Relaxing by the Pool

Hola Y'all, I hope everyone had a relaxing labor day weekend. We had a whole gaggle of friends come to visit: Claudia & Jared were in from D.C., Morag, Dara, Knut, Tyra, and the whole Blum family came up from Tucson, and Morag's beau Mike came in from Hawaii, all to hang out, have some barbecue, watch the diamondbacks play the dodgers, and to generally have a fun & relaxing time. It went well. We grilled pizzas on friday, smoked lots of ribs on saturday, had more barbecue on sunday, and even more on monday (plus some salad too).

The picture above is not from this weekend, but from our first day in Tanzania. This was tuesday evening. We started the journey mid-day on saturday, spent sunday night in london, monday night in nairobi, then took a ~6 hour bus journey (some of that time spent at the border post) to finally arrive in Arusha. We were met by two landcruisers from our safari company who took us to our first lodge, on a coffee plantation on a hillside east of town. It was a great chance to relax in comfort after a long journey, and to prepare for the long (though far more exciting) journey of the safari in front of us.

I'll try to post more of the safari pictures and stories this week, while I've already moved on to my next trip. Right now I'm in Santa Fe, New Mexico (a town I last visited 29 years ago), for the National Virtual Observatory Summer School. I'm learning all about how to use the NVO tools and the internet for doing astronomical research. Today was day one, and I must say it sounds like a pretty exciting group of tools. We students (about 50 of us) will learn about the tools this week, and do some experimentation, then next week we'll try out full projects. I have one in mind already, so hopefully it's doable. I'll find out soon.