Sunday in the park with Erwin (Schrödinger) - Part Zero

So, I occasionally attend the meetings of a group called “Philosophy in L.A.”, a discussion group that meets in a public “community room” in Santa Monica. I don’t remember how I first got on the mailing list of this group, but it turns out they are a Meetup group as much as anything else. At the first meeting I attended (topic: Gun Control), I made friends with a guy I’ll call Moses, and he mentioned that there was, in the same room but on different Sundays, a similar Meetup group that got together to talk about Quantum Mechanics, in case, you know, I was interested. Wow. Out of my league. But at the second Philosophy meeting I attended (topic: Loyalty), it became clear that another guy was there by accident, having gotten confused about the date for QM. No, that’s next week, said Moses, but stay and see how you like this one. The guy stayed.

Moses insisted I didn’t really need to know that much physics to come to the discussion. Many people don’t talk at all, he said. Ok. Did he sense my utter desperation for intellectual challenge? Don’t get me wrong; I love getting paid to teach dancing. It’s an awesome thing when your hobby can be your living – they actually pay me to do something I’d do anyway, something I love to do. But… let’s be honest. If my creative/artistic side wasn’t completely fulfilled in my first career in software, my intellectual side is surely unfulfilled in my second.


And that’s how I came to spend a bright and beautiful Sunday afternoon in September at the Quantum Mechanics Meetup (topic: Schrödinger's Cat and dual-something-something).


First big question: is Schrödinger correctly pronounced with a hard or soft /g/ sound? (Echoes of the big .gif or .jif debate, anyone?) I’ve always said it like the g in ringer, but the first guy to jump in with questions, let’s call him Wayne and more on him later, pronounced it like the g in ginger. Which is it, internet friends?

The meeting lasted about two hours, and I spent it in a state of almost constant amazement. First, I was here remembering and learning and understanding topics in advanced physics!!! Second, this kind of thing even exists! Random not-necessarily-scientists from all kinds of who-knows-where will gather together one Sunday a month to discuss PHYSICS! I spent quite a bit of time in this meta-space, thinking about the people in the room, and the room around the people, and how these things came together.

Serious idea: I should write a book about the whole Meetup phenomenon. I should go to tons of different Meetups, the social ones and the academic ones and the animal-related and the vegetable-related and the one for Girls Who Embrace Their Naturally Crazy Curly Hair (This exists. Locally.) I’ll notice the patterns, talk to the people, find the similarities and differences and the humor and the pain and just do an enjoyable and enlightening study of this intentional community thing that’s going on.

Serious problem with above serious idea: I’ve already used the word thing about eight times in this essay. Does anyone honestly think I could write a book?



More later, because Life. And attention spans.

"Literature is like DNA..."

My last full day in the Bay Area was spent, again, Visiting Former Students At Their Universities.  I went to see the lovely and talented Hannah at UCSC - supposedly the University of California at Santa Cruz, but I can see now why it's often called UC Summer Camp.  Totally different view of the campus than I got at the beginning of this trip when I visited another friend there.

Took some of the apparently requisite Mom-pics...

 I took Hannah with me to dinner with good friends and then dancing at Loui Tucker's Monday night Israeli dance session (yay!) and there, Aaron gave me another lesson:  How to Poach A Pear.  This guy came seriously prepared! 

Which one is the college student?

On Tuesday, I went to my first-ever 8:30am college class, because when I was actually in college, I dropped every single class that started earlier than 10am.  (Nope, still not ashamed.)  I fit right in, no? 

Before hitting the road, Hannah taught me the guitar chords for "Nights in White Satin", one of my all-time favorite songs, and thereby ended the Northwest edition of the Teach Erica Something World Tour.  So happy, so satisfied, so ready for the Cross-Country edition!

Flawless.

What do you call a prune-plum that...

One of the main reasons I set out on this particular Northwest roadtrip was to spend some time with my dear friends in Seattle, Becca and Lior (and Bailey the Cute).  Becca and I go back a long ways and I've spent the holidays with her and her family before.  A noteworthy and memorable item from these holidays?  The 

tzvetchkedaatsche, obviously.  And since it's High Holiday time once again, the Lesson Becca teaches me should surely be how to make tzvetchkedaatsche.

The what?  you may now ask.  Like I said, the tzvetchkedaatsche, obviously.  Pronounced, by Becca and her family, as tsvetch-keh-dah-chi.  Pronounced by me, all these years, as tsvetch-keh-dah-chKi.  I swear that extra /k/ used to be in there, but anyway.  You don't care how it sounds, you still want to know what it is.

It's a German dessert, a Italian-prune-plum tart, obviously.  Sheesh.

