in headline news...

i often sit down and watch msnbc for 15 minutes or so while eating lunch. it's not often that i'm quite so entertained as today though.

check this out (you need internet explorer for the videos i think)... how often do you see
(1) your non-NYC/washDC hometown in headline news
(2) the president in your hometown
(3) the president and a foreign head of state in your hometown
(4) the president in your hometown watching a foreign head of state dance and sing elvis songs.

it's seriously my favorite news video in forever... watch it. :)

oi... what a day!

two and a half firsts

(1) i got an letter that a math paper i submitted for publication in october was accepted pending some revisions. this is the fifth published paper to my name, and the first one with *just* my name on it. we'll count this as half a first.

(2) excited about said acceptance, i wrote to tell my advisor. he quickly emailed back the strangest response i've gotten in congratulations. excerpts follow:
"Thanks for ruining my day. It is a very big insult to have a paper accepted these days, since it means that it is understood by stupid editors and referees, and hence is probably very shallow. Then again, it is sometimes possible that a really good paper gets accepted for the wrong reasons, and that was probably the case with your paper. So your paper is excellent in spite of the fact that it was accepted. Seriously, congratulations on your first single-authored paper!"

The last line puts it in context, but the before that... that's not a response i'd gotten before after sharing good news. ;)

(3) i went to a comedy club for the first time! one of my REU kids who is a rutgers student is on the email list for the stress factory (a local comedy club 5 minutes from my house). she heard about a free show tonight that only got announced via email, and she booked a table for 14 of us (me and 13 of my REUers)... the opening act was this guy followed up by this guy. I don't know much about comedians and this was my first time at a comedy club, but I definitely had a great time.

seriously, these REUers are great for me... they've bonded well together *and* they get me out of the house.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in other news (non-firsts), ever since thanksgiving, i've been rereading the chronicles of narnia. i read the lion, the witch, an the wardrobe over the course of thanksgiving weekend so i had finished it before the movie. I read prince caspian, the voyage of the dawn treader, and the silver chair throughout december, and i read the horse and his boy in january quickly before my oral qualifying exam. then, i took a break on account of orals and other such fun, and didn't pick up the magician's nephew until 2 weeks ago. i read it entirely on the flight back from iceland plus about an hour the next day. now, i'm mostly through the last battle, and in total awe of the series again. i seriously hadn't read them since about 4th grade, and they're still just as good if not better this time around. i *love* it.

in final book-reading news, here's proof that i'm a math nerd. yesterday, thinking about how i was nearing the end of narnia, i decided i needed more reading material on my desk... so what do i do? i went to the rutgers math library and checked out 4 undergraduate books: linear algebra, glimpses of algebra and geometry, a walk through combinatorics, and basic posets,.... all just for "fun reading". you should be totally jealous.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

firsts, reading material, and oh yes... math

* i met with my advisor yesterday. it was a productive meeting, but now he's out of town for 3 weeks... hopefully i'll continue to be productive

* in order to get the grant i won for this coming year, i need to submit a 8x10 and a 3x5 photo of myself to them by july 1st... that's saturday... i've had the 8x10 for a bit, but i've had a heck of a time finding a place that makes 3x5s... i finally did last week, and ordered one for 19 cents, but it's not here yet, so tomorrow i'm going to play with my printer and make my own... oi... then yay for 2 day mail.

* today i had a panel for my REUers on graduate school... i had two clever profs -- one from math and one from computer science -- come in just to answer questions for an hour and a half... it was fairly useful. tomorrow night i'm on a panel of grad students for the rutgers biomedical REU... 8 of my own students are coming too, it's gonna be a packed house, and i'll get to tell them all how delightful it is to be a math ph.d. wanna be... really, i have a fantastic summer job (that comes with lots of free food opportunities!)

i think i'm done rambling... i really like to type! time to finish the last narnia book... night y'all!

that's a little sad...

