Weekly summary: signs of spring

The last week was very busy. On Tuesday I had a presentation at the Dayton-Cincinnati section of the AIAA (that's the aerospace counterpart of the more famous IEEE). It felt like attending the Israeli aerospace conference: you drive an hour north, the conference has many small rooms with little attendance, and everyone tries to be polite. It was a new experience for me, being my first conference ever, and I'm not sure if I liked it.

On Wednesday I had my birthday. As always, this is a good time for reflections on the previous year. I received a lot of emails and posts on my wall in Facebook with birthday wishes, and thanks for everyone. D and I didn't have time to celebrate, as both of us are extremely busy at the moment with end of the quarter tasks. D wished me a happy birthday, bought me two books, and we promised that when the quarter will finally be over we will have more time to celebrate.

A positive development is the vast improvement in the temperatures. The last few days have been warm, above 20 degrees (Celsius of course), and yesterday's weather was very nice. I wish I had not been so busy with work and laundry yesterday so that I could have enjoyed it, like some of my neighbors did. On my way to the laundry room and back I saw a few of them hanging outside in the parking lot, playing music and getting some rare rays of sunshine. Today is a different story. It is still warm, but we have already had two sirens warning us from the risk of a severe thunderstorm, which could develop into a tornado. And since the buildings here are basically built as boxes of cardboard and wood, a tornado can simply lift everything up and crash it down. We can hear the wooden beams attached to the roof stretch when the wind blows. The trees have not started blooming again.

Others signs of spring follow also: the infamous spring break (that's when all the young American students fly to resorts in Mexico, get drunk, naked, and wild) is just around the corner. Today started the daylight saving time ("summer clock" as it is referred to in Israel) in the US. So now, not only that we are 800 Km west of where the Eastern clock is (meaning that the sun rises and sets late relative to the East coast), now it will happen even an hour earlier. So, again, we will wake up before the sun.