The year 2006 was a good year. I changed my major to physics, got a new job as a nuclear physics research assistant, landed a research internship at MIT for the summer, got interested in dark matter and had the opportunity to meet Sean Carroll at my home institution.

Thanks for all these great posts; the nerd inside me craves for more and more. But at some point, you DO need to start writing those research papers!

Wish you all the best for 2007.

Oh, no…you could have broken the news about my rather intense halitosis a little more gently and a little less publicly!

I’m going to have to chide you about one comment, though: you realize that now everyone else is going to have to avoid saying that Jennifer Ouellette is “nice” because of the excessive freight of meaning you’ve loaded onto the word. The rest of us are all going to have to saying stuff like “Oh, that Ouellette person seems sorta OK,” to make sure that rumors that we’re carrying a torch for her don’t spread.

“Jennifer Ouellette of Cocktail Party Physics — she seems nice.”

Really? You should reserve judgment until you know her better.

I got my first full-time faculty position in a community college. Although the folks in this small town are very friendly and are seriously into baking goodies, there’s no one here to talk to in depth about Physics. Many thanks to CV for providing much needed cerebral nourishment.

Sean, your combination of verbal eloquence, observational powers and analytical mind can surely pay greater tribute to Jennifer than to describe her as “seems nice”! Tsk. Tsk.

Also, you managed to snag Feynman’s desk!

citrine, was that a recent event? Congratulations!

I am told that people who have met me are regularly asked, “Does she really talk like that in person?”

From now on, I will direct people here so they may discover I am more than an f-word spouting crazy person.

Andre, yes, I was only including people I had talked with long enough to gaze into their soul, like our President taught me. Have a biocurious new year!

Allyson, that was a silent rebuke to the infrequency of your blogging. Unless you post more than once a month, you’re not a blogger, just a regular person.

Do you really have Feynman’s desk???

Well, I found a new job, moved across the country, and got engaged. What did you do this year? (On the other hand, I finished an anomalously low number of actual research papers. That should change in 2007, as I’m settled down and back in a groove.)

Replace ‘engaged’ with ‘married’. I’m trying not to correlate my low output of papers with the blogging A belated Happy New Year!

B.