alea iacta est. ESPP suspended!

Chloe pregnant!!!!!!

chloe pregnant!

ugh

Yesterday we discovered that the workers had accidentally unplugged our deep freezer in the course of their work two weeks ago. And by "we", I mean that I found Chloe whimpering and pointing to the freezer and then to the obviously unplugged cord. Knowing that Chloe would practice a strategy of avoidance, I tackled the cleanup operation today.

Rather than go into the details of the olfactory assault that awaited my opening of the freezer door, let me just tell you what was in there: steaks, seafood, chicken stock and a few other things. The thing about steaks packed in paper is that they tend to leak when they thaw. Imagine what a standing pool of blood smells like after two weeks at room temperature. It was a nasty business, and hopefully the neighbors didn't get too freaked out. I had elbow length gloves on and was soon spattered with a mixture of Formula 401 and blood. Also, shuttling black garbage bags from the basement out to the trash might have looked a little suspicious. All I can say is that I take payment in Cooks Illustrated recipe brownies if, for example, someone wanted to thank me!

feijoa

One of our Feijoas is flowering!

Hopefully they will get fertilized and set fruit!

Freeley Lake

We drove up to the Carr Lake trailhead today, but discovered that it was completely snowed in! Not willing to give up, we parked the car a few hundred feet down from the trailhead and set off on foot, but soon got into the deep stuff. Even though we weren't sinking that much, it was tough going, and we gave up at the East end of Freeley Lake (mostly because we couldn't tell where the trail went). A few pics:




On the way back, I noticed a peculiar bluish-grey dust near the edge of some snow


and bent down to discover that it wasn't so much dust as a seething lawn of disgusting bugs:


We drove to Alta, where I was happy to see that the apple was doing well and had even sprouted new clusters of leaves. No sign of life in the grafts though. Zoe was too tired to even leave the car,

so Chloe stayed with her while I brought another 25 gallons of water up to the tree.

ugh

we were supposed to go to hawaii today, but missed the flight -- going to the mountains instead. :(

alta

We drove up to Alta from Sacto for the day and met Paul + family for a barbecue: blue cheese burgers, corn and sausages. We *finally* planted the fuji apple tree that had been sitting around in my parents front yard getting root bound for the past three months. Hopefully it will survive! I hand toted ~25 gallons of water from the river up to the apple tree's new home, so here's hoping it's not grafted onto super thirsty rootstock. I also set up a few grafts which are very very unlikely to work. I had been saving scion wood from the CFRG exchange back in January. Normally, I think you're only supposed to keep them around for a few months, so there is a good possibility that they are dead! The "rootstock" (i.e. what I was grafting onto) was a wild cherry tree, which was also quite a long way away from being dormant, so it will be interesting to see if any grafts take. I'm told grafting plums are pretty stupid-proof, but I wonder if they can be THIS stupid proof? Grafts completed:


Santa Rosa
Satsuma
Golden Nectar
Elephant heart (x2)
Inca
Beauty

rock and roll!

Mom's Opening

Mom had her gallery opening at the Sakata Garo gallery in Sacramento today. I have to admit that I've never had a very high opinion of Sacto, but that changed completely during this trip. The gallery is in a section of town lines but numerous and beautiful huge trees. It's super bike friendly, and there was even a huge street party this evening -- very cool.

Before the opening, we took Zoe to the pool in her new swimsuit, which was pretty adorable:







The opening went very well, and Paul and Nikki brought Emmett and Joshua up from their new home base in Davis. Zoe looked very cute in her new French dress:







I think I could easily live in Sacramento if I could do commute by bike. It has a nice vibe, and a small town feel to it, and as an added bonus, its closer to the mountains!

Chloe

four months pregnant

grafts

Most of my grafts (guerilla and otherwise) have worked, and it is amazing to see how fast they can grow. Here are some photos of the plum tree in my back yard:



And one to our pear tree

Zoe vs. Ladybug

LNL HUTZ

While we were walking to Boulevard on Saturday, I saw (and parked behind) this car:

Which was heartwarming, because I never imagined that there was an intersection between the Simpsons aficionado set and the people-who-appreciate-and-can-afford-Maserati-Cambiocorsas set.

I googled the plate of course, and it turns out that the original license plate support device for that plate was a Toyota MR2! Quite a jump, I'd say.

woot!

Chloe's birthday dinner @boulevard

Layovers

had a layover in Munich airport. Not much to see or do, and only pay wifi via T-mobile (probably the worst mobile carrier in the developed world). There were APCs waiting outside the terminal!

FONDUE!