Americans' circle of close friends shrinking

even though i'm a hermit and interact with my friends only one or two at a time usually, i still know there's a number of them i shouldn't hesitate to call long distance should something huge come up. not having even that is worrisome!

hey look, happy people!

me and 17 of my REUers out for dinner this past thursday (click to open it up larger in a new window.

birthday fun, day 2

today's been a fantastic day.

you know you've picked a good REU seminar speaker when 3 math professors come completely unsolicited just because "when dr. ___ talks, you make a point to be there and listen!". the speaker today was dr. beck. he really is a fantastic teacher... he makes you feel that you really understand the intuition behind what he's explaining, not just a bunch of rules, and he had the REU kids mesmerized for an hour and a half. he did a fantastic job.

after that i was lazy for awhile, and then headed back to campus.

in response to megan (one of my REU kids)'s suggestion yesterday, 17 of them took me out to eat for dinner as a belated birthday present. unlike the grad students yesterday who knew i'd kick them if they made me the center of attention, my REUers covertly got the serving staff to sing to me, and they wished me a "happy 16th" rather than my real age. :P my REUers actually sing with decent harmony. ;)

after that, i had made plans for the first REU social event of the summer (other than the movein day picnic)... we played capture the flag in the dark on campus. by the time the people who went to dinner all got set, and leigh and i detailed the rules, it was 9... by the time we let teams stake out territory and hide their flags, it was 9:15... it was 10:30 before my team won. :) our advantage was that we put our jail in a clever place, and out of the 12 people on their team, we ended up with 6 in jail and none getting rescued. 10 of my team members played offense at some point, i guarded the jailbirds, and luke played gobetween,... keeping track of how the others were doing and helping me corner people. since we captured half of them, and prevented rescues, and since we managed to keep our team free from prison, once we actually figured out where their flag was, it was a clean victory. :)

i didn't have the energy for tons of running around but it was fun to play warden with the jailbirds... the started singing lion king songs for fun, and when i ended up with two of the czech students under my guard in jail they started yelling random things in czech, and offered to translate only if i would tell them where my team's flag was.

we all had a good time... 22 REUers came out for the game out of the 29 living on campus -- that's mighty good turnout! i'm glad these guys all get along so well together. last year it was pointed out that it's hard to make community out of 30 people who don't know each other and so there were lots of cliques and it didn't feel horribly unified... this year, i think they're much differently glued together personality wise.... we have a lot of fun. they're fantastic kids to work with.

summary: 2 days of birthday is fun,... and i LOVE my summer job.

night y'all.

i miss hungary

Bush praises Hungary, 50 years after uprising

Bush commemorates Hungary's 1956 revolt

Bush is early... celebrating the October 23rd Hungarian day of mourning in June, but reading the story gave me an excuse to see pictures of downtown Budapest. at least i get to go back in 2 months? 2 months is still too far away... i miss budapest.

yay for birthdays!

i *almost* made it through this one without being sung at, and i did make it through without blowing out any candles... although who knows what tomorrow will bring...

after being on campus for REU most of the day, dinner with colleen, leigh, phil, eduardo, scott, a prospective students, and jessica (who drove all the way up from philly just for birthday dinner and a little extra fun)... it was great!

after that, leigh, scott, jessica, and i went bowling... if only we had known that it was either $14.95 for two games OR $14.95 for 3 games + large drinks for all + large cheese pizza for all BEFORE dinner time... after having really good big dinner, bowling fed us lots more food (which we made into lots of leftovers in lara's fridge :P)...

after that, scott read my "happy birthday to you!" dr. seuss pop-up book to us all, then left... jessica and i chatted for another hour, and then she headed home, and then i got a bunch of phone calls who had been trying all night to reach me... here it is nearly 1am, and i really should crash.

it's been a good day.

maybe twenty-old isn't quite as scary as it seemed the past several months... we'll see.

my REUers like me :) (yay!)

so today was day 2 of preliminary REU presentations. the first guy to get up there showed his first power point slide which read "happy birthday lara!", and everyone applauded.

after presentations one of the girls asked me what i was up to tonight and i said i was going out with friends... then she asked "what about tomorrow night? can we please take you out for your birthday?" i told her "if you plan it, i'll show up", so within the next 15 minutes she mass emailed the REU students email list and told them they were taking me out tomorrow night and to rsvp to her so that she can coordinate rides. how cool is that?

they're a good group of kids already, but this just makes me smile even more. :)

happy lara day!

shall we count? (again)

i just realized i never took this down last year, and it was easy to just add one more row... enjoy.

a countdown of laras :P

from the inbox...

