So why don’t we play the bullet game, that’s a fun way to get things back on track:

• Lucy is now 20 months old.
• 20.
• Months.

• When the hell did that happen?
• She’s is no longer a baby (although my mother still refers to me as her ‘baby girl’ and so I can still call Lucy my baby) and becoming her own little person.
• It’s weird.
• I’ve been running! I think that I’ve run at least one day a week for many many months now. I’m not running far, or fast  or that many days or on any kind of real schedule. But that’s ok, because I’m having a crazy good time *just* running with no agenda.
• On my last post I said that this summer is going to kick all kinds of ass. I was right about that
• We have gone to street fairs.
• We have traveled.
• We have played in the water.
• We have sweated (because if you hadn’t heard…it was hot)
• I think Washington is sad and pathetic.
• I went to Brookhaven Lab to start taking apart the g-2 ring to get pieces back to Fermilab. We moved stuff in a Uhaul. I see no problems with this. See pictures if you are interested of the disassembly here.
• Jason came with me.
• Lucy stayed home.
• With my Dad and Stepmom because they have abandoned their sailing plans to come back to live in Chicago.
• Which is obviously exciting.
• It was the first time both Jason and I had left Lucy for an extended amount of time.
• Not going to lie. We missed her but had a great time in NY.
• Jason went back to Chicago a week before I did and I missed him and Lucy more than ever. I am going to be done traveling for awhile, it’s too hard to be away from the family unit.
• We are talking about buying a multifamily building with my Dad and Stepmom and all living together.
• I’m calling it The Complex while the rest of the family is referring to it as The Compound which to me sounds like the government needs to get involved.
• Maybe they do.
• I want to call it the BRW Complex (BRW refers to all of our last names….and you know beer. Which is delicious).
• I’m getting better at taking pictures. See here, here and here.
• I wonder if I can make money taking pictures.
• I am cranked for the NFL season. Da. Bears.
• The air is cooler in the mornings and I’m getting very excited for jeans and sweater weather. I’m a big fan of fall.
• Thinking about it, I’m a big fan of all the seasons when they change. At the end of the summer I want the fall, I look forward to the snow, I beg beg beg for the leaves to come in on the trees in the spring, and I relish in that first 90 degree day.
• The above point is why I can never live where there aren’t seasons, it would get dull. What is there to look forward to weather wise!
• I always change that tune in the middle of March when it’s snowing and gray for days on end.

In exciting news, I applied for a grant to work on the new g-2 experiment at Fermilab about a month ago. I found out yesterday that I got it. Which is very exciting. I’ve never written a grant proposal before, so it was a totally new experience. I will be able to do some hardware work, as well as I am hoping a *little* help on the software end. I think they are going to do some good things (:gasp: they are using git) and it would be nice to be out cout statements and cvs….but we’ll see if time allows that to happen.

In other news my Dad is spending his spring break aboard Enee Marie, down in Grenada getting her fit to sail again. Check out his stories here: http://scottsuesailaway.blogspot.com/. We are of course looking forward to getting Little Miss Lucille aboard, but probably can’t make that happen until a trip tentatively planned for after Christmas.

And that is all. Stay warm Chicagoans. Green and warm will happen!

Let’s start with I can only call the most amazing thing I have ever seen. Well…last year I did see the alps while a guy playing Amazing Grace on an alpenhorn (yes I’m an atheist…yes it was still amazing…if you want to see some pictures from that part of our Zurich 2009 trip, they start here: http://leahc.smugmug.com/Travel/Zurich-2009/7414407_ZVZMc#482264509_Kng95) …so that was up there…but I digress. Part of the day today was a tour of the ATLAS detector at CERN. When I was an undergraduate I had a job helping with the assembly of the inner most detector (you can’t see it in these pictures). The part that is about 1m in diameter. This thing is about 25 tall…for you people on the English system that’s about 75 feet. It’s ridiculous. I was awed.

I didn’t have time to go back to my room to get my good camera with my ultra wide angle lens, but I did have my awesome Olympus with me, so I got some pictures, I don’t think they do it justice however. But here you go:

While I’m here my analysis work back at Fermilab is in full on approval mode for the winter conferences, so when I get some minutes I have to work on getting jobs submitted, finding failed jobs, and then running the actual code that makes the physics. Plus I want to talk to my baby girl who isn’t home yet from daycare. It’s looking like I’ll be able to see her for about 5 minutes at around midnight my time. I have major plans to get up at 6am tomorrow and go for a run. If I can get that in, I will be channeling undergrad Leah on steroids. Undergrad Leah didn’t run. She was too busy with the physics and oh ALRIGHT and the beer drinking at Yogis. Ok. There I said it.

Alright, videoed with the Lu and now I’m off to bed.

But in all seriousness, it’s funny how much faster it is for me to find my way around the computer systems, and get things up and running. Or at least I know who to ask when things aren’t working. Hello Alan!

