Kevin's Life Story, Page 3

This is my life story for the last couple of years. All the good stuff happened on the first page - It's been bullocks since then.

I spent a few months in West Virginia/Virginia after defending at JHU. During this time, I made a few trips back to Baltimore. The last one was to join up with Erik and Sundar to record "Walking Into Windows" at The Bunker, a recording studio north of downtown. In September 2006, I moved to Canada to take a joint fellowship at the University Toronto's Department of Astronomy and the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics. Even though I am the farthest thing from a theorist you can imagine, I had an ivory tower 13th floor office and unlimited time for deep thoughts. I was generally blowing in the wind here, but did get some work done - finishing the Spitzer IC 405 project, writing a paper about molecules in a low-mass circumstellar disk (AU Mic), and helping out my old pals at BU with models of molecular hydrogen in the constellation of Scorpius.

King College Circle at the University of Toronto, June 2007. While in Toronto, I lived in the first floor of a nice suburban house in the northwest part of downtown. The people who owned the house (the Mosher/Roycroft family) were wonderful to me, often having me up for dinner as well as a visit to their summer cottage on Snake Island, which is out in Lake Simcoe. I enjoyed our numerous talks about Canadian and US politics - as well as science, education, and travel.

Sunset at the Mosher cottage on Snake Island, on Lake Simcoe, August 2007. As much as I enjoyed Toronto: the work freedom , and the unlimited travel opportunities: ( Noordwijk, Seattle, Kingston, etc), a job surfaced on the AAS register in late 2006. Applications were solicited for research associate hires at the University of Colorado for the COS instrument. COS is a new ultraviolet spectrograph that will be installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in Fall 2008. Since I am an ultraviolet spectroscopist/instrumentalist by training (and an American by birth and culture), I could not pass this up. Also, it gave me an opportunity to be in the States where the aforementioned Emily was applying to law school (although that proved to be an 'unfulfilling' motive, to put it nicely). So, I informally applied for this job, was given the last offer they made, and was on my way to Boulder.

Colorado! Lake Isabelle in the Indian Peaks Wilderness. ~25 miles west of Boulder. Visited with Ryan and Shmee in July 2008 I moved to Boulder in August 2007, I found a nice 2-bedroom condo in Gunbarrell, near the Boulder Country Club (I am ritzy by association). In a happy twist of fate, my old office mate at Hopkins, Eric, took a job at CASA at the same time. We have been working together on science and instrument projects since arriving. We (with other JHU alum, Charles) have also been tackling Colorado mountains in close proximity to Boulder - mainly in the Indian Peaks Wilderness and Rocky Mountain National Park.

(TO BE ADDED: 1-Shuttle launch for SM4/COS installation 2-witty banter)