first post!1

first post in a long time, anyway! this is for mr. anonymous, who's right -- it does suck when people start blogs and then don't update them.

and OMFG BETHY! praise the maker's mark!!

so... lots of stuff has happened. in february i went to poitiers to visit ANDY HOUCK who has gotten MARRIED to a nice french girl named adeline. they have a dog named harry. i have a picture but it's not on this computer so i'll post it sometime soon. anyway it was cool; we drank a LOT, ate a LOT, and i brought so much food/wine back with me that i had to get a second suitcase.

at this moment i'm making a batch of silica microspheres like these according to the stober technique. in the boring part where i have to wash and centrifuge them over and over. presumably they are going to be pretty crappy - i.e. polydisperse - so i'm going to try to use them for fractionation experiments. want to come up with a nice way of getting rid of extra-large or extra-small spheres since they cause cracks/dislocations when they're used to grow an opal.

i'm hungry!