Southern bound

it's off to pittsburgh tomorrow for me, and memphis on saturday -- haven't been home since christmas and just barely then.

goals while i'm putzing around memphis for two weeks when neither of the two high school friends i keep in touch with are :-P

* actually do my final project for dr. z.'s class

* read some math. namely, a journal article i'm supposed to referee for dr. z., a few other papers for our reading class (which continues in june), and Combinatorics of Finite Sets (Ian Anderson).

* read some non-fiction just for fun, namely, Journey Through Genius (William Dunham) and/or The Story of Mathematics (Richard Mankiewicz)

* read some fiction, namely, The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom) and/or Prague: A Novel (Arthur Phillips)

* take full advantage of the $2 movie theather by my parents house

* show up at each of my parents' jobs one afternoon, wander around, and get a free lunch out of whichever one i'm visiting. in mom's case, this is basically just visiting my grade school/where i worked in HS/my church during the work week and seeing lots of people who have known me since i was 5... in dad's case this involves free admission to the botanic gardens :-)

* i would add "go see a planetarium or IMAX show at the pink palace with my brother", but apparently in february they got a budget cut and the planetarium is indefinitely closed and the museum isn't open when my brother's off work... this makes me sad. i know that you have to prioritize when there's budget troubles, but it makes me sad to see educational places having to close their doors....

* finish arranging this summer's REU schedule

* learn how to pick locks

[this last one probably needs some explanation. in a back issue of Mental Floss there was a short article on how to pick locks. i figured my landlord would kill me if i tried to pick a lock attached to his house and he saw me... replace "my landlord" with "most any professor" and "his house" with "the math building" and you have an equally true statement... however at home, my dad has lots of padlocks that go on the outer fences to the yard. occasionally these rust or he buys new ones just to have different keys... it should be easy to find a few unused padlocks in a drawer somewhere to play with and no one would care... thus, goal is to put mental floss to the test and learn to pick locks while i'm home ;-)]

i think that about sums it up.

i'm ready to hit the road now, but it's probably better to get some sleep first ;-)

night y'all!