quotes, etc.

today's been a long but good day -- the first real "break" i've had in 2 months...

for starters, i slept in without an alarm... my first obligation was at noon... REU mentor meeting. my main function was to sit around and be friendly... we had the applications sorted out by project for the mentors to look through, and mentors know what they're doing so they don't need much interference.

after that i was scheduled to meet with my directed reading program mentee... when he was half an hour late and i was getting ready to leave, he finally showed up, running late from a midterm he had just taken... that was fine... while we were in the middle of working a problem on the board and i explained "stars and bars" (which is the standard way to explain n choose r with repetition), colleen, who was sitting across the room blurted out
"wow lara, you sound like mathematical dr. seuss!"
i was amused.

after that, it was to scott's house to get an early dinner with him...
quote:
me: "cmon, all i ever do is tell lies always"
scott: "dude, don't try and run that past a logician!"

we also agreed that my chief problem worrying (word choice?) about friday (which for those of you who haven't caught on is when i'm going on my first date ever) is that i'm not used to thinking of myself as a girl... along the way chatting about that and related things, scott blurted out laughing
"why does everyone tell you i'm the best person for advice on this. i've never been on a first date with a 30 year old guy!"
me: "are you sure?"
scott: "i think so... um, yeah"

finally, it was time for my first lesson in driving a stick.. i've always wanted to learn and never had an opportunity, except that scott currently drives a stick and promised to teach me after i passed my exam. we played around in parking lots for half an hour. generally, i tended to talk to the car along the lines of "go car go!" as i tried to start (getting from park into a happy 1st gear is really hard!)... a few times though, when i got flustered, i would just yell
"CLUTCH! BRAKE!" (doing just that while i said it) and look worried at scott while he'd laugh at me. he laughingly commented part way through "i'm really glad "clutch! brake! is the first thing i taught you or we'd be in trouble... you've got that down good"

plans for the evening? out for a walk/jog, a little homework, and a lot of watching RENT on dvd (it came out yesterday and i already have it). it's so nice to be able to look forward to a weeknight without math (now that the exam is done), reading REU applications (now that mentors have sorted through them), or writing applications (now that i sent in one for a fellowship i'm applying for for next year this afternoon). i never thought this day would come. :P

happy wednesday! :)