Day 66 - Panic! at the office

I grabbed a muffin on the way to work this morning, but once I got there I realized that the flash drive where all of my work and documents are located wasn't in my backpack. I searched slightly frantically for it, then decided (/hoped) it was in my room somewhere, and walked home. I randomly ran into Asaf on the path to Clore, and we chatted briefly before I went on to my room. I looked all over my desk and still couldn't find it, which was awful. Luckily I peered underneath my desk chair, where it was. Phew.

I headed back to the lab and worked on my presentation all morning. Tamara and I met at Charlie's for lunch, where Lisa was almost done eating but stuck around to chat. I had chocolate milk with my meal, for the third time in Lisa's presence (and third total). Back at Perlman, I continued working for a couple more hours, then headed to the Physics Building for another talk.

The speaker was a professor in physics, and his presentation was titled "Massive Black Holes." It started out by being very interesting, but all the blinds were drawn and I had forgotten to take my narcolepsy medication, and together these factors led to a disaster which resulted in my not really knowing anything further about this talk. Daniela, who sat next to me, told me it wasn't too noticeable, and that she would have woken me if I had snored too loudly. I was terribly embarrassed anyway. On the walk back, though, we made plans to eat dinner the next day.

At work afterwards, Noa had found a really old sonicator in a corner of our lab, so we decided to make some more samples. I had to take some pictures of it, though, so I also took some other lab shots (see below). At around this time, Mom called to tell me they were back on campus for the evening. I told them to stop by Perlman, as they were about to walk by. They came up to the fourth floor. Between the elevators and the lab, Professor Wagner and XiaoMeng were chatting, so I introduced the fam to the Professor. I then gave them the three-minute tour of the office and lab, introduced them to Noa and Patro, and took them down one floor to meet Asaf.

Next we headed to the stairwell, where I showed them the Foucault's Pendulum as we headed up to the fifth floor. I made Nitzan come out and meet them, where there was an awkward moment where Nitzan told my mom he was kidding with all his jokes about not holding onto the rope when we climb, and my mom's blank and slightly confused face revealed I had not been telling her anything about these jokes. After this amusing occurrence, they left Perlman so I could do some more work before we met for dinner.

I had told my family we would have some of my friends as guests for dinner, but didn't know who that would be yet. Once I made it back to Clore, I ran into Jonathan, and asked him to come along with Stephen (who wasn't around, but who I called). After about a half hour, my family approached Clore, Stephen had returned to Clore and dropped off his stuff, and he, Jonathan and I headed up to the lobby. We all met on the lawn and started walking toward Tuk Tuk, the sushi/Japanese restaurant near the science park.

Jonathan and Stephen introduced themselves and such on the way. My dad complained mildly as we walked, because the science park is sort of far from campus. Finally we made it to the restaurant, where we figured out the seating arrangements and surveyed the menu. I ordered a sweet potato "photomaki" (futo maki) and a rainbow roll thingie, while my family also ordered sushi and Jonathan and Stephen ordered cooked things and/or vegetarian rolls. I think it was a great meal: the food was good and my "roommates" seemed to get along with my family. Jonathan is in applied math, so he and my dad talked about that stuff, while Stephen and my brother completely agree in their hatred of Million Dollar Baby. The latter relates to the following conversation:

Stephen: I used to be a real movie buff. I would watch all of the Academy Award winners, and everything...

Me: Andrew, you and Stephen can really agree on something.

Andrew: Is it that Million Dollar Baby is a terrible movie, and should not have won Best Film, and that you stopped watching the Oscars after 2004?

Stephen: YES! How did you know that?

So it was a good meal. We were off to our normal Goldman family roll, and our guests didn't seem to mind. When we headed back to Clore, pretty much everyone was in the lobby, so I was able to have my parents meet some new people, including Jordan, Lisa, Joel, Tamara, and Ari! We sat and chilled, then decided to try the other ice cream place, Tartufo. We all had more basic flavors tonight, before heading back to Clore. Andrew left with my parents this time, so I joined those chilling in the lobby registering for the GREs together, namely Ari, Tamara and Stephen. The registration session eventually degenerated into Ari and me watching a few episodes of The Office before I headed to bed.

Today's pictures feature Perlman:

Noa hard at work breaking ice...

...for the sonicator! It used to be white. I know because I found it online (they still sell it!)

Patro dipping silicon, held in clothespins, into solution