(no subject)

The lights on the skating rink are all green tonight; I have no idea why. We walked close to the big tree on the way to dinner tonight, and I realized that the ornaments are the size of basketballs and the tiny lights are at least the size of my thumb; I've been underestimating the scale of the thing.

Yes, I went out to dinner tonight, the first and only time this trip, in honor of being done with the meeting. (I gave my second talk this afternoon, and it seemed to go okay.) n the way back, we stopped in the lobby of another hotel to admire the magnificent seven-tier sugar-and-gingerbread castle, rotating majestically on a plinth in the lobby with a a counterrotating train running around its base. (No pictures, sorry.) It had a unicorn, battling knights, a wizard, and various other figures around the base or looking out from balconies.

I'm heading back to Tucson in the morning -- more dark and early than bright and early, I think.

The Sun puts on a (small) show for the AGU.

Three, count them, three C-class flares on the UT version of the 16th. It was only two when I checked at lunchtime, and I was happy to be able to point them out during my talk. Maybe the Sun isn't going to be as active for a while as we've been used to for the last half-century, but at least it isn't as blank now as it has been for much of the year.

Of course, when we first announced the result I talked about today, at the SPD in June, the Sun kindly produced a nice little sunspot, complete with penumbra -- and then nothing at all for the next two or three months. I think I'm going to have to work that line about past results not being an indication of future performance into my next paper. Except in broad and rough outline, the Sun doesn't really repeat itself -- and those rough repeats are long enough that we only get three or four of them per career.