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Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Berkeley next
Listen to "Going to San Francisco" - check
Packing - check (but in a hurry, so not really sure if I'm bringing everything I want to...)
Passport - check
ESTA - check
Print of tickets (yes, I'm old school) - check
Print of hotel booking conformation (still old school) - check
Wearing comfortable clothes - check

I think we're ready for Berkeley/San Francisco, and a week of PhD life on the other side of the Atlantic, now <3
Below is what I did yesterday, as part of my preparation for this trip - on the first picture, the dotted line is not in agreement with the black squares, but on the second picture, it's like a perfect fit 😀 This means that the first part of my uranium analysis is coming to an end (if you ever can say that anything in science is "coming to an end" - I guess you actually really can't...:P), and I'm really excited about this trip!

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Wedding in Toledo!

- Toledo working outfit 😉 -

Happy Monday everyone! 

As you know, I came back home from my very sweet colleague Lucia’s wedding in Toledo, Spain, on Saturday.

Toledo is a town about one hour from Madrid (where Lucia is from), and according to my friend Google.com it is "one of the Spanish cities with the greatest wealth of monuments. Known as the 'city of three cultures', because Christians, Arabs and Jews lived together there for centuries, behind its walls Toledo preserves an artistic and cultural legacy in the form of churches, palaces, fortresses, mosques and synagogues. This great diversity of artistic styles makes the old quarter of the city a real open-air museum, which has led to it being declared a World Heritage Site."
Unfortunately I didn’t experience anything of Toledo this time, I just watched it at a distance 😛 But I know, after what Lucia has told me, and after driving through it on our way back to Madrid on Saturday, that this is a place I have to come back to. Maybe like September, or something? We’ll see what the Man has to say (cause next time I’m not going on my own, like I ”had to” this time, since he’s in Asia – yes, I still miss him 🙂 ).

Anyway; I loved every single part of those 24 hours I spent in the Hotel Cigarrel El Bosque, where I stayed, and the party was! From sitting outside my room at my balcony, in the shadow, looking at the old town of Toledo, drinking ice cold water and writing, to sneaking out to the pool with Cecilie at 2 AM, and sitting there with our tired feet in the water and discussing nuclear physics <3

As I’ve promised; here are some pictures from Lucia and David’s wedding in Toledo – including my choice of outfit, of course 😀

- my room had a view towards the old town of Toledo -

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I couldn't decide whether to wear my red/pink roses dress, or an apricot thing, but when it turned out that my underwear showed through the apricot dress,  the decision was quite easy 😉

- someone sent a bottle of sparkling wine to the room, and I have no idea who did it -

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Today I'm back at the office again, writing. It's pretty quiet here at Blindern now - not sure if I prefer it like this, or with a lot of other people...
PS: I still miss Anders - just 22 more days to go, now...

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Not as planned
I really hate being away from my blog for as much as I've been have lately :/ The thing is that sometimes plans change, and time for stuff like blogging goes towards zero - which has been the case the last weeks (especially the last 10 days or so).
Last week, for example, we spent two days at Brønnøya, with Charlotte, Anders (Charlotte's husband, not my boyfriend), and their daughter Kristiane. That may seem like an odd choice when I'm "complaining" about there being so much stuff to do (with Berkeley coming up in August), but those 48 relaxing hours were more or less my entire summer vacation with both Alexandra and Anders (my boyfriend, not Charlotte's husband 😉 ) so when Charlottes asked if we wanted to go, it really was an easy choice after all <3
Then there's been two non-planned days at home with Alexandra (which I of course love, but then there is less time for working, and then no time for blogging), and yesterday she went off to her father for summer vacation the next 2.5 weeks... Yesterday was also the day when Anders went to Asia for the next month - I should be honest and say that I did shed some tears.
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Now I'm off for something that is planned: my fantastic colleague Lucia's wedding in Spain <3
Right now I'm waiting to board my flight for Frankfurt, and then I'm going from there to Madrid. I'll spend the night at an airport hotel in Madrid, and then, tomorrow I'll go from Madrid to Toledo, where we'll celebrate Lucia and David.
I'll keep you posted with wedding outfit and other stuff (at least I'll try my best 😛 ), but now I have to run to get me an extra dose of cosmic radiation *yeay*.

