Women of String Theory Calendar

January


There are six women graduate students attending TASI (out of sixty students total) so I really only have enough for a half calendar.

February

March

April

May

June


Last night we had the final TASI barbeque. Because of the thunderstorms, it was moved indoors. The dining hall staff fed us one beer at a time and took them all away at 8:30, kicking us out at 9. But we still managed to have a rowdy enough time (and let off some steam) before the sun went down.
Here are a bunch of smiling, happy pics:









and when things got a little bit rowdy...


(Dima thinking about the Attractors and Arithmatic paper)



I don't remember what this conversation was but I like this progression:

5.11b

It’s the last week of TASI. They’ve been keeping me super busy here at physics camp. We have many, many hours of lectures a day interspersed with horrific cafeteria food and tons of socializing. Its taken a lot of effort to find time to go climbing outside (but I’ve managed, really) and I’ve fallen way behind on the blog. I hope that I haven’t lost my entire readership by now. (And I'm sorry to everyone whose phone calls and emails I haven't returned!)

On Sunday, Lukas and I went climbing at the Sport Park in Boulder Canyon. (yeah, yeah, I know. Its Boulder, I’m supposed to be on the Flatirons or in Eldorado Canyon or something. But Boulder Canyon is sooo wonderfully close and I don’t lead trad (yet)!) We warmed up on some easy routes and then something caught my eye.

Oh boy It was a beauty. (It’s the one in the middle)

Check out that horn. More than anything in the world, I wanted to pull through that horn. Yes, it was very OCD of me but I absolutely had to give it a go. I was willing to lose gear on this one, just for the horn.

I asked a local for the rating and he informed me that it was “Killer Fish Tacos 11b but really 10c-ish. The crux is balancing through a nasty pinch on the slab before the last bolt.” Balance? Slab? No problem! Those are my specialties! (Says the girl was projecting 10c’s last summer and has never tried to lead anything harder than a 10d and only once nearly flashed an 11b on TR. yeah, yeah, yeah)

The bottom was easy 5.8 and the falls at the top were clean so I hopped on it. The horn was a fun little move. And the slab was tricky but manageable: I fell (a lot), I hang-dogged it, I cursed, I laughed, and I made some very strange noises. But I did it, The crux wasn’t too bad.

Then I got to the top. All I had left to do was to stand up, throw in a hand-jam, and clip the anchors. (Either that or some nasty, reachy move from a pinch to a crack…) Anyhow, I could not do the last move. I tried and tried. I cursed. I grunted. And I could not make the reach.

I ended up coming down and had Lukas (who is a full foot taller than me) give it a go. He clipped the anchors without much problem.

I tried it again on toprope. Again, the moves were balancy but reasonable. I did them without too much hanging. But I could not get to top. I had to pull on the anchors to clean the damn thing. They were just too high.

After my exhausting flirtation with 5.11, Lukas and I went over to the Clock Tower section of the Sport Park and tried a couple of routes there. I was knackered but we had fun on a 9+ and a 10b. I’d like to go back and give some of the other routes a go.

By the way, Lukas gets the gold star for catching my many, many leader falls and letting me hang dog my way up a route that was really, truly at my limit.


Here I am, knackered and completely manic after Fish Tacos. (Lukas also gets the gold star for listening to me sing Lou Reed all day long)

Lolita, aka "Why I am not dating much at TASI"

I cannot get enough of the skies here. The clouds are fabulous colors and fantastic shapes.


Ok. I owe you a story.

The University of Colorado, all summer long, rents out its dorms to conferences and summer camps (in addition to freshman orientation). So the entire time we’ve been here, various groups have been coming and going for a few days to a week at a time.

Week one was the CHEERLEADING CAMP/COMPETITION. Yup, our lives were invaded by a small army of pubescent girls in uniform who were on separate teams. Eating lunch in the cafeteria, I felt like I was in the movie Mean Girls—the looks they gave eachother, the matching outfits, the little rituals. They were kind of scary.

There were a lot of cheerleading jokes going around and it was all good and fun until Day 2 of the Cheerleaders. That was a bad day.

I (as well as many other groggy quasi-nocturnal grad students) was woken up at the (ass-) crack of dawn (read: 6:30 am) by the sounds of CHEERING coming from FOUR FEET outside of my (single panes) window. They were cheerful, they were synchronized, they were catchy, and, damn it, they could really project their voices.

For four days, we, the newly arrive (and altitude sick!) TASI participants, bonded with our common hatred of the cheerleaders and their early morning perkiness. A popular meal time conversation topic was (aside from "who is your advisor?") when they would be gone. Finally, they got on their perky bus and drove away.

