man, oh man

what a week...

i don't get much sleep this week... combo due friday (i've done 1.5/8 correctly and made up answers for 3 others, so that's better than nothing, but it's still not good)... meeting with dr. z. tomorrow, for which i'm working away and have been for hours already this evening.

i did manage to be a decent host today at least :-P... i had to get up early to observe ben teaching... when alliswan was here, and i had class, i dropped her off at the music campus to practice piano... arlene, on the other hand is majorly into ultimate frisbee and has a need to go running all the time... so instead of dropping her off somewhere, i just left her my house key so she could go running around my neighborhood and lock the house while she was not in it :-P... that worked well... i came back home so we could have soup and sandwiches for lunch, and then she actually was brave enough to come with me to combinatorial commutative algebra this afternoon not knowing much of any of the subject and coming in to one lecture partway through the semester :-P

after that, since eric and arlene know each other equally as well as she and i know each other, and they hadn't gotten to visit yet this week, arlene and i went over to eric's house and we all made dinner together -- homemade pizza and some salad... it was quality. after that we played pool for a bit, and before that we watched eric and arlene take turns doing magic tricks too... it was a fun time all around.

nonetheless, me having oodles of hw, we were back home by 8:30 so i could work, as i have been for the past 5 hours straight now.

this is just such a weird week... here, we've had at least one prospective grad student visiting each night (which means lots of opportunities to go out to eat and get free food if i weren't so busy!... oi)... there's 2 guys at eric's house tonight and there was 1 last night... tomorrow night there's a girl staying at my house, but leigh's in charge of entertainment since colleen and i will each be out at church, etc. instead.

in other academic news, one of my friends here (should be easy to deduce who) plans to talk to dr. z. tomorrow and see if dr. z. will take him on as an additional student. there shouldn't be any issues, but for some reason it makes me feel ultra competative towards the friend in question. even though dr. z. specifically asked me to be his student, i constantly am mindful of continuing to keep him impressed with me. the friend in question is really industrious and dedicated when he's working on things he likes, and i feel not as dilligent compared to him despite the long hours i put in to my classes... i don't always want to have something nagging in the back of my head that i'm not as good as him. i'm pretty sure he'd tell me i'm being ridiculous if i brought any of this up with him. i can share my advisor (and i recognize it's really up to my advisor, and not up to me or his other students, who he takes on as students)... it's just, i really liked the idea of the fact that the other students who work for my advisor are not like my best friends here, and are more of academic friends, while the people i hang out with are doing something different. this friend potentially working with my advisor mixes up that dynamic, and means i'm going to have to work through this hyper competative streak that i don't even know why it's there. all this is to say, tomorrow said friend and dr. z. will probably both be delighted with the idea of working together, and in the meantime, it incurs a lot of issues in my head that it probably shouldn't and i'm not quite so excited. oh well. i'll figure it out in time.

for non-rutgers people it seems to be an off week in a completely different way. got an email from my friend carli (who i just saw on saturday) that her sister is having eye surgery (she has a tumor in her eye and they'll have to implant a radioactive disk and isolate her from all other people for a bit)... alliswan's grandmother died this week too so she's suddenly off to NC to be with family for memorial service etc. i feel for my friends a lot when they're going through stuff... i know it's not fun :-/... at any rate, alliswan, carli, you're in my prayers.

night?