still studying...

me: (on the phone, leaving a voicemail for ben) ben! i have an analysis emergency of epic proportions... eric and me are irate that we don't understand why the dirichlet function restricted to the unit interval isn't a counterexample to lusin's theorem... it's the characteristic function of a measurable set, so it freakin well better me a measurable function... but it's discontinuous everywhere so how the heck do you find a compact set with measure arbitrarily close to 1 where it's continuous... find me an answer or i'm gonna cry that math is fundamentally screwed up and i'll find something new to do with my life... catch you later"
me: (to eric) see wasn't that a good message?
eric: yes, it was hilarious, but i have TWO words for you
me: what's that
eric: drama queen

cantor sets (see here) may be all pretty and cool at a first glance, but when studying for a qual, really screw up the world..

it really makes me unhappy that by lusin's theorem, the Dirichlet function, which is discontinuous EVERYWHERE has a compact set in the unit interval with measure almost as big as the unit interval that it's continuous on. (note, the set is a "fat cantor set", like in the initial link... it also makes me angry that there are compact sets of positive measure that don't contain any intervals.)

math can be soooo twisted.... down with set theory altogether now!

studying quotes

a song sent to me by steve klee this afternoon:
)to the tune of cecilia: )
non-abelian, you're breaking my heart
you're shaking my multiplication
non-abelian, i'm down on my knees
i'm begging you please to commute

algebra in the afternoon
non-abelian groups in my classroom
there are things that cannot be done
when a b inverse a inverse b is not one

:-)

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

actual fun with studying:

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

leigh: has anyone seen my hungerford? (note: thomas hungerford is the author of our main algebra textbook)
me: you mean you have a clone of good old tom and he got out of his cage?
leigh: yeah, i took him home and i'm afraid i might have left him there
me: oh, i see, you brought him home and your mom got so attached that you left him there for a bit
colleen: that's one way to break up
leigh: huh? so where IS humphreys? (note: humphreys is the author of our lie algebras text book)
me: humphreys... wait which one is that?
colleen: see, leigh has so many boyfriends none of us can keep them straight
leigh: why are we talking about multiple ones, i just want hungerford
me: you said humphreys
leigh: oh dear
colleen: and the guys think we don't have any boyfriends to speak of... ha

me: see, wasn't that one of the funniest things you've done all day?
eric: and the chocolatiest!
(there are pictures to illustrate this... eric took a freakin huge hand full of chocolate covered raisins and ingested them all at once, much to the entertainment of all)

leigh: so then we can always find a sup within epsilon of that pizza hut!
(this is what happens when you let lara name the variables in a problem instead of calling them x, y, z, etc. as usual)

me: wow leigh! what are you doing here? i like it when i see you at my house!
leigh: wow, you must be happy a lot because guess what?
me: what?
leigh: i live here!
eric: wow! i have no idea what just went on here
me: you don't tell your roommates that you're amazed and so happy to see them all the time?
eric: um, no
leigh: that's because they don't have anyone in that house near as cool as you lara

once i spent a whole day doing that... you know,
putting + and - in front of zero and watching it
disappear... it's like 'look! it did it again!' every
time. ~eric

note: the door to the graduate lounge in the math
building locks and has no recycling bin in it, so it's
a fun game to throw the door open, run to the
recycling bin to get rid of trash and run back before
the door closes
me: shoot, the bins are further down the hall, i don't
know about this
eric: well, you can cheat and prop the door and we'll
all laugh or you can be brave and try it
leigh: c'mon we'll both go... let's do it!
(leigh and i run out the door, i get back in just
before it shuts and leigh's still outside... eric
gives me a high five and a "see told you you could do
it!"
...just as the door is closing in front of leigh, we
hear "lara! you missed and threw yours in the paper bin!"


who says studying ALL DAY long in the math building isn't fun? all your meals in the graduate lounge using leftover plates from a semester of pizza seminar... all the hot drinks you could want out of the shady machine in the basement.... all day in a dusty 7th floor room with 2 walls of chalkboards, 3 good friends, and a freakin lot of math books... then studying all evening until bedtime at our house or eric's house alternately.... oh man, what a week...

