so, saw "the passion of the christ" today... you can read reviews of it everywhere, i don't need to tell you what it's all about.
i will say this... it's easy to make me sad or mad or scared or whatever... it's not so easy to make me cry.... and i did for a bit of the movie. when i got to my car to go home, i turned off my radio and had perfect silence for the first time in 6 months. it totally made me stop in my tracks and just think for awhile. regardless of whatever else can be said about the direction, the script, etc., etc., etc. movies that make you just have to freeze and contemplate are few and far between.
the end.
Sunday, February 29, 2004
going to h*ll in a handbasket
it's a good day when what i'm up to has no relation on the world, and then i remember what's going on in life.
my friend jenny just got sent back to the states from haiti where she's been a peace corp volunteer for the better part of 2 years. she was due to come back later this year anyhow, but now we all get updates about the looting, her friends still caught in the chaos there. what makes me lucky that i live in a relatively safe country? people complain when bad stuff happens near them, but truth is something really bad is happening somewhere at any given point in time. you're lucky when you're safe and all your friends are. mostly i'm just sad for what's going on there right now, having several friends who have good friends there, etc. mostly i guess i'm just sad for the world.
it's funny how the calendar can play into your emotions. nicole died exactly 6 months ago this coming friday. in theory, that shouldn't make my feelings about the situation change any more from one day to another than usual over the past half a year, but somehow anniversaries of events are significant. kristin (roooommate) is visiting me this weekend, and we were chatting on IM earlier. she suggested (and i agreed) that since we'll both be in the same place friday, we should call nicole's parents together to let them know we're thinking of them and just chat a little. it's a good idea and i'll do it, but i'm already bracing myself emotionally.... it will already be an emotional chat, and probably a kinda tough one to get through... it's going to be a weird week.
i'm done being all morose, i'm going to sleep. night.
my friend jenny just got sent back to the states from haiti where she's been a peace corp volunteer for the better part of 2 years. she was due to come back later this year anyhow, but now we all get updates about the looting, her friends still caught in the chaos there. what makes me lucky that i live in a relatively safe country? people complain when bad stuff happens near them, but truth is something really bad is happening somewhere at any given point in time. you're lucky when you're safe and all your friends are. mostly i'm just sad for what's going on there right now, having several friends who have good friends there, etc. mostly i guess i'm just sad for the world.
it's funny how the calendar can play into your emotions. nicole died exactly 6 months ago this coming friday. in theory, that shouldn't make my feelings about the situation change any more from one day to another than usual over the past half a year, but somehow anniversaries of events are significant. kristin (roooommate) is visiting me this weekend, and we were chatting on IM earlier. she suggested (and i agreed) that since we'll both be in the same place friday, we should call nicole's parents together to let them know we're thinking of them and just chat a little. it's a good idea and i'll do it, but i'm already bracing myself emotionally.... it will already be an emotional chat, and probably a kinda tough one to get through... it's going to be a weird week.
i'm done being all morose, i'm going to sleep. night.
Saturday, February 28, 2004
consciousness
random observation: i can't just eat candy that comes in different colors and/or flavors (e.g. m&ms, skittles, etc.) like last week i bought myself a thing of starbursts... what's the first thing i do? open it up, dump out the whole bag and put them in little groups where each group has one of each color in it. then i put the complete groups back in the bag, and then the groups that have all but one color in another bag, and etc. all the way down to the color i have the most of... then i eat them in reverse of that until at the end i have the same number of every color. am i on drugs? =P
so as i sit here eating one of each color of my tropical fruit starbursts, ... instead of working so far today i finished the most interesting book i've read in a bit... _things a computer scientist rarely talks about_ by donald knuth. knuth's a lutheran but also one of the most respected computer scientists ever... his idea is, "i definitely am not a theologian and there's not good reason to listen to me... but there are some ways i organize my thoughts that are common to computer scientists in general, and then, maybe, just maybe, my thoughts on the divine and the infinite might have some value to computer scientists trying to wrestle with questions of the meaning of life, etc."
the book was transcripts from a lecture series he gave 5 years ago at MIT. it started off pretty slow (4/6 lectures) about the process of writing a book he did called "3:16" where he studied in depth chapter 3 verse 16 of every book of the Bible, developing his own translations, and compiling what countless theologians had to say coming from countless religious backgrounds etc. after all of that, lecture 5 sums up statistically and personally what he learned and how he was affected by his "random sampling" method of studying scripture. chapter 6 deals with computer science as a whole, completely aside from his 3:16 project, and concepts from that that might help one grapple with concepts of the divine, the infinite, consciousness, and the like. the book ends with a panel of him and 3 other CS gurus discussing computers and consciousness, etc. for a bit. i didn't agree with *everything* but a lot of what he had to say did resonate well with me. it was very thought-provoking, and unique book... i'm glad i checked it out. eric commented after i bought it that he wants to read it when i'm done. it'll be interesting to see what he has to say when he's read it too since we come from relatively different backgrounds on religious issues. mostly i'm fascinated by the ideas put forth.
in the end, the conclusion was... no matter how much technology and science grow, although we can't prove it, there are generally always going to be things we don't know or understand. the goal isn't to answer all the big questions. the goal is to keep on asking them and struggling with them. the end.
anyhow, *now* it's dinner and analysis time... or algebra, depending on how much analysis wants to be my friend today. =P the (real) end.
so as i sit here eating one of each color of my tropical fruit starbursts, ... instead of working so far today i finished the most interesting book i've read in a bit... _things a computer scientist rarely talks about_ by donald knuth. knuth's a lutheran but also one of the most respected computer scientists ever... his idea is, "i definitely am not a theologian and there's not good reason to listen to me... but there are some ways i organize my thoughts that are common to computer scientists in general, and then, maybe, just maybe, my thoughts on the divine and the infinite might have some value to computer scientists trying to wrestle with questions of the meaning of life, etc."
the book was transcripts from a lecture series he gave 5 years ago at MIT. it started off pretty slow (4/6 lectures) about the process of writing a book he did called "3:16" where he studied in depth chapter 3 verse 16 of every book of the Bible, developing his own translations, and compiling what countless theologians had to say coming from countless religious backgrounds etc. after all of that, lecture 5 sums up statistically and personally what he learned and how he was affected by his "random sampling" method of studying scripture. chapter 6 deals with computer science as a whole, completely aside from his 3:16 project, and concepts from that that might help one grapple with concepts of the divine, the infinite, consciousness, and the like. the book ends with a panel of him and 3 other CS gurus discussing computers and consciousness, etc. for a bit. i didn't agree with *everything* but a lot of what he had to say did resonate well with me. it was very thought-provoking, and unique book... i'm glad i checked it out. eric commented after i bought it that he wants to read it when i'm done. it'll be interesting to see what he has to say when he's read it too since we come from relatively different backgrounds on religious issues. mostly i'm fascinated by the ideas put forth.
in the end, the conclusion was... no matter how much technology and science grow, although we can't prove it, there are generally always going to be things we don't know or understand. the goal isn't to answer all the big questions. the goal is to keep on asking them and struggling with them. the end.
anyhow, *now* it's dinner and analysis time... or algebra, depending on how much analysis wants to be my friend today. =P the (real) end.
chalk one up for productivity
dude, i'm good today.
called the car place yesterday and got an oil change appointment for today... that's done with.
called the family to discuss changing doctors issues, then called and got an eye appointment for tuesday.
these aren't that significant of things to do, until you take into account the fact that i hate calling people i don't know and i have to "rehearse" even asking "hi, i'd like to make an eye exam appointment, when's your earliest opening?" like 2 dozen times before i call. i'm weird, i know...
but 2 phone calls to businesses in less than 24 hours, i'm proud of me. =)
and hey, maybe tuesday afternoon i'll actually have contacts again.
(footnote: this recent obsession with contacts is 2-fold... (a) i'm getting tired of my glasses, (b) even if i weren't the anti-reflective coating on my lenses right now has scratched off in weird patterns making it so i have a smudge i can't get rid of in front of each eye... i'm annoyed and need new lenses at the very least anyhow... just doing shopkeeping that needs to be done... joy)
that's it. gotta get some work done.
later.
called the car place yesterday and got an oil change appointment for today... that's done with.
called the family to discuss changing doctors issues, then called and got an eye appointment for tuesday.
these aren't that significant of things to do, until you take into account the fact that i hate calling people i don't know and i have to "rehearse" even asking "hi, i'd like to make an eye exam appointment, when's your earliest opening?" like 2 dozen times before i call. i'm weird, i know...
but 2 phone calls to businesses in less than 24 hours, i'm proud of me. =)
and hey, maybe tuesday afternoon i'll actually have contacts again.
(footnote: this recent obsession with contacts is 2-fold... (a) i'm getting tired of my glasses, (b) even if i weren't the anti-reflective coating on my lenses right now has scratched off in weird patterns making it so i have a smudge i can't get rid of in front of each eye... i'm annoyed and need new lenses at the very least anyhow... just doing shopkeeping that needs to be done... joy)
that's it. gotta get some work done.
later.
tgif!
today was a good day.
(1) worried about algebra on account of possibly writing up stuff on the board i didn't want to, but he lectured the whole time and didn't ask anyone to present anything -- i like that
(2) later tonight, we had early dinner at jared's house -- quiche... very good! and it was free b/c we had a prospective student visiting (so the dept. foots the bill!) turns out the prospecive is a friend of my friend alina (budapest semester friend) who helps plan the nebraska math conference i went to last year and i had actually met her (through alina) there in lincoln a year ago... she was very nice.
(3) after jared's (dinner and playing catchphrase for a bit), eric had a band concert. the first half was a high school band whose conductor plays clarinet in eric's band. the second half was his crew. i heard his 3rd horn parts on several songs between classes and going to jared's, so then it was fun again to put it together with the whole band later... my favorite is a tune called "loch lomond" one of the other bands played last semester, and halfway through the horns come in playing "danny boy" which eric thinks is hilarious.. he actually made a face at me just before they came in with that from across the place.
(4) after all of the above, i took eric back to his dorm to change out of his tux, then we went stargazing... halfway to where we go, we realized we left the battery pack for my telescope on my bookshelf, by the charger, so we had to operate it manually... still, we looked at the moon, then found the NGC1977 nebula again (in orion's sword), then saturn and then jupiter.. jupiter's moons were arranged far differently than we'd ever seen before... usually they're pretty much in a straight line, and this time 3 were and a 4th was way off to the side... go figure.
having gotten frustrated with the imprecision of operating the scope manually, we put it up and used my star chart to find all the constellations we possibly could. winners are: Gemini, Auriga, Orion, Perseus, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Monoceros, Cassiopeia, Cephus, Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Draco, Bootes, Corona Borealis, Virgo, Leo, Corvus, Crater, Cancer, and Hydra.... and the “winter hexagon” made up of Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Castor, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel. very cool indeed.
so happiness all around... i was also thrilled to get paid today... i'm tired of my glasses since the antireflective coating is gradually scratching off, so i figured i'd order contacts online... *after* i got past the payment screen on the website i was ordering from, it asked for my eye doctor's name to verify the presciption. so here i have already processed my info, and they want that... fine... then i get an email later from the website with a scan of a form my eye doctor filled out saying "the last time i prescribed contacts for this patient was in '02" and a followup note from the website saying "your order has been denied."... blah. my memphis eye doctor retires in april, and the next i'll be there is in july... i guess maybe i need to just visit the walmart optometrist or something and get them to prescribe me some. we'll see.
reading for a bit... then sleep... getting my car a checkup tomorrow and lots of homework... dude. night.
(1) worried about algebra on account of possibly writing up stuff on the board i didn't want to, but he lectured the whole time and didn't ask anyone to present anything -- i like that
(2) later tonight, we had early dinner at jared's house -- quiche... very good! and it was free b/c we had a prospective student visiting (so the dept. foots the bill!) turns out the prospecive is a friend of my friend alina (budapest semester friend) who helps plan the nebraska math conference i went to last year and i had actually met her (through alina) there in lincoln a year ago... she was very nice.
(3) after jared's (dinner and playing catchphrase for a bit), eric had a band concert. the first half was a high school band whose conductor plays clarinet in eric's band. the second half was his crew. i heard his 3rd horn parts on several songs between classes and going to jared's, so then it was fun again to put it together with the whole band later... my favorite is a tune called "loch lomond" one of the other bands played last semester, and halfway through the horns come in playing "danny boy" which eric thinks is hilarious.. he actually made a face at me just before they came in with that from across the place.
