Tuesday, July 5, 2016
By:
“Looks like you guys have adjusted to the new space…”
James and Stephen were throwing ducks across the hallway as Becky arrived for the week. To be fair, they weren’t real ducks: they were made of rubber. And they weren’t flying so much as falling gracefully. I think we’ve all settled into our new row of cubicles well.
This has been a very productive week for my project. I finished the text for five months worth of content, and have started drafting visuals for two months worth of Snaps. Creating the text for my project involved researching and summarizing topics in physics to a level that can be understood by someone without a heavy science background. Hopefully what I have so far fits that criterion… I’ll be keeping an eye out for any outstanding errors as I go through the material again, though. Another exciting development of the week was that I booked my tickets to go to San Diego to attend Comic Con with the rest of the APS Outreach team! This will be a great opportunity to test out the new Snapchat account, as well as advertise it as we get into more editorial content.
Aside from my project, it was a pretty busy week at APS. On Monday, we welcomed the APS’ new Editor in Chief, Pierre Meystre, with a midafternoon break with snacks and drinks. On Thursday, we had another midafternoon break with ice cream and fruit bars in the conference room on the fourth floor! On Friday, all of the interns at ACP got together for lunch with Courtney and Brad. We went to an Indian fast food restaurant called Spice 6. It was very reasonable, and pretty tasty. I’d recommend it if you’re ever out by Hyattsville and need a quick lunch fix.
I attempted to go to Jazz in the Garden again on Friday after work, but after one song, the concert was rained out. My original plan was to hang out at Jazz before heading over to the Air and Space Museum for their anniversary event, but instead I went home for a few hours and came back to the museum at around 10pm. The Air and Space was open all night to celebrate their 40th anniversary, giving tourists and locals the opportunity to see the museum in a different context. I stayed until around midnight, when my body finally started to rebel and insist that I needed food, sleep, or both.
This was my first Fourth of July weekend in the USA, so I thought I’d make the most of it. I went to a friend’s barbecue out in Alexandria on Saturday to kick off the weekend festivities. I had such a good time; it was a nice way to see friends without the craziness of being in the city. On Sunday, I went to the Capitol Fourth dress rehearsal on the West Lawn of the Capitol. I had never really thought about the preparation that happened before live shows, and this was a fun way to experience bits of the concert without the serious crowds (or rain) of the Fourth. I think the best part of the concert was seeing Smokey Robinson live.
I spent most of the Fourth itself at Georgetown, catching up with my friends who stayed around campus for the summer or came down for the weekend. The weather put quite the literal damper on things, though, and I ended up indoors for most of the day. You could barely see the fireworks from Georgetown, so I finally went home and curled up in sweats with a movie and grilled cheese sandwich for the rest of the night.
My weekend closed out with an NYTimes alert on my phone that read "The NASA spacecraft Juno has reached Jupiter. It will orbit for 20 months searching for clues to the solar system's origins." Perfect.
Isabel Binamira