So, it is party time again, folks!

[wiseheart]

Each year this time, we launch my virtual birthday party, which starts on October 1 and ends on October 9 at midnight, sharp. The goals of the party are to post as many comments and collapse as many threads as possible, on as many new pages as we can. It is always great fun, as you can see if you check out the similar entries of the last few years.

This year, I'll also throw the real party at mid-time - and post the recipes of all the food that will be there for you, so that you can all participate if you want to. Virtual food has no calories.

Fandom-related discussions are as welcome as the ones about coffee or chocolate (just to name a few favourites from previous years), and, of course, pictures and recipes of birthday cakes. ;)

So, drop by, tell your story, post your pics or silly poems, ask questions you always wanted to ask and have a good time!

Soledad, in excited expectation




Oh, and by the way, to provide birthday gifts hobbit-style, I've got a revived story and a Kansas 2 update for you.

Enjoy!

Comments

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

We're moving several hundred miles and a ferry trip -- to the Isle of Mull. (I've added you on my personal filter so you should be able to read my post about it, if you're interested.)

How long are you staying in Belfast? Is it a three year position or have you got tenure?

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I keep forgetting that lots of university courses are now four years. I never took any physics beyond school level, though my first year maths courses assumed one was taking physics, which was painful.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I take the view that with a lot of food, if it isn't obviously foul smelling or mouldy then it's fine, though with chicken or prawns it's more of a problem. We've just finished some overlooked cherries that were dated best before 6 September and they were absolutely fine.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

It's always hard running something where you are dependent on prodding other people to do what they said they would. Kudos on getting to the posting phase!

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

It looks gorgeous! One of my mother's cousins lives on the Isle of Arran, and when I spent six months in Glasgow during my Ph.D. I had the good fortune of being able to visit a couple of times. Your house looks quite similar, up to the peak behind it! Their house has a view of Goat Fell (highest peak on Arran) in one direction and the sea in the other.

My position here in Belfast is permanent, though I have to get through probation which is a three-year period. I had my first probationary meeting this spring, and I think I am on-track; there were definitely no major complaints about what I was doing. The one thing that was brought up was that I should go to more conferences; as it happened I managed to go to one -- giving an invited talk no less! -- within a month of that meeting. And I definitely want to go to more conferences, anyway, so that isn't a hardship...

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I hadn't realised you had spent time in Glasgow -- it will be our nearest major city. I've actually never been on Arran, for some reason; it's supposed to be lovely. I've always wanted to live somewhere between mountains and the sea, and now we actually get to do it!

Going to more conferences doesn't sound like much of a hardship. Do you get funds to attend?

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

It was a problem of sorts, for the international people in my group at Uppsala University; they were generally not 'allowed' to speak Swedish at work, because everybody else's (technical) English was so much better than their Swedish. Of course, that meant they never got a chance to practice their Swedish and therefore didn't improve...

I, too, thought that written Chinese was entirely dialect independent, but my Chinese colleague here at Queen's implied that was not the case. However, I was mostly referring to the fact that the spoken Chinese is very different in different dialects.

Knowing both Swedish and German, I can see the Germanic roots in (some parts) of English; there are definitely very strong other influences as well. Sometimes knowing English actually helps me with my French, with words like 'liberty'; the Germanic 'freedom' is not quite as recognizable in Swedish 'frihet' and German 'Freiheit'.

[elmey.livejournal.com]

It's the 50th Anniversary of the first broadcast of the show. I won't have to do it again for another 50 years.

How are you doing?

And just as important, has anyone ordered Chinese yet?

[elmey.livejournal.com]

We have a ground level birdbath in the back yard, it's plastic made to look like stone, once it's gotten a little dirt on it, it's not bad looking and it's in the middle of plenty of weeds plants. The advantage is, that it's light enough to drain easily for cleaning. It's kind of nice, with a shallow end and a deep end. The birds love it, and the other day we had two deer drinking from it too.

[sammydragoncat]

I like older homes, although they do need work - but I have a decent size front and backyard, which was very important when I bought the house (I had dogs at the time and they needed a yard).

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

Yes, shellfish and chicken are definitely foods one should be extra careful of; being a vegetarian myself these days, I luckily don't have to bother about those. ;-)

Finding some forgotten cherries sounds a very happy thing to do, when they are still edible. I have had grapes, which I forgot about to the point where they turned into delicious raisins!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

My husband spent a couple of years living in Germany but barely learned any German because everyone there spoke English, and they all socialised together.

Modern English is quite a complicated language, I think; a bit of a mongrel -- there are roots in Latin, Greek, Old French, Old German and several other languages, and often there are concepts that can be expressed with several words with entirely different roots. I've never studied it but I imagine Anglo-Saxon would be strongly linked with Swedish? (I fear my acquaintnce with Swedish is limited to watching Wallander and the like...)