Two things that came out of this…

One of the other women grad students here was mistaken for a CHAPARONE by a very anxious young cheerleader. (If that doesn’t make us feel old…)

And, while some guys were joking about how they like the cheerleaders “for their minds” (which is slightly disturbing), one of them (thinking he was joking) said that they really like them for their vaginas (which was seriously disturbing). (My brother received an email shortly after that about why I don’t think I’ll be dating much at TASI)

more TASI stories

Today, near the end of Mike Douglas’ talk (when everyone was starting to fall asleep because we are a video game/TV generation with the attention spans of a knat), Louis got a little too comfortable in his chair (which is attached to and swivels out from a long, skinny, table-desk) and snapped his chair right off the pivot. Laughing, he stood up in the lecture, picked the chair up over his head, and placed it in the back of the room. Everyone woke up and wondered if we were going to get an announcement about not breaking lecture hall furniture. (There have been many such announcements such as not leaving TASI early for Perimeter, cell phones and computers in lectures, using fat versus skinny chalk, attending even the non-stringy lectures, writing on the far right side of the board, etc)

Tyrolean traverse

I played hookey yesterday and went climbing at the Avalon wall in Boulder Canyon with Amanda, Jeff and Lukas. The climbing was nice but the walls were pretty dirty. On a hard 10, my feet kept skidding off the lichen on the rock. The best part of the day was the approach.

We parked the car and hiked down the road to a Tyrolean traverse across the river. The river is running fast and high right now so there are two ropes suspended about six feet above the water. We put on our harnesses, clipped ourselves onto the rope, and pulled ourselves (upside-down, facing the sky) across the river (like in Cliffhanger). With a large backpack full of gear, it was hard work. And, stepping onto a boulder on the other side, I pinched the skin on my arm between the carabeaner and the rope. (I now have a black bruise that I can show off in the cafeteria during meals.) We then hiked up a steep talus field to the cliffs.

Its been a lot of fun climbing here. I'm still not in the shape I was last summer (I'm not yet leading 10's but I'm about ready for it). But the weather is beautiful, the cliffs are amazing, and the routes are abundant. On Tuesday, I did some afternoon bouldering with Paul, Lukas, and Jon. We went to Mount Sanitas and tried some tricky problems as a huge thunderstorm rolled in. As we were heading back to the car, the clouds broke and and we were drenched in seconds. By the time we reached the car, we were dripping.

Pictures coming soon!

crush

The theme of the TASI lectures this week is phenomenology (stringy and collider). So I've been skipping a lot of lectures, going climbing, etc. There has been one set of lectures that have been absolutely fantastic.

David Tong is visiting from (the other) Cambridge to teach us about solitons: instantons, vortices, monopoles and domain walls. He tells a great story, lectures with charisma. The physics is new and beautiful. And he's British and very cute. I think I'm in love.

On Monday, I finally learned what the definitions of the Coulomb and Higgs branches are. I also developed a bad case of the giggles and a stupid grin. Its been a really fun week.

climbing in Boulder!

When I went to Trieste, Italy, for a string theory summer school a few years ago, I had enormous difficulty finding a climbing partner. Of the hundred or so graduate students attending, none of them climbed. It was shocking given the lovely limestone in northern Italy and the sport-climbing mecca of Osp a few hours away in Slovenia. I managed to get some climbing in by meeting people at the local crag and by going to Cortina in the Dolomites and hiring a guide.

I wasn’t about to let that happen again. As soon as I arrived in Boulder last week, I found out where the rock gym was, headed over and put up a flyer. (it was raining, anyhow.) I also discovered climbingboulder.com and listed myself in the “looking for partners” section.

Enter the freak show.

I made a point of meeting potential partners before climbing with them and I promised myself that I would listen to my instincts. After a week of this, I started to get cynical. A few examples:

One guy, over the course of an hour, told me all about how wickedly mean his parents are, how they kept him from going to college, all about how happy he is to be divorced and be a “free man.” I noticed that all of his climbing partners are young women. I ran like hell.

And here are some excepts from an email I got:

Ciao' Michelle! I boulder up and down the Front Range, I just got back from Horsetooth where I sent a string of problems that I have been waiting on to dry out after all the rain_we have had here. Tilt Boulder, Dred Face, Surplomb, Prow, they all went down. I know all the areas around the Horsetooth intimately, so if you want to see the sights I can show you about.

So far, seems ok. He ranted about local climbing areas and then wrote this:

As far as what I climb, the higher and scarier the better. I am a very experienced soloist, rock climbs, ice climbs, alpine climbs, mixed climbs, I've done them all un-roped. My bouldering reflects my interest in this type of climbing experience, I have a good head for being way off the deck and climbing hard.

Yikes. And then he included this photo (and only this photo):


Then I met Annette. She is a local, a little bit older than me, a bit of a traddie and she climbs sport at about the same level. She is pleasant and funny (and not lonely or crazy!). Plus she has a big brown friendly dog.

