Friday, August 27, 2004
We live on the East (Cold) Coast now - and things are different here.
I grew up in the Bay Area. Many of my friends had swimming pools in their yard, each high school had an outdoor pool, and many cities had public, outdoor, pools. I saw things like indoor pools in movies and thought they were somewhat odd. Why have a pool indoors when you can swim ourdoors all the time?
Then I moved to southern California where, once again, all the great pools were out-of-doors. We swam whenever we wanted without problem. Sometimes the first jump might seem cold, but it would always warm up.
Dan and I went swimming at Princeton for the first time last weekend. Finding the pool felt like descriptions I've read of the dungeons in European castles. We went indoors at ground level to present our IDs. Up half a flight of stairs to the main gym, then down 1.5 flights to the lock rooms. Go back through the cavernous lockers quite a ways, change, leave the locker rooms. Turn right, go down a triangular stair case, through some doors, down another stair case. A few more doors and stairs and finally you are there. You go into the (sub-basement, by now) pool. After the darkness of the staircases, the pool area is beautiful and open. The roof is 3-floors above with an entire floor of windows letting in natural light. We hope to become regulars.
People also seem to have a different opinion about the role of traffic lights. Since, at least in Princeton, no sensors are installed, people become upset with the lights and figure, "Darn it, I saw the light while it was green - that means it was my turn to go and I should take it now." What are you going to do? We can (and do) honk, but everyone is beginning from stopped, so what can you do if that car is the fourth to go since the light turned red?
I grew up in the Bay Area. Many of my friends had swimming pools in their yard, each high school had an outdoor pool, and many cities had public, outdoor, pools. I saw things like indoor pools in movies and thought they were somewhat odd. Why have a pool indoors when you can swim ourdoors all the time?
Then I moved to southern California where, once again, all the great pools were out-of-doors. We swam whenever we wanted without problem. Sometimes the first jump might seem cold, but it would always warm up.
Dan and I went swimming at Princeton for the first time last weekend. Finding the pool felt like descriptions I've read of the dungeons in European castles. We went indoors at ground level to present our IDs. Up half a flight of stairs to the main gym, then down 1.5 flights to the lock rooms. Go back through the cavernous lockers quite a ways, change, leave the locker rooms. Turn right, go down a triangular stair case, through some doors, down another stair case. A few more doors and stairs and finally you are there. You go into the (sub-basement, by now) pool. After the darkness of the staircases, the pool area is beautiful and open. The roof is 3-floors above with an entire floor of windows letting in natural light. We hope to become regulars.
People also seem to have a different opinion about the role of traffic lights. Since, at least in Princeton, no sensors are installed, people become upset with the lights and figure, "Darn it, I saw the light while it was green - that means it was my turn to go and I should take it now." What are you going to do? We can (and do) honk, but everyone is beginning from stopped, so what can you do if that car is the fourth to go since the light turned red?
Monday, August 16, 2004
A growing family
I hadn't realized the last post was so long ago. I guess since I've been out of the habit for so long, blogging a couple of times each month seems like quite a lot.
Also, each time I've thought about posting, I knew I couldn't post about the top thing on our family's mind, but now it is open to the public. We're expecting our first child to join us, Lord willing, in late February. We heard the heart beat about a week and a half ago (there's a baby with its own beating heart in my belly!) and all my pants are getting too tight. I've told people at work and started letting Dan colleagues know.
The last of the fourth-years in Dan's department finished today (and is moving this week to his first post-doc) so I was able to meet the new first-years in his department. After a couple of years of no women in each class, this incoming class has 3 women! One of them is a friend from Caltech and it was fun to see her in this new environment. And yes - people really do finish PhDs in four years here at Princeton. Crazy!
The elevator isn't working again, but we're hoping to use that to meet other students. Dan's sending about a letter to the people in the building to send complaints/work-repairs to us as well as to housing so that Dan can examine the elevator problems for similarities in break downs circumstances.
Also, each time I've thought about posting, I knew I couldn't post about the top thing on our family's mind, but now it is open to the public. We're expecting our first child to join us, Lord willing, in late February. We heard the heart beat about a week and a half ago (there's a baby with its own beating heart in my belly!) and all my pants are getting too tight. I've told people at work and started letting Dan colleagues know.
The last of the fourth-years in Dan's department finished today (and is moving this week to his first post-doc) so I was able to meet the new first-years in his department. After a couple of years of no women in each class, this incoming class has 3 women! One of them is a friend from Caltech and it was fun to see her in this new environment. And yes - people really do finish PhDs in four years here at Princeton. Crazy!
The elevator isn't working again, but we're hoping to use that to meet other students. Dan's sending about a letter to the people in the building to send complaints/work-repairs to us as well as to housing so that Dan can examine the elevator problems for similarities in break downs circumstances.