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Forms

As (some of) you know, I'm going to Berkeley in August. One exciting week to work on my next paper, and to do some simulations of some reactors. To do this I have to fill in forms - and I HATE forms 😛 (But love Berkeley <3)
I tried to do it yesterday, but did of course not have everything I needed to complete it.
The problem was my passport, which wasn't located at the same place I was... I was at my office at the University, and my passport was at home. So why didn't I just do it when I got home then? Well, I got home just after 11 PM, from dinner with the Ludvigsen committee and the minister of education, and at this time my mother was trying to sleep (she was there because of Alexandra <3), and I didn't want to wake her/keep her awake, and besides I was exhausted and didn't even remember that I was supposed to complete my form with the passport information. Luckily I remembered to bring my passport this morning, and now it's finally done.
Sorry, Berkeley people, that I'm so scatterbrained <3
 

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Barcelona and solar eclipse

Hello from Barcelona <3

I'm here for the weekend with Anders - just him, me, some quantum physics mandatory assignments (Anders is teaching) and my Big Bang manuscripts. Mostly play, but there'll always be some work too - that's just how we like it 🙂
Barcelona is warm and and beautiful; there is wine, tapas, and basically everything you (or at least we) could wish for...except the solar eclipse. We "should have" gone to Svalbard and Longyearbyen this weekend, of course. Except I would have frozen to death. So even though it would have been great to see the solar eclipse, I´m actually choosing warm weather, palms, no snow, Cava (bubbles bubbles bubbles <3), and Spanish cheese over freezing cold, snow, and solar eclipse any day 😉

guess it was "wrong" to eat and drink at an italian bar last night - but it was the first place we saw that was open (we were out too early for dinner, really) and looked nice, and Anders wanted pizza, so we went for it...we DON´T REGRET it, and will most likely go back again before we leave Barcelona on Sunday!

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til I love my job


Happy happy Monday everybody <3
Last week (weekend included) was quite exhausting, with five different talks, one trip to Bergen, one trip to Ålesund, Lise´s thesis defence and so on… I had to do something i really HATE – I had to cancel a meeting I was supposed to go to on Friday, but I just really needed to spend my time on preparing for my talk Friday afternoon (at Ekerberg, with a beautiful view of beautiful Oslo, bathed in sunlight).
There was no real weekend this weekend (work work work, talk talk talk), and on Friday my neck and upper back stiffened (not the worst I´ve experienced, but still quite painful) - BUT...to the title of this blogpost:

Yes, periods like this is exhausting. But it is also extremely exciting! I was sitting at a café in Ålesund after I had finished my talk for NITO on Saturday (which seemed to have gone really well – they seemed happy and excited J ), preparing for the Ludvigsen committee meeting today and tomorrow, and I was drinking a glas of wine (since it, after all, was Saturday) – that´s when I realised I had been up since 4:20 AM, and also that I was actually working, but I was really happy, I was doing my job, sitting at a café in beautiful Ålesund, drinking wine! I´m so grateful to be in a position where I can call days and periods like these for my job! (I´ve worked for it, so I must admit that I think I´ve earned it, but I´m still grateful).

Anyway, I just had to tell you: I Love My Job <3
  


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Publisert 3 kommentarer til Dead tired

Good morning everyone!