3 more days to study, then 2 of insanity.

here's to hoping for survival

night y'all

day 2

practice test, day 2... not as good... but not good for any of us

i'm tired of doing math 12 hours a day for the past...
(counts...)
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10+ days

my head hurts

in 5 days minus 4 hours, it'll be over...

maybe grad school will be done then too :-P

update

yes, i'm still alive

yes, i'm still studying like mad

no, i don't feel completely confident about the test (nor do i think i ever will)

no, i probably don't want to talk to you in the next week unless you're telling me how to solve math problems (sorry, that doesn't mean i don't like you, i'm just pretty one-track-minded right now)

eric, colleen, leigh and i all met at 9 this morning to take day 1 of a practice test under usual testing conditions, (format: each day 3 required questions, 6 others from which you choose 3 each day... score out of 60 points, you have 9am til noon to work... this happens for two consecutive days to give a total score out of 120... usually 70 is guarantee to pass)... estimating based on answers and objections from within the group, i got 47/60 on this morning's work... considering i got 42.5 TOTAL on both days last august, this is moderately encouraging.... at least i've learned *something* during the inbetween time :-P

now, here's to hoping that the real test next week includes questions i know how to do too

later dudes

moving to antarctica... effective immediatel-- well, asap maybe

let's talk about fears.

i'm afraid of the wall-sized mirror in my dining room after dark when the lights are out.

that's a silly fear, that i can easily talk myself out of.

i'm afraid of pushing shopping carts at stores.

that's an annoyance that i've let grow into an irrational fear because people are willing to humor me and push the shopping cart instead when i need to buy lots of stuff at once.

i'm afraid of dying in a car wreck in the rain.

that's a fear that's grown from enough people i know having had that happen, that everytime i'm out driving in the rain it fills my mind... what can i do? be a cautious driver, and not much else.

those fears are all well and good... give them as much or as little credit as you want... but they're all circumstantial, and in the end,...
* my mirror can't hurt me...
* having a weird thing about not pushing shopping carts and just buying a few things at a time when i'm at the store by myself isn't going to affect my life for better or for worse...
* and driving in the rain,... if you're cautious, that's all you can do to help with that... if i really wanted to i could just stop driving in the rain full stop forever, right?

but let's talk about huge life-changing fears...

i have several of these too...
i'm afraid of being alone in the long run
i'm afraid i'll never get out of debt
and, what concerns me most this week: i'm worried that in the near future i'll get a major sign that what i've been aiming to do with my life for the past 6 years is all to waste and that i'm really not qualified for it at all.

in case you haven't gathered, in a week, i will be taking my written qualifying exam... i am a 2nd year ph.d. student in math at rutgers. the first step towards getting a ph.d. at just about any school is to pass a written qualifying exam to show you know the basics of first year course material. this past august, i and all the other students who entered the program when i did, took the test for the first time. 4 of us failed. many professors, fellow students, and others attributed my failing at least in part to the fact that i attended a funeral the week before the exam and had a moderately stressful summer; although it was partially a nice cover at the time, it also frustrated me, because honestly, even if my summer hadn't been that stressful, i honestly don't believe i knew enough material at the time to have been able to pass the exam. heck, i take the thing again in a week and i still don't think i know enough material to pass.

all fall, the 4 of us who failed worked with a phenomenal analysis professor to learn how to solve analysis problems that may or may not appear on the exam. we learned a lot, and he claims he has faith in us to pass.

all fall, i've been working sporadically between homework for my actual classes to learn how to do other problems and learn other concepts for the test, and math friends who have seen me working claim they have faith in me to pass.

all fall, i've been many things (both good and bad) to many people outside the program, and they said "if you can so determinedly do (fill in the blank), i have faith you can do anything, including pass this test"

truth is, to have failed it once, and failed it badly, i've felt kinda insufficient to be in this program all year... heck, i've felt insufficient to be here most of the previous year too.... people can tell me all they want that they have such faith in me, but really, until you've lived with the demons in my head, you don't understand how frustrating it is to hear that when (a) i don't believe it myself, and (b) i know there's an equally likely if not greater chance that i still could fail the darn thing again in a week.
(this is not to invalidate compliments... let me make it extraordinarily clear that i love the support and love i get from so many people and the sentiment is greatly appreciated... but there's a hard-to-precisely-define line between appreciating the sentiment and appreciating the gesture expressing the sentiment -- still not phrased quite right... parenthetical remark is just to say that you shouldn't feel dissed if you've complimented me or told me you have faith in me in the last week after you just read the above paragraph, even though you probably feel that way anyhow).