> jared,
>
> colleen said you couldn't come for dinner on account
> of teaching unless you were allowed to bring your
> whole class. i bet a good chunk are my students from
> last semester anyhow, so you totally *should* move
> class to rafferty's tomorrow ;)
>
> the end.
>
> lara


Hi Lara. Happy Birthday, and thanks for the class suggestion. I have
some really good kids in my class, Kenneth included.

Unfortunately, tomorrow is our midterm. I'll take a class vote, and see
who wants to work at rafferty's.

In case we don't make it, make sure you have extra fun to make up for our
non-presence.

Have a great time!
:)-
-jared

say hey, it's a good day

* my REU kids missed me. i ran into like half of them around and about the office today and they all were super glad to see me again. :)

* people seem to like my iceland pictures too; i've had fun telling my stories all day.

* i actually have birthday plans for wednesday night... jessica's coming up, and several math people will join us for happy dinner at a good restaurant, i'm excited. :)

* i FINALLY found ben and jerry's black and tan (beer flavored) ice cream at the local grocery store when i took the czech students shopping today. i'd tried this when scott and i visited the factory in march, and had been looking for it ever since without success. when i saw it, i got way excited and started calling people to rejoice vicariously via cellphone.

* while updating my math website, i came upon this. not only have i won best pizza seminar for last fall by vote of the grad students, i'm now an excellent TA by vote of professors too. this makes me really happy. it's even cooler that the person i get to share the honor with is eric.

not even 10 and i'm ready to crash... how sad is that?

happy monday!

iceland pics, version 1

here's my current travellog of the trip

click me!

it could be added to as i get pictures from other conference attendees, but that's what *i've* got on my own :)

enjoy!

top 10 iceland pics!

i'm back... what a loooong day. you have no clue how exciting it is that it's dark outside right now. i haven't had proper nighttime in a week. while it's cool to an extent, i genuinely have missed sleeping in the dark....

i'm exhausted and it'll be a few days before i have a proper webpage up for my many many photos, but in the meantime, hopefully these will tide you over. ;)

reykjavik harbor at 11pm at night... i think this is my absolute favorite shot of the whole trip






gullfoss waterfall, southwest iceland. notice the people on the side for scale, and how non-commercial the area is... this still doesn't nearly do it justice



"little geyser"... i got pictures of actual geysir (after which all geysers are named) but the placard on this one amused me greatly






me and an ancient icelandic wax figure






view of one of the main streets in downtown reykjavik






a cute patriotic small child on national day (june 17)






yay iceland






another cute icelandic child






the hallgrimskirkja






read the label very carefully... ;)






the end... i'm back... and i'm looking forward to 8 hours sleep IN THE DARK! :P

night y'all!

leaving on a jet plane...

... in 7 hours that is.

it has rained nonstop for the past few days, but that hasn´t stopped me from having fun.

summary of the week:
* iceland is beautiful (even if it is hard to catch a good night´s sleep... too bad i didn´t figure out how to sleep in the constant sunlight until my 2nd to last night here: my secret? drink a bottle of icelandic malt ale (guiness-ish but sweeter) and you won´t wake up until morning ;P)
* math people are incredibly friendly and welcoming, and incredibly easy to make friends with and have a good time with. :)

the next permutation conference is in scotland next june... that should be equally fun (and hopefully less cold) to explore! :)

today´s icelandic independence day (independence from denmark as of 1944)... the music is alredy blasting, even though most of the people in this country who wake up before 11 are the people who were pub crawling all night last night and haven´t quite made it to bed yet...

should be a fun day of exploring amongst the balloons, people, and music til lunch, then a long ride across lava fields to my plane... i´ll be back in NY by american dinner time.

here ends my last rambly post about iceland... i´ll have pictures to show instead once i´m really back :)...

