the rundown

in general
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it's been a crazy few days... after quals, i've spent most of the past week remembering how to have a normal non-studying-24/7 routine again... i bought groceries for the first time in a month... i caught up on bills, mail, email, buying school supplies, cleaning (i actually put all my furniture in a pile and got into every corner of this room)... it's been busy.

along with high stress lately (and despite good news/excellent payoff for hard work), comes snappiness... just because the qual is done and i got lots of good news last week doesn't mean stress instantly dissipates... i'll be the first to recognize that i have been periodically unreasonable with people this week, but i don't think it's *all* me... then again when of all the people i know around here, i can only name one who i haven't been irritated with for at least 5 minutes in the past 5 days, at least part of it has to be lara issues, and probably a significant chunk... so i seclude myself and mind my own business a lot in hopes of my attitude going away before i deal with people more... so it goes....

school stuff
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obviously the qual is no longer a worry... classes around here started yesterday... i'm currently taking 4 and have been to two...

i'm taking the second semester of combinatorics... same prof, same students, same time... same everything, just new impossible homework :-P

i'm taking combinatorial commutative algebra... it's really exciting that i finally have a female prof since rutgers only has like 5 female math profs out of like 110 faculty... we had our first class today and i liked the prof a lot... my background is definitely not in algebra, but i think she plans to present things on a straightforward enough level that it won't be a problem... looking forward to it

otherwise, i have a reading class and a real class with dr. z., my advisor... his real class is tomorrow, and i suppose we'll talk then about our reading class (i already have known since before break what i'll start of working on... i just haven't started anything since quals have been done)

besides that, i'm still in charge of pizza seminar

besides that, friday i have a meeting with the dimacs people to meet people i'll be working with this summer... i'll start helping them with some preliminary stuff before january is up even if the bulk of my job will be in the summer

besides all *that*, since eric and i weaseled our way out of the teaching training course last spring, we have to take it with all the 1st years this semester... ai yai yai

so busyness all around

speaking of eric, i think he's not talking to me right now... see 1st section... oops

church stuff
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as recorded multiple times, pastor j., the pastor at my church here in jersey, retired 2 months ago now... so my church is in the process of finding a new pastor... in the meantime, we have an interim pastor.

he's nice enough, but has only been around for 3 weeks and is still working on ironing out the kinks... e.g. a week and a half ago, he turned 2 pages in the bulletin instead of 1, so immediately after the prayers he did the benediction, then realized he had skipped over a large chunk of the service and needed to go back... this past sunday he got confused reading the congregation's version of the hymnal in a place where the pastor's part is printed in part with an ellipse to save space i guess (the proper preface to communion)... whether you're familiar with lutheran liturgy or not, the point is, the vacancy pastor stopped church for 10 minutes and had all the deacons come up to the altar and help him look for a passage of his part of the service that he couldn't find... in the end they didn't find it for him either so we just skipped it...

i know he's new and things will smooth out in time, and that's fine... i also just miss having a pastor who knows me by name

reading
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i haven't had time to read fiction since last summer, what with studying for the august qual, then a crazy semester during which i was studying for the january qual, and then studying like nuts ever since, that this week i've made a point of starting in on some non-math before things get crazy again... you can keep tabs on what's actually off my bookshelf on the sidebar of my blog, but some comments.

mental floss magazine is *hilarious*... i've mentioned them before... i discovered them in a bookstore in ohio on a trip last may, and bought the then current issue... later in the summer i saw the next issue and bought *it*, and then got myself a subscription when i moved into this house last fall... so enamored with their writing and humor am i, that i ordered every single back issue that exists (the magazine puts out 6 issues a year and started in 2002)... silly lara though... i got the subscription, and just keep putting the new issues on the bottom of the stack, which i'm reading in chronological order... i've got 3 more 2003 back issues to read, then the 3 from fall 2004 to catch up with... lots of laughs though... it's a quality mag.

tonight, i started reading lee strobel's the case for christ... i purchased it nearly 4 years ago now, after a conversation with a friend who was really into it... i recognize that there are some strong criticisms of the way strobel goes about things and the information he presents, but it's been on my shelf for so long, that i kinda wanted to know for myself what was in there rather than listening to all the critics... i actually read 1/6 of it in the last hour and a half, so it's not too difficult of a read, and nice for me to see what all the fuss is about.

is it weird that i now read non-fiction for my leisure reading? it makes me feel old :-P

other people stuff
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i got an email tonight that really frustrated me (word choice) in a way that's hard to put into words... i've posted before how my friend nicole (who died in a car wreck in september 2003) was supposed to be intered in a columbarium on the valpo campus... when steps were being made earlier this fall to finalize that though, her family met resistence from the board of directors... instead of intering nicole's ashes a couple weeks ago as expected, her parents ended up bringing the urn containing her ashes back home to florida (it had been in the campus chapel for the past 16 months)... instead of having the green light on the columbarium, there is now a committee being formed to determine whether it's a good thing or not... also the prayer garden/labyrinth they had been planning to go with it is now estimated to cost 8 times what original estimates said... all in all, things that had been in the works for the last 16 months are suddenly hitting a frustrating brick wall, so to speak... if you're a valpo person and have any interest in contacting the committee (with concrete, non-"i think the runaround you all are causing on this is unnecessary, stupid, and hurtful" type comments) once it's formed, let me know and i'll keep you posted on what i hear from nicole's folks on how to contact them and submit your input... but that's the scoop on that for now...

otherwise, lots of changes going on for plenty of other friends too... whether moving back to school that they've been absent from for a bit,... or worrying about applications/steps for next year after graduation... or returning to foreign countries for mission and/or peacecorp type work, or for school... i guess it's a general rule that everyone's always got something going on, and we all need each other's patience and support and prayers to make it through...

in conclusion
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if i've managed to offend or irritate you this week, i'm sorry

if i've been mad at your this week, unless i've specifically approached you about it, consider things as all good between us...

i just want space right now, and i think (hope) that's all there is to it.

hope you all have a fabulous week