if i fail next week, does that make me a bad person? no

will i feel like crap? freakin yes

what does it mean? it means that i have devoted the past 6 years since graduating high school to the study of higher mathematics with the goal of doing research and/or teaching others about math. if i fail next week, the general rule at rutgers is two chances and then you're out of luck, and thus, even with undergrad successfully completed, the past two years of my life will have amounted towards nothing... two years of struggling to learn analysis and other fun concepts, only to have less than six months to find a new life plan... having been hooked on to this one for so long, despite how the most recent two years of it have completely ruined what little self esteem i had at the start, i really have no idea what an alternate plan would be. somehow, in the last semester, i've managed to impress a professor enough to have him ask to be my future advisor. if i fail again, i'd be all the more humiliated in that, why would a professor want a student that has failed multiple times in passing the litmus test of knowledge of the first year courses, when there's even harder stuff to come.
in the end, this doesn't come down to being just a stupid test that doesn't reflect who i am anyhow... this comes down to a question of if i can prove myself capable of doing something i've devoted 25% of my life to. the fact that that all comes down to 6 hours next week that i still don't feel very prepared for, despite a week of nearly non-stop study this week, and quite a bit of work before that is rather frustrating.

if i somehow manage to pass next week, does that make me a good person? not really

will i be ecstatic? actually, probably not... i'll probably still be equally angry that grad school involves hoops that completely undermine what little self-esteem the average graduate student has. perfectly smart and qualified people come in to programs like this, and with few exceptions learn to call themselves stupid several times a day and learn to focus on all that they don't know and can't do rather than who they are and what they do bring to the table... either that or they're the top 5% who outshine the rest without trying... or they're egomaniacs who can't admit when they screw up... complaints about others aside, even if i pass, i will probably be exhausted that so much energy and tears have gone into something that has so undermined my view of self that i still won't want to rejoice about it.

all that said, what do i want?

(1) i don't want people to tell me "i have faith in you" and/or "i know you can do it" with specific regard to the qual
fact: in this case, i really DON'T know i can do it until i see it happen, and furthermore, if you don't know the math and don't have a sincere estimation of how well i know it, you can't really have an estimation of how i'll do on the test... don't take it personally, but in the end, all the "i have faith in you"'s add up to me feeling i've disappointed even MORE people in the event i don't do well

(2) i want someone to just give me a hug, listen to me cry, and validate that the above is a real fear and that my head will be a mess for the next week, and probably for a bit more, and that that's ok -- i don't want people to try to change my attitude... i want them to listen and acknowledge that how i feel is ok... i want people who talk to me to acknowledge that the issue at hand isn't just lara and a test that will be done with at noon on january 13... i want acknowledgement that the question at hand is one of "what *should* i be doing with my life?, and what if i'm not really qualified for something i've put a heck of a lot of time into preparing for?"

in the end, either, yes i'll pass and in two weeks be looking ahead to my next set of grad school hurdles... or i'll fail, have one more semester of being paid to take classes, and then be off looking for a new job... in time, yes, this will pass, and i know that.

but standing at a junction of two different roads, one of which is a huge scary question mark, and having little control over what happens, having put in all i can into studying, and still feeling like i'm coming up short, i just want validation that it's ok to be afraid.

the end.

the rundown

* church this morning... first day with interim pastor, who we get to keep until we find a permanent dude... pastor j was back visiting too, which was fun... the new pastor preached a good sermon, but was a little flustered with the order in which my congregation does things... for his first week around ever, he did great... i hope he gets comfortable quickly :-)... also good to see pj around, even if it was just a brief exchange after church :-)

* lots of math this afternoon... while working i turned the TV on for background, and caught bits and pieces of airplane!, which i had never seen or heard of before (given that it came out the year before i was born, not surprising... very 80s... very random... but still amusing

* besides the math, i still feel yucky... i left scott a voicemail earlier to the effect of "hey, it's me... i feel like roadkill today and i think i sound like a frog, but whatever... i have some math questions for you (blah blah blah)"... he returns my call later with a "dude, you DO sound like a frog today"

go me.

