Let The Wild Rumpus Start!

2010 arrived today, not with a wild rumpus, but with a kiss and a hug and falling asleep before midnight. Eric and I watched the ball drop in Times Square though, so that usually means it's officially the new year, no matter where you are in the US. It was quiet in our neighborhood at the stroke of midnight. I could hear distant fireworks but no one was shooting off guns or yelling wildly or honking car horns. I like it that way. In my younger days I used to love to wait up and have a champagne toast, wear a silly hat, or as I did in Florida, jump into a pool sans clothing. Now I appreciate the quiet evenings at home, watching a movie or a football game or playing a game of Scrabble. I also appreciate not having to watch the Tournament of Roses Parade with a hangover.

So on this first day of 2010, I awoke with the sun. Usually I am up before the sun, so it was nice that we got up together today. Then I went grocery shopping, came home, watched the parade, watched some football, made some homemade chicken noodle soup, and began my resolution of reading the first of those 100 books I plan on getting through.

I had two choices. My fiction choice was "Amateur Barbarians" by Robert Cohen and my non-fiction choice was "The Age of Entanglement: When Quantum Physics was Reborn" by Louisa Gilder. I chose the non-fiction book because I figure you should always start the new year out with the truth. Plus, I was never big on physics, quantum or otherwise, so I knew I would struggle with this book and figured it would be a good challenge. I was a little concerned that the end of the book contained 100 pages worth of glossary terms and notes, but got over that after looking at the glossary and realizing that I knew more about physics and scientific terms than I had remembered. Living with my mathematician step-father for all those years probably had something to do with it.

I am two chapters into the book and am finding it interesting but also realize that I still am not big on physics. The book contains excerpts from letters, interviews and conversations between all sorts of scientists including Einstein and Bohr. It has charts and footnotes and the author is doing her best to keep it an "easy" read rather than making the reader have to stop and look up every other word in the dictionary. But for me, this is a book where I am only going to be able to read a chapter and then will have to put the book down, think on it a bit and then pick it up again. I don't think this is like "Harry Potter" where I can read it in one sitting, nor do I want it to be. Part of this resolution is to introduce myself to new experiences, new authors, new ideas, and to maybe learn something or a lot of somethings in the process.

So even though the "entanglement" is sort of a "wild rumpus" in the quantum world, I'm going to take it in quietly, like my New Year's Eve celebrations.