Supposed to Snow this Weekend!

It's now well into November and it is getting cold. It's been raining for nearly a week now. It's about 38 degrees outside and they say that there is about a 30% chance of snow for where I live. I need gloves.

Seattle in Fall

The leaves all changed color, it was very beautiful. I have now explored some new neighborhoods Ravenna, Greenlake, Wallingford, and Ballard which are all right around adjacent neighborhoods to the U District. These are places where I might live in the future. They were all very nice, and a lot less expensive than where I live now.

I've only included pictures I took of trees though because I like them better.

Inness and her Functions

Inness and I attended many different functions this month. Here are some of the highlights. We joined a casual Jazz singers group. Where we, along with some very accomplished jazz vocalists, all got together on a Saturday afternoon and sight read some tight-harmony jazz. For just sight-reading it sounded really good and it was nice to get some singing in. We definitely were the youngest people there.

Seattle hosts something called couchfest every year. It is an independent film festival that has it's viewing parties in normal people's houses. Inness and I went to the "Comedy and Awkward Awesomeness" showing. It was literally in someone's apartment that we had never met. They had set up a projector and 20 strangers showed up to view about 15 short films. Some good, some not so good. Afterwards however we stumbled upon an Ethiopian (I think Ethiopian) diner where they had the best chai tea.

One of my personal favorites of the night. Grandma don't watch...http://vimeo.com/11649385

We also attended a free vegetarian cooking class where they taught some things about being vegetarian as well as how to cook some tasty dishes. A lot of it made sense and it seemed good in health/environmental/ethical ways. I don't think I'm going to become full vegetarian, but I am going to try to phase out meat at least a few days a week.

Jewish Things:

I only managed to do two Jewish/Israeli things this so far. I went to a Hebrew discussion group which just ended up being me and one other guy trying to speak in hebrew at a local bar. He was a native speaker and very excited about everything so I just tried so make him slow down. It was nice though, and he's going to be having these discussion groups about once a month.

Megan, Inness, and I went to Hillel where they were putting on an Israeli dinner in conjunction with an Israeli organization that teaches natives how to cook professionally. Nine Jewish woman from all over the world (Yemem, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Turkey, India, Israel) all came and cooked us dinner, told us their stories and then as any good Jewish mother would, thrust food at us and complained we didn't eat enough. I took home four pita breads in my pockets that night because they wouldn't take "no" as an answer.

Schoolish Things

Lots of midterms in quantum mechanics this month. That was pretty exhausting. I ended up doing fine on all of them, not that great, but ok. We are learning the derivations of EVERY crystallographic system known to man. I'm also supposed to be writing a term paper on the crystallography and properties of Iron Sulfide (FeS2) also known as pyrite or "fool's gold". Needless to say I am extremely far behind on that.

This is a picture that my friend Eli took of me while we were exploring downtown Seattle on Veteran's Day. I finally went back to Pike Place Market and saw some fish being thrown.

Research

I am currently getting trained to use a Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM). It is a very powerful microscope capable of seeing down to atomic resolution. It takes quite a long time to get good at it. So far I have spent over four hours, and over $500 of my advisors money, sitting in front of this thing trying to get pictures. It's really fun to use since it actually works more like a projector than a typical microscope.

The dots that make up the big blobs in the picture above are actually individual atoms. The things that make up EVERYTHING. To use the proper vernacular I was "geeking" out when I saw this on the microscope. This picture is from a sample that the trainer prepared, they are Gold (Au) nanoparticles. My sample that I did today was not nearly as good as hers was. I made Copper Sulfide (Cu2S) quantum dots in lab on Monday. I must not have prepared my sample too well because it ended up looking like this:

Each of the little dark circles is a nanoparticle approximately 2-3 nm in diameter. Not the best image, but those are in fact nanocrystals that I made and imaged.

TAing

As part of my fellowship I got to attend a luncheon the other day where I got to meet my benefactor. His name was Tom Delimitros. He introduced himself like this:

"Hi I'm Tom, I have a boat..."

He was a very rich guy, very smart, with a big yacht that he lives on in Seattle when he isn't at his mansion in Texas. He also ended up being the keynote speaker for the event which took place in the skybox of Husky Stadium.

My normal TA duties certainly aren't as entertaining usually. Things have been going well enough. I have a large pile of reports sitting on my desk that I need to start reading. I like the students, and it hasn't gotten too boring yet.

I'm not so sure about coffee, but Seattle has the BEST hot chocolate you could ever ask for. There are all these artesian chocolate cafes (Chocolati, Chocolate Bar...) where they serve European drinking chocolate. I...have...no...words.

This is Bailey, my officemate. What do you think is Archie cuter?

Oh and I forgot to mention just how much I HATE my radiator. Absolutely hate it. Without fail at 5am it'll start banging so loudly it sounds like Archie got inside it with a monkey wrench. Building maintenance can't do a thing about it. I HATE my radiator.