i'm going to sleep.

night y'all! :-P

random resolution generator

don't believe in making new years resolutions? too lazy to do it yourself? click below, and the good old world wide web will tell you what yours should be. :-)

In the year 2005 I resolve to: Procrastinate more. Get your resolution here

photo fun

first photo post of the new year :-P (since i just finished up a roll on the "real" camera :-P) enjoy!


eric looking spooky while doing a magic show for me and heather a couple weeks ago


the whole family at church this past sunday


jenny and me at my house in memphis


jenny, me, and jessica after seeing "phantom" on sunday :-)


me and jessica this morning

happy new year!

in the last 24 hours

*lots of math
*a little packing
*drove to philly
*saw "reality bites" for the first time (and highly enjoyed it)
*went through a "family size" box of kleenex to keep up with the marathon my nose is running this week
*drove back from philly and dropped off film
*unpacked

in the near future?
*get my film back
*do a freakin lot of math

happy new year! :-P

year in review

to wrap up the year... at the risk of being a little myopic, how about a top 10 stories in lara's life this year

i mean, seriously, you'll find lists compiled by cnn, msnbc, whatever else of the stories of national import, but if you're reading this, for some reason you enjoy my summaries of what i've been up to and/or thinking about each day, so i might as well compile .... (more or less in chronological order, rather than ranked)... here goes nothing!

(1) january trip/spring break trip/may trip (consult appropriate time frames for multiple entries of each... january: memphis to st. louis to chicago to minneapolis to valpo to pittsburgh to jersey with colleen and scott.... spring break tour of new england to see marianne... may 7-city tour across the midwest :-) lots of fun all around!)
(2) lara meets the NYC planetarium and is inspired to purchase a telescope for herself later that day (see here -- i think i neglected to mention the telescope so as to keep it a secret until after the parents visited later that week :-P, nonetheless...)
(3) delaware trip (see here -- this pretty well sums it up)
(4) best birthday EVER (see here and thereabouts... it was a freakin good week :-) )
(5) cross country roadtrip (read any blog entry from july 18 through august 1 -- how often do you get to drive in a car with a friend from one coast to the other and see all kinds of cool things on the way? trip of a lifetime indeed!)
(6) moving to highland park (see here -- not that that post is exciting, but it's good to live with friends)
(7) roommate's mom dies (see here and various posts before that -- august and july were pretty heartbreaking all around)
(8) lara gets an advisor! (see here -- um, YAY!)
(9) pastor j retires (see here or here -- so long to someone who's been a person of major importance to my time in jersey so far)
(10) the boy question (despite things like this and the end of this throughout the year... looks like nothing's going to happen of note there anyhow.... it was fun while the mystery lasted)

on the other hand, somewhat disjoint... in my estimation top blog entries of the year, whether for serious import or just humor value... in chronological order... enjoy :-P

• Saturday, January 24
  
• Thursday, January 29
  
• Sunday, February 15
  
• Saturday, February 21
  
• Tuesday, February 24
  
• Saturday, February 28
  
• Wednesday, March 24
  
• Tuesday, March 30
  
• Tuesday, March 30 (2)
  
• Friday, April 2
  
• Wednesday, April 14
  
• Tuesday, April 27
  
• Friday, April 30
  
• Sunday, May 2
  
• Wednesday, May 5
  
• Friday, June 4
  
• Sunday, June 6
  
• Sunday, June 27
  
• Monday, September 13
  
• Monday, October 25
  

and i'll let the memories wrap it up... so long 2004... you've been...well,.... interesting... more stress than i could ever imagine, but also getting closer to soooo many friends than i'd ever imagine as a result too... here's to hopefully less stress and hopefully more good times in 2005!
happy new year people :-)

i feel like crap

i did sooo much work yesterday... i basically did math for 12 hours...

then i slept for 5 and woke up suddenly, with my head all full of crap... literally... i have a nasty head cold now... headache, my eyes sting, my nose is runny, my throat hurts... and i HAVE to work on qual stuff... not a fun day...

for as much time as it's taken me to really get in to studying, i do not envy colleen and leigh at all... neither of them seem to be doing much besides family stuff while gone and neither gets back til next week... eric's in vegas, but putting in almost as many hours a day as me and calls me periodically to compare notes... it would be nice to have a local study buddy right now, but i'll take what i can get...