[elmey.livejournal.com]

OK guys, Dr Who starts here in two hours, and in the meantime, i brought the Chinese Food:

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I loved staying in Glasgow; especially coming there from Uppsala which is on the plains, I was so pleased with the not-flatness of it. The people there were really friendly as well, and I lived in a (private) student halls right next to the Forth and Clyde canal. My walk to the university took me past both the river Kelvin, and the building on campus that Lord Kelvin worked in, ending in the Kelvin building. It is funny to see how Belfast tries to claim him, as having been born here, after having spent time at University of Glasgow, which I think has the much better claim...

I did get a small start-up fund from the University, as a new lecturer, that I can spend on whatever makes sense for my research. Other than that, I am expected to apply for grants to fund my research, which includes going to conferences. So, in principle the university pays; at least I am not expected to pay for conferences myself, out of my own money.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I gather it's perfectly possible, and indeed common, to get food poisoning from bought salads, but somehow shellfish always makes me more nervous than other foods. Being vegetarian does have a lot of advantages.

I think there might be another slightly less old batch of forgotten cherries, too -- will have to dig them out.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

My undergraduate engineering degree was actually four-and-a-half years, which has been the standard for engineering degrees in Sweden for decades. Pretty much all science degrees are four year courses in Sweden, so I find the three-year degree courses here in the UK very short. It does seem we are moving towards the four-year degree being the standard here, too. There has been talk of making the Physics BSc at Queen's an exit degree only, so that we don't admit students to the three-year programme, but can allow them to exit with some degree after three years if they aren't getting the grades we require for them to be allowed to progress to the fourth year.

What did you do your degree in? The officially translation of my degree title is Master of Science in Materials Engineering, though I would generally express it the other way around as an engineering degree in Materials Science.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

In principle, I like older homes, too, but I am very pleased with the low level of maintenance required for my newish house in practice!

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

Some of the country immediately north of Glasgow is very beautiful and rugged; it's always a shock having driven through Glasgow on the various motorways coming out the far side and finding it so quickly becomes rugged. I nearly did a PhD in Glasgow but my other half of the time couldn't get a job there.

Cambridge claims Kelvin too!

I suppose one of the disadvantages of having a permanent position is that you need to apply for your own research grants, and also justify what you spend the money on! I imagine equipment in your field is large and expensive.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I haven't studied Anglo-Saxon either, but yes I do believe it is the Germanic parts of English with strong links to Swedish. I do find that the more languages (of a certain group) you know, the more likely you are to spot even the less obvious links. For example, 'light' in Swedish is 'ljus' which is pronounced with a silent 'l'; in Danish (and I think Norwegian) it is 'lys' and in German 'Licht'. Going straight from Swedish to English, it looks quite different, but taking the route via Danish and German it looks much more similar.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

when I was at university, engineering degrees usually took four years but most other sciences were only three.

Officially I have a Master of Arts in Natural Sciences but in practice I switched over the years (owing to an allergy to maths) from studying chemistry & biochemistry to graduating in pathology, mainly studying virology & cancer.

[solanpolarn.livejournal.com]

I think the advantage of not having to move every two or three years, more than outweigh the disadvantages; having to apply for my own research grants is indeed one of them. Though it is also one of the advantages, in that I get to choose what I work on -- so long as I can convince so grant awarding body to give me the money to do so... Equipment is indeed expensive in solid state physics; this is one of the ways I am very lucky to be at Queen's, because we have (since long before I started) a very good collaboration with Seagate (who have a factory in Derry/Londonderry); a part of this is that they have donated a number of pieces of equipment to us that they no longer wanted/needed. Indeed, the two most important bits of kit for my research came from Seagate.

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

Yes it is. I think the triple-deckers are always wood frame, although a number of them have asbestos shingles on the outside. The major variations include being 3 units, like ours, or a "double-bow" which has two units on each floor.

The part that sticks out on the side can have different shapes, as well. I found an online photo of the first place we rented: notice how the "tower" part to the side is like a half-hexagon, with straight walls.

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/17-Victoria-St-UNIT-1-Dorchester-MA-02125/63710358_zpid/

In our current home (can't find a good real estate site photo), that part is round, like the silos of my childhood in the US Midwest! So, the front portion of our front room is curved. Nice for letting light in, but a bit challenging for arranging furniture inside! Fortunately, the low bookcases built by The Beloved (my husband) for our first flat fit into the curved spaces, so it's quite cozy.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

A plastic birdbath is a good idea; we've been tidying up the garden over the past couple of years so that many of the pools of water that had been lying around have gone, and we've been feeling rather guilty.

Deer in the garden sounds interesting! Where do you live?

[lhun-dweller.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the pleasures of a bit of outdoor space. These designs emerged around the turn of the previous century and were, as I understand, influenced by emerging thinking about the importance of fresh air and light for one's health.

I share your love of a garden. Alas! the pine trees in back make the soil unreceptive. We had some pots of plants this year, and I'm thinking to try some raised beds for shade plants next year.

[espresso-addict.livejournal.com]

I'm looking forward to Yuletide - not done any fiction writing since the summer (hangs head in shame).

I see you've ordered in the Chinese! Yay!