Kat Volk

Gus is out cold laying across my legs in bed.

Gus is exhausted after a hard day of napping. I should not have once again let him fall asleep on me such that I can’t get into a comfy sleep position

Oh there are plenty!

I have apparently lost my side of the bed tonight. Good thing I have four pillows (Gus can only hog two at once) and enough room for me on the other side of the bed. At least they aren’t hogging my covers this time

No fun. Hopefully it helps

Oof. I hope that goes well and the recovery is ok!

I really hate joint injections because I hate feeling the pressure buildup and the numbness from the Novocain. But fingers crossed it does something

Sigh. Still nothing obviously, identifiably wrong with my shoulder after the ultrasound exam. He did find an area of worse arthritis and some fluid buildup that could be a contributing factor. Did a steroid injection there and will see if that helps

Yep, I still was and didn't realize

Echo is booping Gus with her nose as they lay face to face on my legs

Top down view of echo and Gus laying across my legs in the recliner

It’s a double snuggle Sunday again

The floof is so well highlighted!

Oh that’s so wonderful! So glad you can help the kitties and their humans!

It helps that they’re all motel style, the doors and window shades stay open, and there are a lot of people around! Still a bit odd though

Yeah. I *hate* going places where I don’t know how the parking will be. The kino show you might have to walk a little, but the back parking area is huge so there’s no risk of there being no spots

A google maps screenshot

There are usually some meteorite dealers at all of the shows! Though the place that I’ve had the best luck for reasonably priced meteorites is the days inn/country inn off the frontage road (they set up in the hotel rooms. It’s odd, but 🤷‍♀️)

The 22nd street show is better if you’re into fossils, but you have to go early because the parking can be a problem.

I usually find the one down at the kino sports complex to be easiest to deal with! The parking area is large and there are a wide variety of vendors. Maybe not the best vendors of every kind, but a decent selection with easy parking is a win

Not as well as I did back then. But I speak a bit

I think he was always in the lab on the ground floor, but the lab you spent more time in I think did belong to one of his main collaborators at one point. So still could’ve been something to do with him😂

Not the only time he likely alarmed people in the Kuiper building 😂 (there’s a story whose details I don’t quite remember about inadvertently producing toxic fumes in his lab that almost spread through the building…)

My favorite Uwe story is from when he was cleaning out his lab to hand over the space to non-retired faculty. He came excitedly down to my office saying “Look what I found!!” And proceeded to crank up an old air raid siren he had been storing there. It was definitely loud 😂

Since we are reminiscing about college tonight apparently, I guess a little more reminiscing is in order before I go to sleep. Uwe and I had offices in the same hallway my last couple years at LPL and it was always fun to see what he was up to

I bet that was a cool class

He was.

It was fascinating to do a deep dive into one person who was so terrible. Read a couple biographies and first hand accounts of his rule

Did we take that same semester? I feel like we did. But it was horrifying long ago 😂

The Stalin class also had a great final. The 6 of us in the class spent hours together studying/discussing in the student center, which the professor noticed and decided was the point. So when we arrived for the final he said “if you’re happy with your grade, you can leave. Otherwise take the exam”

For the Stalin class, all I had to do was discuss events and put them in context with other events. I can remember order/cause of events, but sucked at his lower level exams that asked for dates 😂 he ended up just letting me write a big research paper and skip the intro class exams

The Stalin class was great. It was a small, senior level history class. I took the same prof’s intro history class the next semester to fulfil a requirement and he found out just how bad I am at remembering specific dates. All the Stalin assessments were essay-style…

Five classes I took in college:

Hitchcock’s cinema
Russian fairytales
Stalin
European economic history
Russian conversation through film

(Physics was only *one* of my majors)

Yes! I hate how much mail I get from them because I don’t want mail, I don’t want a calendar, I just want to give them my annual tax credit to feed people with.