Perhaps you can surmise from the title why there haven't been any recent blog entries until now. Things have ratcheted up just a bit. I'll try to cover the details in a systematic way...because that's just who I am.
Beowulf, and GREN:
If I was back home, I'd go see the new film release of Beowulf. But here, it's GREN (get it?). "Global Run at the End of November", that is.
To preface this adequately, it should be known that CMS is a huge particle detector divided up into several "subdetectors" that use different kinds of technology to detect the passage of subatomic particles. Each of the subdetectors is worked on by their own teams of people, has their own set of electronics for reading the detector out and converting the readings to digital; i.e., they each come with their own "data acquisition system", or DAQ for short. Teams of people for each subdetector: hardware gurus, others who work on DAQ software, and others assigned to collecting the data ("shifters", once they implement data collection shifts), and still others dedicated to analyzing the data "offline" once it has been collected and stored.
Each month at the end of the month, the CMS project has a global run, meaning that all of the subdetector teams come together, along with the "central DAQ" team, and try to get their subdetectors to play together. But since the LHC isn't up and running yet, what particles are there to detect? Cosmic rays! Relativistic "muons" (meaning they're traveling at almost the speed of light) showering down on us all the time, products of cosmic ray collisions - ultra-energetic particles slamming into the upper atmosphere. These muons even make it through hundreds of feet of earth and rock to the underground cavern and pass through the pieces of the detector that are armed and ready to see them.
So each of these runs is intended to build on the previous ones, as more and more of the detector is commissioned and integrated together. This particular run is no different - we're trying things that haven't been tried yet, many more pieces have to work together than have yet done so - and the next global run will be even more that way.
"Very interesting," you say - or maybe, "Get to the point! What has that got to do with anything else?" Well. Let's get to that, then:
Vehicles:
Because of GREN, the demand on the one vehicle we share has increased, so that we had to factor it out of our weekly plans.
On the plus side, we were finally able to pay the seller of the car we've been intending to buy for almost a month now - the Honda Civic. I was spending time trying to figure out how to pay this guy without incurring sizable fees - until it occurred to me that I was losing more money waiting because of the plummeting dollar. Each week the price in U.S.$ was going up even though the price in Swiss Francs was holding constant! So we finally swallowed the $45 wire transfer fee and paid for the car. But now we have to wait still for our French cards to show up before we can get plates for it and drive it. That's supposed to happen next week.
In the meantime also, we may suddenly have a second car show up at the same time. A young woman from the states we learned of through our church is flying in to buy a car, and then just as quickly turning around and flying out again, and is looking for someone who might be able to make use of the car while she's gone, until March, she says. This car may actually be ready for us faster than our own vehicle, because of the delay in the French card.
(Did I tell you why our cards are delayed? The nice folks at CERN delayed sending out our applications to the French government by almost a month! So now they say they've asked for it to be expedited: total wait time? 2 months. I've been told actually that they are already made, but they can't be sent now for two weeks. Must be waiting for the French ink to dry...).
Benjamin:
Because of the lack of transportation, we had to cancel Ben's therapy appointments for the week. But the therapists tell
us that he's doing so well he can afford to miss a week of appointments. They've been working with him on transitions between sitting, standing, all fours, and prone; bringing his hands to midline (he can clap them now), getting used to an all fours position (still not crawling yet), standing with aid in front of a table, feeding himself.Ben with his physical therapist:
Now however, he has caught a fever. Today his temperature was back down but he was whiny, sensitive to touch, his appetite was off, and he slept a lot. We think he actually caught it on Monday at his first pediatrician's appointment in Nyon.
Housing:
Because of GREN, I've been keeping a more rigid schedule, been less available for going to see housing prospects. Meanwhile, Kathy has been turning up more housing leads than you can shake a stick at. So at the same time she's seeking my input I've had less time to provide it. She's gone to several places, having had to arrange for her own transportation, and taken videos for me to look at after the fact. (Thankfully, one lady in particular from her Women's Fellowship at Crossroads has been particularly helpful transporting Kathy around and providing translation services. To answer Naomi's previous comment, this is the one thing we are the most thankful for: all of you family and friends back home praying for and supporting us, and all of the people here who have stepped forward to help us.)
One major praise item: it looks like our cost-of-living adjustment will be more substantial than previously thought, at least in the short term. The long-term is not a sure thing, because of budgetary considerations. And at least for the present it is indexed against the exchange rate, so that the COLA at least (not my salary) is more insulated from changes there. But this bit of news, along with an idea Kathy got for cleaning houses a few hours a week for extra income, has allowed us to be less tight in our rent restrictions. We have around half-a-dozen prospects: a couple of Echenevex's, a couple of Gex's, a couple of Segny's. There were also a few Ferney-Voltaire's we've seen, but we're not counting those...We are also getting more refined in understanding better what is critical to our needs for housing, which helps us to reject some prospects faster and saves time.
Tomorrow we go to see some of these prospects. We may have something to report by the evening!
Weather:
The annual Dude-fattening is upon me - that time of year when temps plummet, days shorten, schedules fill up, and unhealthy foods beckon - but wait! It's subfreezing in Minnesota, but not here! After a spell of clouds and rain, it's been sunny and 40's here in balmy "Pays de Gex". Today it actually got up to 54degF. Fortunately, GREN has not placed that many demands on my time this second half of the week (there have been more than a few problems...), and what better day to go jogging at lunchtime? The clouds were draped limply in a Dali kind of way on top of the Juras, and the Alps were visible too. So maybe I can be less un-svelte than usual when I show up in Minnesota for the Christmas feasting...
Social:
We attended Tday celebrations at the Toole's and had a good time. There's an extended film on dropshots of Ben enjoying himself with Mom there.
Last Saturday Kathy and I went out for our fifth anniversary in downtown Geneva. We got a lady from church to babysit for us. Unfortunately Kathy had to wait almost an hour at the Indian restaurant while I meandered aimlessly through downtown Geneva looking for this elusive parking that the restaurant guy told me I could find. Still we managed to have our dinner; when we got back we found out that Ben did not take our absence well, and gave our babysitter a rough go of it. Herewith also a picture of Ben and babysitter as we found them when we got home. He had just fallen asleep... 
Happy Holidays,
-PKBD
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