This last week I got to go back to the home of the fight’n Texas Aggies (Texas A&M) my home institution. Similar to Homer’s blog entry I spent my time meeting with people that I only get to chat on the phone with or see over video. Needless to say this gets our analysis moving much faster and helps to fix all those little bugs in our code when we are trying to reproduce each other’s numbers.
Texas A&M
While I could dedicate an entire blog post to just the intricacies of my analysis and all the interesting and fun things I learned from meeting with our new post-doc, (Daniel Goldin) who is joining our Delayed Photon Team on CDF, or the endless discussions with my adviser and other professors; I’d instead like to talk about the second (but really first) reason I went all the way to College Station, Texas for a week.
WEDDING, WEDDING, WEDDING!!!
This wasn’t my own wedding but rather a dear friend and colleague of mine (Vadim Khotilovich) and his lovely new wife (Karen Trainor). Vadim has worked in our group at CDF since before I was a graduate student and after receiving his PhD has continued on with us as a post-doc working on CMS. Vadim and I have had a lot of fun times together since we both enjoy the sport of rock climbing and even managed to live close to one another while I was in College Station.
Vadim and I returning from a rock climbing trip with too much gear and not enough room in the car
There are lots of fun memories from Vadim and Karen’s wedding but by far was their first dance. Now an important thing to know about Vadim is he is no ordinary physicist. Not only is he an amazing rock climber (a sport I tend to love myself) but he is also a well trained dancer. Likewise Karen is also formally trained in dance and that is how those two love birds met, so of course their first dance was INCREDIBLE!
I was lucky enough to serve as a groomsman for Vadim’s wedding along with another Texas A&M professor. Along with Vadim and I’s mutual friends from physics, a list of talented and
Vadim and Karen
brilliant people from all disciplines of science and art were there to attend this wedding. The night was filled with wonderful food, fascinating discussions, outstanding dancing, and an atmosphere of love and friendship.
Standing in a crowd of so many wonderful people at such a beautiful event really reminded me of how great it is to be in a field like physics. Never mind the interesting things we study and the brilliant people we meet in our own field, there is also an entire book to be written on the other people, activities and talents that being part of this community plugs us into.
In closing as part of this wonderful particle physics community I would like to extend a big congratulations to Vadim and Karen. I realize that while our world of particle physics is big and growing, it is also closely related and tight knit. So if you know Vadim be sure to congratulate him and if you ever get the chance pick up some dancing pointers…he has a lot to teach all of us!