We headed out yesterday and did a couple of routes in Boulder Canyon. We warmed up leading a slabby 5.7 and then set up a toprope on a wicked little 10d. Last year I was hang-dogging and having head problems on Rumney’s 10d’s so I was delighted to try this on TR. It was a beautiful route—a nice flat arête for my left hand and thin little crimps and ridges for my right and feet, all on orange granite.

We got out late but managed to get a few climbs in before it got dark. I had a fabulous time and we’re definitely going to get out again.

It turns out that a handful of the TASI folks are into climbing. They aren’t as willing to play hookey from lectures during the week but we managed to get out to Boulder Canyon for a few routes last Saturday (before the rain kicked in).

We were originally planning to go to Avalon but wussed out when we saw the Tyrolean traverse over the spring rapids. None of us had done one before and there were beginners with us so it seemed like a bad idea.



We drove further up the canyon and went to the Sport Park where you can walk across the (chilly!) river holding onto a fixed rope. With numbed legs, we hiked up to the crag and did a couple of routes.


I’m not sure what we climbed but I think it was a 5.8 (that felt a lot like Jimmy Cliff at Rumney) and something that may have been a 9 or 9+ up a crack/corner to a tricky slab with thin high steps (that reminded me of Lonesome Dove at Jimmy).



I took this photo at the top of one of the routes.

(I can't get used to the fantastically beautiful, colorful big skies here)

just a little squirt

Those are the words that my Grandma used to describe my brother, Jeremy, when he was a baby.

Indiana had the best radio.

I made it to St Louis by lunchtime and hung out with Grandma all afternoon.

Aunt Sharon also stopped by to say hello. It was a fun time and I wish I could've stayed longer.

I hit the road again in the morning. Most of the day was uneventful.

Central Missouri countryside (ok radio)


Here is the bug with some cow bums


Kansas, even Lawrence (which is a college town!) appears to be completely free of gourmet coffee drinks. I was craving a latte all day but my thirst was never quenched.

By the way, in the summer, Kansas is quite pretty. Western Kansas' rolling green hills give way to long flat colorful fields with big skies.

Here is a movie of the clouds.

By the time we hit eastern Colorado, the radio was horrible. The choices were:
Jesus
Country Jesus
Jesus
Country
love-oriented soft rock
Country
Country Jesus
The lady bug and I listened to some comedy CD's but when those ran out, we got really bored. Nature answered this by sending us a big thunder and hail storm. We took shelter in a gas station.

The rain let up and we made it past Denver last night. I'm 15 miled from Boulder this morning and am about to head over to TASI. That road trip was quick!

Road Trip!

Greetings from Greenfield, Indiana!

I am en route to Boulder, Colorado for the month long TASI summer school program. I decided that, instead of flying, I would drive there and stop by New York and my grandmama’s in St Louis on the way.

On Monday evening, Jenn and I set off for New York. We had a rainy drive but the Lady Bug boogied to Lou Reed’s Transformer

and you know what they say about honey bears
when you shave off all their beary hair
you have yourself a hairy-minded pink bare bear


On Tuesday, Jenn had to go to work so I set off by myself. Jenn’s neighborhood in Brooklyn:



I headed to the Max Ernst Retrospective at the Met.

The Met is wonderful food for my soul. I particularly enjoy the Modern Art—not that I understand it. But I love that it is strange and confusing and sometimes cerebral. The Max Ernst Retrospective was excellent and incredibly fun. My favorite piece was The Joy of Living. It’s a garden with forests in the background. The plants in the garden are full of little surprises including some plants morphing into copulating forms. It was not a highlighted work so most people just walked right by it. I stared at it for a good twenty minutes which attracted the attention of some others. “Eew. That’s grotesque!” “That’s weird!!”


I then walked the ninety blocks to Soho where I met up with Jenn for a tasty organic dinner and drinks with people she works with. It was a bright and sunny day, a welcome break from the week of soggy weather we had in Boston. (By the way, I'm having trouble walking today. I blistered the bottoms of my feet!)

I rolled out of bed this morning and hit the road. Here is the Lady Bug enjoying the Pennsylvania countryside:


…and in front of the strange strange rest stop where (1) we got lattes at a highway-side Starbucks and (2) we saw the Amish in line at Burger King


Here is the Lady Bug admiring the horses in the western Ohio countryside:


and at an Ohio reststop


Twelve hours of driving got us to Indiana. We were pretty wiped but, surprisingly, the quality of the music on the radio inproved dramatically when we crossed the state line.


Other highlights of the day:

A truck full of pipes: from the very back you could see through them but as you moved to the side, they got dark. This was fun.


This looks like some kind of farm equipment or factory gizmo but I’m not really sure what it is.