The Lab on the Hill Right Above the Hill with the University

As Mike suggested, I have a new job, in a teeny research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories, henceforth referred to as LBL. This is a new situation for me in that I've never had employers or coworkers who knew about this blog before I came into their fold. In this case, the night of my interview our SiteMeter picked up a hit from LBL and twelve hours later I was asked to provide references. On Thursday I was told that the blog did not get me the job, but I cling to my theory. Having described my new job briefly to Jeff, he suggested that I call myself Statgirl, for its resonance with Batgirl. I will indeed be "doing statistics" as my mother calls it, mostly programming at least for now. I'm only three days in but it's fun so far.

LBL itself has a lot of romance for me, fuelled by the ad campaign on their shuttle buses, which drive through the city of Berkeley with Nobel Prize winners on their sides. The actual campus is gorgeous. I rented Ang Lee's Hulk last night because they filmed there and I wanted to show it to Mike, but there weren't that many exterior shots (although the rental did justify my forwarding to one of the silliest scenes in film, in which St. Ann's alum Jennifer Connelly gets attacked by a giant mutant poodle).