And so it begins

Wait for it... drum roll... after two months of itching, I finally jetted off for my first business trip as a Scientifica engineer. Woohoo! Of course, it wasn't all fun and games. There was company politics, more than I'd expected, and professional niceties, and the weird pleasure of being in my familiar spaces in a totally different capacity. To be enveloped in the dark, with only the glow of highly magnified neurons seeping off a monitor, chatting science, enjoying the highlights of my old world, all the while knowing that I would be leaving the grunt work of actual research to some other poor soul: what a thrill. I think you can say this is the job for me.

And then came Friday afternoon. Sure, there was the 6pm flight home. But there was also a 9:30pm departure. And who could hold me back from a few hours out in the town, finally getting to see the place where I'd been planted for the past half week? This time it was Frankfurt, which has been described to me as "the Canary Wharf of Germany." It's basically one giant finance center, but since this is Europe, even giant finance centers have the historic old town to be explored. And I wasn't alone: this was Nelly the Neuron's maiden voyage too. Yes, we have a new team mascot. (And yes, I made its hat.)

Painting the town purple with Nelly the Neuron on our first Scientifica trip at Goethe University in Frankfurt

Sight-seeing in Frankfurt in between the storms: the Imperial Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew, Paulsplatz, Stern Kaffee, and the historic old town

A happy customer, a freshly functioning microscope, and a touristed Emilienne: I think we can count my first business trip as an overall success.

Loud and proud

June may be Pride Month, but the UK saves its biggest celebration for the start of August. And this year, the rainbow flags came out in full force to celebrate fifty years since the partial decriminalization of homosexuality in England and Wales. Pride began bright and early on Saturday morning, with grannies in their wheelchairs draped in flags out for their morning stroll (roll?) through town by 9am. (The fact that I too was convinced to be up that early, en route to my spin studio's 10am "Pride Ride," is still beyond me.) The Parade floats and drag queens were also out and about, mulling along the Hove Lawns awaiting the start of the big parade. The detour through the Lawns en route to my "Pride Ride" thrilled me, since we'd made the mistake to accept an invitation in London on the Saturday of Brighton's Pride, meaning this was about the closest I'd make it to most of this year's parade.

Snippets of Brighton's Pride 2017

The LGBT community first paraded in Brighton in 1973, though the Pride Parade didn't become an annual tradition until 1991, when it returned as a mostly political march. My how times have changed. Today, Brighton Pride a massive city-wide party, drawing crowds of 300,000, according to the BBC, and leaving the city looking like an abandoned war zone by 1 in the morning, when we returned from our day in the capitol.

You've got to credit to the party planners, who ensured that by 10 this morning, the city was sparkling (and not just from the tiny shards of broken bottles that couldn't be swept away). Having purchased Sunday Pride tickets, we hit the streets mid-afternoon to see what the Pride village party was all about. Answer: for the most part, one massive, afternoon, outdoor clubbing scene. Not exactly us. But you can't live in Brighton and never try Pride. So now we've been there, done that.

Next year I think we'll just catch the parade, admissions-free, and then wind our way down to the beach with some blankets and drinks. And how amazing to be able plan for next year! It's only been a year since I picked up our keys to our first flat in Brighton, during Pride weekend 2016, but after the uncertainty this past year has brought, it's an exquisite luxury to think about the sitting under the sunshine on the Brighton beach a year from now, and know that we can (probably) count on it. Well, except perhaps for the sun part. This is England, after all.