(4) after all of the above, i took eric back to his dorm to change out of his tux, then we went stargazing... halfway to where we go, we realized we left the battery pack for my telescope on my bookshelf, by the charger, so we had to operate it manually... still, we looked at the moon, then found the NGC1977 nebula again (in orion's sword), then saturn and then jupiter.. jupiter's moons were arranged far differently than we'd ever seen before... usually they're pretty much in a straight line, and this time 3 were and a 4th was way off to the side... go figure.
having gotten frustrated with the imprecision of operating the scope manually, we put it up and used my star chart to find all the constellations we possibly could. winners are: Gemini, Auriga, Orion, Perseus, Canis Major, Canis Minor, Monoceros, Cassiopeia, Cephus, Ursa Minor (Little Dipper), Ursa Major (Big Dipper), Draco, Bootes, Corona Borealis, Virgo, Leo, Corvus, Crater, Cancer, and Hydra.... and the “winter hexagon” made up of Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Castor, Capella, Aldebaran, and Rigel. very cool indeed.
so happiness all around... i was also thrilled to get paid today... i'm tired of my glasses since the antireflective coating is gradually scratching off, so i figured i'd order contacts online... *after* i got past the payment screen on the website i was ordering from, it asked for my eye doctor's name to verify the presciption. so here i have already processed my info, and they want that... fine... then i get an email later from the website with a scan of a form my eye doctor filled out saying "the last time i prescribed contacts for this patient was in '02" and a followup note from the website saying "your order has been denied."... blah. my memphis eye doctor retires in april, and the next i'll be there is in july... i guess maybe i need to just visit the walmart optometrist or something and get them to prescribe me some. we'll see.
reading for a bit... then sleep... getting my car a checkup tomorrow and lots of homework... dude. night.
Friday, February 27, 2004
the apprentice
after not watching TV regularly for so long i'm halfway kicking myself for being hooked on 3 shows... but they're fun so i can't get too mad at myself. =P
tired because i stayed up and watched what i had recorded of friends and the apprentice until 2am last night instead of getting even close to 8 hours of sleep... but i *had* to see who got fired! i'm starting to hope troy wins.
today's another turn in homework day in algebra... i ran the first two times... we'll see if i stay in the room this time or not. blah.
happy almost weekend at least. =P
tired because i stayed up and watched what i had recorded of friends and the apprentice until 2am last night instead of getting even close to 8 hours of sleep... but i *had* to see who got fired! i'm starting to hope troy wins.
today's another turn in homework day in algebra... i ran the first two times... we'll see if i stay in the room this time or not. blah.
happy almost weekend at least. =P
Thursday, February 26, 2004
=)
BlkDeth 13: two nights in a row? surely, i am blessed!
glad someone thinks so... i guess that's what internet friends are for =P... yay =)
glad someone thinks so... i guess that's what internet friends are for =P... yay =)
Wednesday, February 25, 2004
duuude
the book i'm reading for fun right now (things a computer scientist rarely talks about by don knuth) just gave me another reading assignment online before i read the next chapter.... duuuuude!
oops
just finished writing up the longest analysis assignment ever... was all excited to watch scrubs, which i thought i recorded last night. turns out i only recorded 9:55-10:05 instead of 8:55-10:05, so i got the whole last 5 minutes... the moral of the story without the story... oops.
my leg hurts. i accidentally bumped my telescope (which sits by my closet door) as i was getting out clothes for today, and as i walked away it fell and jammed really hard into the back of my calf... i'm in progress of creating the hugest bruise ever... OUCH =(
my leg hurts. i accidentally bumped my telescope (which sits by my closet door) as i was getting out clothes for today, and as i walked away it fell and jammed really hard into the back of my calf... i'm in progress of creating the hugest bruise ever... OUCH =(
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
she lives on...
so, walking to class this morning, i caught a glimpse of my reflection in a glass door i was going through. this is a busy (and thus stressful) week so i wasn't looking (or feeling) too overjoyed,... however, the expression in my eyes was *exactly* the look nicole used to give me when i had just said something *completely* ridiculous.... for that i just *had* to laugh. =) duuuude. hard to believe she's already been gone 6 months next week...
just keep reminding me...
Galois1105: yeah, my advice is more like "there will be better days":-)
Galois1105: there better be better days anyway
Galois1105: there better be better days anyway
Monday, February 23, 2004
a party of an afternoon
so, despite only solving 1 math problem today (and yes i worked pretty much all afternoon... really), it was a good day.
scott's birthday was yesterday and he had said he was all about seeing the movie "miracle" about the 1980 u.s. hockey team since he was born during their match against ussr. we agreed to catch a 6:50 showing, and colleen (whose birthday it was today), came too! it was quality and i rather enjoyed it. from what i had heard from others they hired actual amateur hockey players for the cast, and during the game they mixed footage of their actors along with actual clips from the televised game... it was quality.
as soon as the movie was done and i had brought colleen and scott back to campus, i called eric to see if he was still up for a csilag buli (star party) since it was extremely clear out tonight... so without actually leaving campus, i just waited a few, and took him with me to my place, grabbed a quick dinner, and then we loaded up my telescope and we were off... saw saturn, jupiter, several of the stars in taurus including aldeberan, a few of the stars of cassiopeia, a double cluster between cassiopeia and perseus, and the M42 nebula all with the telescope... also did some unaided constellation finding and figured out where leo is for the first time. it was pretty cool... especially the double cluster and the nebula since those were both new.
after we finished with stargazing we brought my telescope back and then i drove eric back to campus. now, i wish the fun would continue... but
(1) couldn't find a single parking space at my freaking apartment complex... like the whole place is full... had to park down the road a ways and hope i can remember where i left my car in the morning... blah. i don't pay what i do to live here and then not be able to park even in the vicinity... dude.
(2) the roommate got home while eric and i were stargazing... in fact, we passed her coming in the driveway as we were going out... her current away message reads "outrageous electricity bills make me want to scream and never use the heater again"... have to laugh a little because my mom's comment earlier was "it's winter... no matter what you do to 'save power', unless you just turn everything off, it's going to cost more... i don't know how you seem to have a more realistic expectation of such things than amanda, but apparently you do"... i did nothing but live here and exist, i've tried to help conserve energy, but somehow i have a feeling i'm getting an earful at some point in the next few days... blah.
(3) i can't for the life of me figure out my last graph theory problem... this is frustrating because there's only so many ways i can turn the problem around in my head and i've spent so much time on that assignment this weekend that i haven't even looked at the problems for the other two assignments due this week... oops.
oh well... the stresses of a week full of classes, a spendthrift roommate, and an overcrowded apartment complex continue, but at least i had a good day. =P
night.
scott's birthday was yesterday and he had said he was all about seeing the movie "miracle" about the 1980 u.s. hockey team since he was born during their match against ussr. we agreed to catch a 6:50 showing, and colleen (whose birthday it was today), came too! it was quality and i rather enjoyed it. from what i had heard from others they hired actual amateur hockey players for the cast, and during the game they mixed footage of their actors along with actual clips from the televised game... it was quality.
as soon as the movie was done and i had brought colleen and scott back to campus, i called eric to see if he was still up for a csilag buli (star party) since it was extremely clear out tonight... so without actually leaving campus, i just waited a few, and took him with me to my place, grabbed a quick dinner, and then we loaded up my telescope and we were off... saw saturn, jupiter, several of the stars in taurus including aldeberan, a few of the stars of cassiopeia, a double cluster between cassiopeia and perseus, and the M42 nebula all with the telescope... also did some unaided constellation finding and figured out where leo is for the first time. it was pretty cool... especially the double cluster and the nebula since those were both new.
after we finished with stargazing we brought my telescope back and then i drove eric back to campus. now, i wish the fun would continue... but
(1) couldn't find a single parking space at my freaking apartment complex... like the whole place is full... had to park down the road a ways and hope i can remember where i left my car in the morning... blah. i don't pay what i do to live here and then not be able to park even in the vicinity... dude.
(2) the roommate got home while eric and i were stargazing... in fact, we passed her coming in the driveway as we were going out... her current away message reads "outrageous electricity bills make me want to scream and never use the heater again"... have to laugh a little because my mom's comment earlier was "it's winter... no matter what you do to 'save power', unless you just turn everything off, it's going to cost more... i don't know how you seem to have a more realistic expectation of such things than amanda, but apparently you do"... i did nothing but live here and exist, i've tried to help conserve energy, but somehow i have a feeling i'm getting an earful at some point in the next few days... blah.
(3) i can't for the life of me figure out my last graph theory problem... this is frustrating because there's only so many ways i can turn the problem around in my head and i've spent so much time on that assignment this weekend that i haven't even looked at the problems for the other two assignments due this week... oops.
oh well... the stresses of a week full of classes, a spendthrift roommate, and an overcrowded apartment complex continue, but at least i had a good day. =P
night.
Sunday, February 22, 2004
utilities
dude, i wish life were like monopoly and you could just buy up the places that charge you money and earn from it.
amanda asked me like a month ago if i could please keep my door shut when i'm not going through it to save power, so although i like my door open, i've been shutting it 99% of the time any more, and keeping the heat down a little lower, etc.
we got our feb utilities bill (gas, electric, whatever) yesterday and i just opened it... it's 150% of the last bill she freaked out about and i've been making an effort to be good!
i am not looking forward to her coming home and seeing it... i didn't do it, i've been practicing better power habits for the last month, as per her request, and it still went up. frankly, i don't think $130 in a month is a bad price to heat the size place we're in, especially when it's as chilly as it's been around here... some small snow in the forecast this week, but hopefully it'll warm up enough soon that we can just turn the heat off and not stress about this.
time to get some work done and brace myself for the inevitable confrontation... joy.
amanda asked me like a month ago if i could please keep my door shut when i'm not going through it to save power, so although i like my door open, i've been shutting it 99% of the time any more, and keeping the heat down a little lower, etc.
we got our feb utilities bill (gas, electric, whatever) yesterday and i just opened it... it's 150% of the last bill she freaked out about and i've been making an effort to be good!
i am not looking forward to her coming home and seeing it... i didn't do it, i've been practicing better power habits for the last month, as per her request, and it still went up. frankly, i don't think $130 in a month is a bad price to heat the size place we're in, especially when it's as chilly as it's been around here... some small snow in the forecast this week, but hopefully it'll warm up enough soon that we can just turn the heat off and not stress about this.
time to get some work done and brace myself for the inevitable confrontation... joy.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
baby animals galore =)
by now you've read me rambling many times in the past few months complaining how i'm in a funk... scott suggested a week ago that we should have a margarita night since i like those, so last night at no math night we bought $40 worth of jose cuervo, a big thing of triple sec, some lime juice, and some strawberries, and some ice, and made frozen margaritas for all the people. we made them a bit strong, i had 2, and it was probably a little too much, strength of drink taken into consideration, but they were good. unfortunately all alcohol does to me is make me tired, so i left around midnight and crashed for 11 hours. now, it's homework day.
at any rate, me and my attitude probably gets boring after awhile, so funk or not, that's not the main topic today.
brother just got online to cheer me up and sent me 3 pictures that are really cute from around our house in memphis yesterday.
(1) this is a baby squirrel that was in a nest in a tree that got cut down at brother's job on thursday. they didn't see the baby or the nest til after the tree was done... it's so small it hasn't opened its eyes yet. rather than leave it die (how's the mother going to find it in a tree that's not there anymore?), ryan's secretly taking care of it in his room when he's home, and keeping it in his shirt pocket while he's in classes at school, and bottle-feeding it. top secret from parents-- don't tell.
i know it's a a small pic and little blurry, but that's the best focus i could get it... it's sitting in my brother's hand... his wrist it towards you and fingers behind the baby just to give a sense of its tiny size.
(2) the family has 4 baby goats now: these are bob and allie.
(3) and these are mary helen and mark:
that's a party, right? yay for small animals... the end.
at any rate, me and my attitude probably gets boring after awhile, so funk or not, that's not the main topic today.
brother just got online to cheer me up and sent me 3 pictures that are really cute from around our house in memphis yesterday.
(1) this is a baby squirrel that was in a nest in a tree that got cut down at brother's job on thursday. they didn't see the baby or the nest til after the tree was done... it's so small it hasn't opened its eyes yet. rather than leave it die (how's the mother going to find it in a tree that's not there anymore?), ryan's secretly taking care of it in his room when he's home, and keeping it in his shirt pocket while he's in classes at school, and bottle-feeding it. top secret from parents-- don't tell.
i know it's a a small pic and little blurry, but that's the best focus i could get it... it's sitting in my brother's hand... his wrist it towards you and fingers behind the baby just to give a sense of its tiny size.
(2) the family has 4 baby goats now: these are bob and allie.
(3) and these are mary helen and mark:
that's a party, right? yay for small animals... the end.
...
"you're so much more fun when you're high on caffeine... why didn't you drink any coffee today?"
