cinque terre terrace, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Cinque Terre is the name for a collection of five villages, located on the northwest shore of Italy near La Spezia, in what is sometimes called the Italian Riviera. They are tiny, tiny villages, and it seems that much of the land in the area is being used for agriculture (grapes, olives, etc.). The terrain is challenging, though, so the land is beautifully terraced. I think it was the most charming part of Italy we visited.

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Location update: I'm now in Los Angeles, helping Ben pack up. We're renting a truck and moving his stuff up to Douglas and Nancy's place in Ojai tomorrow, and on Tuesday we start our cross-country drive. I think we expect to be in Philadelphia on Saturday evening; we're spending an extra day in Bryce, and an evening with Jeanine and Andrew. I just spent a week in Indiana and Michigan, seeing West Lafayette where Jeanine and Andrew live and going up to Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, on the northern part of Michigan's lower peninsula.

south manitou bay, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Sleeping Bear Dunes was really awesome. Jeanine and I took a one and a half hour ferry ride out to South Manitou Island and backpacked there for three days. We stayed at Popple Campground, wehich was about 3.5 miles from the ferry landing and was the furthest, most deserted campsite. It had some patches of poison ivy (which I can now identify but had never before seen), but not in our campsite and not on the path. Our campsite had a short trail, less than 100 yards, down to the beach. The water in Lake Michigan was cold and clear, and the bottom was these big smooth rocks. I swam in it a few times, at our campsite, near the lighthouse, and just off the mainland. The hiking was beautiful, green and full of colors and sounds. We saw wild orchids, wild lilies, wild roses, and verdant birch-maple forests. There were also a lot of animals: lots of toads, snakes, turtles, fish, a black squirrel, chipmunks, ducks, seagulls, and a huge majestic wild swan. We hiked all around until our feet hurt and our muscles were sore, and sang old Girl Scout songs. It was fantastic.

abandoned building, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

South Manitou Island has one of the only natural harbors between Chicago and the Mackinaw Straits on Lake Michigan, so it was settled pretty early in the 19th century. A lighthouse and life-saving station were established near the harbor, which saved many lives. Nonetheless, the island is surrounded by shipwrecks, and there are actually many shipwrecks all over the Great Lakes. Originally, both South and North Manitou Islands had huge pine forests, which were quickly logged out for lumber and to power the ships travelling the Great Lakes. (North Manitou Island is bigger and less developed, but had less ferry service so we didn't go there this time.) When the lumber forests were cleared, inhabitants (max. population, 100) used the cleared land for agriculture, and apple and cherry orchards did especially well. But the services on the island started to decrease, and I think only around 20-30 people were living on the island when the Park Service bought it in the early 70s. At that point, most of the island was still cleared for agriculture. In the early 80s it was incorporated into Sleeping Bear Dunes, and for the last thirty years vegetation and birch-maple forests have been overtaking the island. There are still some relatively young pine forests on the south side of the island, though.

lake sunset, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

We also had an especially good food trip. The easiest food to take backpacking is dried or reconsituted, things like Lipton noodle packets, dried fruit, nuts, crackers, etc. These are great until you've been eating them for a few days. Luckily, when you're backpacking all food tastes amazing. But we brought a lot of semi-perishable stuff... ravioli, Gruyere, hummus, and onions, tomatoes, and avocados for vegetarian fajitas. There was also a pretty funny moment after we had spent the return ferry trip daydreaming about food, and cheese in particular, and how much we wanted it. But the towns near Sleeping Bear Dunes are small and limited, so we figured our chances of getting good cheese were slim. The ferry docked, we put on our packs, and not 50 feet from the dock did we see an old wooden building with a big sign: 'CHEESE'. It was a gourmet cheese store right by the dock! We didn't have any cash on us, but we ran back to the car, grabbed some, and bought local raclette and chocolate-covered cherries. We had the raclette that night, melted on garlicky toasted bagels, and it was awesome.

birch-maple forest, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

The day after we got back from backpacking, we rented a canoe and canoed the Lower Platte River. It was our first time in a canoe, but we didn't capsize and didn't really hit anything, though there was a close call with a fish weir and some miscommunication. We floated over lots of cool-looking fish, and since it was early-ish in the morning, the river was pretty much empty. It was extremely quiet and peaceful, and a lot of fun, and it's interesting being the steerer for the canoe. It made Jeanine and I both want to try a longer canoe trip, maybe on the Wabash or the Manistee, though it would have to be pretty easy because we're both still beginners.

in the lake, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

It was also cool to see where Jeanine and Andrew are lviing now. I saw the Wabash Valley Historical Trust, where Jeanine is working, and some of the cool older buildings in Lafayette, like the courthouse. I also saw a lot of the Purdue campus, and the acoustics lab that Andrew works in, which is really cool. There's a horticultural park across the street from their apartment which has lots of trails through beautiful woods, though many of the plants have labels. It's just nice to see where your close friends are living and working, and what they do all day.

south manitou lighthouse, originally uploaded by clevermynnie.

