A brief update

Hello, all,

We finished our week of meetings this last week, and heard some unofficial updates from LHC officials, and second/third-hand scuttlebutt from people with better connections than me. Descriptions of the "incident site" in sector 3-4 of the ring sound worthy of a Hollywood disaster movie. I've been told there are pictures that no one may ever see. None of us really know. But the reality is that the LHC will be down for quite a while as they finally get a chance to assess the full magnitude of the damage in the days and weeks ahead, and the full magnitude of the required efforts to mitigate such a thing ever happening again. CMS will continue its own testing and commissioning efforts and collecting cosmic-ray data in the meantime.

K and I are contemplating a change of plans (again) to see if we can get back to the states before the holidays. It depends completely on being able to find someone in a timely fashion to whom we can sublet our apartment here while we are gone.

We held B's 2nd birthday party at our church last Sunday, and it went spectacularly well, a testament to K's planning and also to the assistance of many people who came, helping grill the food, bring their own, set up decorations, and clean up afterwards. We will be posting pictures of the party on our dropshots website soon.

And right now we're enjoying the benefits of technology: I'm watching Channel 9 KMSP from Minnesota (the Vikings are losing to the Tennessee Titans) and Channel 10 WFTC (the Twins are beating KC) all via "Slingbox" - cable TV (courtesy of my mother, thanks Ma!) captured and streamed over the internet to our computer here! At the same time K is listening to what I like to call "sermon on a stick". I got a digital recording of today's sermon recorded on memory stick, and we can plug the stick directly into a boombox we recently bought, so she can catch the sermon she missed while in the nursery this morning.

I was working on a bigger blog entry, but it was taking too long so I'll just close off with this.

Take care,
-PKBD