Thursday, February 19, 2004
am i adhd? your vote here:
just kidding.
dude, so i was up later than necessary last night. one class today and i've spent a whole afternoon since. after class, eric and me got lunch (at subway... this is why thursday is "subway day"), went to lowe's to try to buy a little metal rod to replace one that goes in the leg of my telescope tripod that we lost, were unsuccessful... drove out to where we go stargazing to search the ground for the missing piece, were still unsuccessful, went by starbucks and went home... talked quite a bit during the whole 3 hour extravaganza:
comment 1:
"i think that you have a very different way of interacting with the world and with people than like... everyone"
comment 2:
"have you ever been tested for ADD/ADHD? like not that you have it or whatever, but like you do have some common behaviors with people who actually have it that i know... but then again i wonder, how do we decide that a behavior is wrong and needs changing just because it's different per se?"
i've been jokingly told i have ADD or ADHD before and i'm in denial... jokingly... not concerned really, just got me thinking about why it is i act the way i usually do... why i almost always need to be "active" in my interaction with other people and why i get fidgety if there's not enough background noise/colors/interaction going on around me... who knows, maybe i am... but you know what... i don't care =P
ironically enough, i had decided this afternoon would be a "mental health day"... sooo much work and sooo little sleep this week that i need it... reading/lounging, and watching friends and the apprentice later... should be a party... do dah =) the end.
dude, so i was up later than necessary last night. one class today and i've spent a whole afternoon since. after class, eric and me got lunch (at subway... this is why thursday is "subway day"), went to lowe's to try to buy a little metal rod to replace one that goes in the leg of my telescope tripod that we lost, were unsuccessful... drove out to where we go stargazing to search the ground for the missing piece, were still unsuccessful, went by starbucks and went home... talked quite a bit during the whole 3 hour extravaganza:
comment 1:
"i think that you have a very different way of interacting with the world and with people than like... everyone"
comment 2:
"have you ever been tested for ADD/ADHD? like not that you have it or whatever, but like you do have some common behaviors with people who actually have it that i know... but then again i wonder, how do we decide that a behavior is wrong and needs changing just because it's different per se?"
i've been jokingly told i have ADD or ADHD before and i'm in denial... jokingly... not concerned really, just got me thinking about why it is i act the way i usually do... why i almost always need to be "active" in my interaction with other people and why i get fidgety if there's not enough background noise/colors/interaction going on around me... who knows, maybe i am... but you know what... i don't care =P
ironically enough, i had decided this afternoon would be a "mental health day"... sooo much work and sooo little sleep this week that i need it... reading/lounging, and watching friends and the apprentice later... should be a party... do dah =) the end.
i win
dude, hello 3:40am
so i got my wish... when eric finished his homework, he emailed me to see if i wanted to go star looking... it was so clear when i packed up my telescope into the car, with just a fringe of clouds on the southern horizon... half an hour later, when we got to where we usually go to stargaze, the whole sky had clouded over except for a patch around jupiter... not wanting to have made the trip for nothing, we set up quickly and watched until it was covered in clouds too... interesting observation: every other time we've seen jupiter in the last 2 weeks, it had 2 moons on one side of it and 2 on the other... this time there were 3 on one side and 1 on the other.
once there were no stars/planets to watch anymore, we chased a plane (i have a high power reflective scope, so there's a viewfinder that's just to look through to center where the scope is pointed without magnification, then another place to look in where you actually attach different size eyepieces to change magnification with it etc. eric used the viewfinder to center on the plane and then moved the scope with the plane while i got to look through the magnifier... we did that last time too... conclusion: planes look really funny in telescopes -- it's a fun game.
then, having run out of celestial objects AND planes, there were a herd of deer watching us again from 50 feet down the road, so we centered the scope on them... since the scope is reflective, the light coming into it hits a big parabolic mirror in the back which bounces back to a straight mirror to aim the reflection out through the eyepiece... if you're any good at optics, you know this means that the image you see in the scope is upside down of what you see in real life. while looking at stars or planets this isn't noticeable since it's enlarging points of light, and how the heck are you supposed to know which way is "up" looking at another planet? but looking at the deer, upside down, was hilarious... (maybe we just have a little too much fun with the telescope, who knows... we found it funny at least =P)
having finished watching wildlife too, we tried to model how the phases of the moon work with our shadows and a streetlight, and are puzzled about "new moons", but had a fun time indeed.
so that's my star-less stargazing story of the night.
now, i've written up all i'm going to write up for lie groups... colleen called earlier to compare notes on how i was doing and it turned out at that point in time (5 hours after i left them) i had exactly the same amount of work done and on the ones i asked her about her answers to, i had deduced and proved the same, so maybe working on my own isn't all that bad after all. =P
now to clean up so i can go to sleep... most of you know i can't stand working at desks and would much rather write on a book in my lap, so when at home i generally work sitting on my bed with everything spread out around me... lie groups is so tricky though that i have 8 different reference books spread out everywhere, a stack of scratch paper, a stack of real paper, my notebook, and my lapdesk (one of the greatest inventions ever)... in other words, a big mess. oh bother.
i'm done rambling for today... really... class in 7-8 hours... if i'm still up and not 100% sure on the quality of my homework, though, why do i win? because i have no more homework due til tuesday now and no majorly time-consuming plans for the weekend, so i can take a day off tomorrow after i go to lie groups lecture... that's a party... and tomorrow is subway day too! how party is that?
really, i'm done now. the end.
so i got my wish... when eric finished his homework, he emailed me to see if i wanted to go star looking... it was so clear when i packed up my telescope into the car, with just a fringe of clouds on the southern horizon... half an hour later, when we got to where we usually go to stargaze, the whole sky had clouded over except for a patch around jupiter... not wanting to have made the trip for nothing, we set up quickly and watched until it was covered in clouds too... interesting observation: every other time we've seen jupiter in the last 2 weeks, it had 2 moons on one side of it and 2 on the other... this time there were 3 on one side and 1 on the other.
once there were no stars/planets to watch anymore, we chased a plane (i have a high power reflective scope, so there's a viewfinder that's just to look through to center where the scope is pointed without magnification, then another place to look in where you actually attach different size eyepieces to change magnification with it etc. eric used the viewfinder to center on the plane and then moved the scope with the plane while i got to look through the magnifier... we did that last time too... conclusion: planes look really funny in telescopes -- it's a fun game.
then, having run out of celestial objects AND planes, there were a herd of deer watching us again from 50 feet down the road, so we centered the scope on them... since the scope is reflective, the light coming into it hits a big parabolic mirror in the back which bounces back to a straight mirror to aim the reflection out through the eyepiece... if you're any good at optics, you know this means that the image you see in the scope is upside down of what you see in real life. while looking at stars or planets this isn't noticeable since it's enlarging points of light, and how the heck are you supposed to know which way is "up" looking at another planet? but looking at the deer, upside down, was hilarious... (maybe we just have a little too much fun with the telescope, who knows... we found it funny at least =P)
having finished watching wildlife too, we tried to model how the phases of the moon work with our shadows and a streetlight, and are puzzled about "new moons", but had a fun time indeed.
so that's my star-less stargazing story of the night.
now, i've written up all i'm going to write up for lie groups... colleen called earlier to compare notes on how i was doing and it turned out at that point in time (5 hours after i left them) i had exactly the same amount of work done and on the ones i asked her about her answers to, i had deduced and proved the same, so maybe working on my own isn't all that bad after all. =P
now to clean up so i can go to sleep... most of you know i can't stand working at desks and would much rather write on a book in my lap, so when at home i generally work sitting on my bed with everything spread out around me... lie groups is so tricky though that i have 8 different reference books spread out everywhere, a stack of scratch paper, a stack of real paper, my notebook, and my lapdesk (one of the greatest inventions ever)... in other words, a big mess. oh bother.
i'm done rambling for today... really... class in 7-8 hours... if i'm still up and not 100% sure on the quality of my homework, though, why do i win? because i have no more homework due til tuesday now and no majorly time-consuming plans for the weekend, so i can take a day off tomorrow after i go to lie groups lecture... that's a party... and tomorrow is subway day too! how party is that?
really, i'm done now. the end.
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
i'd rather be stargazing
dude, so lie groups homework is due tomorrow. 7 problems.... i don't really understand the particulars of what's going on although i have a good idea of the big picture if i can gloss details... that makes so that i know enough that the problems are meaningful and interesting but not enough to be confident my solutions are right, or close enough to right to get by... blah.
i have a problem with group work lately. if i work on homework with just one other person where we can both mind our own business but ask each other questions on occasion, i'm ok with that. when there's more than that and we try to collaboratively talk up solutions, i just run out of patience lately. i don' know why that is. it happened again tonight. leigh and colleen were working on lie groups, i joined them and so did minh. finally, they're talking and talking and i didn't quite follow them so got off on my own tangent thinking... after a bit i figured, i wasn't really collaborating with them or gaining much useful info or insight out of the process so i might as well work at home where i'm comfortable and can listen to music, etc. as i work. so that's what i did... they're still working together, i'm minding my own business, not confirming my solutions with anyone, but much happier with the system... go figure.
why would i rather be stargazing? well i'd just about rather be doing anything than homework i don't fully understand, but maybe you read the entry a week and a half ago, maybe not where i commented "stargazing just got a million times cooler... ask me in a week"... so the day eric and me went to the plantarium, i finally bit the bullet and bought myself the $300 telescope i'd been eyeing for a bit. it's super cool (goto www.meade.comclick on "ds" and check out the 2130 i believe it is)... it is reflective instead of refractive, and it's computerized... there's two motors that move the scope around and aim it... when you go outside, you find a star you know through it, and tell it where you are (latitude and longitude) and what time and date it is and then you can scroll through menus full of stars, pick what you want to see, and it'll automatically find it for you... you can hook it up to a computer to download info on where like the space stations etc are too... it's completely awesome. eric and i have taken it out 2 or 3 times since i got it... i saw jupiter's moons and stripes and saturn's rings for the first time -- completely awesome! i was sooo pumped... why was it a secret for a week? simple... didn't want a lecture from the parents on spending money while on a relatively low salary while they were here, so it was living at eric's place until yesterday... do dah =)
in short, here i am, half done with an assignment i'm tired of, and i have an awesome telescope sitting across the room on a night that's clear and relatively warm (10-15 F higher than last week) and i'm stuck not stargazing... this is sad.
other completely random observation.... so since i've been living with amanda, i try to acclimate to her habits... like if i toss something she thinks should be recycled, she fishes it back out... so i'm super conscientious of keeping stuff out that can possibly be recycled and actually recycling now... dad tried to throw away a plastic bottle while he and mom were visiting this weekend, and i stopped him and made him recycle too.
amanda on the phone just now, "how can you say that? it's like against the law to not recycle...seriously! they could fine you for throwing that away!!!"
dad in response to me telling him where to put the bottle, "lar, no offense, but i toured the memphis recycling facility before with work... they were taking all the stuff people turned in, and throwing all of it away except for plastic bottles... and only some kinds of those because they were worth less money if they weren't clear.. and even only some of those since they were short staffed to catch every single one that came down the conveyor belt... the thought's nice, but the system doesn't actually do what you think it does... i have no problem throwing this away"
duuuuuuuuude... woulda been great to have amanda hear that one. whatever... it's the thought that counts... recycle the stupid bottles to maintain peace with the roommate, and whatever happens to them, happens. the end.
(was that not the most random digression ever?) =P
i have a problem with group work lately. if i work on homework with just one other person where we can both mind our own business but ask each other questions on occasion, i'm ok with that. when there's more than that and we try to collaboratively talk up solutions, i just run out of patience lately. i don' know why that is. it happened again tonight. leigh and colleen were working on lie groups, i joined them and so did minh. finally, they're talking and talking and i didn't quite follow them so got off on my own tangent thinking... after a bit i figured, i wasn't really collaborating with them or gaining much useful info or insight out of the process so i might as well work at home where i'm comfortable and can listen to music, etc. as i work. so that's what i did... they're still working together, i'm minding my own business, not confirming my solutions with anyone, but much happier with the system... go figure.
why would i rather be stargazing? well i'd just about rather be doing anything than homework i don't fully understand, but maybe you read the entry a week and a half ago, maybe not where i commented "stargazing just got a million times cooler... ask me in a week"... so the day eric and me went to the plantarium, i finally bit the bullet and bought myself the $300 telescope i'd been eyeing for a bit. it's super cool (goto www.meade.comclick on "ds" and check out the 2130 i believe it is)... it is reflective instead of refractive, and it's computerized... there's two motors that move the scope around and aim it... when you go outside, you find a star you know through it, and tell it where you are (latitude and longitude) and what time and date it is and then you can scroll through menus full of stars, pick what you want to see, and it'll automatically find it for you... you can hook it up to a computer to download info on where like the space stations etc are too... it's completely awesome. eric and i have taken it out 2 or 3 times since i got it... i saw jupiter's moons and stripes and saturn's rings for the first time -- completely awesome! i was sooo pumped... why was it a secret for a week? simple... didn't want a lecture from the parents on spending money while on a relatively low salary while they were here, so it was living at eric's place until yesterday... do dah =)
in short, here i am, half done with an assignment i'm tired of, and i have an awesome telescope sitting across the room on a night that's clear and relatively warm (10-15 F higher than last week) and i'm stuck not stargazing... this is sad.
other completely random observation.... so since i've been living with amanda, i try to acclimate to her habits... like if i toss something she thinks should be recycled, she fishes it back out... so i'm super conscientious of keeping stuff out that can possibly be recycled and actually recycling now... dad tried to throw away a plastic bottle while he and mom were visiting this weekend, and i stopped him and made him recycle too.
amanda on the phone just now, "how can you say that? it's like against the law to not recycle...seriously! they could fine you for throwing that away!!!"
dad in response to me telling him where to put the bottle, "lar, no offense, but i toured the memphis recycling facility before with work... they were taking all the stuff people turned in, and throwing all of it away except for plastic bottles... and only some kinds of those because they were worth less money if they weren't clear.. and even only some of those since they were short staffed to catch every single one that came down the conveyor belt... the thought's nice, but the system doesn't actually do what you think it does... i have no problem throwing this away"
duuuuuuuuude... woulda been great to have amanda hear that one. whatever... it's the thought that counts... recycle the stupid bottles to maintain peace with the roommate, and whatever happens to them, happens. the end.
