Parties!

I'm lagging a bit behind on recounting my adventures, and looking back at what I've been up to, it's mostly partying!

The Catholic grad students' dinner a few Fridays ago barely rates a mention, because all though it was most enjoyable it was just like the several I've described before.

Early in December, the James Franck Institute held an open house. The keynote of this day is the Physics with a Bang lecture, which Sid and Heinrich put on to show off how much fun they can have making use of physics. I went to the dress rehearsal on Thursday, and enjoyed it. And the bang name was most appropriate. I had agreed to do some demonstrations in theory alley during the open house, so Arvind and I spent Friday designing and making some rigid origami structures to help people understand what we work on. Much of what we build has not been so exciting, but these looked nice: they look like a set of claws that will grab if you push just a little in the middle. The middle school students who came on Saturday seemed impressed enough. I also had fun with Tom on his demonstration of sound. We could sing in harmony and note the ratio of wavelengths (simple numbers like 3/2). Another aspect I found interesting was looking at how different the overtone patterns were when singing different vowels.

The hordes left around 4 pm, and I headed into the city to see Evelyn, who was visiting Chicago for a workshop. We went to Mass at the Cathedral, before heading to the University of Illinois, Chicago for a meeting of Communion and Liberation, a Catholic lay organisation of which she is part. It was interesting to hear a different group of people talk about their lives as Catholics, focusing on similar questions to what I have discussed with friends at UC. Evelyn was travelling a long way north, so we spent the train ride discussing our lives and what has influenced decisions we have made.

On Sunday I went to two Catholic discussion groups: the faith and science group on gender, and the grad students' faith sharing group on Advent and evangelisation.

On Monday I went to the Calvert House caroling event, rescheduled from the previous week due to the shooting threat. It was an augmented undergrad dinner, and we ate soup, rolls, etc. before heading upstairs to sing. This event was founded by my MIT friends Lisa and Phil, and I recognised a couple of the carols only from the event they hosted two years ago.

On Tuesday, Noelle and Alice hosted a party to celebrate the Immaculate Conception. Their apartment is becoming quite the party destination (though even careful readers might not have noticed that, because I am include both a party that didn't make the blog during my busy June and another that is more recent than even this post covers). We enjoyed delicious chili (which in most of the US refers to a dish somewhat like chili con carne, definitely with beans and with or without meat) and other dishes, and spending time together as the end of the school year approached.

On Thursday, Noelle hosted another party, to celebrate life, Christmas and the end of the year, and encourage her friends to find joy and help spread it. There was dancing, but it was mostly the ballroom dance club members who participated. I and a few others partook more of the food and games (Jenga).

Friday? Party day! This time it was the end of semester party at Loyola. I went and celebrated with the scholastics there - and the archbishop.

On Saturday, Austin arranged for standby tickets for me to fly to meet him in Boston. He was interested in seeing Harvard and MIT, and we were both interested in seeing each other. So we met at BOS and caught the red line out to Harvard. I'm not an expert on the campus, but we saw many of the buildings and took a few photos together, though we are not students, alumni or really affiliated in any way with the university. We walked through Cambridge to Central Square, where I met a few of my Catholic friends for lunch at an Indian restaurant. Then it was off to MIT, where I was able to show him more personal locations such as the chapel and my office, as well as regular sights like Killian Court and the Stata Center. We crossed the river to St Clement's, then walked along Boylston St to the Common. We had had in mind doing some of the Freedom Trail, but we had pretty much run out of sunlight. So we just headed back to the airport, and I was just able to make it onto an earlier flight.

Last week was much quieter, though we did have a few friends over for a steak dinner on Wednesday.