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So every morning (well, 5 days a week) for the last, oh, 40 years or so, people have gathered down the hall from what's now my office and had coffee at 10:30. A great many projects and collaborations began as conversations over coffee there. Including something like half the papers that have appeared on my CV since I came to work here in 1995.
The space in which this is held is a bridge between two buildings, so there are only a few offices nearby. It has floor-to-ceiling windows, and hot-water radiators running just at butt height along them, perfect for leaning against, or setting one's cup upon. In a crowded space, there's an instability that sets in at a certain population density. The noise level rises more or less linearly with the number of people (or perhaps the square, since we're talking about 2-person conversations for the most part) until it becomes difficult to pick out the conversation you're having from the background. And then, suddenly, it gets much noisier, because everybody needs to speak up to be heard. I think I need collaborators who are less soft-spoken. Otherwise, how are things? The little dog is becoming socialized, realizing that just doing whatever she wants isn't acceptable. I think she really does want to please us; she's just a bit short of clue as to how to go about that. She's mostly learned to ignore the cat on those rare occasions when he allows himself to be seen (but he still hisses and runs off, which makes him an oh-so-tempting target for pursuit). I get to be a single parent for the critters for parts of this weekend, since toxicfur and her work group are going to a conference on Cape Cod. Oh, and speaking of the weekend... There's an annual Walk for Hunger in Boston, which attracts vast numbers of people to town on a Sunday morning. This Sunday morning. So, not much chance of parking downtown. No problem, says I, I'll ride the T. But not so fast. As part of a multi-year project to upgrade signals, the Orange Line is closed this weekend, and they'll provide bus service. On a day when the trains would be packed if they were running. Yeah, I sent in a complaint via their web page. Fat lotta good that'll do. The summer's already getting crowded with stuff to do. There's a big deadline in late May for toxicfur. We thought we'd do a vacation after that; the Florida Keys were mentioned. But it'll be Memorial Day weekend before we can get out of here (along with 50 million of our closest friends). Then June 8 I have an undergrad coming to intern for the summer. There's one other colleague working on the project, but he'll be away much of late June and a week in July. So I prolly need to be around, nearly every day, in case questions come up (and I'm sure they will). And then we're into Hurricane Season, which is not a cool time to be visiting Key West. Dammit. On top of all that, my folks had their 60th wedding anniversary in March, and we'd kinda like to visit them when it's not winter and do dinner or something. What with last winterval's visit being interrupted by events and all. So... dunno.
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