(was that not the most random digression ever?) =P
Tuesday, February 17, 2004
what book are you?
You're Roots!
by Alex Haley
While almost everyone agrees that you're brilliant, no one knows quite
how to categorize you. Some say that you're a person with an amazing family tree. Some
say that you're just a darn good storyteller. Others say that you're both and don't much
care where to draw the line. What is known is that your people have been through a great
number of trials and that you are where you are because of hard work. You have nothing to
lose but your chains.
Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.
it's hard to be a grump when everyone else is being happy; it's hard to run away when what you're running from goes away
...but nevertheless i manage to do both.
boy, did i have a bad attitude or what the end of last week... i managed to stifle it and be good for the weekend and enjoy myself while showing the parents around, but after they were gone yesterday afternoon, the attitude was back, and worse than even before. woke up today just as grumpy, but really, it's hard not to be at least moderately happy around my math people.
ex. 1: i really didn't like the day we turned in our first algebra assignment this semester and the prof randomly called people to go to the board so i left the classroom for a bit. today we were turning in assignment 2, and i was really only happy with 3 of my 5 solutions, tired from cerca 3 hours of sleep 3 nights in a row, and not really wanting to deal with putting up stuff on the board i'm not that happy with or dealing with people, so jared told me before class, "dude, i'll gladly turn in your homework for you if you make your escape now, before the prof or any other students get here!" so, i ran off, and studied analysis in the lobby of the next building over for an hour and a half and went to my next class. turns out our regular prof had a doctor's appointment and an older grad student lectured instead (who i happened to run into in the hallway while escaping -- oops!)... so yeah, hard to run away from a class setting i didn't want to deal with that didn't actually happen, but i did manage to do so anyhow =P
so jared was nice and sympathetic to my attitude. after my 2nd class, which i did go to, scott saw me across the parking lot and stopped me before i got to my car to try to make me laugh... later, eric, who's been telling me i need to work on getting over this running away from algebra kick and over my attitude, was helpful anyhow with questions about class/homework, and even showed me some fun stuff he's been downloading all afternoon. even after my attitude last night studying, colleen and leigh still invited me to work with them and are as friendly as ever. truly, if you are going to be sullen and have a horrible attitude for a bit, this is a good group to be that way with because it's hard to stay completely down and out for more than like 30 seconds... maybe i'm not bouncing off the walls, but i am much more up than how i woke up feeling. in summary, yay for my math people.
so about this attitude... dude, i really wish i could get rid of it... like i'm even starting to get a little tired of myself... theory is that when i'm behind on my workload (i.e. the last 2 weeks), then the stress of trying to keep up gets me down, and then that stress carries over in to just about everything else i do until i have such a plethora of negative things going on in my mind that it's impossible to combat it all anymore. doing homework early -- that's the key. =P
heh... analysis time.
later.
boy, did i have a bad attitude or what the end of last week... i managed to stifle it and be good for the weekend and enjoy myself while showing the parents around, but after they were gone yesterday afternoon, the attitude was back, and worse than even before. woke up today just as grumpy, but really, it's hard not to be at least moderately happy around my math people.
ex. 1: i really didn't like the day we turned in our first algebra assignment this semester and the prof randomly called people to go to the board so i left the classroom for a bit. today we were turning in assignment 2, and i was really only happy with 3 of my 5 solutions, tired from cerca 3 hours of sleep 3 nights in a row, and not really wanting to deal with putting up stuff on the board i'm not that happy with or dealing with people, so jared told me before class, "dude, i'll gladly turn in your homework for you if you make your escape now, before the prof or any other students get here!" so, i ran off, and studied analysis in the lobby of the next building over for an hour and a half and went to my next class. turns out our regular prof had a doctor's appointment and an older grad student lectured instead (who i happened to run into in the hallway while escaping -- oops!)... so yeah, hard to run away from a class setting i didn't want to deal with that didn't actually happen, but i did manage to do so anyhow =P
so jared was nice and sympathetic to my attitude. after my 2nd class, which i did go to, scott saw me across the parking lot and stopped me before i got to my car to try to make me laugh... later, eric, who's been telling me i need to work on getting over this running away from algebra kick and over my attitude, was helpful anyhow with questions about class/homework, and even showed me some fun stuff he's been downloading all afternoon. even after my attitude last night studying, colleen and leigh still invited me to work with them and are as friendly as ever. truly, if you are going to be sullen and have a horrible attitude for a bit, this is a good group to be that way with because it's hard to stay completely down and out for more than like 30 seconds... maybe i'm not bouncing off the walls, but i am much more up than how i woke up feeling. in summary, yay for my math people.
so about this attitude... dude, i really wish i could get rid of it... like i'm even starting to get a little tired of myself... theory is that when i'm behind on my workload (i.e. the last 2 weeks), then the stress of trying to keep up gets me down, and then that stress carries over in to just about everything else i do until i have such a plethora of negative things going on in my mind that it's impossible to combat it all anymore. doing homework early -- that's the key. =P
heh... analysis time.
later.
Monday, February 16, 2004
...and now back to work =P
it's monday afternoon, 15 minutes before analysis class... i dropped my parents off at the train station half an hour ago, and by now they should be boarded to catch their ride to the airport.
it's been a fun weekend, but kinda weird.
(1) i enjoy visiting with my parents, especially mom... but dad has a tendency to ask questions or make outrageous statements and get mad when the answer to a question is "same as i told you an hour ago" or i correct the outrageous statement in question and ask "are you listening to yourself?" he means well, but he has a tendency to try my patience... on the whole he was mostly good this weekend just forgetful and repetative.
(2) mom has a tendency to see me as a friend (which is a good thing!) but then has a tendency to start telling me things about her and dad, forgetting the "daughter" aspect of things might make it so that there's some things i just don't want to know. enough said.
(3) i spend so much time with my math people, it was completely bizarre not to see any of them all weekend and hear about adventures later on... i had my own quality adventures with the parents, and i'm not complaining or saying i wish things were different... just commenting it was a different kind of weekend. =P
that basically sums it up... now to pay for having fun all weekend, i have to do homework until i spontaneously combust this week... yuck. at any rate, analysis class calls... later.
it's been a fun weekend, but kinda weird.
(1) i enjoy visiting with my parents, especially mom... but dad has a tendency to ask questions or make outrageous statements and get mad when the answer to a question is "same as i told you an hour ago" or i correct the outrageous statement in question and ask "are you listening to yourself?" he means well, but he has a tendency to try my patience... on the whole he was mostly good this weekend just forgetful and repetative.
(2) mom has a tendency to see me as a friend (which is a good thing!) but then has a tendency to start telling me things about her and dad, forgetting the "daughter" aspect of things might make it so that there's some things i just don't want to know. enough said.
(3) i spend so much time with my math people, it was completely bizarre not to see any of them all weekend and hear about adventures later on... i had my own quality adventures with the parents, and i'm not complaining or saying i wish things were different... just commenting it was a different kind of weekend. =P
that basically sums it up... now to pay for having fun all weekend, i have to do homework until i spontaneously combust this week... yuck. at any rate, analysis class calls... later.
day #3 of the grand parent adventure
dude... i am too tired for words.
got up and left by 9:30 this morning to pick up the parents for church (normally i make it outta here just a hair before 10)... church, lunch, checking out every square inch of a bird shop dad spotted on the way too lunch, and driving through all the rutgers campuses later, i gave them a tour of the math building and then we went to barnes and noble for half an hour.
the weiss's had us over for dinner... we got in around 4, visited while she finished dinner, and then proceeded on a 6 course 3.5 hour dinner extravaganza which was fantastic... around 9:15 my parents decided they were tired and it was time to drive the half an hour back to my end of the world... i dropped them off at their hotel, got home for the first time all day at 10pm, was home for 10 minutes and then headed to campus to work on tuesdays algebra homework with the people until nearly 1... now home, exhausted, and i see the parents off tomorrow..
it's been a fun weekend... cool to show them my lifestyle and all my people here, but exhausting running around and not doing my homework (so it'll be an exhausting week in general)... fun to visit with mom despite her intense head cold, and trying my patience to listen to all of dad's fussiness and questions (whose answers he forgets or twists and reasks about later) but on the whole it's been an excellent visit.
back to barnes and noble earlier... i got 2 books... super excited about 1... it's the new top of my reading list... things a computer scientist rarely talks about by donald knuth... if you're unfamiliar, knuth is (a) practically the most famous computer scientist ever and (b) a lutheran organist... this book is about what computer intelligence, randomization, etc. tells us about the divine... he wrote a multivolume book called the art of computer programming that is basically like the Bible of computer science... so not only is this an interesting topic, it's written by like the well respected powerhouse of the field. i'm excited to read it... he's written another book called "3:16" or something along that line... this is instead the transcript of a series of lectures he gave 5 years ago on the same topic... should be very cool indeed.
at any rate, that's pretty much the scoop.
gotta be up early tomorrow to entertain the parents before i take them to the train station to go home tomorrow... duuude... at any rate, night all
got up and left by 9:30 this morning to pick up the parents for church (normally i make it outta here just a hair before 10)... church, lunch, checking out every square inch of a bird shop dad spotted on the way too lunch, and driving through all the rutgers campuses later, i gave them a tour of the math building and then we went to barnes and noble for half an hour.
the weiss's had us over for dinner... we got in around 4, visited while she finished dinner, and then proceeded on a 6 course 3.5 hour dinner extravaganza which was fantastic... around 9:15 my parents decided they were tired and it was time to drive the half an hour back to my end of the world... i dropped them off at their hotel, got home for the first time all day at 10pm, was home for 10 minutes and then headed to campus to work on tuesdays algebra homework with the people until nearly 1... now home, exhausted, and i see the parents off tomorrow..
it's been a fun weekend... cool to show them my lifestyle and all my people here, but exhausting running around and not doing my homework (so it'll be an exhausting week in general)... fun to visit with mom despite her intense head cold, and trying my patience to listen to all of dad's fussiness and questions (whose answers he forgets or twists and reasks about later) but on the whole it's been an excellent visit.
back to barnes and noble earlier... i got 2 books... super excited about 1... it's the new top of my reading list... things a computer scientist rarely talks about by donald knuth... if you're unfamiliar, knuth is (a) practically the most famous computer scientist ever and (b) a lutheran organist... this book is about what computer intelligence, randomization, etc. tells us about the divine... he wrote a multivolume book called the art of computer programming that is basically like the Bible of computer science... so not only is this an interesting topic, it's written by like the well respected powerhouse of the field. i'm excited to read it... he's written another book called "3:16" or something along that line... this is instead the transcript of a series of lectures he gave 5 years ago on the same topic... should be very cool indeed.
at any rate, that's pretty much the scoop.
gotta be up early tomorrow to entertain the parents before i take them to the train station to go home tomorrow... duuude... at any rate, night all
Sunday, February 15, 2004
yesterday
my IM away message from last night... summarizes pretty well =P
the last 36 hours:
turnpike traffic jam, to newark and back, thai food w/ the parents and the people, cards, late night freezing cold csilag buli (that's "stargazing party" for those of you who don't speak hungarian), 3 freakin hours of sleep, up and running, 9am train, world trade center, wall street, brooklyn bridge, battery park, statue of liberty, times square, rockefeller center, st. patrick's cathedral, hello deli, rupert gee, tgifridays, trump tower, central park, zoo, home, errands, dinner, mooooovie... and now, pretty freakin tired... to sleep, and catch all y'all in the AM :-P
the last 36 hours:
turnpike traffic jam, to newark and back, thai food w/ the parents and the people, cards, late night freezing cold csilag buli (that's "stargazing party" for those of you who don't speak hungarian), 3 freakin hours of sleep, up and running, 9am train, world trade center, wall street, brooklyn bridge, battery park, statue of liberty, times square, rockefeller center, st. patrick's cathedral, hello deli, rupert gee, tgifridays, trump tower, central park, zoo, home, errands, dinner, mooooovie... and now, pretty freakin tired... to sleep, and catch all y'all in the AM :-P
Saturday, February 14, 2004
the parents are here!
dude, what a day
so as usual, 2 classes... then instead of pizza seminar, home for a 5 minute lunch, to the bank, the gas station, stuck on the NJ turnpike for awhile, picked up the parents in newark, and now they're here.
