Photonics West

Photonics West, one of the largest optics conferences on the planet, happens in San Francisco every year. Correspondingly I get to visit my sister's family, who lives in Berkeley, each February - this year was no exception:

This year was particularly special as my niece Phryne was born last November and this was my first chance to see her! So we took the rare opportunity to take some family pictures (though unfortunately without Juri, who was travelling this week - poor timing!):

 After San Francisco / Berkeley I had to travel to Washington DC to attend the technical program committee meeting of CLEO (yet another optics conference). As our subcommittee finished early, I had some time to walk along the National Mall, which I hadn't done since 1996!

Is that... a bone??

That must have been what Pepper was wondering. It took him several minutes just staring at the bone before he had convinced himself that it, indeed, was edible :)

Happy New Year!

Like most years, I got up early on New Year's Day to greet the New Year from the virtually deserted slopes of Mt. Hood. Sunny weather and no wind - what's not to like?

Bread maker

Jan gave me a bread maker for Christmas, and I LOVE it! Love it, love it, love it. So far I've made two different gluten free loafs (brown rice and teff flour mixes), and they both came out soft and fluffy and oooooh-so-tasty!

Neskowin - Christmas 2014

This year's Christmas was the first in quite a few years that we did not celebrate in Wilsonville with family, but instead headed out to the gorgeous Oregon coast. We rented a little condo straight at the coast with a nice view of Proposal Rock.

And then we got out to do what we had come for: looong walks along the endless, deserted beach - rain or shine:

Which made for a happy dog...

George and Abby took a while longer to settle in, but they came around, eventually.

Christmas Eve was particularly stormy and so large amounts of sea foam piled up on the beach. (Contrary to common perception, this is - at least on the Oregon coast - not due to pollution, but due to a productive ocean ecosystem.)

PDX International Raceway

Billie and Rod invited us to drive along the raceway near Portland, which is always nicely decorated during Christmas time. And it was a lot of fun! Christmas music on the radio, lots of lights outside. It really put me in the right mood for Christmas. Pepper and Maggie joined us, of course, and Pepper also seemed genuinely interested in all the lights outside! And afterward we had dinner at Xico, a Mexican restaurant. A great evening with great friends!

Dog Days

This year it struck me: Pretty much any time Pepper and I walk across campus, students ask if they can pet him, and then they tell me how much they needed that because they have an exam in a few, or they have a lot of homework to do, or.. fill in the blanks. And what's the most stressful time? Finals week of course.

So I sent an email to my fellow dog owners and asked them if they'd be willing to volunteer some of their time during finals week, to make their dogs available half an hour before a final. And guess what - we got nine wonderful dog/human teams together to cover 12 pre-final time slots. All in all, about 100-120 different students came, several of them multiple times. I call that a great success :).

Pepper had a great time too. Note the blurry tail :)