After arriving back home from New York on Sunday night (late) my next tasks were to sleep and wake up super-early to write some lecture notes on various approaches to treating diffraction (vectorized Kirchhoff integrals and so forth) for my class, and to grade several weeks of homework assignments…. all before the day’s guest (Howie Haber from UC Santa Cruz) arrived to visit and give us a departmental colloquium entitled “The Higgs Boson Unleashed”. It was great, and included discussion of new results from the LHC announced just last week. Then there was dinner in one of the excellent new downtown restaurants where I seem to have become a regular (nice to be remembered by the wait staff sometimes).
Today I must think about what I’m going to say in a colloquium I must give at Cal State Long Beach on Monday… But before then I think I need to have a slow day as I’ve really not stopped being in extreme headlong motion on various projects and deadlines for over three weeks now.
Of course, I do try to create moments of quiet whenever I can. It is important to me. Sketching practice helps. I’d taken my watercolour pencils and little portable fillable brush with me to New York, and got a few opportunities to do some experiments. Above left is a guy who was catching forty winks on the subway. This was while I rode the Q train to Park Slope neighbourhood in Brooklyn. (The drawing was done quickly with a ballpoint pen, and the watercolour started on the spot, but finished while waiting for an omelette to arrive at the excellent AOC bistro (no relation to the AOC restaurant that I love in LA – It has been a while since I’ve been, come to think of it). I’d an understanding dining companion…)
-cvj
