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Although I've been living in my new apartment since mid-October, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I finally felt ready to throw a proper housewarming party. In French, a housewarming party is a Pendaison de la crémaillère , which translates to something like "hanging of the trammel." According to the internet , a trammel is a thing that you put in your fireplace which can be adjusted to hold a pot at different heights. Presumably, in the past, one could only truly say that they had moved into a new home when they had put this very important piece of cooking apparatus in the new fireplace. At any rate, nowadays I don't think anyone has any idea what a crémaillère is or why you would be hanging it, but the phrase survives. So, despite the fact that my apartment is pretty tiny, I decided to invite everyone I know in Switzerland (aka my labmates, my boss, and the administrative assistant) to my home for an evening of merrymaking. Upon being invited, many ...

Lots of old news to cover, what with me not writing an actual update in like a month, so away we go. Way, way back -- before Christmas break -- I took the train to beautiful Grenoble to visit my friend Loren, who works there as a lab monkey, like me. Although Loren has made it into Switzerland (successfully) two times, this was my first trip to France to visit him. I had heard lots of talk about how awesome the city, so I was pretty excited about checking it out. To most French people, Grenoble = the Alps. Located smack dab in-between three massive sets of mountains, Grenoble is known for its mountainy beauty. On the mountains to the north is La Bastille, a huge prison complex that was begun in the middle ages. Loren and I -- trying to recreate everything we knew about French history -- decided to storm the bastille. It wasn't the same bastille, but it was close enough. Fig. 1: La Bastille, in Grenoble. Pretty much the ultimate snowball fort. Grenoble hosted the winter olymp...