It's been a while

Well it's been a while since I last posted to this blog, my work blog has been a bit more active, but I didn't realise I hadn't posted here since the middle of February until I started the redesign of my website. I've been pretty busy with work since getting back from India, including trips to Lake Louise Canada (amazing!!) the day after I got back from India, and Fermi Lab just outside Chicago via New York.
The India trip was pretty great. Hard work punctuated by a great trip to Goa - I still miss those beaches!! I think it really got my thesis on track, certainly all the work that I've done since built up on the work done on that trip.
The trip to Canada was for the Lake Louise Winter Institute, a nice relax after the bustle of Mumbai, a week in a Five Star hotel (the Lake Louise Fairmont Chateaux) discussing physics in a nice laid back manner, snowboarding, snow shoeing, swimming and steam room. It really was tough. Probably the most beautiful scenery that I've walked in. It was also really nice to be around people I knew - India had got a bit lonely. After the week in Lake Louise I went to Toronto to spend a week with my friend Lindz, which was pretty cool. I really needed the week to just hang out and Toronto is a great place to do that.
After the two trips away it was great to get back to Bristol and normality. It lasted a while, but then the CMS physics week at Fermi Lab came up.
Myself and Rob Frazier travelled over together and spent a long weekend in New York, before heading to Chicago on the Monday for the Physics week. The weekend in New York was pretty amazing, it's such a cool city, so big. It's how you imagine a city should be. I want to live there! Rob had a friend living there who showed us the sights and sounds of the place. I think without having a guide we would probablyhve got overwhelmed.
Fermi Lab was a pretty interesting place to visit, and I enjoyed working there for the week. We went out into the city one night for some Persian food, which was very tasty and spent a couple of days in Chicago at Hotel 71 after the conference which was pretty nice. It was a shame that it was just me and Rob against the City of Chicago, but we made friends with some Americans and ended up in a "Keg Party". Very cool. Living in Chicago wouldn't be that bad either.
I'm now back in Bristol after possibly my last trip to CERN. Works pretty hectic lots of analysis to do, which is mainly working out how to submit jobs running over the whole 5,000,000 event sample. Great fun! Right best get back it....