This morning I woke up ridiculously early as usual (jet lag is KILLING me this time) and hung out in the jardin de ville, working on my iphone app. I also had a video chat with my friend Paul in Davis, which was fun. After getting my fill of free wifi, I headed to Enrique and Leslie's place, but managed to end up in the wrong building. Lolo had given me the building access code the previous evening, which I punched into the keypad. I heard the buzz of the door lock clicking open and walked into a dark corridor. I wasn't sure if I had copied the number down correctly last night, so I was relieved to be spared the embarrassment of yelling up at the window to try to get Enrique's attention. As I walked through the hall, I noticed that the building was in a pretty appalling state. Huge curls of paint were peeling off of the walls, and -- horror of horrors -- the nameplates on doors were written on paper! Shocking! Anyway, I didn't see the name that lolo had given me on any of the doors, and I was beginning to think that something was very wrong indeed. As I left the building, I noticed a plaque commemorating the fact that Stendhal had lived there. I'm sure he would be disappointed. Anyway, it turned out that Enrique +family were in the next building over which curiously had an identical door code. Their building and apartment were a lot nicer. After a tour of the apartment, I showed them the local amenities: market at places aux herbes (special care taken to point out the pouletmobile), Arthaud, K-store, Dalbe, Talemelerie (sp? I never get that one right), and finally, Les Alpages. In my absence, the cheese man has apparently won some kind of major fromagier honor, and so has his lieutenant (take a look at their website and video). They also have a sous vide machine, so I ordered almost a kilogram of comte de montagne and some tomme crayeuse as well. The Lt even recognized me, which was heartwarming. I love that place.

We made one last stop at the children's clothing store, where I couldn't resist buying another outfit for ZZN and then had lunch along the tramway.

After lunch, we headed back to Enrique and Leslie's place and had some cheese and wine, and then it was time for me to head over to the EMBL. I did make a stop at Etam to get Chloe a few things and then I hopped on the 34 bus.

After a little kerfuffle at the guard gate because I had lost my badge (edit: it turned up in my back pocket a week later), I hung out in the newly refurbished EMBL library. A view of the Chartreuse is a pretty sweet environment to be working on an iphone app! A bit later I met up with Franck, headed to St. Egreve to pick up his son Artur, and then on to his house at the foot of the Neron. I've mentioned it before, but Franck is extremely fortunate to live in a beautiful stone house which shares a large grass field with several other people. It's an amazing piece of wilderness ten minutes from the synchrotron. This time he showed me a few of the trails that lead up to a spring and I got to try out his VX125.

Even before I arrived, Franck had promised me a fondue, but he didn't tell me that it was going to be a very special one made of amazing cheese from the Laiterie Bayard. I did my best, but was not able to help Franck finish the fondue. I think I did ok for a ricain, though. As usual, there was an incredible bottle of wine involved. I had previously not been a big fan of white wines, but this one has changed my mind forever. It was a burgundy (I think it was a "St. Aubin"), and not only was it delicious, but it was a perfect complement to the fondue. Dessert was an entire cake made of ice cream from the green arch ice cream place near the jardin de ville. All the flavors were good, but the cassis in particular was out of this world. Thanks, Franck!!

Grenoble ville, Dinner at lolos

I wandered around town during the day and took a few mediocre pictures (accidentally had the iso set high -- d'oh!)






In the evening, I had dinner at Lolo and Vero's. A former grad student (Enrique) from the adjacent lab at the Salk who is now at Yale had just arrived the night before and was staying at Lolo and Vero's place. He and his family are starting a five month sabbatical in Grenoble, so I made arrangements to show them around town a little bit tomorrow morning. The meal was great and it was a lot of fun to see lolo, vero, thomas and their newest addition -- Margot!

Awesome dinner at Ciao a Te

I spent most of the day walking around (I did Zoe outfit shopping yesterday) and had lunch at the cafeteria again... this time with my old friend Lolo. It was great seeing him again, and it sounds like he is kicking ass -- director of research with twenty people working for him! Pretty sweet.

I met Franck and Thibault for dinner at the Italian restaurant Ciao a Te. I had cepes ravioli with meatballs which were just unbelievably good. It might not sound like a very exciting dish, and their description had a little more poetry to it, but it was perfectly done. Even the ravioli pasta part was al dente, which is almost never the case for ravioli. Desert was a fantastic profiterole dish with a home made chocolate sauce. Without a doubt one of the best meals I've had in recent memory. Chloe and I had been there once before, and my only memories were the excellent food, and the super hard working waiter who had beads odf sweat running down his forehead by the end of the evening.

lunch with Francois

I had lunch with my climbing buddy Francois, and it was great tallking about past and future climbs. He is planning an ascent of Rackham le Rouget, and I am really envious.

I saw a few familiar faces in the cafeteria, including a secretary at the IBS with the thickest accent imaginable. In my interactions with her, she always seemed to be yelling. When I countered with my cunning blank look of incomprehension, she would yell louder and finally leave in a huff. Trying to understand her was like a non-american trying to understand Sgt. Maj Sixta from Generation Kill. Not easy, and a little frightening.

I climbed in the fricking GYM today. Mon dieu! At least I was able to keep up with the young'uns at A blok for a while.

more dinner at Francks!

We all but finished Francks super bottle of wine tonight, discussed camera stuff and came up with a cool design for the megal bike light Mk. III. I think the configuration of lights and driver board is quite logical. The bigger questions are how expensive the part will be to manufacture and whether it can adequately dissipate the heat from twelve (!) LEDs. I finally have settled on Cree MC-Es -- smaller footprint, more optics, no enforced parallel circuitry.