this is a bizarre visit... when i go home, i'm entering their turf... they can tell me my schedule is abnormal and blah blah blah... when they visited me at valpo over time, it was very much in the "we're lara's parents and while we're here we're still acting our age, and whatever whatever whatever"... this visit, they're actually stepping into my world and having to play along. =)
after i picked them up, we went by a diner for some soup and coffee... then mom took a nap (she's fighting a cold) and dad watched animal planet for 2 hours... at 8, we met 7 of my friends (ben, sam, eric, leigh, colleen, trevor, and scott) for dinner at a thai restaurant...dad's food was spicier than he planned, but it was quality and we had fun... then we all went over to jared's house for coffee, brownies, and sheepshead... i had really crummy cards all night, but it was fun... colleen explained the game to my parents and kept the moderately involved while i had fun just playing... finally, i took them back to their hotel so they could crash and went back for a few more hands.
then, after cards, i drove colleen and eric back to campus, and then eric and i collected our stargazing gear (maps, binoculars, etc.) from his place and went looking for awhile... it was relatively warm (although windier than planned) and stayed relatively clear enough for 40 minutes for us to see a bunch of stuff... very cool.
now, it's freaking 2:45am... i have to meet my parents at their hotel at 8:20 to catch the train to NYC in the AM... should be another fun day.
the end. =)
so as usual, 2 classes... then instead of pizza seminar, home for a 5 minute lunch, to the bank, the gas station, stuck on the NJ turnpike for awhile, picked up the parents in newark, and now they're here.
this is a bizarre visit... when i go home, i'm entering their turf... they can tell me my schedule is abnormal and blah blah blah... when they visited me at valpo over time, it was very much in the "we're lara's parents and while we're here we're still acting our age, and whatever whatever whatever"... this visit, they're actually stepping into my world and having to play along. =)
after i picked them up, we went by a diner for some soup and coffee... then mom took a nap (she's fighting a cold) and dad watched animal planet for 2 hours... at 8, we met 7 of my friends (ben, sam, eric, leigh, colleen, trevor, and scott) for dinner at a thai restaurant...dad's food was spicier than he planned, but it was quality and we had fun... then we all went over to jared's house for coffee, brownies, and sheepshead... i had really crummy cards all night, but it was fun... colleen explained the game to my parents and kept the moderately involved while i had fun just playing... finally, i took them back to their hotel so they could crash and went back for a few more hands.
then, after cards, i drove colleen and eric back to campus, and then eric and i collected our stargazing gear (maps, binoculars, etc.) from his place and went looking for awhile... it was relatively warm (although windier than planned) and stayed relatively clear enough for 40 minutes for us to see a bunch of stuff... very cool.
now, it's freaking 2:45am... i have to meet my parents at their hotel at 8:20 to catch the train to NYC in the AM... should be another fun day.
the end. =)
Wednesday, February 11, 2004
what country are you?
so there's this crazy website that asks you six questions (2-5 change depending on what you answer for the previous one) and tells you you're one of 64 countries... i was indecisive on some questions and the results were funny, so i kept backing up and reanswering some to read more descriptions... here's one of my favorites that i earned pretty honestly=P
You're Libya!
It seems that these days, you just say things to get attention.
Shock value is the really important thing for you now. You used to have
a cause, and this made you seem like a threat to the established order, but now you
just want to say wacky stuff once in a while. Air travel doesn't really mesh
with your lifestyle, and you'd probably scare the security guards somehow
anyway.
Take
the Country Quiz at the Blue Pyramid
do i have a lying face?
dude
twice today i've been accused of "looking like" i'm thinking something i'm not
instance 1: sitting in analysis taking notes... prof is lecturing away when he says "and (blah blah blah)... right, lara???" and i kinda nodded, continued taking notes, and a couple people sitting near me turned around to see what had made him single me out for a second... when i kinda shrugged at them, the prof noticed that too and commented "really, i saw you roll your eyes"... dude, whatever... when i'm thinking through something i know i kinda look up and roll my eyes side to side, and i was probably doing that, but i know i was paying close attention and it sounded like he misinterpreted and was accusing me of thinking something he said was awful pedantic or something... i didn't like being singled out.
instance 2: eric and me went to a "how graduate students should handle their taxes" workshop for a bit tonight... we left partway through the Q&A part, and a lady who helped organize the speaker, etc. stopped me on the way out to ask "was this a good speaker?"... when i nodded and said "yeah, he was really helpful... good information", she immediately said "no, really, i want honest feedback... what do you think?!"... like, no, i was totally making up what i had just said? whatever dude.
so apparently i have the ability to look disinterested or annoyed or like i'm lying when i'm really not... maybe i should work on that =P
now, really, to work, the end.
twice today i've been accused of "looking like" i'm thinking something i'm not
instance 1: sitting in analysis taking notes... prof is lecturing away when he says "and (blah blah blah)... right, lara???" and i kinda nodded, continued taking notes, and a couple people sitting near me turned around to see what had made him single me out for a second... when i kinda shrugged at them, the prof noticed that too and commented "really, i saw you roll your eyes"... dude, whatever... when i'm thinking through something i know i kinda look up and roll my eyes side to side, and i was probably doing that, but i know i was paying close attention and it sounded like he misinterpreted and was accusing me of thinking something he said was awful pedantic or something... i didn't like being singled out.
instance 2: eric and me went to a "how graduate students should handle their taxes" workshop for a bit tonight... we left partway through the Q&A part, and a lady who helped organize the speaker, etc. stopped me on the way out to ask "was this a good speaker?"... when i nodded and said "yeah, he was really helpful... good information", she immediately said "no, really, i want honest feedback... what do you think?!"... like, no, i was totally making up what i had just said? whatever dude.
so apparently i have the ability to look disinterested or annoyed or like i'm lying when i'm really not... maybe i should work on that =P
now, really, to work, the end.
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
on being a couch potato
dude, today i've earned it... although i should probably be asleep by now instead of working on the laptop and watching nick at nite.
so last night i got about 3 hours of sleep... skipped algebra, but apparently so did half the class and the prof too (he had an older grad student teach instead)... went to graph theory, turned in the results of my allnighter, then eric and me went to get lunch (tuesday is now subway day so we can collect free sub card stickers =P), ran errands, then worked on analysis all afternoon... i actually fell asleep for about half an hour on the comfy couch in the TV room of eric's apartment while he was doing laundry, which i think has helped me stay awake for as much of the day as i have... came home to work and see tonight's new scrubs episode that had michael j. fox in it.
i've taken pride for awhile in saying i don't really watch TV because when i have i've watched some shows so addictively that that's all i'll do for many evenings instead of any work, reading, socializing, whatsoever, but now i have 2 regulars again.
(1) i've been watching friends all year since g-ma pudwell is addicted to it and that gives us at least something to talk about... whenever i tell her i haven't seen an episode yet she always tells me i should watch more tv, so whatever, i'm trying =P
(2) scrubs -- i started watching this sporadically last year at some point, but not regularly... when it was on the same night as friends this fall, i'd record it too and watch them both the next morning, but now, even though it's moved to tuesdays, i've still been watching/recording it.... the writers have such a bizarre sense of humor that it's always a good laugh, but generally with a decent "moral to the insane story" kind of ending every episode too... like tonight involved a really crazy OCD doctor, and a mini-me janitor and a devious plot to steal all the hospital's garbage... completely silly outrageous plot stuff, but the end was all about "half of conquering your own problems is recognizing them... and when you recognize that *everyone* has problems yours don't seem quite so unbearable" it's quality and i enjoy it. =)
three more thoughts:
(1) apparently i'm more readable than i thought... strange story, enough said
(2) i miss living with friends... kristin and i have talked a few times this week, and i miss seeing her in person... on the other hand my roommate here (amanda) i think is breaking up with her boyfriend or something, she's running around crying a lot and yelling with various people on the phone this week, but we don't talk more than bills... when i ask her how things are going it's always "fine, how are you?"... we coexist, but i don't really know her, even 5 months after living 3 feet away from her door... i dunno, whatever, it's just weird to live with someone majorly stressed out on life without you knowing them well enough to know how to respond, or them knowing you well enough to even feel comfortable letting down the "life is great!" facade even occasionally.
(3) quote of the day
adam hughes's away message: "if 3 + 3 = 5 then what's the capital of singapore?"
my response: it can be whatever you want it to be since the if clause is false no matter what standard group you're operating in. =P thus, i vote the capital of singapore is "llama pizza party city"
(this is now his profile)
dude,
thought 4... i just went to sleep 17 hours ago, and woke up 14 ago... it's time to get a *real* night's sleep vislat
so last night i got about 3 hours of sleep... skipped algebra, but apparently so did half the class and the prof too (he had an older grad student teach instead)... went to graph theory, turned in the results of my allnighter, then eric and me went to get lunch (tuesday is now subway day so we can collect free sub card stickers =P), ran errands, then worked on analysis all afternoon... i actually fell asleep for about half an hour on the comfy couch in the TV room of eric's apartment while he was doing laundry, which i think has helped me stay awake for as much of the day as i have... came home to work and see tonight's new scrubs episode that had michael j. fox in it.
i've taken pride for awhile in saying i don't really watch TV because when i have i've watched some shows so addictively that that's all i'll do for many evenings instead of any work, reading, socializing, whatsoever, but now i have 2 regulars again.
(1) i've been watching friends all year since g-ma pudwell is addicted to it and that gives us at least something to talk about... whenever i tell her i haven't seen an episode yet she always tells me i should watch more tv, so whatever, i'm trying =P
(2) scrubs -- i started watching this sporadically last year at some point, but not regularly... when it was on the same night as friends this fall, i'd record it too and watch them both the next morning, but now, even though it's moved to tuesdays, i've still been watching/recording it.... the writers have such a bizarre sense of humor that it's always a good laugh, but generally with a decent "moral to the insane story" kind of ending every episode too... like tonight involved a really crazy OCD doctor, and a mini-me janitor and a devious plot to steal all the hospital's garbage... completely silly outrageous plot stuff, but the end was all about "half of conquering your own problems is recognizing them... and when you recognize that *everyone* has problems yours don't seem quite so unbearable" it's quality and i enjoy it. =)
three more thoughts:
(1) apparently i'm more readable than i thought... strange story, enough said
(2) i miss living with friends... kristin and i have talked a few times this week, and i miss seeing her in person... on the other hand my roommate here (amanda) i think is breaking up with her boyfriend or something, she's running around crying a lot and yelling with various people on the phone this week, but we don't talk more than bills... when i ask her how things are going it's always "fine, how are you?"... we coexist, but i don't really know her, even 5 months after living 3 feet away from her door... i dunno, whatever, it's just weird to live with someone majorly stressed out on life without you knowing them well enough to know how to respond, or them knowing you well enough to even feel comfortable letting down the "life is great!" facade even occasionally.
(3) quote of the day
adam hughes's away message: "if 3 + 3 = 5 then what's the capital of singapore?"
my response: it can be whatever you want it to be since the if clause is false no matter what standard group you're operating in. =P thus, i vote the capital of singapore is "llama pizza party city"
(this is now his profile)
dude,
thought 4... i just went to sleep 17 hours ago, and woke up 14 ago... it's time to get a *real* night's sleep vislat
aaaahk!
dude, i went to sleep at 6:30am and you (probably) didn't... and then i woke up at 8:45 with the alarm i forgot to change to later, and then again at 10... today's going to be an interesting day.
on the brighter side, staying up over night allows you to run into people on IM who are either on study abroad or just living in Europe that you normally don't catch... here I am 4am working away, and here they are at 9/10am telling me about their mornings... duuuuude.
the end... i have to go to graph theory or i stayed up most of the night for nothing... then analysis party until we're done or until i crash, whatever comes first... i can't wait (that is in fact sarcasm at its most raw)
on the brighter side, staying up over night allows you to run into people on IM who are either on study abroad or just living in Europe that you normally don't catch... here I am 4am working away, and here they are at 9/10am telling me about their mornings... duuuuude.
the end... i have to go to graph theory or i stayed up most of the night for nothing... then analysis party until we're done or until i crash, whatever comes first... i can't wait (that is in fact sarcasm at its most raw)
blah....
so it's one thing to pull an allnighter or close to it on account of fun... it's another to do so on account of homework you didn't plan to take that long... the thing is, i've had all my graph theory homework solved since this afternoon... for that class though the prof's requiring us to turn in our homework in TeX... it would seem if you know what to do and what you need to write down, this shouldn't be a big deal... try again... TeX is a math typesetting program that is pretty straightforward, but if you haven't used it in awhile (i haven't since early november) you spend a LOT of time looking up commands and if you're really tired (like i am tonight) you make a lot of typeos in the type up and have to go through and keep debugging... this is a PAIN!
about halfway done... prospects for sleep not looking so good...
then again, on the other hand, for "listening" to my gripe of the evening, here's something fun =P... crazy cow story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4200577/ enjoy! =P
about halfway done... prospects for sleep not looking so good...
then again, on the other hand, for "listening" to my gripe of the evening, here's something fun =P... crazy cow story here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4200577/ enjoy! =P
Monday, February 09, 2004
csilag buli!
hungarian for star party!
dude
so went star finding again for an hour to an hour and a half again tonight... way freezing cold, but way clear, and an incredible night for actually finding stuff.
ask me more about this in a week, but suffice it to say, stargazing just got 100 million times better than before!
the end
dude
so went star finding again for an hour to an hour and a half again tonight... way freezing cold, but way clear, and an incredible night for actually finding stuff.
ask me more about this in a week, but suffice it to say, stargazing just got 100 million times better than before!
the end
Sunday, February 08, 2004
two gentlemen of verona
so today was another party... after church, eric and i had been talking about seeing "two gentlemen of verona"... shakespeare play that the rutgers theater department was putting on... this afternoon was the final performance... leigh and scott had been way excited about going too... a week ago, but both backed out because of "too much to do" at the last minute... bother again.
at any rate, eric and me had a great time and are beginning to get frustrated with people ditching plans for fun to do work... it's not like we don't have work to do too... it's just funny because the reason people usually say they can't come is "oh, i didn't work hard enough on such and such day"... at least on the days when we're not doing work, we're not wasting time necessarily... we're having planned fun, and then doing work when we're not having fun... different organization methods or something... i know i'm putting just as much effort into my homework... i'm just also having more scheduled fun along the way. =P
so fun comments on the play?
