Sept 20, 2026

 

Dear Everyone,

I’m writing this in between periodic trips down to our basement where one of our two hot water heaters (the older one) has sprung a leak.  We moved some boxes (with cider brewing supplies), and have some towels on the floor that we (mostly Cindy) must wring out every 5-10 minutes.  We are waiting for an emergency plumber - - cheap at any price.  I hope he doesn’t have to turn off the entire house water supply. [[We only had to turn off the hot water supply. We need to get a new heater, some new piping; I hope it can be done on Monday!]]

Labor Day weekend Cindy and I went to see Coyote vs Acme, a very funny live action-animated film, based on a New Yorker humor piece from 25 years ago.  I enjoyed it more than Cindy did.  Afterwards we went to a Bonchon Korean outlet quite near the movie theater; I think the one we go to in Bolingbrook is nicer - - that one has a delivery robot.

Last weekend we celebrated Jasper and Vivian’s birthdays by going to Smyth, Chicago’s only Michelin three-star restaurant.  The hype certainly made the price quite high, and having been to Indienne just a couple of weeks earlier made me seriously wonder if the cost was worth it.  Maybe the food at Smyth was marginally better, and the menu allegedly changes on a daily basis (not that I would ever notice), but I felt that the food at Indienne was more connected thematically.  I also thought the lighting was brighter at Indienne, and the noise level was less.  I had trouble hearing and understanding the waitstaff at Smyth while they went through their long spiels on the food and wine.

Below are pictures and some comments on what we ate.

Watermelon kombucha. strongly flavored with basil

Dulse seaweed with truffle buttercrean

Masa tuille with  crab filling.  You could taste the masa note strongly

Cindy liked the champagne that went with this

Tomato tofu with tamarillo.  We both liked this.  The tomato was spongy, and the soy milk creme was flavored with marigold

Maine lobster and uni with peach.  Cindy liked this

Caviar with panna cotta jackfruit and fermented almonds.  I liked this one

Smoked trout donut. Interesting

Rainbow trout with a saffron cream sauce.  We both liked this one, unfortunately, I forgot to photograph until it was half eaten!

Wagyu tartar and venison carpaccio  in sour cream foam.  A really excellent Alsatian pinot noir with it

Black walnut cured quail egg (at 11:00), Vermont quail breast on top of sprouted porridge (see photo below.  Some kind of sweet bread with eel sauce glaze at 12:00

I thought this dish was a failure.  Weird textures and flavors.  The quail breast was rubbery, and I did not like the sprouted porridge or the bread.  The quail egg was ok

Lemon sorbet with freeze dried melon and pumpkin syrup

Chocolate foam ice cream with caviar in a chocolate tuille (clearly the chef likes making these).  Cindy liked this dessert

"Cadbury" quail egg.  Sugary

Pistachio tart and red fruit tart.  I liked the red one more.

Other than eating out, we’ve had a pretty quiet week.  We started the second season of the Gentleman, but Cindy doesn’t like it, and I’m not sure I will finish it.  Guy Ritchie has such convoluted plots, which is fine over a two-hour movie, but maybe not so great over a multiyear, multipart serial.  It doesn’t seem as funny as the first season either.  We also started watching Witches Bay, which just recently won a lot of Emmy’s.  I’m not sure either of us like it that much.  It seems neither scary or funny to me.

Some interesting FSF fiction included Kill All Wizards, sort of a mix of Jack Vance, M. John Harrison, and Fritz Lieber (don’t let the cover art fool you), and Slayers of Old, a contemporary fantasy taking place in Salem that made me think of the movie Red as the protagonists make a big deal about being old and out to pasture - - two of the three are younger than me!

Lots of sports on for me tomorrow - - the Bear’s home opener (in the rain; we’ve had a lot lately) and the heartbreaking loss of the Sydney Swans against Freemantle in the Australian Football league semifinal (The final will be Fremantle against Brisbane; Brisbane has won the last two years in a row - - the Swans lost the final to them in 2024).

Love, H.

PS

I am appending these comments from Jasper about his three projects.  He did not like my bad descriptions of them:

In the first project I debrominate alkanes with atomic H. In the precision measurements of the debromination rate accomplished through the STM of the dilute brominated films there was not a statistically significant deviation of the reaction rate of 11- or 12-carbon alkane chains despite H striking the molecules at an average deviation of 25 degrees. The lack of angular sensitivity is further supported by vacancies appearing within the pure brominated films (particularly 12-Br which samples a greater variance of collision angles) randomly and at similar rates regardless of lattice directions. These findings taken together with higher reactivities found in gas phase reaction literature suggest that head-on collisions (direction of H propagation is parallel to Br --> C internuclear direction) are extremely efficacious and other geometries are much less so. We also find that brominated alkanes dethiolated from the surface slower (potentially not at all) than the non-brominated decanethiol. 

In the second project I am again dosing surface bound molecules with atomic hydrogen, but also atomic oxygen. This used the trans-cis photoisomerizable Azo and BrAzo. Neither molecule showed any reactivity with H or O in either isomer. When the films are heated they are much more thermally stable than alkane analogs. They appear to have a decomposition pathway that becomes active ~200C in which it is likely that the C-N bond on the sulfur side of the molecule breaks allowing N to leave the surface faster than C or S.

In the third project I analyze the chemical identity and morphology of the surface of Nb after it has been anodized in NaOH. Anodization of Nb has been shown to produce more pristine and stoichiometric Nb3Sn during Sn vapor Nb3Sn alloying. Highly pristine Nb3Sn is required to produce a better superconductor than Nb since inhomogeneities within the surface alloy act as hot spots causing the superconducting field to break down. I show that the anodized surface is about 10 times rougher than a non-anodized surface which allows for a greater number of nucleation sites, therefore improving Sn homogeneity. I also show that the anodized surface reduces (Nb2O5 --> NbO) at higher temperatures than the non-anodized surface. In Sn vapor alloying a cavity is heated in a big vacuum furnace with some Sn on the inside. To get the Sn to vaporize and coat the Nb you have to heat the entire thing up so the Nb surface is the same temp as the vapor (~500C during this step of cavity preparation). My results show that during this period (which sees the greatest density of Sn vapor) the surface of an anodized cavity is Nb2O5, in contrast to prior beliefs and non-anodized cavities whose surface is NbO during this step. My collaborator did some calculations that show that Nb2O5 is better for the retention of Sn, and better for preparing Sn to wet the Nb surface and alloy. I also show that anodization in NaOH forces Na incorporation into the Nb surface. The role and effects of Na is unknown.