On Monday I rode my bike-cycle as I’ve been calling it (40 year old Virgin reference right there for you smarties out there) to Union station for the 6:32 train getting me to Route 59 at 7:15. Then from there I rode all the way to the lab. And let me tell you something suburbs. When someone does a Google search for “Bike riding suburbs Rt. 59″. You could mention that the bike route goes right up to it which connects to the Prairie Path. Jeez. I looked on google maps at the area, and found a road that looked like it would work. IT WAS AMAZING! Fairway drive for anyone looking for that kind of thing. Nicely paved wide street. No traffic. It was perfect.

It took me awhile to get to the lab because I couldn’t quite figure out which side of the station I needed to be on, and then I couldn’t quite figure out how to cross Butterfield Rd. But I got there eventually.

Then I worked until 4 and left thinking that I might be able to catch the 4:32 (it’s about 6.5 miles away). But there was a 4:58 that I really didn’t want to miss and I just wanted to give myself time in case I got a flat. And so I’m going, and there is a headwind and I’m tired and there is a headwind and I’m thinking, “I’m a runner. What the fuck am I doing?”. But then I get on the Prairie path and my foot slipped (it was out of the straps because there is some loose gravel and I’m convinced I’m going to go head over heels and kill myself). ANYWAYS. I thought I kicked something off my bike, so I dismounted layed the bike down and started looking in the weeds. Seriously. THERE IS NOTHING ON MY BIKE hence nothing to fly off. I finally figured that it was my imagination that something fell off and I realized I had about 10 minutes to make the 4:32 so I hauled my ass there and I made it just as the train was pulling into the station. Of course then I got onto the wrong car as I was on the one that didn’t have a bike area. But I figured it out, got back to Chicago and biked home with the J-Man. So yeah. No biking ever to 23 miles in one day.

Tomorrow I’m going to bike to Northwestern and so we’ll see how that goes. I’m pretty happy with the biking but I want some things to make it easier (some Amadillo tires is a big one as I’m afraid of flats…I can change them…but I would rather not have to worry about it). Also in the future I suppose I should learn how to ride with clip pedals.

Today I drove to the lab. In the future my days at the lab are going to be Thursdays and Fridays and so I’m going to drive to Fermilab early on Thursday with my bike on the car, then commute by bike home Thursday, then Friday morning. Then drive home Friday.

Seriously. I’m the queen of different commuting options. I’ve found that if it’s ever all of one thing it gets annoying. All biking is tough, all driving is tough…so I like having a mix.

Ok. Don’t say bike. Bike.

That is all from here in the world of commuting and physics.

Oh and Lucy. She’s awesome. Crawling and pulling herself up on everything. Also. Room full of toys and all she wants is the remote for the TV. Of course.

Of course things have changed since the baby came. For instance, do you babies go to bed really early? Visions of walks after dinner for ice cream cones have quickly gone out the window as we can’t even seem to figure out how to eat dinner together, let alone go for a walk afterwards.

I was talking to my Dad the other day and I was saying, it’s a lot harder to do things now with the baby. Getting in runs and especially if we take her becomes a race to get home in time to go before she gets too tired. On the other hand, I was also telling him that she makes everything way more fun.

Yesterday I literally didn’t stop moving from the moment I woke up at 6:30 to when I went to bed at 10:00. In the morning I finished up a big big knitting project (Seriously. I want to give myself a high five for this one) and went to get my bike post (stem?) changed out for a shorter one to make my ride a little more comfy. After I got home, I took a quick shower, woke Lu up from her nap. Then it was on the train to wiggleworms. We then went to lunch with our wiggleworms companions and Lucy’s best friend Ethan. Then we walked all the way home from there which was about 2 miles. Oh yeah. And it’s like a 100 degrees here. Lucy got cranked at the end of that walk because she was so hot. So we decided not to make her go for a run with us because it was so hot. We played with her, she went to bed at like 6:15 (I told you! Early!). Then after she went down I went out for a 6.5 mile run (Oh I’ve been playing with DailyMile for my running log…a little rough in places but getting there). My day went from 6:30-8:00. Then I did some more knitting things before I went to bed (after the crazy project I’m going to knit some dishcloths).

I mean from 6:30am – 10:00pm. I didn’t stop moving. So that part of me hasn’t changed…it’s just become more so. More Leah! If there was a TV realty show about me, I’d want the name of it to be The Leah Experience.

With my new job there is going to be a lot less down time because I’m going to be super super busy. People at Fermilab asked me how I could have possibly wanted to come back given that I had a 40 hour work week and I made a ton money. For the second point I actually didn’t make a ton of money, I got a 10% raise going back to academia. For the first point. Sure 40 hour work weeks are nice. But not when you aren’t passionate about it. Plus I love the physics nerds so much. I mean please, if you could work with Leonard and Sheldon wouldn’t you?

Today looks to be another long day. I’m up early although the other two are still snoozing. We have to clean this place up a bit, and then Lucy has her first swim lesson at the YMCA in the late morning. Don’t know why I signed up for a summer swimming class that’s indoors when we are already doing a music class on Saturdays. But whatever. It’s going to be fun. Or I’m going to call and see if I can get a refund and I’ll just take the next class. Also we are looking forward to Jason’s parents coming in this afternoon.

So yes. Changes. It’s inevitable that it’s going to happen. You’ll see. But I won’t tell you what you’ll see. Just enjoy them as they come.