's award lectures. Basically, the astronomy department likes to invite people to give special talks named after famous astronomers who used to work here. There's one in the fall and one in the spring -- plus a physics one named after an astrophysicist that sometimes means we get an astronomy talk. This year, we got Rashid Sunyaev, who is famous enough at extragalactic astronomy that even I've heard of him. Anyway, the talk was excellent, since Sunyaev not only did kind of a history of his work on galaxy clusters, but filled in a lot of funny anecdotes about his career as an astronomer. Some of the jokes are old ones in the field**, but it was entertaining and interesting not just for learning about the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and galaxy clusters.
* More or less. There's a couple of buses that run out of town along the road I live on, but it's a good idea to know what you are doing before taking one. Being stranded miles out of town is not fun, nor is asking the bus driver to turn around and head back to campus.
** Seriously, get a bunch of physicists together and tell a story where one line is '...and the proof is left as an exercise to the reader' (also 'it is trivial to show...'), and most likely we'll laugh. It's like, 'assume a spherical cow'.