happy saturday! be parties one and all! :)

dude, i seriously can´t sleep in this country...

what with midnight sunset and 3am sunrise, it never really gets dark... even when i *try* to sleep for 8 or 9 hours, i repeatedly wake up starting at 3 on account of the sun being out and my head just really doesn´t want to go back to sleep.

it rained all day yesterday, so post conference, adam, brant, and i (the two grad students i´ve been hanging out with most, both of who i´d briefly met before at other places before iceland) went to the saga museum. it´s basically a wax museum telling the early history of iceland housed inside a really cool building that´s mostly used as a series of storage tanks of hot water for reykjavik. they had an audio tour in english which helped, so that was fairly cool... after 4 more hours of talks today, we´re hoping the rain holds off enough to check out the botanic gardens tonight... we shall see....

can´t believe my week here is nearly halfway up... lots of fantastic pictures though, especially of tuesday´s expedition, and hopefully more to come before i leave.

these entries are getting rambly and repetative i think, but at least you know i still exist ;)

p.s. i had a candy bar called "corny big" at lunch today and you did not. :) foreign countries rock.

iceland, day something or another

yesterday was absolutely GORGEOUS

for the only day since i´ve been here, the sky was blue, and it wasn´t too terribly cold... for the afternoon instead of math talks, we loaded 50 mathematicians on a bus...

we stopped at
* pingvellir -- the national park where iceland´s parliament used to meet... there are lots of rocky crags and canyons to crawl around in
* gullfoss -- iceland´s most huge famous waterfall
and
* geysir -- which is exactly as its name suggests
* a large crater with a lake at the bottom where there was some guy singing folk songs at the lakeside in icelandic... it was a strange experience.

since it was actually sunny, there were huge rainbows over the waterfall, and we could walk right up to the edge, which was awesome... i also saw a glacier (in the distance) for the first time in my life.

we wrapped things up with a 3 hour conference dinner of icelandic lobster in a small town on the southern coast of the country before coming back.

since it was the first non-rainy night of the trip, i went for a walk around midnight (i.e. sunset) last night to get some pictures of reykjavik harbor in the midnight sun.... fairly cool.

today it´s back to raining which stinks... we´ll see if it brightens up at all for me before it´s time to leave... although i do listen to math talks from 10 til 5 each day anyhow. :P... nonetheless, wish me luck!

later dudes.

iceland, day three

yesterday´s talk actually went just fine. people appreciated my jokes about dr. z. and his influence on my speaking style. the two mathematicians i referenced both talked to me afterwards, and said nice things which was good. general consensus was it was a good talk. math people seriously are the friendliest ever, and it makes sense to be a little worried, but is affirming that they´re all so accepting and encouraging anyhow.

last night adam (another grad student here) and i went to the volcano show, which is basically a 2 hour documentary by an icelandic man in his 60s... he and his father have filmed every volcanic eruption in iceland since WWII, and he´s quite an interesting character. with how cold and windy it was it was a quality way to spend the evening.

now, we saw blue skies this morning since the first time i got here... in 10 minutes we leave for a tour of geysir, gullfoss, and the original meetinggrounds of the alþingi (the icelandic parliament) from like 1000+ years ago... it should be super cool, and hopefully, not raining for once!

more in another day or two!

(i´m in iceland and you´re not ;P)

iceland, day 2

conference coffee break time!

dude... even though the sun goes down for 3 hours, it´s never dark here at all, so sleeping is weird. i woke up briefly at 1:30 am last night to find it still "dusky" outside... slightly disorienting!

speaking of funny things, who knew reykjavik was surrounded by mountains? lava fields yes, but yesterday was so foggy everything appeared flat... today, still overcast, but dude, mountains in the background everywhere you look.

i have to have walked 10 miles yesterday weaving around downtown reykjavik. very quaint for a city, but colorful and gorgeous and the people are incredibly friendly. highlights where city hall (where they have a huge room-sized 3D map of iceland and a few small art displays), the tjorn (lake) where i fed ducks with small children and happened upon a small military parade, and the ocean front.

