Ah, Dartmouth (students)

Have a happy happy happy happy Hanukkah!

Our friend Cara had us over for a joint Hanukkah / Gingerbread house decorating party last Sunday. It was the 7th night of Hanukkah, which meant there were just enough candles for each of us to light one. She gave us a quick refresher on the Hanukkah story, and we made a valiant attempt at repeating the Hebrew prayer that went with the lighting of each candle. For dinner, Cara served Potato Latkes with sour cream and applesauce, which were crispy and delicious. They are a traditional Hanukkah food because they are made with lots of oil, which pays homage to the tiny oil lamp that burned for 8 days during the holiday.









After dinner, we all played dreidel for Hershey-kiss prizes. Tom and I lost pretty early, but there was a good matchup between Cara and her roommate Karen for the top prize. Tom even made his dreidel spin upside down like the pros do.

We also built and decorated Gingerbread houses in the Ebel family tradition. We baked them 2/3 scale this year so they wouldn't be quite as daunting. Tom and I decided to do a pirate theme on our house/boat this year. Tom made some very impressive sails complete with rigging and a "bowsprit" for the front of the boat. He also amputated the leg off of a gummi bear in order to make a swarthy peg-legged captain. For my contribution, I created a gingerbread island complete with candy-cane coconut palm and an overflowing treasure chest on a red "x-marks-the-spot". I also added some sea creatures including a couple circling sharks, a very angry octopus who is attacking our boat, and a little yellow duck. Yum!

A sad, sad day

Last Sunday was the fourth annual "Kate and Maggie go to the Broncos-Raiders" game day. I've posted about it before, but this year's game had a decidedly different flavor.

The day started off promisingly - Maggie and I both got there early and had a good time roaming around in the tailgate areas making some new friends with Broncos fans and Raiders fans alike. One of the more creative jabs at the Broncos that we saw was this make-shift portapottie that one group had set up in the back of the lot. I apologize if this photo offends anyone, but I thought it was pretty funny. In case you can't read it, the "bucket" is labelled "White Donkey Beer".

Morale was high on both sides of the parking lot, and everyone was having a good time. Improbably, we even ran into a Raiders fan we had taken a picture of two years ago, and he graciously posed for a sequel this year. He has the exact same haircut that he had back then, which makes me wonder if he really goes through life with "RAIDERS" carved into the back of his head or if that is just a special Broncos-game-day "do".

We headed into the stadium about an hour before the game and found our seats (about 30 rows up in one of the corners of the stadium). We happened to be surrounded by a big group of female Raiders fans, which was an interesting twist. They were just as knowledgeable and pumped-up as we were, so we had a good time bantering back and forth. Anyway, the day went downhill from there, as the Broncos turned in one of their worst performances of the season. We were really never in the game and ended up losing 34-20. This was the first year we've left the Coliseum without a victory and Maggie and I were both very very sad.

Notes of consolation will be accepted in lieu of flower arrangements.

My 15 minutes

Look! I'm famous:

The article about our telescope is linked above. I thought this quote was pretty good:

The science is known as helioseismology, and it is no small task. "It's like deducing the interior structure of a piano by listening to it fall down a flight of stairs," Scherrer said.

In case you couldn't tell by the eyebrows, I'm the guy in the bunny suit on top. Actually, this picture was taken about a year ago before we were done building our telescope, but now that we have delivered it to Goddard (why I've been in DC a couple times recently) the press releases are coming out. Kinda funny - in that picture there's no screw anywhere near where I'm putting the wrench, the photographer just wanted to make it look like I was doing something and apparently that was a photogenic place to act like I was screwing something in. And he spent some 20 minutes getting the angle just right so the flash would glint off the telescope's front window like that.

The Tech Museum of San Jose

A couple weekends ago, Tom, Erin, and I decided to check out the Tech Museum of San Jose. We had heard good things about it, but had never made the trip down.

Boy was it fun. Anyone who comes to visit us in the future will hereby be taken to the Tech for at least a day.

True to its name, the Tech had a bunch of cool technologies on display. One of the first exhibits we enjoyed was a huge 3 dimensional globe that had satellite images of the entire earth projected on it in very high definition. They were linked to a bunch of different databases, so you could bring up images of the world at night, or during hurricane Katrina, or heat based images of the wildfires or a whole bunch of other things and then manipulate them to your heart's content. It should be no surprise that Tom particularly loved this exhibit.

Throughout the museum there were little ticket scanners related to individual exhibits. Then, for example, if you stand in front of a thermal camera and scan your ticket, it will take your "picture" and post it online for you to retrieve at home. Can you tell which one of those hot people is Kate, Tom, and Erin?

I also got a 3-d scan of my head done at one point, which was pretty cool. Unfortunately you have to download some software onto your computer to view it from home, so I probably won't post it online. It is very surreal, though, to be able to spin your own head around at will.

