Starting a Fire with a Piece of Plastic...

...and the sun.

The piece of plastic is a fresnel magnifying sheet.

Earth Hour 2011

Earth Hour 2011 will be celebrated by the city of Batavia and Fermilab this year.

Another Election Already?

While a surprising amount of news coverage has been given to the beginning of the 2012 Presidential Election, in our own city, there is another election coming much sooner:  April 5 to be exact.

It is the local spring election, and three contested races appear on my ballot.

• Batavia City Council, Ward 4
• Batavia School District 101 Board 
• Kane County Forest Preserve Bond Referendum

The people and issues that win or lose these races will have real impacts on how we and the children in our community live.  They are also the races in which individual voters have the most power because of the small electorate and low turnout involved.   For instance, in the 2009 spring election, only 426 ballots were cast in the Ward 4 election.

God Provides

The title of this post may strike some as cliche, but it was true for us.  We were planning to be on a bus to Columbus, OH today, but Kelly became quite ill yesterday.  We decided to cancel the trip.

From Columbus, we were scheduled to fly to Venice, Italy for a conference at which I am giving a presentation.  Then, we were going to fly back from Venice to Chicago.

I called United to see how much it would cost to change our flights so that we would depart from Chicago rather than Columbus.  Given the last minute nature of this change and airline's penchant for charging fees, I thought it would be prohibitively expensive if there were even any seats available.  This is where God provided.

In what was probably the most productive half-hour I have even spent on the phone with an airline employee, he found seats on a flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, where we could connect with the same flight to Venice we had already booked. The seats are a pair, so we will still be able to sit together in the kind of seats we prefer (window and aisle).  He made the change for free!  Anyone who has navigate the world of airline fees will realize why calling this an instance of God's provision is no exaggeration.  He mentioned something about bad weather in Cleveland, but I didn't ask any other questions.

Our plans for Venice and the return flights are unchanged, so we would appreciate your prayers that we will both be well enough for our trip and my presentation.

"Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds." - Psalm 36:5

The President's Budget and Me

The President released his budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2012 this morning.  It may not mean much since we don't yet have a budget for this year.  However, the New York Times has a nice chart showing how the administration is proposing to spend our tax money.

The part of the budget that affects me most directly is the Department of Energy because a grant from that Dept. pays my celery salary, and it provides most of the funding for the experiments on which I work.  It is marked "ENERGY" in the lower right hand portion of the Times chart.  More specifically the budge of High Energy Physics, the subfield in which I work, receives a small increase, as you can see in Slide 24 of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu's presentation of the proposal.

Secretary Chu's FY 2012 Budget Briefing

On Slide 6, you can see that the Tevatron run will not be extended.  This was officially conveyed in a Dept. of Energy memo and has gotten coverage in Fermilab Today, the Beacon News, Science News, and The New York Times.

Upcoming Travel: Miami, Columbus, and Venice!

From Feb. 5 - 8, my wife's late birthday and early Valentine's Day present is a trip to someplace warmer than here!  That doesn't narrow things down very much, but having a friend offer to host us in the Miami area certainly does.  When I planned this trip, I didn't realize it was Super Bowl weekend.  However, we certainly plan to be watching Pittsburgh vs. Green Bay.  I am from Wisconsin and married into the Steeler Nation, so whoever wins, I will have a reason to celebrate.

On Mar. 13, we will be in Columbus, OH to see our friends Stephen and Danielle get married.

That evening, we will fly from Columbus to Venice, Italy, where I am scheduled to give a presentation on the MINOS experiment at the 14th International Workshop on Neutrino Telescopes!  We are going to be in Italy for a week.  It should also be warmer than Chicago.  This will be my second trip to Italy and Kelly's first.

It really is amazing all the blessings God has given us, and the places (both literal and figurative) that he is taking us.

Super Bowl XLV