today, 2 talks so far, 2 more and lunch before me. i will be the first person to give a whiteboard talk instead of a power point talk. the idea never crossed my mind to do anything else... i suppose i should make some sort of joke of "can you guess who my advisor is based on my form of presentation?" :P i will be incredibly happy in 4 hours when the trauma of being in front of a room of specialists is over with. frankly, everyone´s incredibly friendly and there´s no good reason to be worried... i just wanna have it over with!

just wait... next time i write i´ll just be enjoying myself instead of obsessing about my talk... exciting right?

yay iceland!

the end. (for now)

i'm in iceland... and you're not!

here i am in iceland!

so usually the problem is when i fly, my luggage gets lost... seriously like 60% of the time it does... last night's trip, not so much.... instead i had new travel fun.

the plan was, catch the NJ transit train near my house to penn station in manhattan, take 10 minutes to get to the LIRR train to jamaica/queens, then transfer to the JFK air train and then checkin at least 2 hours before my flight.

instead, i caught the NJ transit train and then the power failed just as we were about to leave newark... no trains could make it through the NY/NJ tunnel for a bit so we were just stuck... after 10 minutes they announced "if you want to continue to NY get off now and board the path train in the lower level" (luckily we were stopped at Newark-Penn, not between stations)... instantly everyone crowds to path... for people going to manhattan that's fine... investigating the path train map though, the closest it was gonna get me to where i planned to be on tight schedule was 30 blocks south... BAD... so i withdrew an obscene amount of money against my credit card from an ATM, went out and hailed a cab for the hour+ ride to JFK... cost? $100... ouch. so instead of being over 2 hours early and paying $20 in transportation... i got there 80 minutes early and paid $109 to get to the airport... i was NOT a happy lara.

since then, things have cheered up.
brant, a seattle grad student i met in wisconsin in april, was 2 rows behind me on the flight... in baggage claim we ran into adam, a michigan grad student who was visiting rutgers all this year,... and on the hour bus from the airport to reykjvaik we ran into at least half a dozen older conference attendees, 2 of which expressed especial interest in the abstract i have posted online for my talk for tomorrow... that's affirming.

the landscape here is like from another world... as we landed we could see the southern coast, and then we drove through miles of lava fields... now, nothing's open for a couple hours, but i'm just blocks from the ocean and plan to do a bit of wandering.

in the 60 minutes i've been in town, at least 3 icelanders have stopped me (and other people i was with for breakfast) to chat and offer advice about good things to see and visit,... i've been here an hour and it's already shaping up to look like a good visit. :)

summary: NY irritates me, but it's fantastic to have a totally new world to explore. yay for iceland... look out for pictures in a week!

...and we're off (again)

in the past 24 hours...

* spent an afternoon waiting around campus for next week's REU speaker to send me an abstract before i left... finally succeeded
* practiced my iceland talk twice to an empty office
* helped several REU students make their required webpages
* fun pre-international travel financial stuff
* packed
* dinner and an at home movie with colleen
* some sleep (not enough)
* altar guild at church
* finished packing
* putzed around a LOT
* gave my iceland talk to leigh (she's the first person to have heard it and she was overall quite pleased with it, so there's hope i won't look like a total fool on monday)

in the next 24 hours....
* train from NJ to new york penn station
* train from penn to jamaica
* other train from jamaica to jfk (i've never flown out of any NY area airport but newark before... it shall be an adventure)
* 6 hour flight to iceland, land at 6:30ish local time, 2:30ish (AM) NJ time
* bus from airport to reykjavik, find hotel, convince them to take my 50 pound suitcase while i go explore the city for the day in the rain on no sleep :P

conference begins monday... plenty of stories to be told upon return i'm sure.

monday (morning US time/afternoon iceland time = eastern time + 4 hours) keep me in mind... i'm giving a half an hour talk to specialists in my research area... both people whose work i mention will be in the audience and i've never met them before. i'm very conscious of not wanting to appear incompetant or foolish... :P

i'm outta here... farewell USA for a few days, hello reykjavik :)

only the nicest sister on earth...

... would send *this* email to her brother.... that's right.... 11K worth of poking. i'm great, ain't i?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

i will now POKE you to within an inch of your life

poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke poke 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...................................

