owsome

Today, I did a lot of fun things. Some were huge and exciting. Others were little and relaxing. All of it was great.

• This morning began with the Brookhaven PhotoWalk, where we took 50 amateur and professional photographers on a tour of the cool facilities at the lab. I liveblogged the whole thing, and had a blast hanging out in the RHIC tunnel, seeing the STAR and PHENIX detectors, and also visiting the cool equipment at the National Synchrotron Light Source and its huge cousin, NSLS II. 
• After the event, I was exhausted (corralling tour groups and answering questions all while being super excited about how surreal it is that I get to work at this awesome lab sapped my energy) so I came home and sat in the sun on my porch and watched an enormous spider build a crazy-elaborate web. It took him about half an hour to finish it. I’m usually terrified of enormous spiders, but there was something really nice about watching this creature work hard at making something beautiful and useful. 
• There’s a metaphor about my own life in there somewhere that I’m too tired to find. Eh, oh well. 
• I also did a Google+ Hangout with Toph and Charlie, where Toph basically made me die laughing while he was playing around with the effects: 

So, you know, fantastic day.