Making Omelets

We are two weeks into the new job and new Kindergarten, all our stuff (minus the car) has arrived. We miss our friends and community in Juneau horribly. Carrie has finally succumbed to the cold that Torsten has been sniffling and coughing from (and of course it is worse for adults!). So we are letting Carrie “sleep in” a bit (we were up at 3am and ~5:30am with Aven, so somehow it doesn’t seem like sleeping in!). I’m preparing some omelets for breakfast. While I do this, I’m catching up on the last few weeks of magazines. Physics Today has a review of the book “Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers” by Joseph C. Hermanowicz.

An excerpt from the review:

“n the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) assessment of graduate physics departments, two of the universities (“elites”) were ranked near the top; one(“pluralist”), near the middle; and three (“communitarians”), near the bottom.

The pluralists express the most satisfaction. Many, after some initia discontent, have found a comfortable mix of teaching and research and realize that internal as well as external sources of recognition are important for their sense of personal satisfaction. The communitarians, at universities where teaching dominates over research, feel they have become disconnected from professional science as their careers have evolved. By midcareer their expectations have adjusted to meet the low research expectations and meager resources of their universities. Many of the communitarians state that they dislike their universities and would not choose an academic career if they could begin again. They look forward to a retirement in which they can pursue interests outside of science.”

Did we make a good decision? Can we find a community? Will the forecast “winter storm warning” measure up? 🙂 We hope so on all three, and we’ll see.. sooner or later. Hopefully this is not a broken egg (or at least no shell!) in the omelet of life.

I’m excited about the apple and brie omelets. And of course, to perfectly complement the subtext of this post, Torsten wants scrambled eggs…

Meanwhile, the view from the sunroom:

From Stuff

From Stuff

Travelling Fools

We’re almost used to our no-stuff monk-like existence, but we are giddy (and a bit fearful) when all our stuff is supposed to arrive Tuesday (will it fit? I’m calling storage places today!). It is hard to believe all that has happened since October 1, but we’ll catch up with ourselves soon. This picture shows that we mostly manage to keep our smiles and roll with the craziness

From December 2009

It is also one more test of facebook/wordpress (blog) integration. It might just work. It appears that embedded picasa slide shows don’t work, embedded bikely maps don’t work, but hopefully picasa pictures do make it through to facebook.

Los Alamos reservoir run

Jan 2, run with Suka: Down into the canyon below the bridge, by the ice rink. Then a run up the canyon to the Los Alamos reservoir. It looked like a great trail to skijor, and very possibly dog mush. On the way back we saw a skier.

(test of bikely, my favorite trail mapping app)



(And also a test of Word Press/Facebook integration.. No joy with the LinkAlpha/Network Publisher, so I’m trying WPbook.)

Trail Runs – Quemazon

The Los Alamos trail system is something I never got to take advantage of last time we lived here (we were up in the Jemez mountains, and I definitely used the trails up there!). Exploring those with Suka has been a great start to trying to settle in. One Jan 1, we went up Quemazon trail a good way. Here are pictures:

(This blog post is my first test of trying to cross-post to facebook at the same time.. We’ll see..)