Halloween Housewarming

Halloween night marked exactly three months in the house.  (Though Matt was only around for five of those weeks.)  At that point our transforming home had taken enough shape to coral friends, their kids and some costumes for a fun evening together under our very own roof.  Mom was also in town visiting and had fun putting names with faces.  She was a great help with food prep too!  We feasted on our traditional pot of Halloween chili as well as white chicken chili, potato soup, homemade pumpkin bread, other little finger foods and 87 tons of candy.  Really.  I think Matt ate Laffy Taffy for breakfast the entire following week.   But anywho... we were both so happy to give our home a good first dose of people and messes and memories!

Symmetry and the Standard Model

If you're looking for a good book, I don't recommend this one.  But it's still one of my favorites :)

What started in graduate school as a small personal project, over time grew into a book publishing contract in New York City.  With lots of patience and help from various qualified folks, there is now a hardback textbook floating around in academia with my husband's name on it!  And I'm so very proud.  It's the first in a series, so this will be a project on Matt's radar for quite some time.  A hobby with commitment.

Again, it's a physics textbook, BUT if you're curious and want to take a peek past the cover you can do so on Amazon,  Barnes & Noble and the publisher's website, Springer.  

"Symmetry and the Standard Model: Mathematics and Particle Physics, by Matthew Robinson, is the first volume of a series intended to teach math in a way that is catered to physicists. Following a brief review of classical physics at the undergraduate level and a preview of particle physics from an experimentalist's perspective, the text systematically lays the mathematical groundwork for an algebraic understanding of the Standard Model of Particle Physics. It then concludes with an overview of the extensions of the previous ideas to physics beyond the Standard Model. The text is geared toward advanced undergraduate students and first-year graduate students."