(1) the leading actress is a masters theater student who got her BA from Valpo at least 3 years ago... it was just exciting to see "valparaiso university" in the program notes =P
(2) there's a dog in the play that one character is always running around with and making analogies to... so they have this tiny little extremely cute dog that was in the play... he was so good... ran around with a little bandana on... the character who walked around with him would walk him on stage, pick him up, put him on a table, tell him to sit, and he'd just sit there or lie down, and not make an effort to be anywhere except for the spot he was told to be for whole scenes... he (the dog) was even listed in the program credits. =)
(3) cute story, and well played out, but since it was in verona it was really bizarre to hear shakespearean english pronounced with italian accents... go figure =P
at any rate, it was a party... now working on graph theory homework... pretty sure i've solved 4 out of 7 problems in the past hour.. i love having a class where i know exactly what's going on, and where the problems make me think but don't make me get utterly confused... this is a party indeed. =P
at any rate, back to work... later =P
at any rate, eric and me had a great time and are beginning to get frustrated with people ditching plans for fun to do work... it's not like we don't have work to do too... it's just funny because the reason people usually say they can't come is "oh, i didn't work hard enough on such and such day"... at least on the days when we're not doing work, we're not wasting time necessarily... we're having planned fun, and then doing work when we're not having fun... different organization methods or something... i know i'm putting just as much effort into my homework... i'm just also having more scheduled fun along the way. =P
so fun comments on the play?
(1) the leading actress is a masters theater student who got her BA from Valpo at least 3 years ago... it was just exciting to see "valparaiso university" in the program notes =P
(2) there's a dog in the play that one character is always running around with and making analogies to... so they have this tiny little extremely cute dog that was in the play... he was so good... ran around with a little bandana on... the character who walked around with him would walk him on stage, pick him up, put him on a table, tell him to sit, and he'd just sit there or lie down, and not make an effort to be anywhere except for the spot he was told to be for whole scenes... he (the dog) was even listed in the program credits. =)
(3) cute story, and well played out, but since it was in verona it was really bizarre to hear shakespearean english pronounced with italian accents... go figure =P
at any rate, it was a party... now working on graph theory homework... pretty sure i've solved 4 out of 7 problems in the past hour.. i love having a class where i know exactly what's going on, and where the problems make me think but don't make me get utterly confused... this is a party indeed. =P
at any rate, back to work... later =P
a party of planetary proportions
how's that for bad late night alliteration?
so i've been waaay excited about today for forever... it was planetarium day! i had gone to the planetarium at the pink palace in memphis over break, and when i told eric about the show i saw, he suggested we should check out the one in NYC... so today was the day.
yesterday, scott and liviu had both said they wanted to come, but liviu (due to more work than planned on for today) and scott (due to having his fun last night) both had to back out last minute... so just eric and me ended up going, but we had a blast!
the planetarium in NYC is part of the american museum of natural history.. we spent the morning in the space part of the place and the afternoon checking out animal exhibits... it was really cool.
for the planetarium:
(1) it had the best star projector i've ever seen -- completely awesome!
(2) most planetariums are a half sphere... this one's a whole sphere with a dome ceiling show like normal in the top half and a shorter, looking down at a bowl shaped floor show in the bottom half... we saw both shows (one about looking for life on other planets, one about "this is the universe - ta da") that the place is running, and then checked out exhibits.
(3) party and a half... it was one of the best done, hands on type museums i've been to in forever. =)
so, besides that, i got an awesome orion poster at the gift shop... it has all the major stars (not just shoulders knees and belt... like the sword, bow, etc.) with enlarged magnified views of the nebulas etc. in there... it was an awesome poster... eric got one too actually...
getting the new poster and a walmart frame for it inspired me to finally decorate my walls... i had tried back in september with posters and sticky tack, but the stuff all fell down over night the first night i had it up, and i never did anything with it since but put it under my bed... so tonight here's how it goes.
the wall my windows are on already had a cross on the right hand side of the windows... now the left hand side also has these letters "L" and "A" that my dad found at an antique store and gave me for christmas... the wall to the left of that (where i have a bookcase, my CD tower, and a few other random things stacked) now has my three framed big hungary posters from last fall... my wall behind the desk here (opposite my windows) still has a dry erase board calendar and both my valpo diplomas... and finally, orion's above my bed, and above the bookcase on that side (yes i have two bookcases on opposite walls from each other), i put a string art bird i made 10 years ago, a framed angel picture a friend (jessica in fact!) drew for me for a christmas present a few years back (i collect angels) =) and a framed picture of me, nicole, michelle, heather, and kristin from last year that they all wrote me notes on... i'd been meaning to put all this up for awhile, but having another HUGE thing to put up (orion's 2 ft. by 3 ft.) finally got me going.
party.
the end. =)
good night =P
so i've been waaay excited about today for forever... it was planetarium day! i had gone to the planetarium at the pink palace in memphis over break, and when i told eric about the show i saw, he suggested we should check out the one in NYC... so today was the day.
yesterday, scott and liviu had both said they wanted to come, but liviu (due to more work than planned on for today) and scott (due to having his fun last night) both had to back out last minute... so just eric and me ended up going, but we had a blast!
the planetarium in NYC is part of the american museum of natural history.. we spent the morning in the space part of the place and the afternoon checking out animal exhibits... it was really cool.
for the planetarium:
(1) it had the best star projector i've ever seen -- completely awesome!
(2) most planetariums are a half sphere... this one's a whole sphere with a dome ceiling show like normal in the top half and a shorter, looking down at a bowl shaped floor show in the bottom half... we saw both shows (one about looking for life on other planets, one about "this is the universe - ta da") that the place is running, and then checked out exhibits.
(3) party and a half... it was one of the best done, hands on type museums i've been to in forever. =)
so, besides that, i got an awesome orion poster at the gift shop... it has all the major stars (not just shoulders knees and belt... like the sword, bow, etc.) with enlarged magnified views of the nebulas etc. in there... it was an awesome poster... eric got one too actually...
getting the new poster and a walmart frame for it inspired me to finally decorate my walls... i had tried back in september with posters and sticky tack, but the stuff all fell down over night the first night i had it up, and i never did anything with it since but put it under my bed... so tonight here's how it goes.
the wall my windows are on already had a cross on the right hand side of the windows... now the left hand side also has these letters "L" and "A" that my dad found at an antique store and gave me for christmas... the wall to the left of that (where i have a bookcase, my CD tower, and a few other random things stacked) now has my three framed big hungary posters from last fall... my wall behind the desk here (opposite my windows) still has a dry erase board calendar and both my valpo diplomas... and finally, orion's above my bed, and above the bookcase on that side (yes i have two bookcases on opposite walls from each other), i put a string art bird i made 10 years ago, a framed angel picture a friend (jessica in fact!) drew for me for a christmas present a few years back (i collect angels) =) and a framed picture of me, nicole, michelle, heather, and kristin from last year that they all wrote me notes on... i'd been meaning to put all this up for awhile, but having another HUGE thing to put up (orion's 2 ft. by 3 ft.) finally got me going.
party.
the end. =)
good night =P
Friday, February 06, 2004
super-escape-ism
i don't know what my problem is lately, but i've been weird...
last weekend, i was in a bad mood, so justifiably, i skipped out on hanging with the people... did various stuff with different ones of them all week, then last night mason came into town, i was done with homework, and knew they were all getting together for dinner and cards and yet opted to stay put just so i didn't have to get cold between my place and my car... wimpy and dumb reason.
today, had fun with the people, had algebra, graph theory, pizza seminar, and now i'm home,... mason came with me to all 3 classes and now he's w/ eric in number theory seminar...
anyhow, last night i skipped out, because i was too lazy to leave.
today, in algebra, we turned in our first homework set -- 5 problems... he started shuffling through papers and randomly calling people up to show their solutions on the board and for some reason i just really didn't want to, so before he called the 2nd person at random, i left like i needed to use the bathroom or get a drink or something, and kinda just stayed in the hall for 15 minutes and waited until he was just about to call someone for the last problem before returning... i can get away with that this once, but i can't make a regular habit of it... oops.
(scott, on the other hand, also skipped out for comparably long to go get a book from the library! mason commented after class "what just happened in there? does that room have a seating capacity of one less person than the number of people in class? that was so bizarre!")
so that's escape #2 in the last 24 hours.
and escape #3 is already planned! one of the like 5th year students is having a "soiree" tonight... (1) i'm not feeling all that up for mingling where i only know a small percentage of the people, (2) i'm a little scared of the guy throwing the thing, (3) going to be up early... instead i have dinner and a movie plans with leigh later, but yeah, dude... i'm being antisocial lately...
bother...
last weekend, i was in a bad mood, so justifiably, i skipped out on hanging with the people... did various stuff with different ones of them all week, then last night mason came into town, i was done with homework, and knew they were all getting together for dinner and cards and yet opted to stay put just so i didn't have to get cold between my place and my car... wimpy and dumb reason.
today, had fun with the people, had algebra, graph theory, pizza seminar, and now i'm home,... mason came with me to all 3 classes and now he's w/ eric in number theory seminar...
anyhow, last night i skipped out, because i was too lazy to leave.
today, in algebra, we turned in our first homework set -- 5 problems... he started shuffling through papers and randomly calling people up to show their solutions on the board and for some reason i just really didn't want to, so before he called the 2nd person at random, i left like i needed to use the bathroom or get a drink or something, and kinda just stayed in the hall for 15 minutes and waited until he was just about to call someone for the last problem before returning... i can get away with that this once, but i can't make a regular habit of it... oops.
(scott, on the other hand, also skipped out for comparably long to go get a book from the library! mason commented after class "what just happened in there? does that room have a seating capacity of one less person than the number of people in class? that was so bizarre!")
so that's escape #2 in the last 24 hours.
and escape #3 is already planned! one of the like 5th year students is having a "soiree" tonight... (1) i'm not feeling all that up for mingling where i only know a small percentage of the people, (2) i'm a little scared of the guy throwing the thing, (3) going to be up early... instead i have dinner and a movie plans with leigh later, but yeah, dude... i'm being antisocial lately...
bother...
candide, take 2
just finished candide in another hour and a half...
moral of the story? you can't just sit there and assume life always works out for the best... lots of bad stuff happens all the time... you can find the good in things, but you've gotta work at it.
the end.
moral of the story? you can't just sit there and assume life always works out for the best... lots of bad stuff happens all the time... you can find the good in things, but you've gotta work at it.
the end.
