So little time

I took off for a family reunion in the beautiful Traverse City area of Michigan on Thursday afternoon last week. It was great to get together with my family - its the first time we have all been in the same place for more than 24 hours in over 2 years! The lakeshore country is just gorgeous with the shallow and sandy bottomed waters giving a tropical appearance that contrasts with the quaint cross between a midwest softness and east coast white picket fence feel. All in all a sucessfull weekend.

On the way to Michigan I finished the book "Freakonomics." A quick 250 page read full of an interesting and diverse set of questions followed by number crunching economic analysis. I learned some good stuff, like how to sell my home for a good price and words and writing styles to avoid and use in personal adds. More than anything its a great demonstration of the power of incentives. On the way back from Michigan I put down another 100 pages or so of "From Beruit to Jerusalem." Thats a lot harder of a read but quite enlitening on its subject (the modern history of the middle east).

I missed a lot at work in the day and a half that I missed. I think I've made up my time with two 11 hour days in a row and more on the horizon. Its really exciting now that my research companion and I are becoming more independant from our advisor and are really on the verge of getting some data collected. We've got a long way to go, but we have all the pieces in place so that if we tweak everything just perfectly, we might be able to get some results. I'm doing my best to learn how to code in LabVIEW and align diffraction gratings. So much to do!