Nikki's Blog

I am laying on the carpet in Nikki's house in North Brunswick, NJ planning to the hour our Grand Tour, which starts tomorrow evening. The itinerary is contained in the google map below, and in graphical form on Nikki's blog here:http://careeningthroughtheuniverse.blogspot.com/

With some luck we should be in Dublin in about 36 hours from now.

To Be Continued......now

View Nute [deleted scenes] in a larger map

2 weeks to the end of the beginning

a bit busy in this finest weather.
road tripped with nikki to cambridge, ma for dinner with some characters including transplant surgeons, AI founders, and Joe Rosen. Stayed in a little B&B that sounded like it would collapse if you walked on the period wooden floors without stepping from persian rug to rug. Earlier that day we brewed some beer. Yesterday I baked pizza with classmates, laid in the sun and read sleepily with a cold bitter beer. I'm told that final exams begin in the next 2 weeks so I've started carrying my books around with me but not yet opening them, maybe today is the day.

Back In-YC

As I type this Nikki is finishing her last class of this school year somewhere uptown. I am holding down a bench at some hipster coffee shop in the Lower East side of new york, putting off studying by sending emails and wasting time in general caught in the internet. The last few days have been eventful. Mike and I held a pizza bake at the Norwich Bread Oven on Wednesday with members of our class. The local newspaper stopped by and plastered a dough photo on the front page. Shortly thereafter King Arthur Flour agreed to donate a quarter ton of flour to our project over the next year...

I have also just received word that I'll be awarded some sort of funding for the bit of research I'm helping with in the Plastics Department. PLus, the weather is beautiful and I have no right to complain about anything. So....

Studying

It really isn't that bad. With the test-every-third-week schedule, I get what amounts to a weeklong vacation after each round. So 2 days in the library is worth the next 7 in the spring sun. What am I learning about? Starting to get interesting, let's see:
dozens of bacteria, wound healing, the thalamus, eh never mind, interesting is a relative term. Last trimester I was still stuffing biochemical acronyms into my head.

10 weeks to go

I'm sitting in Bryant Park in midtown Manhattan looking at the slammer (medal, coin, thingy) that C. Everett Koop gave me. I and some classmates had lunch (quiche) with the 92 year old former surgeon general in a little house on the college campus. Nothing too eventful to report but the event itself was pretty memorable. The gist of the experience was "I'm C. Everett Koop; I'm awesome." He didn't actually say that, but he easily could have and no one would have protested.

Nothing too exciting happening right now. I'm typing this up 1) as a way of keeping up with the past month and 2) because I feel guilt for not posting. Right now I'm visiting Nikki before she digs in for final exams. I have another set of tests myself one week from today. I view these with mixed feelings now, a lot like how I used to anticipate having to run the mile in elementary school gym class. It never became fun but it got easier and the satisfaction at having it over with made it almost, but not quite, worth doing.

In the next post-quiz lull I think I will build a smokehouse in the wood shop. In the last bit of time off I built a bookcase and a sculpture workbench. I finally got around to planting my 4 hop plants along the side of the barn. Before i forget, the order of the plots is: Spalt, Cascade, Goldings, and Sterling.

That's all for now, will probably disappear for the next week until the studying is done.

Spring (ish)

It's beautiful here in the days and hours between rainstorms and the snow is becoming mud, but spiked with green tufts and so not altogether depressing. I haven't worn a jacket in a few days, haven't built a fire in the furnace in over a month, and am beginning to consider the possibility of natural warmth once again.

And now in this new brown/green world new things are brewing, stirring, and being stirred while being brewed. I just tasted the first of my batch of Hoppy Red Ale and it is probably the best beer I've made yet. It tastes like english bitter with an inexplicable dash of lavender. I've also just ordered some Hop rhizomes on the internet and plan to have a garden dug in the next couple of weeks.

In baking news, I'm working on the Schweitzer fellowship and should be running the oven starting in late April. more details of the general program are here : http://www.schweitzerfellowship.org/

Other than that and school, and summer plans, and laundry, not much to mention at the moment.