...needs a pair.

Seriously, that was my second bierfest (second? I think...) and there I was, in jeans. Not cool for someone in Bayern. Even four of the girls at our table were wearing lederhosen! Soon after sitting down, one of them leaned over and warned me that the beer is quite strong. (I told her not to worry -- that I'm Canadian, and thus can hold my drink.) For the beer aficionatos, my wikipedia research has lead me to conclude that starkbier is the same as bockbier. From personal inquiries, bockbier is a type of starkbier. Regardless, go lent go!

This last week was another frustrating one at work. It involved some things at the end of their duty cycle breaking and then some confusing things that inhibited us from cleaning our sample. In theory, the experiment I want to do is quite simple. This just added to the overall frustration. In fact, there's only one thing saving my sanity. For over a year I watched one of my friends, who is a better experimental scientist than I am, wrestle over a similar problem. He ended up solving it and wrote a beautiful thesis. Clearly intelligent people sometimes get screwed over by vacuum systems. But I'll have something ready for this conference. On a brighter note, I'm really looking forward to the conference. Bennewitz et al. will be there, and Leonard Grill is giving an invited talk. :) Good timing too. I need to be reminded why I love it here.

And, in case the picture wasn't telling enough, I took this beautiful day off life to clean my place. While I like my place, I love it when it's clean. And I think I'm going to try to enjoy the last hours of daylight in beautiful Regensburg, walking around the old part of the city. Servus!