Lisa sent me a couple of links that are pretty cool. They let you generate a map of all of the places you’ve been. There are two versions: one for the world and one for the United States. Below are my maps. Most of my travel has been confined to either the western US or western Europe.  I didn’t include places where at most I was just in their airport (Kentucky) or just peeked in and out (Montana).

create your own visited countries map.

create your own visited states map.

I think if people generate their own map and put the link in the comments, it should show up.  It would be cool if someone tried it.

I just got back from a one-week trip to the UK for a work trip. This is the shortest trip I’ve done overseas. Usually, I like to go for two weeks, just to make the adjustment to the timezone worth it. But, as I’ve got too many things to do back home, I kept this one short. In the end, I think it will be fine. While I had a struggle at times staying awake, I made it through.

The purpose of the trip was to attend and present at a workshop on accelerated molecular dynamics and long time scale simulations. That was the subject of my postdoc at Los Alamos. The idea was to bring together many of the people involved in this research and give the ideas greater exposure in the UK. Most of the talks were very interesting. There were a lot of neat new ideas presented. It was hosted at Loughborough University, in north/central England. They have a wonderful campus, one of the largest, in terms of land, in the UK.

Our host took us to a traditional British pub which served traditional British food. I stayed away from the “typical” fare (black pudding, for example) and got Steak and Guinness pie, which was very good, with no vegetables and extra mashed potatoes.

After Loughborough, I headed to London to spend a day with a collaborator at Imperial College. When I arrived, he and his students took me to a Lebanese place which was quite good. We had a number of starters, all vegetarian, and then gorged on lamb and chicken for the main course. It was very well prepared and tasted great. We spent the next day talking about various projects of common interest. In the evening, my host took me to his place for a BBQ, which he lugged all the way from America after his sabbatical at Los Alamos.

Overall, the trip, while fast, was good. A lot of time spent traveling. I flew in via Atlanta and Amsterdam to Birmingham, as that is only about 30-40 miles from Loughborough. Then I took the train to London. The flight over was a bit obnoxious as they didn’t have the personal TV for each seat. I don’t even remember what we watched. I did a lot of reading of papers and stuff. I took three books and didn’t crack a one. I guess I was too tired to read for enjoyment.

On the way back, I did have one of those fancy personal TVs with my seat. That was cool. I watched an episode of House, which is always entertaining. I saw the first episode of Heroes and was pleasantly surprised at how well I liked it. I also saw Casino Royal (I’m a bit confused by the ending, but will wait to comment on that until I watch it again with Lisa, since we have it at home waiting from NetFlix) and Hollywoodland, which I vaguely remember hearing about but didn’t know anything about. That was good. It has Ben Afleck, who I could give or take, but Adrian Brody was also in it and he seems like a good actor. It is one of those morally ambiguous tales. I highly recommend it.

Also with the TV was an onboard trivia game that you can play against other passengers, which was cool. I won one of the maybe 5 rounds I played. But, there was one question that annoyed me: categorized as “Science and Technology” they asked: what sign would someone born on October 2 be? What does this have to do with “Science and Technology”? It would be fine as “General Knowledge”, but it just does not belong in the “S&T” category. There is no science nor technology in astrology.

My wife, Lisa, has a cousin, Janet, who is an actor in Toronto.  When she and her now husband Bob got married, their friends wrote them a play as a gift.  They performed it locally in Toronto where it was discovered by some producer in LA (I believe).  They tweaked it some and it eventually landed on Broadway, where it is now called The Drowsy Chaperone.  It has been very successful, having been nominated for 13 Tony awards this year, winning something like 5.  Lisa was very keen on seeing the show while it was still on Broadway, so we took a weekend in October to fly to New York to see the show.

I’ve never been to New York before, beyond just a brief layover in the airport.  We stayed in Manhattan, which was pretty damn nice.  Our hotel was on 52nd street and we were within walking distance of Madison.  We wandered through the stores and shops during much of our free time.  We visited Rockefeller Plaza, where they shoot the Today Show, I believe.  We also visited the MOMA and the Met.  We didn’t have nearly enough time to really see either and will have to go back.  At the Met, especially, there were a number of exhibits that I wanted to see, but didn’t get a chance.  I also wanted to see the Statue of Liberty, but we ran out of time.

The show itself was amazing.  Bob, Lisa’s cousin by married, was the star of the show.  He did a fantastic job as “man in chair”.  The show itself is about a Broadway star, named Janet Van De Graaff after Lisa’s cousin, and her giving up the fame of  Broadway to marry Bob Martin.  There are the usually gaffs and confusions that threaten to derail the marriage.  But, the real story is the nostalgia for a simpler time, when Broadway musicals were light hearted.  It was a very funny show and well worth the effort of going.

After the show, we got to go backstage and meet Bob.  He was very kind and gracious, especially considering he had never met Lisa before.  But, we all hit it off well.

We had some amazing meals, especially on the night after the show.  We ate at a French place near our hotel.  It was very decadent.  I had, if I remember right, beef medallions.  They were excellent.  The whole meal was great.  It was especially nice to have dressed up and done the whole Broadway experience.

For anyone visiting NY, I highly recommend checking out The Drowsy Chaperone.  It was one of the funniest shows I’ve seen in a long time.

In September, I had to go to Europe for work to attend the Multiscale Modeling of Materials conference in Freiburg, Germany. Freiburg is in the southwest corner of Germany, near the border with both France and Switzerland. The conference was held in the University. It was my first trip to Germany and it was very interesting. Freiburg, I don’t believe, is very representative of Germany. It wasn’t damage as much during the two wars and so still has some of the old Europe feel to it. Many of the streets are cobblestone, and there is a little ditch that runs along them, creating a little stream that runs through the city.

The Freiburg cathedral was amazing, one of the most ornate cathedrals I’ve visited. It was covered with gargoyles, which was both very interesting and, from the churches I’ve seen, fairly unique. The cathedral was also covered in various carvings. Some looked intentional, but others looked like graffiti, though they weren’t people’s names, but seemed to be diagrams of some sort. In the mornings, the locals set up a farmers’ market around the cathedral, which was very nice.

The conference itself was great. It was one of the best ones I’ve been to, as there was a lot of content that was interesting and useful to me. The conference organizers took us on an excursion to some local vineyards. We tasted some German wines, which were good. I’m no wine connoisseur, but I enjoyed the wines. We then visited another city which had another cathedral, though it was no where near as ornate as Freiburg’s. It did have some interesting frescos depicting heaven and hell that were uncovered during a restoration.

After finishing the conference, I was to meet with some collaboraters in England the following week. I took advantage of the free weekend to visit my family in Euskadi.