I'm David Shoemaker, and I lead the LIGO Lab at MIT -- so have a vested interest in Einstein at home! I have been working on the interferometric detection of gravitational waves since 1980, and had the chance to spend some time in Germany (with the group at Max Planck in Garching) and in France (with the CNRS group at Orsay) on my way (back) to MIT. Most of my time is now focussed on Advanced LIGO, which will increase the sensitivity of the detectors at LIGO by more than a factor of 10 -- and the anticipated event rate by a factor of more than 1000. But the present LIGO is already very exciting; after 25 years of time in the field, it is so satisfying to help in collecting, and analyzing, data that will lead to a gravitational wave detection.