Good news - the world won't end in mid 2008!

Pregnancy does some strange things to your anxiety levels. It makes you wonder incessantly what the future holds, and whether the world will be worth living in. The question of whether the Large Hadron Collider will bring an end to the earth or indeed the universe by creating a stable black hole or another big bang has been occupying my mind lately. Here Mike from CERN allays my fears. And well.


Hi Rebecca,

Don't worry - the end isn't nigh! On a sub-atomic scale, the energies of
our protons are pretty high, but in fact they are equivalent to the
energy of a gently moving fly. So on a cosmological scale it's pretty
small, so no chance of us ripping space-time apart.

The second argument is that the universe has some high energy particle
factories (supernova etc.). Particles from these sources (cosmic rays)
have energies a lot higher than those at the LHC, and some of them hit
the molecules of the upper atmosphere all the time, with no problems
observed.

All the best with your new baby.

Mike Lamont
CERN

from Troyes to Queen's Park

We took BJ to the Zoo back in Feb. It was a dead quiet Tuesday afternoon and all the zookeepers were terribly bored so brought us ferrets to pat and arranged an impromptu show of the African birds feeding mid flight. It was great fun, but BJ slept most of the afternoon and missed out on seeing Ursula the bear.

Mum and Dad kindly minded Betty Jean while they were here so we could gallavant around Troyes and pretend we were childless. I almost convinced myself, but we missed her by the third day.

In true suburban style, we bought lawn. Unheard of these days in Australia. It's so fun being able to sit out there in the sun. I think the chickens have now lost the upper hand finally. They're in the garden beds and the lawn is again just for us. We bought some cloches so they can't eat our vegetables. I planted all our our March seeds, but I can't remember what most of them are. It's going to be interesting come Summer.

Mud

Following a complaint about blogging slackness, here is an even slacker cut and paste from a catch up email I sent a friend:

Yeah I have been slack with the blog. But I have an excuse. Mum and Dad have been here for a couple of weeks, and for the 2 weeks before they arrived I was in a bit of a frenzy trying to get prepared. It's been a while since I have seen them so I am not sure what I was preparing for but it seemed important at the time.

So, while they were here we almost lived like single people again. They minded Betty Jean while we went to the Champagne region. I think you would have loved it. We stayed in the South at a place called Troyes. We stayed at Champs des Oiseaux - the website and photos don't do it justice. It was so incredibly relaxing not to have one eye on the kid 24/7.

Oh, and we're having an Ursula/Ossi in September. It's so funny how laid back you are about the second kid. With the first you're obsessed! You devour every bit of information about babies and childbirth. With the second it's more like you're building on your family. Which is nice in a different way.

Our garden is all mud thanks to continuous rain. It's sunny for a day, then rainy for a day. But we've started our Spring planting. Melons, eggplant, tomatoes, cumin, chives, onions, lettuce, beans, the lot. No brassicas though. Don't like brassicas. Oh, except for purple broccoli.

We got some friends drunk enough to agree to minding the chooks for 2 weeks in May so we are going to Positano and maybe to the castle (Julian's family have a castle. I know. Unbelievable. But more of a liability than an asset. It is quite a few hundred years old. They lost it at one stage - they overtaxed the villagers and they revolted. The new owner, many years later kindly gave it back).

How bout you?
x

- and here is where you can email us and tell us what's going on. If you feel like it.
More soon, with more detail and pictures. Mum picked 200 photos of Betty Jean that she wants printed, so we are shopping around for quotes before we get those and my Lomo Francais printed and scanned.