Guessing a lot of you are still asleep...;) I´m not, though - I´ve been at Gardermoen airport for about 45 minutes already. Going to Ålesund to talk about physics and science and stuff for NITO, and then back again to night. I´ll be landing at 9:25 to night; so it´s really close to the epic date and time march 14, 2015 - 9:26:53 (3.141592653)... Yes, happy Pi Day to all!
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Found this video thing of Alexandra and cousin Andrea playing and dancing just before christmas - aren´t they adorable? At least to me they are <3

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Publisert 3 kommentarer til Coffee and (DARK!) chokolate
Good morning!
I forgot it takes forever to get from Charles de Gaulle airport, north of Paris, to the lab in Orsay, south of Paris... Normally I prefer to fly Norwegian to the Orly airport, which is just between the city and the lab, but this time Air France was the only company with reasonable flight times. Anyway, by the time I finally arrived at the lab, I was starving, and had to get something to eat. Then there was catching up to do, and suddenly it was 10:30 PM and I had to go to sleep because I had signed up for the morning/day shift today. I´ve been at the lab since 7 AM, and heavy doses of chocolate and coffee are needed 😉
(Didn´t have time to put on my make up this morning btw., so I look a little...hmmm...don´t really know...:P )

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So I told you yesterday that I was embarrassed, and that I would tell you about it - was planning on doing it last night, but now you know how come that didn´t happen. I will tell you now instead:
Last Friday I was on the radio, and one of the things I was talking about was the amount of radioactivity that was present at earth 3.5 billion years ago (when life started). So I was talking about the half-lives of thorium-232, uranium-238 and uranium-235. 
Thorium-232 has a half-life of 14 billion years, so the amount of thorium here on earth is more or less the same as it was 3.5 billion years ago. The half-life of uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, so around half of what was here 3.5 years ago is gone.
So far, so good...
But then I talked about uranium-235, which has a half-life of "only" 700 million years. This means that 3.5 billion years is more or less the same as 5 half-lives of uranium-235. Then I did the mistake: I said that since 5 half-lives of this uranium isotope has gone by, there is one fifth of it left - in other words, 3.5 billion years ago there was 5 times as much uranium-235 on earth, as it is today.
WRONG! 5 half-lives doesn´t meen that there was five times more :/ *feeling stupid*
1 half-life of something means that after that time half of it is gone. Two half-lives means that 3 quarters is gone, three half-lives means 7/8 is gone, four half-lives means 15/16 is gone, and five half-lives means 31/32 is gone - 1/32 is left. 1/32 is around the same as 3%, and 3.5 billion years ago there was 32 times more uranium-235 on earth...!
My excuse is that I was really stressed the day before, and something did NOT feel right (e.g. I didn´t get the right percentage of uranium-235 to have fission and a chain reaction going on in nature - and now I know why 😛 ); but this was a "rookie mistake" - and I shouldn´t have done it 🙁

Hope you can forgive me <3 <3 <3

Tomorrow is an important nuclear anniversary - anyone that can guess what it is? I will tell you tomorrow 🙂

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Testing outfits
Hi everyone! I´m at the airport right now - on my way to Paris (not really - I´m on my way to Orsay, which is outside of Paris :P) and the fission experiment. Excited, and will tell you more about it when I get there, and know more about it myself.

This morning started at NRK, where I tested outfits for Big Bang... We start on Monday (O. M. G.), and I must admit; the next days will be very hectic. It helps to be "stuck" at a lab, though - I will hopefully (very likely) have some time when I´m not baby sitting the experiment or working on the "bridge" chapter, to prepare for Monday.

See you later! I have a confession (hint: I´m embarrassed), and I will tell you about it tonight...

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snaps from yesterday - getting ready for my lecture about SoMe at HiOA

Just LOVE the scarf - that I got as a gift from Sunniva (supervisor) after I finished my Master´s degree. Real, Russian, wool scarf <3

Publisert Legg igjen en kommentar til Who´s the scientist?
The doctors and the lawyers are (at least in popular culture) successful, nice, good looking people who help others and make good money...but who´s the scientist?
Today I´ve been in Hamar (at Hamar Katedralskole) talking about "my story", and physics and science and scientists and why it´s important and a profession I love <3 Can´t complain about the view from the train either 😉