This weekend, as in last weekend, the San Francisco bay area is under a severe wind advisory. Last weekend, this meant nearly 100 mph winds in the bay around San Francisco, and 50 mph winds where I live. A series of rather unpleasant winter storms, gliding down the coast from Alaska, have wrought havoc on California these past weeks.
Much like the wind gusting over my house, progress in my research often comes in huge fits that knock over fences and bow windows. The several research project I work on in the BaBar Collaboration are all accelerating at an exciting and feverish pace. As I wrote over a week ago, on the eve of my collaboration meeting, I was obsessed with making progress on research I had only tasted in spoonfuls over the past few months. The meeting itself brought great ideas, and this week saw rapid progress on many fronts.
There is nothing more satisfying to a physicist than to actually move forward on something which once seemed fruitless but always should have been fruitful. I guess wishful thinking can sometimes be the savior of a project, but only when there actually is an interesting side to it. On all of my research fronts, this week brought great leaps forward. If I can keep this kind of progress up, while still keeping my health, I suspect that summer will be most exciting for me.
