Britt's Blog

One of the things for which Beloit is famous is the Mindset List, a list of cultural touchstones assembled by Beloit’s Professor Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief. Its primary purpose is to help us understand exactly how freakin’ young this year’s incoming frosh are.

Also, to make us fogeys feel old.

The one that makes me shudder most is: “They have always ‘dissed’ what they don’t like.” Mostly because I hate when “disrespect” is used as a verb. And, “The U.S. has always been studying global warming to confirm its existence.” We’ve come a long way, baby.

Some of them, though, just make me go, “Buh?” Like, “They never played the game of state license plates in the car.” Huh? Why the hell not? “They have never put their money in a ‘Savings & Loan.’” Um, what? Despite the S&L crisis, they still exist.

The thing that completely freaked me out, though, wasn’t actually on the list. As I was reading the Mindset List out loud to Jason, he pointed out that we have been on the East Coast since they were eight! AAAAHHH!!!!

He also points out that they have never known a world without Magic: The Gathering. Maybe we should have a Gaming Mindset list.

So today was New Faculty Orientation.

It was worthwhile, in general. The best part was meeting the other new faculty. There are eight or nine new tenure-track faculty (estimates, for some curious reason, vary) [Edit: The official figure seems to be 8.] and a total of 20 new faculty, counting visiting professors, adjuncts, etc. We were told that this was the largerst “incoming class” of faculty ever.

We were invited to introduce ourselves, and tell the group one thing that isn’t on our CVs. So I announced my gamer geekness to the crowd, and a couple of people were interested in getting together to play board games some time. They aren’t gamers though…at least, not yet. I also met a woman who actually lives in the same building as us. Someday when our apartment isn’t full of boxes we’ll have to invite her over for tea!

They sent us on a scavenger hunt, were we were supposed to find certain rooms, and find some people and ask them certain questions. Our group had a good time, and asked lots of additional questions of the friendly, knowledgable and helpful persons we met, and were the last ones to return. But check this out…the last person we talked to said that she had only seen seven people total the whole time, including the four of us. And it turns out that at least one of the groups split up, which wasn’t against the “rules” inasmuch as there were rules, but sort of defeats the purpose of everyone getting better aquainted with the campus. Sooooo, we lost the scavenger hunt, but we had no idea we were competing against Prof. Cheaty McCutcorner, Prof. Sneaky McCheatenstein, or Prof. Doesn’tDoTheWhole McScavengerhunt.

I am apparently not yet entirely pointed toward the east, because tomorrow there is Yet More Orientation—this time for filling out forms and signing up for benefits and all that jazz.

In other news, Woodmans (Motto: “We’re Almost as Good as Wegmans”) has mangos for 49 cents. Forty-nine freakin’ cents! They aren’t hugetastic, like the ones you see at Wegmans, but they are big enough to make dessert for J and me, and they are tasty and good!

Okay, usually I don’t do these quiz things, but seems like everybody’s doing this one.

I can’t say the results are much of a shock… The only word in the description that I object to is “necessary.” ;)

On Tuesday I made one last visit the Temple of Zeus to have an emotionally bittersweet, yet so, so, currylicious bowl of Potage St. Cloud.

As I bid farewell to Choklay and explained that I was going to Wisconsin, the woman ahead of me in line, who had, for inexplicable reasonons, lingered by the kitchen window, asked me about my new job. Feeling gregarious, I said I would be teaching at Beloit College. She asked what subject, and I told her physics and astronomy.

She reeled visibly. “Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed. Then, she declared, “You are a genius.”

Um, okay. I’ll take my compliments where I can get them, I guess.

“Are you an Aquarius?” she quickly asked. I hesistated. Did she actually just ask an astronomer for their sign? She added helpfully, “Were you born in February?”

“No, actually, I’m a Cancer,” I responded, not, I admit, without a bit of smugness. What astronomer doesn’t enjoy yet another demonstration that astrology is STUPID AND WRONG?

“Oh, Cancer, that’s close to Leo, which is another scientific sign,” she said with satisfaction.

At this point I toyed with telling her that I’m actually on the cusp of Gemini… but engaging her would probably just lead down a long, meandering path to me banging my head against a brick wall, and currylicious Potage St. Cloud is better when it’s hot.

So, remember, astrology enthusiasts, if a natal sunsign doesn’t seem quite right, just shift the birthdate 31 days, because that’s close enough.

