I judged the California State Science Fair this year. It was my second time. Last year, I judged in the Junior (6th-8th grade) Material Sciences category. This year, I judged the Junior Physics and Astronomy category. We had about 12 or 13 judges in our category, ably managed by our chairman. The young student I thought was best was the top vote-getter among our judges, so she won first place for her homemade cosmic ray (cloud chamber) experiment. The rest of the top four and honorable mentions were also very good, each getting multiple votes from the judges. As always, the judging was very pleasant and collegial, but if anything, this year’s voting was more efficient than in other fairs I’ve judged.
Right after the CA State Science Fair, I drove straight to LAX and took a plane to Baltimore, to attend a celebration celebrating the career of an old mentor and colleague of mine, Bob Streitmatter. Bob was the PI on the IMAX experiment on which I got my PhD, and I and many others have a tremendous amount of affection for him. He actually retired a few years ago, but this celebration was a bit late. (He’s in the green shirt in the center of the photo above.)
I was scheduled to get into BWI at 1 AM on Wednesday morning, but my second leg flight from Denver was delayed an hour, and when I finally arrived at BWI at 2 AM, it took a good 15 minutes for the rental car shuttle to pick me up. Perhaps because of the late hour, I got assigned a Mercedes E-class something or other, and all the buttons and other electronic controls were more than a little unfamiliar. I got into my hotel room at 3 AM.
The meeting started early, but I arrived around 9 AM, as the talks were already underway. It was nice to see so many old colleagues, including a couple of German fellow former grad students from the IMAX days who Skyped in — Wolfgang Menn and Olaf Reimer. I also got to see Manfred Simon, Dietrich Muller (my old mentor from U. Chicago), Steve Stochaj, Don Righter, Jon Ormes, Georgia de Nolfo, Louis Barbier, John Krizmanic, Kenichi Sakai, Makoto Sasaki, Eric Christian, and John Mitchell (the last four of whom I work with regularly). Dick had also flown in from Caltech.
Of course, topping it all off was seeing Bob again. Because of my work and travel for the previous 24 hours, I was dozing at the edge of the room, and after lunch, I fell right asleep in my chair. I woke to the words “Wake up, Allan!” I jerked awake, took a look at the guy who woke me up, and thought “What the hell happened to John Krizmanic?” I shook off the sleep and recognized Bob, and we chatted a while. I gave him the unfortunate news of Steve Schindler’s passing last year, which apparently he hadn’t known. He told me a story of how Steve once surreptitiously lubricated a pin or something overnight with Vaseline so that it wouldn’t get stuck during balloon launch the next day.
After the day’s talks, which were full of fond reminiscences, I went back to my hotel for a brief nap, and then I joined the rest for Chinese dinner at the Royal Jade Chinese Restaurant near the others’ hotel.
J had his First Communion on Saturday. Unfortunately, while we were able to make W’s schedule work out for readings tryouts and rehearsals when he had his First Communion, we couldn’t work it out for J. Still, it was nice to finally get that one done. Now he can take Communion regularly.
After J's First Communion and lunch, we went to their school for the semi-annual Family Fair fundraiser. Lots of entertainment booths, games, and food. Of course, it was blazing hot, and I was still tired from the previous week, so I dropped the boys off (Hsuan had gone separately), and then I went home for a nap. Later, I came to pick up W, because he wouldn’t be able to go to Sunday Mass, and together we went to Saturday vigil mass at St. Philip in Pasadena.
The reason W couldn’t go to Sunday Mass was that he was scheduled to do a day-long service project with his Boy Scout troop for the San Marino Little League. I brought J to Sunday Mass while Hsuan dropped W off in San Marino, then Hsuan picked J up while I went to W’s Sunday School class to help teach. I then went to San Marino to provide afternoon adult supervision (along with two other dads). W is second from the right in the photo.
The Boy Scouts worked for the Little League operations manager and cleaned and helped reorganize a lot of storage sheds. It was hot, sweaty, dusty work, but they did the job. I didn’t just supervise. While the boys may be in much better cardiovascular fitness than I am, I have far more muscle mass than any one of them, so I helped with a lot of heavy lifting.
Afterwards, and after stopping at home to shower and change, we went to the boys’ school where J's Cub Scout pack was having its annual Blue and Gold dinner. I had W dress in his Class A uniform so he could help welcome transitioning Webelos scouts into the Boy Scout Troop. J is in the center of the photo, looking off to the right (his left).