Thursday, February 05, 2004
yay for friends =)
dude, so today got off to a slow start... last night scott agreed to go stargazing at like 1:30... i got back home between 2:30 and 3... to sleep between 3:30 and 4... had some crazy dreams and then had to be up at 10 to get ready for class...
my goal for today was to be on time for lie groups and pay attention... succeeded at point 1, and at point 2, but the 2nd part wasn't that hard... dr. woodward's daughter had a fever and he had to go pick her up from daycare, so minh did a presentation he was supposed to give and we left after 30-40 minutes... dude... on the other hand, i finally got the textbook for the class... i think i'm the first person to have it... there were literally no more copies in the states, so i had to have it shipped from germany.
so dude, got back home, groaned at the thought of homework, but two spiffy things to make my day:
(1) got a thank you from jessica for the birthday present i gave her last weekend... quote: "it's cute, clever, and fun (could i be talking about you, too?)" =) made me smile. =)
(2) got an unexpected long email from a friend who i've more or less been in touch with, but we've kinda been gradually drifting apart for the past year and a half to two years... it wasn't even a "hi, how are you? here's the gloss on what's going on in my life" note... it was a long, "hi, how are you? i'm sorry that i've let other things get in the way of us being as close as we were... i can't make up for lost time, but i want to work harder at really being in touch" very detailed kind of thing... quote: "I am so thankful to Him [God] for you and that you are true to yourself. Whether you know it or not, God has used you tremendously in my life to show me countless things, and I am so so so thankful for you."...made me cry a little, but like good tears if that even makes sense... yeah,...it was good.
so yeah,... major yay for friends... =)... the end.
my goal for today was to be on time for lie groups and pay attention... succeeded at point 1, and at point 2, but the 2nd part wasn't that hard... dr. woodward's daughter had a fever and he had to go pick her up from daycare, so minh did a presentation he was supposed to give and we left after 30-40 minutes... dude... on the other hand, i finally got the textbook for the class... i think i'm the first person to have it... there were literally no more copies in the states, so i had to have it shipped from germany.
so dude, got back home, groaned at the thought of homework, but two spiffy things to make my day:
(1) got a thank you from jessica for the birthday present i gave her last weekend... quote: "it's cute, clever, and fun (could i be talking about you, too?)" =) made me smile. =)
(2) got an unexpected long email from a friend who i've more or less been in touch with, but we've kinda been gradually drifting apart for the past year and a half to two years... it wasn't even a "hi, how are you? here's the gloss on what's going on in my life" note... it was a long, "hi, how are you? i'm sorry that i've let other things get in the way of us being as close as we were... i can't make up for lost time, but i want to work harder at really being in touch" very detailed kind of thing... quote: "I am so thankful to Him [God] for you and that you are true to yourself. Whether you know it or not, God has used you tremendously in my life to show me countless things, and I am so so so thankful for you."...made me cry a little, but like good tears if that even makes sense... yeah,...it was good.
so yeah,... major yay for friends... =)... the end.
another weird dream...
dude, so i mostly keep typing these because i don't ever remember having this many vivid dreams in this short a time period... wonder why exactly that is...
so i woke up from this partway through the night and am a little hazier on details...
~~~~~~~~~~~
so i'm in class w/ the usual math crew... later we're all working (but none of this is in hill center, our real math building... it's in a newer place) and i go to find one person in particular (who will remain nameless) only to find them and another person (not a math person, but the roommate of one of my other math friends) falling asleep in the first person's office... the place has heaters like my apartment... small electric boxes near the floorboard, which are running full blast... there's a newspaper spread out on the floor between them with a news story that was really weird, but i can't remember it anymore... it was like the talk of the day... i only see the 2nd person from the back, but the newspaper's getting wet... it looks like they're crying on it.. i tink nothing of it, but look closer at the paper and it's starting to smoke... eventually i figure out that the combination of the paper on the floor, close to the heater, and the tears, for some reason are about to light it on fire... i comment to the people, they're like "yeah whatever, we'll take care of it", and then i leave.
...do other random stuff... i go outside to move my car for no good reason whatsoever... i moved it from like the hill center parking lot here on the rutgers campus to the back "U" of the parking area at immanuel (mom's school in memphis)... go back inside
later, i'm in a room with lots of small children, and many of my same friends as usual (leigh, scott, colleen, eric, etc.), and one of the immanuel preschool teachers working on who knows what, when we somehow realize the building's on fire, and the cause was the burning paper in the office i had been in before... no clue how we knew this, we just did... apparently the fire's out of control... i immediately know whose fault it is, and am about to comment to them but they've suddenly disappeared... i try to open windows, but none of them open except the last one i try... immediately everyone starts helping the small children out the window and down out of the balcony that happens to be there, and down to safety... i insist on gathering peoples important belongings thinking "i'll be fine, people would rather have this stuff than have to replace it with insurance" and it turns into loads and loads of stuff... one or two of my math friends try to convince me to leave too, for my own safety, but i keep looking for stuff to save for people... i give leigh my car keys and tell her to start it up... but go back to work gathering stuff... the person who lit the fire re-appears and tries to convince me to leave, but seeing as it won't work finally helps me get things out of the room... suddenly it morphs into my room at my parents' house in memphis, and not wanting to lose antiques belonging to great-grandparents or have to replace all my clothes with fire insurance money i start gathering things and piling them near the windows... strangely enough this version of my room has a large window over where the head of my bed is (really there's just a wall there between my room and the attic)... this window in my dream has a balcony and then a sloping enough roof below the balcony that one can easily jump down to the ground w/o getting hurt and climb back up again. i keep throwing stuff out the window and the person who started the fire keeps taking trips with the stuff down to my car... i insist on still rescuing stuff, and it starts getting later in the day... my walls feel warm from the rooms on the other side burning... i see flames licking up the roof outside, but think "it's not in here yet" and keep gathering stuff... notice that the person who had been helping me outside is getting slower and slower between trips... notice it's getting darker and try the lightswitch... it doesn't work anymore... turn around for one last trip thinking i probably really should get out of the burning house and then the room goes black (burning debris crashing into the windows and blocking out what light there is)... i see a small pinprick of light appear and then get hit in the head by something and it all goes black again (unconscious?) ... and then i woke up really suddently...
~~~~~~~~~~
i mostly type this while i can remember it... i really don't often remember dreams but this was pretty vivid and scary, as was the hostage situation in the last dream i typed up, about a week ago... i've had several other less vivid dreams, mostly involving bad things (like one of my uncles flying to colorado and catching some bizarre illness once he got there and no one could get to him to help) and occasionally just pretty standard not overly exciting (sitting down and having a chat with various people)... but i don't remember this long a stretch where i could remember a dream vividly every night... it also again bothers me who i attribute the fire to (although that's much more passive than the guns last time) and that i was so busy worrying about stuff (once most of the people were taken care of) instead of ensuring the safety of myself and the friends helping me...
in conclusion: my dreams are weird... the end.
so i woke up from this partway through the night and am a little hazier on details...
~~~~~~~~~~~
so i'm in class w/ the usual math crew... later we're all working (but none of this is in hill center, our real math building... it's in a newer place) and i go to find one person in particular (who will remain nameless) only to find them and another person (not a math person, but the roommate of one of my other math friends) falling asleep in the first person's office... the place has heaters like my apartment... small electric boxes near the floorboard, which are running full blast... there's a newspaper spread out on the floor between them with a news story that was really weird, but i can't remember it anymore... it was like the talk of the day... i only see the 2nd person from the back, but the newspaper's getting wet... it looks like they're crying on it.. i tink nothing of it, but look closer at the paper and it's starting to smoke... eventually i figure out that the combination of the paper on the floor, close to the heater, and the tears, for some reason are about to light it on fire... i comment to the people, they're like "yeah whatever, we'll take care of it", and then i leave.
...do other random stuff... i go outside to move my car for no good reason whatsoever... i moved it from like the hill center parking lot here on the rutgers campus to the back "U" of the parking area at immanuel (mom's school in memphis)... go back inside
later, i'm in a room with lots of small children, and many of my same friends as usual (leigh, scott, colleen, eric, etc.), and one of the immanuel preschool teachers working on who knows what, when we somehow realize the building's on fire, and the cause was the burning paper in the office i had been in before... no clue how we knew this, we just did... apparently the fire's out of control... i immediately know whose fault it is, and am about to comment to them but they've suddenly disappeared... i try to open windows, but none of them open except the last one i try... immediately everyone starts helping the small children out the window and down out of the balcony that happens to be there, and down to safety... i insist on gathering peoples important belongings thinking "i'll be fine, people would rather have this stuff than have to replace it with insurance" and it turns into loads and loads of stuff... one or two of my math friends try to convince me to leave too, for my own safety, but i keep looking for stuff to save for people... i give leigh my car keys and tell her to start it up... but go back to work gathering stuff... the person who lit the fire re-appears and tries to convince me to leave, but seeing as it won't work finally helps me get things out of the room... suddenly it morphs into my room at my parents' house in memphis, and not wanting to lose antiques belonging to great-grandparents or have to replace all my clothes with fire insurance money i start gathering things and piling them near the windows... strangely enough this version of my room has a large window over where the head of my bed is (really there's just a wall there between my room and the attic)... this window in my dream has a balcony and then a sloping enough roof below the balcony that one can easily jump down to the ground w/o getting hurt and climb back up again. i keep throwing stuff out the window and the person who started the fire keeps taking trips with the stuff down to my car... i insist on still rescuing stuff, and it starts getting later in the day... my walls feel warm from the rooms on the other side burning... i see flames licking up the roof outside, but think "it's not in here yet" and keep gathering stuff... notice that the person who had been helping me outside is getting slower and slower between trips... notice it's getting darker and try the lightswitch... it doesn't work anymore... turn around for one last trip thinking i probably really should get out of the burning house and then the room goes black (burning debris crashing into the windows and blocking out what light there is)... i see a small pinprick of light appear and then get hit in the head by something and it all goes black again (unconscious?) ... and then i woke up really suddently...
~~~~~~~~~~
i mostly type this while i can remember it... i really don't often remember dreams but this was pretty vivid and scary, as was the hostage situation in the last dream i typed up, about a week ago... i've had several other less vivid dreams, mostly involving bad things (like one of my uncles flying to colorado and catching some bizarre illness once he got there and no one could get to him to help) and occasionally just pretty standard not overly exciting (sitting down and having a chat with various people)... but i don't remember this long a stretch where i could remember a dream vividly every night... it also again bothers me who i attribute the fire to (although that's much more passive than the guns last time) and that i was so busy worrying about stuff (once most of the people were taken care of) instead of ensuring the safety of myself and the friends helping me...
in conclusion: my dreams are weird... the end.
should i be afraid of myself?
lkp 42 42 42: hey i lit part of my wall on fire yesterday
lkp 42 42 42: it was fun
alliswan42: cool!
lkp 42 42 42: and today i took apart my old watch and disected it and played with LED fluid
alliswan42: I bet your landlord'll be thrilled
lkp 42 42 42: i played w/ LED fluid at eric's and left it there
alliswan42: you LEFT it there?
alliswan42: you're a goof!
lkp 42 42 42: and the light on fire is a metaphor for a candle went a little crazy and charred the window frame and i just need to figure out how to get soot off of paint
alliswan42: what's he going to do with it?
lkp 42 42 42: play with it too
lkp 42 42 42: the "motherboard" of the watch was cool too
lkp 42 42 42: i actually was way excited when the watch spazzed out and died during class today
alliswan42: I tried to do that once with a Timex indiglo
alliswan42: cool
lkp 42 42 42: i never in the year i had it figured out how to set it, so i just got good at adding and subtracting weird amounts of time
alliswan42: I remember not being particularly wowed at what I saw
alliswan42: oh yeah
lkp 42 42 42: i was incredibly wowed by my watch!
alliswan42: that watch
alliswan42: it died?
alliswan42: that's kinda sad
lkp 42 42 42: it was more entertaining in pieces than as a functional whole
lkp 42 42 42: how's that for an advertising slogan?
alliswan42: great for the demographics of those who professionaly demolish watches
lkp 42 42 42: me and 3 others
lkp 42 42 42: well brother told me the other day he took a computer mom was throwing out from her old school
lkp 42 42 42: took out all the parts and put them in different places for fun
lkp 42 42 42: then watched it smoke and blow the fuse on his power strip
lkp 42 42 42: it was "a grand old time"
alliswan42: that's soo awesome
lkp 42 42 42: it was fun
alliswan42: cool!
lkp 42 42 42: and today i took apart my old watch and disected it and played with LED fluid
alliswan42: I bet your landlord'll be thrilled
lkp 42 42 42: i played w/ LED fluid at eric's and left it there
alliswan42: you LEFT it there?
alliswan42: you're a goof!
lkp 42 42 42: and the light on fire is a metaphor for a candle went a little crazy and charred the window frame and i just need to figure out how to get soot off of paint
alliswan42: what's he going to do with it?
lkp 42 42 42: play with it too
lkp 42 42 42: the "motherboard" of the watch was cool too
lkp 42 42 42: i actually was way excited when the watch spazzed out and died during class today
alliswan42: I tried to do that once with a Timex indiglo
alliswan42: cool
lkp 42 42 42: i never in the year i had it figured out how to set it, so i just got good at adding and subtracting weird amounts of time
alliswan42: I remember not being particularly wowed at what I saw
alliswan42: oh yeah
lkp 42 42 42: i was incredibly wowed by my watch!
alliswan42: that watch
alliswan42: it died?
alliswan42: that's kinda sad
lkp 42 42 42: it was more entertaining in pieces than as a functional whole
lkp 42 42 42: how's that for an advertising slogan?
alliswan42: great for the demographics of those who professionaly demolish watches
lkp 42 42 42: me and 3 others
lkp 42 42 42: well brother told me the other day he took a computer mom was throwing out from her old school
lkp 42 42 42: took out all the parts and put them in different places for fun
lkp 42 42 42: then watched it smoke and blow the fuse on his power strip
lkp 42 42 42: it was "a grand old time"
alliswan42: that's soo awesome
candide
so i finally started the next book on my list -- completely hilarious, an easy read and i highly recommend it to any of you -- candide by voltaire... i've read about half of it, and that in just a little over an hour... not bad at all =P
the premise is if you think we live in the best of all possible worlds and in the end all works out for the best to take place you're sadly mistaken... candide is this rather naive innocent character who thinks the world is a perfect place, or at least the best possible... then he gets kicked out of his house, drafted into the army, beaten within an inch of his life several times, etc., etc., etc... encounters many people with similar plights, and yet now halfway through the tale, bursts out with comments like "i am the best man in the world, and yet i have already killed three men; and of these three, two were priests!" basically lots of sarcasm at its finest...
goals of the day tomorrow?