Another exhibit worth mentioning was the hover-craft space vehicle that you could sit in and drive around. They had a cool "laser" attached to the top and you could try to hit various light-reactive targets on the ceiling within a one-minute time limit. Erin got 3, Kate almost got 1, and Tom got 5, which tied the all-time high that the ride operator had ever seen.

Still another exhibit worth mentioning was the earthquake simulator. They had the shock wave patterns from various large historical earthquakes (Loma Prieta, 1906 San Fran earthquake, etc) programmed into a shaker table that you could stand on and feel. Those quakes are definitely more violent than anything we've felt in our tenure here in earthquake country.

Still another exhibit worth mentioning... well, you get the point. I could go on all day. And believe it or not, regular adult admission to the museum was the bargain basement price of $8 (which included an IMAX dome movie)!

So if any of you guys were debating taking another trip out here to visit Tommenkate, add the Tech museum of San Jose to the "pros" column...

Thanks!

Tom and I hosted a Thanksgiving dinner for our friends again this year. We've decided we really love being at home (and not traveling) for Thanksgiving - it gives us a chance to relax, avoid the crowds, and make a fabulous meal just how we like it.

Our college friend Erin came from Boulder to spend the weekend with us, since she just moved out to Colorado and doesn't have any family nearby. She got in on Wednesday night just in time to go to bed, but we rousted her early Thursday morning to start cooking.

I won't belabor the cooking of the meal too much, since you all probably are quite familiar with the process, but briefly we made: 1 (brined) 15 lb Turkey, Homemade stuffing (without any dried fruits!), green beans with almonds and garlic, two types of cranberry sauce, about 35 cubic feet of mashed potatoes, and four cups of gravy. We had 7 additional friends come and join us for the festivities, and they contributed home-brewed beer, a sinful butter-filled sweet potato casserole, more stuffing, a vegetable stew cooked inside an enormous pumpkin, and pumpkin and pecan pies. Suffice it to say no one went home hungry.

After dinner we turned on some music and busted out the board games. First we played "Bandu" which is an Ebel family favorite. It is basically the opposite of Jenga, where you try to build the biggest structure you can with oddly shaped wooden blocks. Afterwards, we played Apples-to-Apples, which is becoming a very well known party game, so most of you have probably played it. Our deck is particularly fun, though, because we always put some sharpie markers on the table and encourage people to change their "cards" however they wish. It is always fun for Tom and I to look back at those cards and remember the inside jokes and parties and friends that helped create them.

All in all, it was a wonderful day. We are thankful for good friends in all parts of the country, and of course for our families too! We hope you all had Thanksgivings as happy as ours!

Scrapbooking, Digital Style

One of my projects over the last couple of weeks has been sorting through all our digital photos and making "real" scrapbooks out of them. I wanted to have a book that I could hold to look through, and hopefully something that we can show our families more easily and maybe even our kids someday. (Before you ask, no, this blog post does not have any announcements in that regard...) There are lots of websites that allow you to create your own books using their design templates and will send you a nicely assembled and bound book when you are done.

So, without further ado, here are links to the three scrapbooks I put together via Shutterfly. You shouldn't have to log in or anything to see them. Tom is putting together a 2007 version as well (very Banjo-heavy!), but we are hoping we'll still have some good pictures from the next month to add to it. We'll post the link to that when it is finished!

2004
2005
2006

A Day in the District

Today being my only day off while I'm out east for work, I spent it being a tourist in DC and had quite an enjoyable time, so I thought I'd share in the form of a picture-and-link-filled post. As you can see, it was a gloriously sunny fall day, perfect for a long walk along the mall amidst the fall colors. But before that I went to the National Gallery to look at paintings.

On the east side I went to the current Edward Hopper exhibit, which was really enjoyable. I, like most Americans, was familiar with his "Nighthawks" piece and some others of New York everyday scenes, but I didn't know as much about his paintings done during his time spent on Cape Cod and coastal Maine. These were neat to see - there was even one piece depicting Vermont's White River, East Branch that showed a section I could swear we canoed a time or two while at Dartmouth. The way that Hopper portrays the ambiguity of his scenes and subjects is perhaps what is most intriguing. As in Nighthawks, and others, there are any number of ways to imagine what the people in his paintings are thinking, feeling, wondering, or anticipating. As the museum brochure states more eloquently than I can, "From his distillations emerge poignant and enigmatic pictures filled with audible silences and pregnant pauses: Hopper's art speaks volumes without uttering a word." Highly recommended. Over in the West Gallery there was an exhibit on J.W.M Turner, who seemed to enjoy painting large British warships of the early 1800s, but that one didn't inspire me quite as much. Also, there were lots of old paintings, including some neat ones by that guy over there on the right.

