An evening with Lucius

I've been a Lucius fan ever since I heard their song "How loud your heart gets" on NPR, which is maybe a year ago? Maybe two?? Anyways... Just for giggles I decided to see if they happen to go on tour any time soon, and guess what! They are currently touring and were in Portland on May 9th! Very exciting!! The downside - that's a Monday. But who cares!

So Jan I bought tickets and headed to the 'Wonder Ballroom' in Portland. It's an old church that has been turned into a place for concerts and such. Not much seating (and with my knee that was challenging), but otherwise a great place. 

The doors opened at 7:30, and the concert was scheduled to start at 8:30. So we figured, maybe 1.5 hours, so we'll be home by 10:30 or so. Late, for us, but not too late. Oh, how naive we were! I guess this comes as no surprise to most, but there is actually another artist scheduled right before the main event, and then there's typically a break to change the set. So, we were looking at 45 minutes + 30 minutes more. Gulp! I can't remember the last time I've been up that late. Heehee...

The opening act was Margaret Glaspy. I liked maybe one or two of her songs; the rest were rather meh. Maybe that's because the sound didn't seem to be set up perfectly; it was very difficult to understand the lyrics. 

Lucius on the other hand were fantastic! I had never seen them on stage before, so I didn't know what to expect. Turns out, they all play more than one instrument, and the rotate through them fluently and often during a single song. Quite impressive. And yes. I love their harmonies! Great show, great songs, great times!

Catching up, part II

Since Jan's played catch-up, I guess I have to as well ;). Here are a few of the photos that I've accumulated on my phone since January:

Sleepy pets, always a favorite!

We did some pet sitting for Billie and Rod (in January and April). Always fun! Pepper and Maggie get along great. It's very funny walking them together: One of them sniffs something interesting, and the other one is right behind to check it out too. And Sailor's a sweetheart. 

We had some golden eggs for Easter (the color was horrible, though, super sticky). 

And I finally took a photo of my research group. Here's us being goofy :).

I had knee surgery on my left knee (the meniscus, again). Not for the faint of heart!

And we graduated another group of seniors. Always bitter-sweet.

And last but not least, Dog Days 2016. Jan helped this time!

Catching up...

It's been a while and the pictures on my phone have been piling up. Not everything is new or exciting, but still worth remembering.
Here we enjoy a lazy afternoon on the weekend - always a favorite:

Our new doggy bath in the laundry room - Pepper is not necessarily a fan, but Michaela is!

On a recent Sunday evening, Billie spontaneously invited us for dinner and we enjoyed a tasty Salmon and Quinoa on their porch with a beautiful view of Newberg and Mt. Hood (which didn't make it into the picture).

Finals week started the following weekend for Willamette's students and Michaela's 'Dog Days' event, by now a well established tradition, helped to reduce student anxiety. Pepper is a total pro by now!

 In between dog sessions we spent some quality time in Michaela's lab, which I visited for the first time in a while and which looks VERY nice by now!) and after a couple of hours of troubleshooting fired up the Mazama laser (at the bottom of the picture) up for the first time, very exciting!

Photonics West and CLEO TPC

It's March already...time for some catching up. February 13-18th was Photonics West week in San Francisco - like every year. What was different this year however, was that Jule and family had returned back to Germany: no luxury accommodations including good food and entertainment for me this time! When I texted Jule a picture of my current location waiting for my cable car (can you tell where that is exactly?)

she knew exactly where I was and would have probably preferred to be there, too...

Photonics West was as good and massive as ever: more than 22000 attendees, 1345 exhibiting companies and close to 5000 presentations, which required for the first time to not only occupy Moscone North and South, but also Moscone West. Needless to say, I met a lot of people, most interesting to me was, that I met all of my former interns there with the exception of my most recent one.

The next trip was a quick one: I hopped on a plane on Thursday, March 10th, crossed the continent to Washington DC, but this time to Reagan airport rather than Dulles (like last year), which meant I made it in time for the CLEO TPC (technical program committee) meeting evening reception. Which turned out to be more interesting than expected: I ended up chatting with Keshav, who is controlling rats (i.e. controlling if they make a left or right turn) by hitting a specific region of the rat's brain with proper light pulses...still gives me the creeps!

The next morning it was time to get to work on hammering out the conference sessions, though I was a bit early:

 As we had by far the smallest section (industrial applications) of the program, we were done fairly quickly (despite some hiccups due to some confusion about where some talks would ultimately end up). So in the late afternoon, I hopped back on a plane to Portland...

Snow!

Just a day after we went to the Salmon River Trail to see some snow we got... SNOW! Totally unexpected. I let Pepper out at 5 am  to do his business and everything was green. I look again at 6:30 and BAM! all white and shiny.



It didn't last long, and actually turned into some nasty icy roads Monday morning, but it sure was pretty!

Salmon River Trail

This morning we left before sun rise and drove toward Mt. Hood for some walking in the snow with Pepper. We had originally planned for a trip to the Mirror Lake, a place we visited some time ago in March or May or so, and were surprised by the amount of snow that was left!, but it looks like the trail head is currently closed. So we picked the Salmon River Trail, which was supposed to be open. We arrived in just over an hour and it looked gorgeous: Crispy cold (but not too windy), snow on the ground, sunshine. Perfect. Unfortunately, the path was pretty icy. Snow, I can do. Ice... not so much. Especially when the path is narrow, next to a steep drop (OK, it wasn't that steep, but you get the point!), and downhill. Note the fierce expression on my face!


I made it to this beautiful point when the path was completely covered in slick ice and even Jan lost his footing. Even Jan! No way I was going on. Pooh!


Disappointed we turned around and then decided to walk along the road some more. And we were rewarded with nice snow, lots of fun for Pepper (and us), and a good 1-hour walk. Not what we had originally planned, but it was a good morning after all.

Same procedure as every year

January first and sunny weather - sounds like Mt. Hood to me!

I arrived a bit earlier than in previous years, so I actually got to see the sun rise after I parked at Timberline - beautiful!

The air was crisp and very much in motion - most lifts were actually closed due to high winds.

But windy or not - this is always a great way to start into the New Year. Happy New Year everyone!