(1) wake up in time for lie groups
(2) actually pay attention in lie groups
(3) write up algebra
(4) read the second half of candide
the end =P
the premise is if you think we live in the best of all possible worlds and in the end all works out for the best to take place you're sadly mistaken... candide is this rather naive innocent character who thinks the world is a perfect place, or at least the best possible... then he gets kicked out of his house, drafted into the army, beaten within an inch of his life several times, etc., etc., etc... encounters many people with similar plights, and yet now halfway through the tale, bursts out with comments like "i am the best man in the world, and yet i have already killed three men; and of these three, two were priests!" basically lots of sarcasm at its finest...
goals of the day tomorrow?
(1) wake up in time for lie groups
(2) actually pay attention in lie groups
(3) write up algebra
(4) read the second half of candide
the end =P
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
analysis misery
dude, i completely have lost my concentration and the semester's barely started... this can't be good.
yesterday after my morning full of classes, leigh called me to see if i wanted to work at starbucks... i, of course, will never turn down the opportunity to work in a place that smells of coffee, especilly if its name is starbucks. =)
so colleen, leigh, and me worked for 2-3 hours, and then we all went home... upon getting home, i putzed around and watched TV for a bit, then talked to my brother for an hour and a half on the phone, then watched TV a bit more, then found other stuff to do... a whole 6 hours later, i started back on my work... until i fell asleep, and that left me with a little over an hour left to do this morning before my class later this afternoon... maaan...
slightly annoyed b/c i want to finish laundry before class too and i have 2 loads of clothes to dry, but someone else has stuff in 3/4 of the dryers in the laundry room i started my stuff in... joy.
it was fun to talk to brother last night... apparently the family has 2 baby goats and 2 baby tortoises born this week... dad has a new boss named bob sushi, which just sounds funny... and brother just makes me laugh.
anyhow, done rambling, off to attack someone's laundry so i can dry mine!
heh heh heh
yesterday after my morning full of classes, leigh called me to see if i wanted to work at starbucks... i, of course, will never turn down the opportunity to work in a place that smells of coffee, especilly if its name is starbucks. =)
so colleen, leigh, and me worked for 2-3 hours, and then we all went home... upon getting home, i putzed around and watched TV for a bit, then talked to my brother for an hour and a half on the phone, then watched TV a bit more, then found other stuff to do... a whole 6 hours later, i started back on my work... until i fell asleep, and that left me with a little over an hour left to do this morning before my class later this afternoon... maaan...
slightly annoyed b/c i want to finish laundry before class too and i have 2 loads of clothes to dry, but someone else has stuff in 3/4 of the dryers in the laundry room i started my stuff in... joy.
it was fun to talk to brother last night... apparently the family has 2 baby goats and 2 baby tortoises born this week... dad has a new boss named bob sushi, which just sounds funny... and brother just makes me laugh.
anyhow, done rambling, off to attack someone's laundry so i can dry mine!
heh heh heh
Tuesday, February 03, 2004
fun with maps
so checking my email, jessica sent me a fun link that lets you generate a map of countries you've been to, and states you've been to... for fun, here it is:
create your own visited country map
or create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
create your own visited country map
or create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide
apple sour altoids and crazy people
completely unrelated topics, but 2 thoughts
(1) got a can of the new altoids -- apple sours... they're pretty good... comparable quality to the tangerine sours... better than the citrus ones =) party
(2) eric and i worked on analysis for like the last 5 hours here at my place... partway through amanda came out of her room and said she had a show she really wanted to watch, so we gladly moved for her and started to work at the kitchen table... what do we hear when she turns on the TV but, "stay tuned for 'my big fat obnoxious fiancee' coming up next!"... eric's expression was pretty hilarious... i'm sure mine was comparable... we quickly decided to hide from the TV in my room to work... but dude, who makes up these shows? i'm a little frightened of my TV now!
the end... good night!
(1) got a can of the new altoids -- apple sours... they're pretty good... comparable quality to the tangerine sours... better than the citrus ones =) party
(2) eric and i worked on analysis for like the last 5 hours here at my place... partway through amanda came out of her room and said she had a show she really wanted to watch, so we gladly moved for her and started to work at the kitchen table... what do we hear when she turns on the TV but, "stay tuned for 'my big fat obnoxious fiancee' coming up next!"... eric's expression was pretty hilarious... i'm sure mine was comparable... we quickly decided to hide from the TV in my room to work... but dude, who makes up these shows? i'm a little frightened of my TV now!
the end... good night!
Monday, February 02, 2004
on stargazing...
IM i just sent for starters:
lkp 42 42 42: i got home from the diner w/ you guys, then like the coffee had started to set in and i was going a mile and minute, sure i wouldn't fall asleep for a bit
lkp 42 42 42: eric said i dramatically slowed down to normal human speed by the time we got to 2am and that i should never have 4 vodkas and a coffee again
lkp 42 42 42: we found lots of stars -- i even saw 3 moons of jupiter w/ the binoculars!
so yeah, stargazing from like 1 to 2am... found a ton of stuff, got freezing cold, had a herd of like 10 huge wild deer within 50 feet of us staring us down the whole time (how cool is that?!?!!?), talked about what we're afraid of... found lots more stars.
now, hopefully the coffee's made it enough of the way through my system for me to actually fall asleep... class in 9 hours... surely i can sleep for at least 90% of that time... i hope =P
visontlatasra!
lkp 42 42 42: i got home from the diner w/ you guys, then like the coffee had started to set in and i was going a mile and minute, sure i wouldn't fall asleep for a bit
lkp 42 42 42: eric said i dramatically slowed down to normal human speed by the time we got to 2am and that i should never have 4 vodkas and a coffee again
lkp 42 42 42: we found lots of stars -- i even saw 3 moons of jupiter w/ the binoculars!
so yeah, stargazing from like 1 to 2am... found a ton of stuff, got freezing cold, had a herd of like 10 huge wild deer within 50 feet of us staring us down the whole time (how cool is that?!?!!?), talked about what we're afraid of... found lots more stars.
now, hopefully the coffee's made it enough of the way through my system for me to actually fall asleep... class in 9 hours... surely i can sleep for at least 90% of that time... i hope =P
visontlatasra!
panther punch and the like... do dah do dah
Q: what do you get when you have 4 vodka drinks and a coffee in one evening?
A: me, right now =P
really, i'm fine.
today, being sunday, i was up early for church, however i woke up an hour before my alarm... lucky for me, since being up then allowed me to catch steve klee for the 20 minutes he was on IM from budapest
went to church, was good to be there... pastor preached a good sermon on changing negatives/excuses into positives (e.g. like jeremiah... don't tell God you're too (fill in the blank) to do something when He has the power to equip anyone he chooses to do what He wants.)
after church, mrs. weiss insisted that me and my parents are coming over for dinner in 2 weeks when they're in town to visit... i don't think i've written about the weiss's on here before...
so the first week i went to the church i go to here, this lady handed me her phone number and a note "i'm from the south too [first time visitors are introduced at the start of each service]... call me if you ever want a good home-made dinner"... anyhow, since then this lady (mrs. weiss) and her family have practically adopted me... they have me over for dinner like once a month, send me home with lots of leftovers each time, give me presents for holidays, etc... they have 3 kids: steve (my age, married to kassandra... more on them in a second, who live closer to my house), scott, and stephanie (scott and steph both live at home still... scott's my brother's age... steph is a HS senior this year)
anyhow, steve and kassandra are great... they're my age, and have been married 2 years, and are just fun to be with... they're both friendly in a way that you don't feel like a 3rd wheel when you hang out with them... kassandra's from switzerland too, so the whole europe thing is really cool... she works on sunday morning's though, so steve's one of the first people i see at church every sunday.
anyhow, steve and kassandra were planning to go to applebees to watch the game tonight and insisted i should come with... we ended up going to one only 10 miles away from the PA/NJ border since it was boasting a big party w/ lots of discounted stuff and free prize giveaways... i actually got pretty good at the "will the next play be run or pass?" betting, and won myself 2 free t-shirts and 2 free keychains =)... all alcohol propaganda of various denominations, but free stuff is always fun.
the two drink specials of the night were patriot something or another and panther punch (lemonade, vodka, and some crazy blue stuff)... each of us had 3 or 4 (can't remember) of the panther stuff... cleared out a lot of nachos shrimp and other fun stuff too...
the game was intense... if you didn't watch, with 4 seconds remaining the game was tied... the panthers got the second longest drive in super bowl history (95 yards) and the new record longest completed pass (85 yards) in super bowl history... but it wasn't enough... the patriots got a field goal in the last few seconds and it ended 32-29... unfortunate b/c i really don't like them... (a) they beat TN a couple weeks ago, and (b) they're not southern. oh well, it was one of the best games i've ever seen, even if the wrong team won.
so i had a 45 minute drive back up to my corner of jersey, and scott had called during the game, so i called back on my drive home... he and colleen were at the diner they hang out at, and he said i should totally stop by... buy the time i was that far i decided i really needed a coffee to counteract the 3/4 vodkas energy-wise (alcohol just makes me feel tired), so i stopped, got a coffee i loaded up with sugar... hung out for 45 minutes while they did homework, and we chatted, and now i'm home...
just convinced eric he wants to go look at stars with me (yay!)... it's not as if i'm falling asleep anytime soon!
later y'all! do freakin dah.
A: me, right now =P
really, i'm fine.
today, being sunday, i was up early for church, however i woke up an hour before my alarm... lucky for me, since being up then allowed me to catch steve klee for the 20 minutes he was on IM from budapest
went to church, was good to be there... pastor preached a good sermon on changing negatives/excuses into positives (e.g. like jeremiah... don't tell God you're too (fill in the blank) to do something when He has the power to equip anyone he chooses to do what He wants.)
after church, mrs. weiss insisted that me and my parents are coming over for dinner in 2 weeks when they're in town to visit... i don't think i've written about the weiss's on here before...
so the first week i went to the church i go to here, this lady handed me her phone number and a note "i'm from the south too [first time visitors are introduced at the start of each service]... call me if you ever want a good home-made dinner"... anyhow, since then this lady (mrs. weiss) and her family have practically adopted me... they have me over for dinner like once a month, send me home with lots of leftovers each time, give me presents for holidays, etc... they have 3 kids: steve (my age, married to kassandra... more on them in a second, who live closer to my house), scott, and stephanie (scott and steph both live at home still... scott's my brother's age... steph is a HS senior this year)
anyhow, steve and kassandra are great... they're my age, and have been married 2 years, and are just fun to be with... they're both friendly in a way that you don't feel like a 3rd wheel when you hang out with them... kassandra's from switzerland too, so the whole europe thing is really cool... she works on sunday morning's though, so steve's one of the first people i see at church every sunday.
anyhow, steve and kassandra were planning to go to applebees to watch the game tonight and insisted i should come with... we ended up going to one only 10 miles away from the PA/NJ border since it was boasting a big party w/ lots of discounted stuff and free prize giveaways... i actually got pretty good at the "will the next play be run or pass?" betting, and won myself 2 free t-shirts and 2 free keychains =)... all alcohol propaganda of various denominations, but free stuff is always fun.
the two drink specials of the night were patriot something or another and panther punch (lemonade, vodka, and some crazy blue stuff)... each of us had 3 or 4 (can't remember) of the panther stuff... cleared out a lot of nachos shrimp and other fun stuff too...
the game was intense... if you didn't watch, with 4 seconds remaining the game was tied... the panthers got the second longest drive in super bowl history (95 yards) and the new record longest completed pass (85 yards) in super bowl history... but it wasn't enough... the patriots got a field goal in the last few seconds and it ended 32-29... unfortunate b/c i really don't like them... (a) they beat TN a couple weeks ago, and (b) they're not southern. oh well, it was one of the best games i've ever seen, even if the wrong team won.
so i had a 45 minute drive back up to my corner of jersey, and scott had called during the game, so i called back on my drive home... he and colleen were at the diner they hang out at, and he said i should totally stop by... buy the time i was that far i decided i really needed a coffee to counteract the 3/4 vodkas energy-wise (alcohol just makes me feel tired), so i stopped, got a coffee i loaded up with sugar... hung out for 45 minutes while they did homework, and we chatted, and now i'm home...
just convinced eric he wants to go look at stars with me (yay!)... it's not as if i'm falling asleep anytime soon!
later y'all! do freakin dah.
