Fallingwater

Before returning from Pennsylvania, we visited the famous 1930's Frank Lloyd Wright construction, Fallingwater. The huge horizontal slab floors/terraces are cantilevered directly over a waterfall. My favourite design element? The retractable-glass covered stairs from the lounge down to the river above the falls.

Warhol Gallery

Artworks by the Pittsburgh native not on display in more important art galleries have been assembled to form the Andy Warhol gallery.

Pittsburgh

Escaping Chicago for the Pittsburgh Diffraction Conference.

Caution

Burning the candle at both ends, and in the middle too, with 4 experiments at once. Probably preferable to consecutive experiments but only just.

Brrrr

Its cold. Freezing in fact. We got the first dusting of snow for the winter today which is incidentally the earliest on record in Chicago. I hear there's a heatwave in Sydney.

Midway-BWI-BWI-Midway

An early start (4am) to Maryland for the day to meet with collaborators. We attempted to form an outline for a paper, but with endless digressions we didn't progress much beyond the title.

Argonne Open House

The usually highly secure Argonne gates were thrown wide open today for the "open house" - an exercise in PR. Massive tents were pitched and shuttle buses hired to ferry people around site. Even the APS was opened to the public as Peter Lee explained synchrotron science to all.
	Being on experiments again over the weekend, the open house provided a welcome diversion. On top of getting "thermal portraits", we wandered through exhibits from Argonne divisions we'd never heard of, amassing high quality souvenirs emblazened with the Argonne logo (including playing cards with 52 protein structures solved at the APS).

Rain

After unseasonably heavy rainfall in Chicago, puddles occupy any slight depression in the otherwise flat landscape. The oval where geese normally munch grass is now their new pond.