{"id":44,"date":"2011-05-27T13:44:07","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T20:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lindacollison.com\/blog\/?p=44"},"modified":"2012-05-18T13:28:35","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T20:28:35","slug":"what-about-bob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/what-about-bob\/","title":{"rendered":"What about Bob?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Of course Bob<\/strong> is not his real name. \u00a0Or rather it IS his real name but it shouldn\u2019t be. \u00a0He needs a distinctive yet slightly nerdy name.\u00a0 A brainiac\u2019s name. \u00a0Like Franklin or Wilhelm… Archibald or\u2026 Aeneas. \u00a0(Yes, I have a character Aeneas in Star-Crossed, but he\u2019s a composite. \u00a0Truth be told, there is a good dose of Bob in Aeneas MacPherson, Patricia\u2019s first husband\u2026)<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been spending the past week with Bob in Hilo, Hawaii, where he has been working at Subaru Telescope, a Japanese facility based on the Big Island, along with a dozen other world class telescopes atop Mauna Kea. \u00a0My 63 year old husband is finishing up an advanced degree in optical science through the University of Arizona. \u00a0His thesis involves Adaptic Optics, deformable mirrors, and other tricks employed to detect exo-planets in the \u201chabitable zone\u201d of other solar systems.\u00a0 This is amazing and I would love to tell you more but I am at a loss for words.\u00a0 My brain seems to be under-pixilated when it comes to comprehending advanced physics and mathematics, but if you ever get a chance to talk to Bob, get him to tell you about it.\u00a0 He explains it beautifully. Every time he patiently explains it to me, I get it! \u00a0(The insight slowly dissolves however, like a dream upon awakening.)<\/p>\n

While Bob has been unlocking the Secrets of the Universe, I\u2019ve been writing a novel, as well as an essay for an American History course I\u2019m taking, plugging along toward a degree in History, on the slow boat it seems. \u00a0It\u2019s pretty interesting, the two of us students again.\u00a0\u00a0 Bob is very supportive of me, and I of him.\u00a0 We’re a team.\u00a0 Are we lucky, or \"\"<\/a>what!<\/p>\n

Bob is one of those brainy guys who received his degree in Physics from IIT and was in a doctoral program in astrophysics at the University of Colorado when I met him. \u00a0We met in 1986 while skydiving, which is another story, a book really, in itself. \u00a0I was a registered nurse, working at the time\u00a0in emergency care, pulling extra shifts in critical care and on psychiatric unit, raising three children, and writing.\u00a0 We were both divorced, both parents.\u00a0 We began\u00a0our drop zone romance and dated for five years before marrying.<\/p>\n

Bob\u2019s life changed dramatically when his father was killed in a car accident, in the midst of his studies, while we were dating. \u00a0As the eldest child, he was swept into the family business of making railroad car trucks, a business based in Chicago.\u00a0 Twenty-odd years later, the family business has been sold and Bob is back to his first love \u2013 science. \u00a0This time around he chose optical science, a field closely related to astrophysics. \u00a0Bob\u2019s life would make a very good novel in itself, and if I ever write it, I won\u2019t be able to publish it until all of us have been dead for at least fifty years! \u00a0Maybe I can work some of the themes and characters into my historical fiction \u00a0where they won\u2019t be recognized\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Of course Bob is not his real name. \u00a0Or rather […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing-and-publishing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1126,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/1126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madhatdesign.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}