Of course, I have failed to find reference to it on the web under this name, but I have found recipes for the cake itself under names like Zwetschgenkuchen and the one at German Pastry Baking, which explains that the German word for the plums is Zwetschgen, even makes reference to topping it off with whipped cream, which they call "Schlagsahne"... and which we call "Schlag".  So, you win some (syllables), you lose some (syllables).

We made the crust first.

Enough about what it's called, RDB, we want to eat already!  Well, so did we, only I arrived in Seattle in time to eat a last supper and go to temple to hear Kol Nidre and then FAST FOR OVER 24 HOURS.  Because what better time to learn to BAKE a DESSERT?

Then I cut a MILLION plums.

We even hand-made the schlag!

Yeah, bad planning.  Regardless, Becca lived up to her promise and we went grocery shopping for ingredients and I learned how to make the tart, all without tasting a thing.  And when it was finally time to taste it, after break-fast at temple and then a seriously yummy second break-fast at an awesome sushi restaurant in town, it proved well worth the wait. 

Soooo....  (you knew this was coming...)

What do you call a prune-plum tart that complains a lot?

Kvetchkedaatche!

What do you call a prune-plum tart that does yoga?

Stretchkehdaatche!

WHAT DO YOU CALL A PRUN-PLUM TART THAT SITS ON YOUR MANTEL?

TZVETCHKE-TCHOTCHKE!! 

THAT'S RIGHT, I MADE THAT.

Teach Erica Something Lessons Two and Three

Man, I love Berkeley.  I'm definitely going there in my next life.

This road trip, number 1 of 3, is off to an amazingly wonderful start.  Great times with good friends and excellent lessons!  Teach Erica Something Lesson Two was how to play the very nerdy game Dominion.  I failed kind of disastrously at my first game, but I still learned how to play, so it counts, and any game in which I can say the sentence "I'm going to Throne Room my Festival to buy a Province" and have it make actual sense is a win in my book.

Plus, I had drank a Whole Entire Beer by time the game was halfway through and for me, that's A LOT.  That's like, RDB's Totally Sloshed (cheap date, anyone?), so I am willing to cut myself a little slack.  Lesson Two was immediately followed by Lesson Three: how to play the ukulele.  The ukulele!!  I learned four chords and one strum pattern, and apparently I can play about half of North America's popular music with just that.

So fantastic.  And that whole day began with an extremely exhilarating ride on a friend's motorcycle.  We ride for a little bit and he says to me, "Isn't it nice to remember you have adrenaline?"

  I AM A HAPPY GIRL.

the Teach Erica Something World Tour begins! Lesson One.

So, I've been pretty excited about spending much of the year traveling and visiting friends, but it's clear that without some larger purpose, I feel enough guilt about "just" doing that to impede my actually enjoying just doing that.  I can couch-surf across America for 8 months, but apparently only if at the end I write a book called Couch-Surfing Across America or something.

Probably I will end up working a significant portion of January to June (more on that plan later), so now I am really just "just" traveling for a few months, something like now (September) to December (until Winter Camp at the very latest).  I set out from Los Angeles last week and headed straight up to Berkeley to stay with two wonderful friends (Aloni and Rebecca) and see as many others in the Bay Area as I could.  Just before I left, however, I had quite a bit of time at home without a whole lot to do, something that has basically never happened in my life before, ever.  I am one of those people who is utterly behind on everything, all the time, and claims, "I've just been crazy busy lately," to which everyone who knows me replies, "It's not 'lately'; you are always crazy busy."  During that down time, I did a few very Erica-like things, like reading Roots by Alex Haley (LOVED it) and a few very UN-Erica-like things, like watch a bunch of TV.  It turns out that I cannot sit still during TV shows, maybe because I got out of the habit of watching them (it's been a while) or maybe it's that YOU ARE LAZY AND UNPRODUCTIVE voice again, or who knows what, but I pretty much always need to also Do Something Else while I watch TV.  I decided I really want to learn to knit or crochet or something, so I can do it while I watch television and finally both enjoy being a couch potato and feel productive at the same time.  When I found out that one of the friends in the Bay Area that I wanted to visit was willing to teach me to crochet, a Project was born.

It's a small project, but it's something.

It's the TEACH ERICA SOMETHING World Tour.  I got up to Berkeley and had a very fun time and lots of ice cream with RBP and AJC.  I saw a ridiculous movie, I went to an Israeli dance led by Aaron Alpert where I got to introduce myself to (and take a picture with) NOBEL PRIZE WINNING ASTROPHYSICIST SAUL PERLMUTTER.  The next day, I drove down to Santa Cruz and learned to crochet.

 
I learned to crochet!  See?  Those are Dani's hands on the left, looking professional.  That is my first practice attempt on the right, looking not at all professional.  But, you know, it's LEARNING.

It feels so good to be on the road.