but really, it's kinda miserable to be sick when you're the *only* person you know in a few hundred mile radius and you have a crapload of stuff to do... woo-freakin-hoo...

hopefully good sleep tonight will kick this... i plan to have fun tomorrow night with jessica no matter what :-P

wish me luck... later dudes

i'm baaaaaaaaaaack

what a week so far... i'm... exhausted

and the next two weeks look like h*ll

yesterday i drove from memphis to pittsbugh (in 12.5 hours) on 3 hours of sleep)
last night i got much more sleep, but i drove back, then took awhile to unload all the stuff i brought back out of my car... errands and other such fun later, here i am

i'm exhausted.

i'm frustrated with people who don't realize how they affect others and cause pain where they don't mean to.

i'm totally discouraged about the qual... working for two hours tonight literally ended with an hour of me sobbing on the phone to eric, (who i must give major credit to for being a consistently having-faith-in-me enthusiastic cheerleader)

really though, i have 14 days to get confident about this test and pass it... i don't see how it's gonna work.

pray for me -- that things stick and that i can somehow buck my attitude which i really need to get rid of and don't know how to.....

hello to a very not so fun month....

walkin in memphis

farewell to the south again... and way too quick this time, but it was a good day

church, then lunch with the family... how many parts of the country can you order fried okra, a baked sweet potato with brown sugar, and baked apples as your side dishes? yay south :-)

came home, and in our 40F heat wave, i washed my car (very much needed)...

about then, jenny came over and saw the birds, etc., visited for half an hour before we headed out again.

picture: jenny with a baby tortoise, dad with a cockatoo, brother with the momma tortoise:



then, jenny and i headed to the theater to meet up with jessica (yay for seeing both my key HS friends i still keep in touch with at the same time again!)... she had her cousin with her, and the 4 of us ran down the street to get tea/coffee/etc. and sit for a little before our movie, and then went to see phantom... i was amused at scenes they rearranged/added and lines they modified, but was generally impressed with the whole production... it was fun :-)

after that... dinner with the family

picture: me at the dinner table with nermal, one of our cats:



since then... packing... it's a goal to eventually get all my crap out of this house, so i chip away at it each visit... current additions to the car for the return trip? a 20 gallon fish tank stand without the fish tank (to become a table for my plants)... a wicker chest half the size of my car's trunk full of balls, frisbees, water guns, etc.... 17 years worth of yearbooks and some misc. scrapbooks... a rack for all my casette tapes... and of course my christmas presents... the car's decently packed but nothing like my college moving trips :-P

the plan... wait for laundry to get done, pack my large suitcase of clothes, then get 4-5 hours of sleep... tomorrow, hopefully be on the road around 6am central time, spending the night in pittsburgh tomorrow night (13 hour drive tomorrow, 6 hours tuesday)...

more news from the jersey front when i get there :-P

farewell from the south, y'all!

be parties one and all :-P

movie madness

the plan tonight?

brother and me were going to see "the life aquatic with steve zissou" at 9:40 tonight, come home around midnight and crash... we skate the car to the theater just as the movie's supposed to start, we go to buy our tickets and we get pointed to a sign in tiny print that reads "due to weather conditions, we did not yet recieve our copy of 'the life aquatic'... sorry for the inconvenience" (instead of opening a week ago like in jersey, it was scheduled to open in TN *this* weekend)... well shoot... the next movie we had even a remote interest in at that theater was at 11, so we left, and tried another theater a couple miles down the road... with nothing there that we both wanted to see, we went a block down the road to the net closest theater (one in a mall), where the only movie yet to start for the evening was "closer", which i've seen once, but am *not* seeing again with my brother... hrmmmmph...

by then it's after 10, but we were determined to do *something*, so we drive several miles down another road to check out another theater that i'll be at tomorrow afternoon anyhow :-P... there were no movies starting there after 10, so we moved on to where the next closest theater should be, but turns out since july they've dug it up and are putting something else there... hrmmmph again.

now it's 10:30, we've been scooting around on ice for an hour and we darn well want our movie... so a stop by walgreens for contact solution, and off to the original theater, we finally got our movie...

