Monday, October 29, 2007

A gift horse's mouth

From the album Gabriel's weirdo plant




A neighbor in Bat 40 (the LHC offices) brought me one of these prolific plants when she saw me repotting mine. They start off like normal young plants, then become gargantuodd. She has an adult one seen here which is completely new-looking to me, and has already started a handful of young ones in its own pot. Mine is in the beginning stages of looking more adult already.

The leaves start as pale green shoots at the top of the stem, among pink fuzz. Then the stem grows past them and they develop white ribs and red leaf stems. The stalk takes on a thick, cactus-y look. Anybody got any ideas about this thing? It's hard to find the name of a plant without technical botanical descriptors in my head.

Saturday, October 13, 2007

A week ago, I met my old friend

I biked out to LHC point 5 to commune with the detector I've been working on.

-Dr. S

Un Anana du Terre

While I was out riding around the French countryside...


Here I thought that the deciduous North American ground pineapple had no relatives...
_Dr. S

Friday, October 12, 2007

Assorted views from the camera

Made six roasted chicken legs with leeks, sweet potatoes, and figs.
Took me two days to eat even a third of it,
then the leftovers went to a BBQ,
then the leftover leftovers I ate with two other people at CERN Restaurant 1.

I kinda went overboard.

~

The Jura nearby Cessy.



On foggy days, we're not in a valley any more.
No hint of the Alps, even.



From the livingroom balcony, looking towards Mont Blanc. It's pretty tall, so I don't think i can walk there. I checked it on a map.
That would be it there, with the snow on it.





The floor of the CERN visitors' center... umm, centre
is graced by a giant, metallic sperm.
Do the reception desk workers know this?

~

...and the ever-poplar Alhambar, in Geneva's Old City.
Most European Place I've Ever Been.

_Dr. S
PS
Now this, this is another story.

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Investigations of Frenchness

Some things in Frenchness have charm,
like the All-Night Pizza-Thing Community Cooking Event. A colleague of mine has been living for about two decades in Bretigny, where they have the last of the area's communal stone ovens. For three days it is stoked with fires (Used to be only two days, but he convinced them of his idea that two was insufficient), and then the fires are alternated with tartes of brioche dough about 20cm across and bearing all kinds of good toppings. It takes all night to bake the 500 or 600 tartes, which are available immediately for sale. So if you're driving from the experiment cavern site in Cessy to your home in Ferney-Voltaire at 3am on the right Saturday... Or you just ask Dick to bring the tartes to work on Monday.

And some other things in Frenchness have strangeness.
The USCMS apartment where I'm crashing is home to a singularly ugly amateur painting. As Jessica is explaining to Andrew, it was almost bad enough to be a "croute." Something about the paint being laid on so inexpertly as to develop a baguette-worthy crust. So we pushed it over the edge by allowing Kathy to apply pink pony glitter.
The ... painting ... passed the croute test by being able to hold the glitter--on the flowers, on the figures' eyes, and in the bluish part of what we took to be a sky.
I used to be unable to look at the thing. Now it makes me smile.
_Dr. S