Hey! I just wanted to drop everyone a quick line. I’m flying back from my vacation in Ocean City, MD. I joined my mother and my sister, Debbie’s, family in visiting my aunt, cousin’s family, and grandmother. We had a fabulous time! Check out my flickr account in the next couple days to see all the pictures! I’ll also post some of the videos I took with my new Canon 780IS to youtube! The videos from it are very crisp at 720p, and all it’s only a pocket, point and shoot!

Speaking of pictures. Check out the picture below. I’m writing this as I’m flying over southern Utah! Virgin America has wi-fi on their flight for 12 bucks. Well, I’m getting my money’s worth! The cabin is pretty cool, and each seat has a little video touch screen attached to it. I can watch CNN, a movie, play games, check out our position on Google Maps, and order a beer! If VA flys to where I want to go, I’ll probably go with Virgin!

Hello from San Jose! I’m here at Bill’s Cafe off of Willow Street. It’s a beautiful morning, and apparently, this is a very popular spot to get breakfast. Even at 9:20 on a Thursday morning, there is a brisk business. The crowd is really cool. Mostly, Latino waiters with a mix of white and Latino customers. The Latinas next to me are hilarious: they go from a Californian accent to Spanish very quickly. When they talk peronal stuff, they speak in a quiet Spanish, otherwise, it’s that funny Californian English.

Today, I hope to go to the Tech and maybe the San Jose Children’s Museum.

I’m at the Science Museum of Minnesota! It’s fantastic museum and I’m enjoying the workshop! Here is the veiw from our meeting room. It overlooks the Mississippi. It’s so small it’s cute!

In the next two months, I’ll find myself in several places: Minneapolis and San Francisco/San Jose.

I’ll be in Minneapolis for business: the NISE Network (a group funded by a grant by the National Science Foundation) invited two representatives from the Science Center. It’s a workshop for informal science educators in conjunction with research scientists. We’ll discuss new developments in nanotech and share our incites on educating the public. There’s a vast array of techniques/tools to educate the public, but nanotechnology has some unique challenges that many mainstream science topics don’t suffer from. Things at the nanoscale are so small, it defies our perception and goes against much of what we normally take for granted at a normal scale. I also hear that Minneapolis is beautiful this time of year! It should be a blistering 80 degrees!! Ha!

Next month, I’m going to San Francisco/San Jose to visit my friend, Christina. I met her through FIRST Robotics, and we’ve been good friends since. I hope to explore San Fran during the weekdays and Napa Valley on the weekend! I also want to check out The Tech in San Jose. As a technology informal educator, the Tech serves almost as a pilgrimage of sorts because it’s a museum dedicated to technology. Also, it really helps that I got a dirt cheap ticket to San Jose. Here’s some advice: travel on Tuesday or Wednesday! Round trip was on $250 on Southwest!! Sweet!