Edinburgh -- Once More

So, apparently there are a lot of programming languages related conferences in Edinburgh. I have been there once, twice... and I just came back from my third time there in the past year. You can be sure the kitties didn't want me to go:

This time, however, I only gave myself two actual non-travel days, to go to the LFMTP and LfSA workshops at the big FLoC mega-conference. This didn't give me much time for fun. In fact, mostly I stayed in my room working on a paper:

although I looked longingly out the window:

But it was not all boring. I did get some awesome, spicy Indian food in my room:

and, as a treat, I passed by a place on my walk to the conference that sold gooseberries!

I had never had gooseberries before, so I got some, and they were delicious! Kind of like grapes, but different.

And, of course, no trip to Scotland is complete without a dinner with beer; the food was from the dorm cafeteria (they put us up in dorms at the University of Edinburgh), but the beer made it all better:

I Got a Job!

You may have heard that my grant was cut, and I was in danger of losing my job...

But no more! I am now working with Vivek Sarkar on programming languages for concurrency. So don't worry, mom, I'm not gonna have to live on the streets!

We're Adults, I Swear!

We've been traveling a lot lately, so this 4th of July, we decided to take it easy.

We had lots of fun at home, just the two of us. We cooked incessantly, played hide-and-seek in our apartment, and we even built a blanket fort.

The fort featured a cat annex.

Guess it doesn't take much to keep us entertained. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!

25,000 Librarians Descend on Our Nation's Capital

That's right, 25,000 of us traveled to D.C. for the annual conference of the American Library Association. Buns all a wavin'. I did a lot of work-related conference going, but you don't want to hear about that. You want to hear about the fun stuff.

I did get some sweet behind-the scenes tours of a couple of Baltimore libraries. The Peabody at Johns Hopkins:

We got to see a couple of fetish items--fore-edge painted books, that is.

This one is a first edition of Winnie the Pooh.

I also visited the Pratt.

We saw a lot of cool stuff here, but probably the strangest is their lock of Edgar Allen Poe's hair and piece of his coffin along with one of only four surviving photographs of him.

Back at the conference, I got to see Toni Morrison speak--always a treat. I was also thrilled to see Natalie Merchant perform songs from her new album, "Leave Your Sleep".

If you haven't heard it yet, definitely listen to "Janitor's Red Haired Boy" and "If No One Ever Marries Me." Especially if you are a huge literary nerd like I am.

It Was Actually Sweatier than Texas

Eddy and I recently traveled to Washington, D.C. for a conference and the D.C. heat definitely beat us into submission. This is basically what we looked and felt like the whole time:

But we did manage to see some wonderful sites.

One day, we rented a tandem bike. At least you get a bit of a breeze when you are riding.

We also visited the zoo--no surprise there. The most amazing thing at the zoo--second only to the octopus feeding we were not able to catch on film--was the outdoor ropes course they had for the orangutans. No cage separated zoo goers from the orangutans and the overhead ropes course allowed them to travel between their two exhibit spaces and decide where they would like to spend time.

The third best thing at the zoo was that they provided misting to cool visitors.

And the fourth best thing was this slipper lobster.

Alright, I will stop harassing you with our zoo exploits. We were sure glad to get back to Texas where we could cool down a bit!

Click here to check out the rest of our photos.