Overall, the trip was great. It's so much fun to go backpacking, so nice to be out in nature, so good to see old friends. And so strange yet wonderful to come back at the end to Los Angeles, fly into LAX for the last time, and finally have a relationship without the long distance.

The last person who visited me from New Mexico in my flurry of entertaining was Steph. She came out Monday night, left Friday afternoon for a friend's wedding in Santa Rosa, reappeared for a few hours Sunday, and then went back home. She just finished her undergrad, like me, and she's taking a year off and working at the lab, probably before applying to some sort of graduate/professional school.

Some background... Steph and I have been friends for a long time, close friends. We got really close in 7th and 8th grade, spent a ridiculous amount of time together, and had various kinds of crazy antics. We passed notes in class until our geometry teacher separated us, and then after that we flashed signs to each other. We ran out of a hot bath at her house in the middle of the night and rolled in the snow. We wrote each other letters in classes we didn't share, long, winding, grammatically unsound piles of fun that I still have a bunch of, addressed to George and Ringo (our Beatles pseudonyms). In 9th grade, we crushed on the same guy. We were on the swim team together, in a lot of classes together, and always really close. During senior year of high school, we drifted apart a little... we were both changing a lot, and for both of us some things about senior year were really hard, and hard to share with each other. We went off to college, still got together over summers and winter breaks, and sometimes I'd see her in San Diego when I went to SoCal to visit Ben. I guess we haven't seen each other regularly since high school, although we correspond. What always strikes me when I see Steph or talk to her, though, is how easy it is to get along with her and open up to her. Partly history, I guess, and partly the fact that for a time, it felt like we were two halves of the same person, and that feeling is still there when it's just the two of us sometimes. Even though we've changed a lot since then, into two distinctly different people.

Her arrival was kind of a mess, because her plane was late, so she barely caught the last AirBART shuttle, then accidentally ended up in Daly City (which would've been okay if she could've caught another train back, but it was the last train of the night). Ron very kindly agreed to drive me to Daly City at 1 AM to pick up Steph, for which I am extremely grateful. The other time Steph came to Berkeley, the crappiness of the AC Transit system caused me to be super-late picking her up from the Amtrak station, which is in a very shady part of Berkeley. I got there and she was gone, and I ran around looking for her and wishing we both had cell phones, until eventually my roommates came and got me, and told me Steph had walked to a nearby gas station to call me and wait for me to come get her. This wasn't quite as bad.

Tuesday, after I came back from my quantum lecture, we walked around Berkeley. We went on campus, went up to the top of the Campanile (which I'd never done before), walked down Telegraph, looked at body jewelry, and eventually ended up at Cheeseboard for dinner. On Wednesday, we walked down to the Scharffen Berger factory in West Berkely for the factory tour. The Scharffen Berger tour is a lot of fun; I highly recommend it. First they sit you in a room and tell you about the company, how it was founded, where they get their beans from, how they make chocolate. They pass around unroasted beans, roasted beans, nibs, milk chocolate (40% cocoa), semisweet (62% cocoa), and bittersweet (70% cocoa). The milk chocolate was the best I've ever tasted, creamy and flavorful, and the semisweet was great too, but the bittersweet was just amazing. I love good dark chocolate. Then they walk you through the factory, which is extremely cool to see. It's a working factory, so everything's on a very big scale. I can see why they give the tours for free; when you leave, you want desperately to buy a lot of chocolate. The whole building smells like chocolate, strongly, because they roast and crush the beans there. Just writing this and remembering the smell has given me a serious chocolate craving.

On the way back we stopped at this pet shop, which resulted in Steph and I holding seven-week-old bunnies, amazingly soft and cute, and seriously considering buying them. The bunnies were that cute... I don't want a bunny much, nor have I ever. Cats have so much more intelligence and personality. But the charm of the bunnies was overwhelming. They had the little twitchy noses and floppy ears, and we agreed that after buying the bunnies, we'd name them something disgustingly cute, like Mr. Hugglekins or Wiggles. It's amazing we made it out of the store at all.