In keeping with the dog-themed birthday cards, I thought I'd look for dog-themed paintings. Here's the three that I found, sorry if they are blurry, I was avoiding use of the flash:

Fancy Woman with Pug - apparently they (pugs) were en vogue back then too.

Hunting Guy with Dead Bird and Ferocious Dog - How safe is your left hand, mister?

Dog in a Punt (that's the actual name of the painting) - The look on that face says "I know I'm probably not supposed to, but I'm about to jump in and you can't stop me." Kinda looks like a labradoodle, no?

After the National Gallery I found the Capitol City Brewing Company for lunch, then continued to wander down the mall to the Lincoln, Korean War, FDR, and Jefferson Memorials. I hadn't seen the FDR memorial before, and was struck by the particular current relevance of some of the quotes inscribed into this "walk-through" monument of stone, waterfalls, and sculpture.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."

"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."

(I had to include this one because of the dog)

If you are curious, all of the quotes from the FDR memorial can be found here.

At the Jefferson Memorial, there are four texts inside the dome, and I thought this one was worth reading a second time:

I am certainly not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.

All in all, a good time being a DC tourist, and I got to visit with Mei-Yen (of the sidebar fame from her New Zealand trip) and some of her friends for a pot-luck dinner! Two more days and then home for Thanksgiving.

28 Years!

Well, I celebrated my birthday this year by flying out to Washington (DC), to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, for the delivery of the solar telescope I've been working on for the past 3 years, HMI. Getting our hardware to Goddard was a big milestone and it's been exciting and busy getting it integrated with the spacecraft in the giant NASA cleanrooms, but before that I had a nice pre-birthday celebration with some friends at home, and I got some very nice birthday cards! I particularly liked the dog-themed ones. Here's a couple I thought I'd share.

This is the envelope sent from my grandparents, covered with really neat old stamps from my grandpa's stamp collection! There are some classic ones of places like Yosemite, Zion, the Everglades, and Minnesota, Alaska, and Oregon statehood stamps. Very cool.


Next up is a quality "musical" card from my Aunt and Uncle, which was one of the popular dog-themed ones this year. Watch the video to see how cool it was. Be sure you have the sound on.

Anyways, I hope to be home just in time to celebrate Thanksgiving with some local friends as well as Erin, who's coming to visit us for Turkey-Day this year! Can't wait!

Fraaaaaaank

Our buddy Frank drove down to the bay area from Seattle last weekend. He came with a couple of his friends in order to cheer the UW Husky football team on against Stanford.

Frank arrived on Friday night and we met him (along with two other Dartmouth '02s) in Palo Alto for dinner and Friday night festivities. We ate at Nola's, a Cajun restaurant that had highly recommended Mojitos. The five of us tried a variety of traditional (and untraditional) Cajun fare including jumbalaya, etoufee, and a teriyaki skirt steak with mashed potatoes. Each dish was spectacular, we all left full and extremely happy. Frank was especially happy after polishing off a "Moron Bowl" beverage with his dinner - a drink that came with the caveat that the purchaser "may only order one and must have a ride home".

After dinner, the five of us went to Blue Chalk - a bar (and apparantly the local Palo Alto meat market) that has a bunch of pool tables and a mini shuffleboard table. We managed to score one of the pool tables upstairs and spent a couple hours cueing it up and then an hour or so sweatily dancing with the crowd downstairs.

We woke up late the next morning and had a leisurely breakfast. Then we decided to head on over to Stanford a couple hours before the game in order to see if there were any other sporting events occurring on campus. We found a field hockey game going on first - none of us really










knew much about the rules, but it was a fun, fast-paced game and we got to see a couple of good goals. Next we wandered over to the Stanford outdoor pool to take in a little men's water polo. Turns out Frank had played water polo at some point in his past (who knew?) so he filled us in on what was going on. Tom and I were really surprised at how violent a game Water Polo is - the players always seem to be kicking, pulling or whacking each other to the verge of drowning.

Anyway, after a couple hours wandering around, we headed to the Stanford Stadium for the football game. Neither Tom nor I really follows the college football scene, but Frank informs us that UW is an up-and-coming squad with a lot of young talent. They had only won two games coming into the game vs. Stanford (who knocked of #1 USC earlier this season), but Frank and his friends were all optimistic anyway. Frank brought Tom and I purple UW tee-shirts and a pair of tickets in exchange for a night on our pull-out couch and our enthusiastic cheers (or Woofs) at the game. The UW fans there were a force! They filled up an entire section (top to bottom) of the stadium and were every bit as loud as the Stanford fans the entire game. The Husky football team came through, too. Lead by a 255-yard rushing performance by Louie Rankin, the Huskies won 27-9. After the game, Frank and his friends started the long drive back to Seattle - glad that the football team could provide a happy ending to their pilgrimage.