Special Delivery

I went up to talk to Chad the other day and heard a weird noise coming from this box in his office.


All we have in this box is a bunch of stuffed animals that we never unpacked after moving. So basically, any noise coming from this box is weird. I thought maybe one of the stuffed animals had come to life.

Chad suspected Max. He was right.


She had dug her way into the box to be with the animals. Nice, cozy company, that doesn't chase her around the house like Entropy does.

Still Bumpy

Just before taking this picture, my darling husband complemented me on my outfit with the following:

"You are looking very bumpy today."

Aw, shucks.


In other news, it seems we suck at blogging. You may have noticed the complete lack of posting. It seems I promise to blog more, then weeks and weeks and weeks go by with no posting. So let's be honest, it's not going to get better until we have better material. Expected in t - 16 weeks.

cat update

Max likes to watch the olympics, but once in a while she prefers to watch us. In a somewhat creepy way from the bookshelf.


When she tires of us, she goes back to watching the olympics. This is somewhat dangerous, as Entropy has found a new spot to stalk her from.


I am rather impressed by Entropy's athleticism, personally. She jumps all the way up there from the TV stand and manages not to knock the whole thing over. Maybe she's actually part squirrel.

The big news in the life of our cats, though, is the newly installed screen door. They were definitely scared of it at first, but now they seem to really like hanging out in front of it. It's the next best thing to being outside!


Perhaps once the baby is born we will have more interesting things to post about than our cats. I'm not making any promises.

Its a boy

Well, this may come as a surprised to you if you haven't heard the news yet, as we've neglected to post it here, but Rachel is pregnant! On Thursday we had an ultrasound and found out that it's going to be a boy!


Here's a nice picture showing the current state of Rachel plus baby. Stay tuned for continuing coverage of Bumpwatch 2008.

Out of control

This is what I picked from our garden this afternoon. Notice the other junk intentionally left on the table for context. These suckers are HUGE!!! We picked a zucchini as big as the large one less than a week ago (last Tuesday, to be exact). We had two friends over for dinner, had grilled zucchini AND zucchini bread, and only used half of the giant. Clearly our garden is out of control.

Anyone need some Zucchini?

July 4th at the camp

So posting once a month is better than nothing, right? Right?

We had a great time at camp no class over 4th of July.


We did a lot of paddling, and basically just enjoyed the beauty of the beaver river.


It was great to hang out with Mom, Sue, Sarah and Al all at the same time. Also, I had no idea Sarah was so good at darts.


This place is just so beautiful and peaceful.

Can you find Sarah and Al in the picture above?

Back to Neutronworld

Sorry about the light posting lately - suffice it to say that life has gotten a bit exhausting. More on that later, but for example, the past three weekends have involved Rachel traveling to Atlanta for USAV nationals, Chad going to Portland for Railscon*, and then Rachel heading to Gaithersburg MD to shoot some neutrons and Chad heading to Boston.

At any rate, I'm back at NIST, and was informed when I arrived at the gate this morning that there is a bear on site.

A BEAR.

NIST is a totally fenced in, guarded, federal lab. Apparently one that is now inhabited by a bear. You know scientists, not satisfied with working in close proximity to a nuclear reactor, might like having a bear around for extra excitement.

I guess the story is that bear was in someone's back yard, and when animal control came after it it jumped the fence into NIST. Apparently the plan is to just wait for it to leave on its own accord. Which is fine with me (I don't think I'm in any bear danger as I walk the short distance from my car to the building), but funny. The gatehouse has a big "bear warning" sign up. Such silliness.

*Did you see the first picture on the railscon website? I guess there are places with a more narrow demographic than WPI. And I thought physics conferences were bad!