brother had never heard of it, and it was on my to see list, although i didn't realize it was a *THREE HOUR* movie!... yup, we saw the 11pm showing of "the aviator"... with the exception of an obnoxious group of teenagers in the back row of the theater who talked on their cell phones for the first 45 minutes of the movie, then all left en masse to go elsewhere, it was good.... brother was extremely confused as he had no idea who howard hughes was, but having even a little background made it worth seeing... the filming was really interesting and i really liked how they put together lots visuals... it was weird seeing leonardo all old and crazy looking; i guess when i think of actors to cast in the role of hughes, he's not who i'd originally think of, but he did well.

so yeah, 2:15am, just got home, movie done, and i gotta drive mom to church in 7 hours... this is fun, right?

moral of the story? you let me and brother leave the house together and you never know where we'll end up or when we'll come back... we are just freakin good at joy riding and/or making excuses to stay gone longer... go us :-P

night y'all

merry christmas!

merry christmas to all y'all!

soooo NOT a standard year around here...

my brother has a new job that made him work yesterday, and he's housesitting, so he fell asleep there instead of coming to church last night... mom's sick and has spent the whole week in her recliner... dad and i already get on each others nerves every few hours, but we're hanging in there and no major or minor explosions per se yet...

between the bad roads (no salt + ice + southern drivers = a city that looks like cars ice skating through town), it's a little crazy around here... mom hasn't felt well enough, nor had the chance to get to the grocery store, so it's looking like waffle house for christmas dinner... doht

last night, dad and i went to the 11pm christmas eve candlelight service... one of my favorite moments of the year is singing silent night at the end of the service with the church dark save candlelight... so that was nice :-)

dad, ryan, and i are supposed to go to christmas morning church in half an hour... hopefully they get their acts together and get in soon so we can go -- usually a 5 minute drive to church, but with this kind of travel conditions (still 2 inches of ice on the road everywhere), it takes more like 20-25 minutes... blah

so it goes...

merry christmas to all y'all. whereever you are, may you find a way to share the joy of Christmas with those you love, and may you be thankful for the gifts of life, health, friends,.... and most importantly the gift of a Savior.... and may your thankfulness and joy last you the whole year through. merry christmas :-)

llamas!

my day?

slept in... had a crazy long, needed-to-be-had chat... went to dixie cafe with brother... went christmas CARD shopping to go with the gifts from yesterday... came home and visited the backyard and posted pictures..

roads are all still caked in 2 inches of ice (no salt out here), so driving is crazy slow... yay for front wheel drive?

fav two pictures of the day


happy llama! (adam, 7 months old)


misty (21 month old llama :-P) and me


merry christmas eve, dudes! :-P

the rundown

ran errands today -- bank, first time to sonic in 6 months, christmas shopping... lots of the city is just caked in 2 inches of ice, which makes driving... um... entertaining

came home and worked on math for the qual... moderately annoyed at one person, for a reason i probably shouldn't be... majorly annoyed with math, and kinda burned out on qual problems when i'm not allowed to be for another 3 weeks... oops

to make up for the angst though, i sat here for the past while and organized and posted the 50ish photos i've taken this week on the digital camera... you can see them all at here, but here's my top 4 fav's... enjoy:


happy cockatoo


happy cat


happy dog


happy brother and me






night y'all!

cold

i slept wih SEVEN blankets last night... because my room is *that* cold... blah

change of plans...

courtesy of www.weather.com:

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


Severe Weather Alert from the National Weather Service

...CARROLL-CLAY-CRAIGHEAD-CRITTENDEN-CROCKETT-CROSS-DESOTO-DUNKLIN-DYER- FAYETTE-GIBSON-GREENE-HARDEMAN-HAYWOOD-HENRY-LAKE-LAUDERDALE- LAWRENCE-LEE(AR)-MADISON-MARSHALL-MISSISSIPPI-OBION-PEMISCOT- PHILLIPS-POINSETT-RANDOLPH-SHELBY-ST. FRANCIS-TATE-TIPTON-TUNICA- WEAKLEY- INCLUDING THE CITIES OF... BLYTHEVILLE... DYERSBURG... HUMBOLDT... JACKSON... JONESBORO... KENNETT... MEMPHIS... WEST MEMPHIS 237 PM CST WED DEC 22 2004
... WINTER STORM WARNING REMAINS IN EFFECT UNTIL 6 AM CST THURSDAY...

