The materials characterization project I've been working on for a good deal of time now recently required a new four wave mixing setup to be constructed. It had to be based around a novel laser that was built through a collaboration with another research group. It took a handful of very long days and a good deal of painstaking alignment to get everything right; if anyone was wondering why I fell off the map for a while, this would be why. We needed some photos for a report, so I went ahead and did a long-exposure card-drag through the beam path, which always looks suitably futuristic. Here's hoping I get to post an update about publishing on this work before too terribly long!