We had dinner at Tako Sushi with Ben, and sat and talked about various things. Most of the best parts of her visit were like that. On Thursday afternoon, after lunch at India Palace, we went into San Francisco. Walked up the main part of Chinatown, had milk tea, bought a lot of fudge from Z. Cioccolato (chocolate, double chocolate, white chocolate macadamia, cafe latte, pumpkin, and reese's peanut butter cup fudge), headed over to Coit Tower. The view from Coit Tower is beautiful, though somewhat overpriced. It was cool to be in these various high places now that I can actually point out a fair number of landmarks. We were walking to Ghirardelli Square when we passed a place that claimed to have the best truffles in San Francisco, so we got some. The lemon truffle I had was truly outstanding. We split a sundae at Ghirardelli Square, which had too little of their fantastic hot fudge, and then sat out overlooking the marina and eating fudge. There was really a lot of fudge. By now, it was nearing dusk, and I was becoming actually somewhat sick of chocolate. We walked to the BART and went home, and had a really early bedtime.

On Friday we went up to LBL for the car show and a live band (in which my officemate Sherri plays the congas), and also to see Joao before he left for Geneva and Lisbon. We looked at the view, definitely my favorite Bay Area view, and then delivered Steph to her friend Fred, who drove her to Santa Rosa for the wedding.

She was back for a few hours Sunday with Ben and I, helping us make a tasty brined chicken and some stuffing. I think that the two big results of me seeing so many good high school friends in Berkeley is that I appreciate much more how happy I am here, and how at home I feel, but I also really want to go to graduate school near some of these people. I love them and miss them. Everyone I care about should be within an hour's drive of me.

So, I didn't quite mention that I went to Angel Island last weekend with Ron. We hiked around the 5-mile perimeter trail, and I learned about the old immigration station, army post, and Nike missiles. It was really pretty and a lot of fun, and of course the view is great.

This weekend, I headed down to Los Angeles for the last time for a few months, to see Ben before he moves up here for the summer. I got in late Friday, and on Saturday we had a leisurely breakfast at the Corner Bakery Cafe (I love their D.C. chicken salad more than words can say), rented Lawrence of Arabia, and started working on various things for the dinner party that night. I think the menu was, avocado and blood orange salad with Asian dressing, cochinita pibil with cocoa pasta, mango and pico de gallo bruschetta, and cardamom panna cotta for dessert. The panna cotta was great; I should make it more often. I also really enjoyed watching Lawrence of Arabia, throughout the day. It's long but great, the sort of movie Hollywood rarely makes nowadays.

As an aside: I guess my french oral comprehension class worked. I watched Breathless (A bout de souffle) on Thursday, without subtitles, and followed along rather well. That's a first for me. And then today at the SNAP collaboration meeting, I could follow some people's French conversation very easily. There are degrees of difficulty, of course, but that was encouraging.

Anyways, on Sunday we went to the beach and barbeque hosted by Ben's master's program advisor, who had one Ph.D. student and one Master's student graduating. That was a lot of fun; we played beach volleyball, went boogieboarding, and ate a huge amount of really good food. I also tried Ouzo, which is surprisingly similar to absinthe.

Slept very little and then got up at 4:15 this morning to catch the 6:00 flight out of LAX. I landed at 7:15, got off the BART in Berkeley around 8:20, ran home to grab my badge and caught the 8:35 shuttle to LBL, and was at the opening talks of the SNAP collaboration meeting ten minutes early, at 8:50. Phew. One of the first talks used my data, and I didn't want to miss it. When he finished presenting my data, Bill's high-voltage data, and Jens' quantum efficiency stuff, someone actually called for a round of applause for how much achievement that is. I'm in a really exciting place right now, career-wise. The talks today were okay; some were really great, mostly instrmuentation ones, and some were really awful. I'll leave it at that.

Now I'm at home, and my plan for the evening is to sleep a lot and not exert myself. My back is hurting a fair amount; I had kind of a wipeout on the boogieboard. I was on this really big wave (all the waves seemed bigger than usual, I thought), and it broke under me and sort of flipped me over, running the board into the sand and my chin into the board, and my legs got swept towards the beach over me but since my head wasn't going anywhere, it sort of crunched and now my back feels very bruised. Bleah. It does make me rethink wanting to learn to surf, a little.