SIGNIFICANT WINTER WEATHER IS LIKELY ACROSS THE WARNING AREA THIS AFTERNOON THROUGH TONIGHT. CONDITIONS WILL CONTINUE TO DETERIORATE THIS AFTERNOON AS HEAVY WINTRY PRECIPITATION ADVANCES IN FROM THE SOUTHWEST.

SIGNIFICANT SNOW ACCUMULATIONS OF 4 TO 6 INCHES ARE LIKELY NORTH OF JONESBORO AND WEST OF THE MISSOURI BOOTHEEL. SIGNIFICANT SNOW AND SLEET ACCUMULATIONS ARE LIKELY OVER THE REST OF THE WARNING AREA. TOTAL ACCUMULATIONS OF 3 TO 5 INCHES ARE LIKELY FROM THE JONESBORO AREA THROUGH THE MISSOURI BOOTHEEL. ACCUMULATIONS OF 1 TO 3 INCHES ARE LIKELY ACROSS WEST TENNESSEE... EAST CENTRAL ARKANSAS AND NORTHWEST MISSISSIPPI THROUGH TONIGHT. PERIODS OF FREEZING RAIN IS ALSO POSSIBLE THIS AFTERNOON SOUTHEAST OF JONESBORO AND DYERSBURG WHERE SOME ICING COULD OCCUR ON TREES AND POWERLINES.

A WINTER STORM WARNING IS ISSUED WHEN SEVERE WINTER WEATHER IS EXPECTED TO OCCUR. HEAVY SNOW AND/OR ICE ARE FORECAST TO ACCUMULATE IN THE AFFECTED AREAS CAUSING HAZARDOUS DRIVING CONDITIONS. THOSE WITH TRAVEL PLANS IN THE WARNING AREA ARE ADVISED TO CHOOSE AN ALTERNATE ROUTE, OR SHOULD USE EXTREME CAUTION IF TRAVEL IS UNAVOIDABLE.

ANY TRAVEL IS STRONGLY DISCOURAGED. IF YOU LEAVE THE SAFETY OF BEING INDOORS, YOU ARE PUTTING YOUR LIFE AT RISK....

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

so much for going Christmas shopping today -- apparently doing so is a hazard to my health :-P

photos of the crazy weather in my backyard in a bit...

maybe we'll get our 1 white christmas in 10 years, *this* year... go figure! :-P

minor drama

background:

in my memphis house, my room and the attic are the entire 2nd floor. seriously. you go up the stairs, and no landing, no hallway, no door, you're just in my room.

the room at the bottom of the stairs has been for years now the bird room... currently there are 3 cockatoos (2 belonging to my parents, 1 visiting while his family is out of town), a macaw, and a miscellane of other smaller birds

to get to my room at night, i have to walk across the bird room in the dark to the stairs, and then i'm home free... usually this isn't a problem...

last night:

dad warned me to be super quiet going to my room last night especially as he just put a pair of doves and their new baby in there yesterday to protect them all from the cold, and the birds who haven't been in there before when i'm home won't expect anyone running through

by the time i got home already though, the bird room lights were already out for the night and i needed to at least bring *some* of my stuff to my room before i went to sleep (e.g. i always bring home my favorite pillow and a warm blanket since when you come home twice a year, things you leave in your room for yourself have a tendency of disappearing while you're gone)

the drama:

so i'm ready for bed, and heading to my room as quietly as humanly possible, with my blanket and pillow in tow... seriously no sound except my feet, and the previous trip upstairs with my suitcase didn't scare the birds at all, so why should this one?

apparently, birds didn't like the color of my blanket, and thus, as i tiptoed through the room, the doves i was warned about FREAKED out and started flying repeatedly into the walls of their cage... two of the cockatoos decided that that (2:30am) would be an optimal time to freak out as well... so i quickly got out of there and dashed to my room and for half an hour listened to the darn cockatoos screaming and the doves flying around....

i hope i didn't inadvertently kill any of them, but seriously... i was carrying a blanket to my room to keep me warm for the night... i was being insanely quiet... how was i to avert *that* one?...

oh the joy of being back on the mini-farm

later dudes.