various and sundry

* i now have my plane ticket to go to valpo homecoming weekend for nicole's labyrinth dedication. this will be good.

* i had a fantastic dinner with sarah last night (she's a year ahead of me here at rutgers in the math ph.d. program is fun to hang out with, but also enjoys giving advice when i need it)... yesterday i asked her advisor (sarah has one of the *cough* 5 female profs. (out of over 100) in the rutgers math dept. as her advisor) to be on my orals committee (she said yes), and if she would meet with me to look over the syllabus for my minor topic (we're meeting today at 2). so soon i'll have a working syllabus for both a major and a minor topic, and i have 2 committed committee members... 2 to go. i know who one of those will be... the other? there's a logical prof to ask that i've taken many classes with but don't want to ask really.... sarah had the brilliant idea of trying to get greenfield... he's not into combinatorics, but maybe we can convince him he is... he's written 2 papers with combinatorial in the title and he does come to some of the more combinatorial seminars reasonably often. i like that idea... but first i gotta convince dr. z. that it's a good idea.

* within the week, my brother should be headed down to the gulf coast to work on a relief team... he installs satellite dishes with dish network, and after big storms where lots of service goes out, work sends them to work like 12-15 hours shifts in affected regions getting everyone back online. they keep delaying sending them... as, understandably, satellite TV comes lower in priority than like um, utilities and things like that, and the basic infrastructure of some of those other services needs to be up before the dish guys can do their job... but also especially since one of his work buddies (like my parents age) had a heart attack on the job on tuesday so all the work guys are getting off and going to the funeral in uniform in the work van on friday (the guy's mother's request)... completely unexpected... so brother's had a totally weird week.

* next weekend (sept 24), my cousin heather gets married in pittsburgh... i'm helping serve communion during the wedding... to save on gas $$, i asked one of the math grad students who is a year behind me and did his undergrad at carnegie mellon (in pittsburgh) if he wants to ride with... then he can see friends all weekend, and we both get a trip to pitt for like $1.50 gas and $5 turnpike toll instead of the $3 gas and $10 turnpike toll each way it would cost if i went on my own. thing is, this is a very friendly guy, but i've honestly never talked to him for more than 5 minutes straight since i've been a lot of a hermit for the past year or so, and next weekend we'll be in the car 6 hours each way... it'll be entertaining to say the least

* i find it really sad that "sleeping in until i wake up on my own" anymore consists of sleeping in til 8:45am... i guess that is a few more hours than the 6am i was up at yesterday or the 6:30 i was up at on tuesday, but still...

i should totally be working on math, but i'm 1 chapter from done with a non-math book i've been chipping away at for a couple weeks... finishing that, review in about an hour i'd guess, then exercising, late breakfast, and getting lazy self to campus. i need to be productive about something today... we'll see how long it takes me to get motivated.

later dudes.