"Winging it is an exceptional and necessary skill" - Matt Hinton

Still playing catch-up here! It is very tricky to keep up with sooooo much other stuff to do.
So sorry people., but here is another installment right now!

So October something (don't remember anymore) saw the DNP come in, around a week after Elle left.
This meant that I didn't have very long to get my presentation finished and done before I had to talk about my project while here to a room full of Nuclear Structure Professors.

East Lansing was very cold and flat, yet still beautiful in fall. Spending most of the time in the seminar hotel meant that it was difficult to appreciate, but at least it was nice and warm.

My presentation was on the Thursday, the second day, in the morning. After a long travel, I was glad to have this out of the way early, especially as I only got it done the day before we left for the DNP itself.
The presentation went well, I believe, and I got a few people saying as such, which is always nice.

After the presentation, we had undergrads to please, by at least pretending to be interested in their presentations. However, to make this a bearable experience, they gave all the judgemental grad students and professors free alcohol! The guys from Richmond & I, whom it was really good to see again, had a fair number of drinks here. We then had the grad student event, with more free alchohol, so quite a lot was drunk that day...

Friday, with a slight hangover, was more presentations to watch and promoting Yale to the undergrads in the afternoon. Saturday was similar again, finally leaving MSU in the afternoon.

Unfortunately, we got stuck in Detroit airport for ages (like 7 hours) due to snow back in New England. By this point I did just want to be back home,  since my brain was fried from too much physics over the past week!

Just a quick post today, since I'm still trying to play catch-up! See you all next time for another convention post!

 

Achievement Unlocked!

"Failing to plan is planning to fail." - Alan Lakein

And I certainly wasn't planning in any way about getting this blog done at any sort of reasonable time.
Lots of stuff has currently passed and therefore need to do a bit of a catch-up, starting with a visit from Miss Elle!


I had a week break between Mandy and Elle visiting, which was kinda nice, meant I got loads of work done at least!
Elle arrived late (not as late as Mandy, but still late) at the completely wrong place on Tuesday 4th Oct (you can see how late this post is now) she soon settled in to life in New Haven, and was quickly complaining about all the things which British people have been commenting about when they visit here, the wooden houses, the accents, all of that!

First weekend here, I had arranged to run PFS (what else?) at a convention in upstate New York, Schenektedekdeddy, or something like that!
Convention was good fun, got to play lots of PFS and even got some board gaming in on the Sunday, so a big thanks to Art for sorting out my attending another great convention, met some really great people there.

Elle and I then had a week hanging out in and around New Haven, seeing the town and a quick trip to shop in Stamford. This lead up to Elle's last weekend here and the guarenteed trip to NYC BABY!!

We managed to spend 2 days in New York. Sat was sightseeing and meeting up with Mr Rosh et al, which was really awesome. Managed to get caught up in Occupy Wall Street, which was ermmm, interesting!
Sunday was shopping day, after a night at the YMCA (which was slightly too much like a jail for my liking!)  Still, lots of shopping was done, and after a VERY tiring weekend we returned to New Haven.



Elle finally dissapeared a few days later, leaving me alone here, with a LOT of work to do, getting ready for the DNP, but that's another blog. It was fantastic to see Elle, have missed everyone from home such a lot, but I'm sure I'll miss everyone here a lot too.
Managed to learn very tiny amounts of Polish while she was here, caught up a lot and got all of the episodes of Parks on Netflix watched, which is really good! :)

It's not actually too long now until I get back to England (as people can see from the corner of my blog)

So, until next time people!

Achievement unlocked!

"Punch it, Chewie!" - Han Solo, Star Wars- Heir to the Empire

So it's onto my third audiobook review.
Feeling like getting my geek on a little more than usual I went for Star Wars- Heir to the Empire (Part one).

This is a sequel to the well known and well loved Star Wars Trilogy. (Yes, there are only 3 true Star Wars films.)

Set 5 years after The Return of the Jedi, the story follows all well loved characters from the films in their new struggled to hold the peace of the New Republic. Adding some new fruitful and interesting characters to the story helps keep this fresh, while not feeling out of place in any way...





As the title suggests, the story also follows an Imperial Grand Admiral and his mission to win back control of the galaxy over from Rebel Scum, but I'll try not to give too much away...

So, my main loves of this book:

Firstly it was certainly the continuation of the Star Wars story, which I have always felt to be somewhat incomplete. I personally love stories that continue on way after the final battle is won and the antagonist defeated, as people will know from my love of the David Eddings and J.R.R. Tolkien stories. This answered many questions from the films, which were left irritatingly unanswered and managed to use most of them as clever plot devices.

Secondly, the production of this audiobook was impressive. Not only does Marc Thompson have an impressive array of voices, sounding increadiably close to Mark Hammil,  Harrison Ford and even  Carrie Fisher! Add that to the laser shots in the background, the sound of the forest, R2D2 whistles and the well loved lightsaber sounds and this is a story you can easily lose yourself in.

Overall this is a complelling read, one which you can get stuck listening to for hours, very well written and read. Definitely a good pick! I am greatly looking forward to the unabridged release of the second book on audible, which I will snap up immediately, since this left such a massive cliffhanger that I need to know what goes on next!


On other notes I have much stuff to update this blog with, including visit from Miss Franklin, the DNP conference and probably some gaming conventions soon! So stay tuned for when I have time to do those!

My next audiobook will be Rides a Dread Legion by Raymond E. Feist, I am getting a little behind, but work has calmed down slightly now after the DNP and I should be able to keep up with the audiobooks.

and now for a classic...

                                                              ^
Also, now on over 1,000 views. Awesome! ^
Achievement Unlocked!