people are funny...

today was super busy but good... wednesday afternoon through thursday night of my life this semester seems to run by in a total blur... it's nonstop running around to get stuff done....i "teach" (more like coordinate and take attendance for) an intro to teaching course on wednesday, and go straight from there to a weekly 2 hour study meeting with my friends baxter and eric... i get home around 9:30, and leave the house again by 9:30 at the latest thursday for office hours, immediately followed by teaching, immediately followed by research meeting, with half an hour to get things done on my own terms before the seminar i help my advisor run. by the time i sit still again it's minimum 6:30pm, often not until 8:30.... but so it goes.

today was fun for a few reasons in particular.

(1) my advisor gave today's seminar. he's a very energetic/dramatic speaker. he talked about the mathematics of the jewish calendar.... and used it to claim that the phrase "let there be light!" was spoken at 11:10:20pm on monday, september 7, in some 3000+ BCE year.... and also to show that although the current computations that go into the jewish calendar keep passover in the spring and rosh hashanah in the fall, in the year 20,830 or so (i didn't write down the correct year from the talk, but it was definitely in the 20,000s), rosh hashanah and christmas will coincide... so it's a pretty good approximation calendar for several thousand years, but even with such a good calendar, eventually the approximations involved creep in and screw things up, given enough time. :) this was entertaining.

(2) when a speaker comes visiting from another school, we generally take them out to eat... since my advisor obviously wasn't visiting from elsewhere, he didn't take us out to eat; however i managed to collect several people for dinner anyhow... my friends baxter and aek were practically given... aek brought his roommate tom, i brought dan (a new postdoc) and dimitrije (conference friend from other places who now teaches in NJ and was visiting), and another new guy from israel came along too... me, 6 math guys, and thai food. the fact that i consider list colorings of graphs and parking functions to be interesting dinner conversation does make me a geek... doesn't it?

(3) speaking of which, post-dinner, i allowed myself to be a vegetable for the first time in awhile. the season premeire of beauty and the geek was on. i watch it because it makes me laugh. they asked one of the "geeks" in the show auditions "describe your ideal woman", to which he responded, ".... well if she can solve a partial differential equation, that definitely gives her bonus points!...".... another answered "of course i don't have a girlfriend!... math makes me very excited." both of which had me absolutely in stitches.

one thing that generally entertains me about this show, even if it is a lot of sillyness sometimes, is that i, as a math grad student, relate a LOT more to the guys on the show, rather than the "beauties"... and this season they did something they should have done earlier... there are 9 teams in the usual format: geeky guy, beautiful girl... but they added a 10th team with a male actor/model/"party planner" teamed with a female grad student. the guy will compete with the other girls... the grad student girl will compete with the other guys... i'm curious to see how this pans out...

not much else of note... tomorrow is busy too; i'm substitute teaching early in the morning for my friend jared, have a meeting with the graduate professor i'm grading for, have a seminar to attend (the powers that be are hijacking graduate pizza seminar to talk about "professional development and the job market"... this can't be a bad thing to hear), and another meeting before i can chill...

sometimes i wonder how on earth i got so busy... and then i remember... i have this thing for not saying no if i think there's the slightest chance i can handle the pressue. doht. :P

onward... happy almost-friday to all!

the end.