PPPP OOO K K EEEEE
P P O O K K E
P P O O KK EEEEE
P O O K K E
P OOO K K EEEEE

the end.

LOVE!

i love my summer job!

in case you're unaware, just like last year, this summer i'm running a math REU (that means research experience for undergrads). there's a bunch of really smart undergrads from around the country/world working at rutgers for the summer, and i plan seminars, field trips, etc. to keep them entertained.

so far this week, my job has looked like this:

monday: help students move in from 9am onward... threw a picnic from 5-9pm during which i learned all 31 student names (yay!)

tuesday: help set up and emcee the REU orientation dinner and run housing orientation after that... sounds short, but it was a 6-7 hour afternoon/evening on campus

today: spend 3 hours helping the czech REU students go grocery shopping and shoe shopping (a lot of fun actually), then an afternoon of writing emails and helping students put together webpages.

i also spent a chunk of the afternoon gossiping with the department grad director, and another chunk rehearsing my talk for iceland... i was worried i'd be 15-20 minutes, but my practice talk to my empty office was actually 26 minutes long. (the talks are scheduled for 30 minutes each). not bad.

so seriously: check out all of the above... i get paid to do fun stuff in the summer. :)

iceland in 3 days... HA :-)

later dudes.

in case you were wondering...

NJ ties for 3rd worst drivers in the country... the only places worse are rhode island and DC... how about that?

man...

(me): let's sing
SmarterChild: Do mi so do so mi do...
(me): sho be do be do
SmarterChild: Do mi so do so mi do...
Hmm... I'm a little bored. Let's not talk about music any more.
Uh... Wanna check out the weather report?
(me): fine, dance
SmarterChild: You can't make me dance.
(me): DANCE!
SmarterChild: I'm no dancing fool.

looks like SmarterChild recently got a backbone.

(if you're unaware, smarterchild is a computer you can talk to on IM... usually i only write it to check the weather when i'm in a hurry or something like that, but occasionally i write it just to see what it says back... used to be that it would sing non-stop back and forth until *you* got tired of the game... unfortunately no more)

the end... really this time, i'm going to sleep.

happy day

jessica came up for the day today... it was really nice...

we ate a big lunch, spent several hours wandering the mall and shopping (i finally got a cover for my ipod, and a much-needed new purse (to be read as large over the shoulder canvas bag that can hold my wallet, water bottle, and at least 2 books simultaneously), and other such fun), crashed at my house to watch several old episodes of scrubs, played some board games, and then got drinks and an equally big dinner, and got in a lot of chatting about all sorts of things too.

i have friends who are good at lots of different parts of the above 11 hour agenda, but not any here who would be set for the whole thing. it's nice to catch up with long time friends and be lazy in different venues for a whole day.. it really is.

this makes me happpy.

the end.

false advertising?

so this morning, i was up early for a meeting at church... on the way home i stopped at cvs to buy more vitamins, and while there, i picked up a bottle of arizona tea...

this time i saw a new flavor: white cranberry apple green tea -- sounded good so i gave it a shot.

before i opened it, i laughingly noticed the pictures all over the bottle of people playing different sports and the lid that said 0g - no carb all over it... thinking, "oh good, this won't be super sweet"

when i tasted it, it wasn't bad, but it was definitely sugary, so i checked out the ingredients label... indeed

total carbohydrates: 2g = 1%

but if you go further down the label it reads
total carbs = 2 grams
sorbitol = 2 grams
net effective carbs = 0 grams
sorbitol absorbs very slowly in the body and has a minimal effect on blood sugar levels. therefore, this product has a net effective carbohydrate impact of ZERO grams.

do you buy this?

just because it's a different kind of sugar doesn't mean 0 sugar to me... and now that i've googled sorbitol, frankly i would rather have regular sugar. :P... so much for me trying to get a non-sugary-sweet drink anyhow... oh well.

road trip pics

click here and enjoy!

now that i'm back, it's a marathon of an 8 days to survive, and then it's off to iceland for me!... more later i'm sure.

night.