Ow! My meninges!

So, I passed my B exam.

Despite the Great Shampoo and Toothpaste Aviation Disaster of 2006, both my advisor and I made it back to Ithaca, and I successfully defended my thesis this morning. My defense went better than I was expecting, and I have very few revisions to do, so, no complaints.

Here’s hoping I can get it all wrapped up and submitted very, very soon.

NY Times Obituary

James Van Allen is most famous as discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, high energy particles from the solar wind trapped by the Earth’s magentic field.

If you are a University of Iowa student of a Certain Age, then you also know his name from Van Allen Hall, the U of I physics building.

If you were a U of I physics student, then you know him as the nice old guy who worked up in that big office (meant to house several graduate students) where, rumor has it, the smoke detector was disabled so that Van Allen could still enjoy his pipe.

After I gave my honors thesis talk on the variable star Algol, he was kind enough to come up to tell me that he had very much enjoyed my talk, and, also, very gently point out that ephmerides is pronounced ef-em-ER-ih-deez, not eh-FEM-er-ides.

The display in the lobby of Van Allen Hall, showing his rockets and other equipment (labeled somewhat apologietically with their un-PC nomenclature) invoked the old rough-and-tumble frontier days of rocketry, when you would just bolt an instrument on top of a rocket and get ‘er up there, to see what you would see. I couldn’t walk by without think how exhilirating it would have been to be out there, using brand new tools to do brand new science.

Godspeed, Dr. Van Allen.

Oh, wait, you non-Iowans don’t understand swine metaphors.

Never mind.

Our Pod has come back to us, and Jason is finding the process of unloading much less stressful than loading, especially with his handtruck! Hurray for handtruck! He purchased a handtruck of his very own at ShopKo. It even transforms from a handtruck to a giant robot! Er, no, actually, it only transforms from a normal vertical handtruck to kind of a little cart thingie. And back. No giant robot. I made that part up.

Anyway, we are very lucky to have the handtruck, because I am largely useless for unloading things, as I am still feeling a bit under the weather, and with my thesis defense coming up I’m conserving my strength and trying to get well, and only helping with the stuff that absolutely needs two people.

We have put together our bed, and we are looking forward to sleeping on something that doesn’t need to be reinflated each evening (although we can’t complain about the air mattress for comfort.) Aside from a slight problem of seeming to have more stuff than we have space, we’re doing okay. Too bad Beloit is too small to have its own Freecycle list.

When we discovered that it would take several days to get our cable and interent access, we thought it would not be too much of a hardship. In fact, we said, “It will be good for us to go a week without TV or surfing the web!”

“I shall get ever so much work done without any distractions,” said I.

“I shall break my message board addiction,” said Jason.

“We will find internet hotspots in charming cafés and coffee shops to check our email and grow more familiar with our new community,” we cried together as we joined hands and danced in a circle.

Uh, yeah.

Then I got sick. Couldn’t really go out, couldn’t work. It was one of those miserable colds where you basically can’t do anything but lay on the couch and watch TV—except, oops, no couch and no TV.

Turns out that there’s one hotspot in Beloit, as far as we can tell. Good news is it’s right down the block. Bad news is it’s open only limited hours, and closed on Sundays.

And, in general, having neither TV nor internet is teh suck. Entertainment value aside, it is just frustrating when you need information and have no easy way to get it.

After a few days, we were both about to snap. I was lying on the air mattress, coughing and hacking, with nothing to do but worry about the work I wasn’t doing on my thesis. J was climbing the walls and muttering darkly about nerve-stapling the cat after too many hours of SMAC.

But now the Cable Technician has come and made everything all better.

Aaaaaaaah.

Sweet information.

Sorry about the lack of updates, but we arrived in Beloit on Tuesday, and spent Wednesday running around buying stuff for the apartment and failing to find any wireless hotspots. Unfortunately, I’d picked up a nasty cold some where along the line, and I spent Thursday incapacitated in bed as the “work yourself to exhaustion, collapse, get up, and exhaust yourself again” plan of recovering from illness failed spectacularly.

A day of rest seems to have helped a lot, and we found a hotspot at Bagels and More, the place to go for Beloit’s premier bagel experience.

I think today we will be able to get out there and get some more necessities, like a chair. And a lamp. No more sitting on the floor in the dark for us!