An evening off!

[cjsmith]

Yesterday I did the dutiful things I was supposed to do: I fought with Microsoft drivers at work, I paid some bills, I went to get a bone scan, I did my meds and the kitties' meds and and and...

By the time Rob got home I didn't have much energy or motivation to do anything else. He needed to study neutrinos / particle physics, but after teaching flight students all day, he was wiped too.

We were so bad.

WE TOOK THE EVENING OFF. Both of us.

We watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and I got sufficiently relaxed on red wine that we really should have stayed awake longer after the movie, if you catch my meaning, except that I was so tired that it just wasn't going to happen.

(Most annoying thing about that movie, aside from the bit about throwing cats against stone walls: they couldn't figure out how to end it. Guys, you were doing great up until the last scene. It's worse than the ending of Blazing Saddles, and that's saying something.)

Y'know what's the problem with taking the evening off? You get used to it. It's fun. Now I'm back fighting with Microsoft drivers, phoning insurance companies and medical imaging clinics, and just generally being good and dutiful and stuff. That's less fun.

Comments

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

6-year-old boy: "But Dad, I don't want to go back to math class."

Enterprise crew member: "Everyone needs a basic understanding of Calculus."

From that ST:TNG episode where a bunch of kids, plus Wesley (sigh, I look forward to Wil Wheaton's review of this one), get kidnapped. I watched the episode in my college dorm at Caltech. The room erupted in cheers at this exchange.

My point being, the same with particle physics. I may be biased, though. Did the death of the SSC take you out, or a different pinheaded move?

[tmc4242.livejournal.com]

You perhaps took my question differently than intended.

That was not "Why on earth would you want to ?"

It was "How is he going to get to ???". As in I'm glad someone is.

As for me - I found out in grad school that I can't quite hack the math for doing the theoretical side of high energy physics. The SSC came to Texas around that time and I decided I liked building things better than math anyway, so I went to work in the Cryostat and Interconnect group with an MS in physics. The PhD was going to be more fun than I could stand. :)

If we'd been able to keep going, I have no doubt I'd still be there. It was a tremendous place to work. I even had a boss planning on sending me back to school to work on an advanced degree in robotics so I could work on systems at SSC.

Let's review: That's get paid to learn to build large radiation resistant robots which would take apart and reassemble superconducting magnets in the world largest particle accellerator.

I just can't see having left that job voluntarily... :)

I went from SSC to a large defense corporation for WAY too long. ( Only bonus points there - business cards to back up the "I'm a Rocket Scientist" T-shirt. )

And now I'm looking for path number three.

BTW, in the small town where I went to college by some twist of fate there were 4 different episodes of TNG on every week night if you channel surfed in the right order. I was working physics problems with a classmate when the episode you mention ran. We cheered too. :)

[psi-star-psi.livejournal.com]

I think my user info describes my exit from grad school, but the short form is that I was studying theoretical particle physics and decided, like too many others at the same time, that it wasn't going to fly for me. About a week after I decided to quit, the SSC died, so any possibility of future employment in the field changed from vanishingly small to truly zero. Shortsighted Congressional idiots. Bah, I say to them.

I think you pulled a better deal on the Wheel of HEP Jobs than I did, but then I only aspired to theory. I had a summer job as an undergrad working in a calorimeter assembly shop. We built the modules in Pasadena, then shipped them to SLAC. I love the checkboxes on medical insurance forms:

"Have you ever been exposed to?"

Lead, lead dust, mechanical soldering stations, solder flux fumes, ultrasonic alcohol baths, high voltage, spot current welders, and probably a few other things I don't remember. I didn't end up with a dosimeter badge until a couple of later jobs or it one would have covered everything.

Now I just watch my ergonomics. Ah, youth...