The other day, I had a conversation with Alex about his advanced exam subject-- the Higgs boson. Last week, I watched Dan's practice lecture for his own (about finding Z particles at CERN). Anyway, Alex was explaining to me about the Higgs field and how it couples with other particles to give them mass, and then found this awesome equation, the Lagrangian for the Standard Model. The Standard Model is pretty much an overall explanation for how 3 of the 4 Fundamental Forces work (General Relativity explains the fourth, gravity), and a Lagrangian is an equation which describes and interaction of a force; so this one piece of math which was being explained to me describes everything in the Universe other than gravity-- heavy stuff.

So, this made me masochistic and I began reading all about the various details again-- I think that I might have a better understanding of how the weak force works, as well as some more details of the Higgs. And, yeah, reading these again made me really miss doing physics. I had been working to be a physicist since I was twelve years old, and having to leave the program at Brandeis just felt destructive. Well, this has been my jeremiad today... the hard part is figuring out what's next. Meg has just been so absolutely wonderful and supportive and loving and utterly perfect, but I feel like I need to be moving somewhere-- after all that she's done for me, the very least I could do is something to make her proud.

I always liked the phrase "not all who wander are lost". And I have wandered and loved it, but it's a new thing to be lost.