bonus points for...

* friends who leave random "thinking of you" voicemails when they know my research is going slow.

* professors who email me and tell me i do stuff well.

* people who learn random hungarian phrases just to entertain me.

that's all. :)

random news update:

haven't done this in awhile, but some headlines are just BEGGING to be shared.

here's what started it off:
* Michael Jackson wants Vegas robot -- indeed, a robot is a cool thing. a 50 foot one in anyone's image, a little scary... one that shoots laser lights and roams around a city? dude. i'm glad i've been to vegas PRE-giant robot, because i don't know that i want to meet such a thing!

moving onward:
* German man chainsaws house in two in divorce split -- that's one "creative" way to get what you want... i can't believe he completed the job before someone caught on and stopped him!

...and because Germans apparently do lots of strange things lately, we have:
* Police rescue 91-year-old man glued to roof

this just makes me smile:
* Swords into plowshares, mortars into Frappuccinos -- three cheers for ethiopia.

and finally, as always, science is just plain cool:
* Pressure of Light Can Move Liquid

the end.

my brother, on plants:

(background: my dad is a horticulturist. i wouldn't be a good kid if i didn't try to manage a few well-behaving houseplants. there are currently 3 survivors that i haven't managed to kill off since moving to NJ. 2 of them are a big leafy kind of plant that seem to be able to survive everything, which is great for me. the third is a gasteria... which is an aloe-looking plant that much prefers being dry. most of the time i ignore it when i'm taking care of the others so that it can continue to pretend it's a desert plant. it's still green and happy looking so i figured i was doing alright by it...

then, this morning i woke up and noticed 3 giant stems sticking out of its pot... ok,
strange, maybe seeds from something else fell into the pot, and should be pulled out? upon closer inspection, the stems were coming from the plant itself, sticking out from between its leaves and looking rather incongruous. soooooooooo, i called my brother, who is excellent at explaining things. here's the gist of our dialouge:)

brother: what's up? you called?

me: got a question!

brother: what's that?

me: either my plant is possessed or it's doing something new that i don't know if i should worry about.

brother: which one? what's it doing?

me: the not-a-pothos that looks like an aloe... what is that?

brother: the gasteria?

me: yes! that one. it looked normal yesterday. now there's 3 footlong stalks coming out from the between the leaves. is it possessed? what is it doing?

brother: what you've got there is probably aerial roots.

me: ew, what does that mean?

brother: it means that even though we told you not to water it much because it likes to be dry, the plant is thinking "hmmm, i think i'm mostly happy, but i could use a little more water", so it springs those things out to drink a little more water from the air than you're giving it directly. you can cut them out of the plant if you want and it'll be fine

me: but i thought i watered it often enough, is that all it could be?

brother: well they look like roots sticking up in the air, don't they?

me: no. they look like little heads of broccoli with very long stems.

brother: ooooh, is your plant reddish brown, or is it still green?

me: still green.

brother: ok, well then it's getting ready to bloom which is cool since dad's gasterias have never bloomed. they do it rarely and sporadically.

me: then what's making MY gasteria bloom when i'm not as good as dad with plants.

brother: plants bloom for two reasons.
(1) they get depressed and think they're gonna die. and since they don't sit there and talk to the other plants they think they're the last one left and need to plant some baby plants before they shrivel up and go extinct.
(2) plants get happy and horny and decide they want to make new plants for fun.
it sounds like you have a happy, horny plant.

me: fantastic. will it get depressed when it finds out that it's sitting on a shelf made out of a chalkboard in a window in NJ and that there's nowhere to plant its spawn?

brother: is the plant red or green?

me: green

brother: then it should stay happy. a green plant is a happy plant!

me: and a sprouting plant is a horny plant... fantastic.

brother: yep, pretty much.

(& etc.)

conclusions to draw from this post:
(1) i do NOT have a green thumb or a fundamental understanding of plants.
(2) my brother is freakin hilarious and the best explainer of things ever.
(3) i have a horny plant in my dining room.

happy friday all!

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

new personal best EVER!!!!!!!!:

it's gone!!!!

dude, apparently i'm subconsciously in a self-makeover phase this week.

last week, i got a much-needed new pair of glasses. i like myself better with contacts, but it's probably better if i don't have headaches all the time when i'm reading/working at the computer for hours, so alas, i'm back to glasses for at least half the time.

today, i went in to see my hair stylist for the first time since december. for the past 2 years i've just been getting it trimmed... but today, on impulse, i let kelly have fun and take quite a bit more than a trim off. compare me in canada last week:









to me as of an hour ago:






... and react?

o canada, o canada....

...how lovely are my spring break pictures!

and if pictures aren't enough... highlight quotes of the trip include:

me: sometimes i just can't deal with large people in groups
scott: try again, that is NOT what you meant to say.
me: oh, permute that.

o canada, o canada, how lovely are your branches. ~me (frequently, to the tune of o christmas tree)

o canada, o canada, o canada, o canada ~scott (equally frequently, and also to the tune of o christmas tree)

me: dude, did you just use the women's restroom?
scott: god, i hope so.

scott (laughing): dude, lara p., you are drunk
(i don't think anyone else has ever gotten to say that... 2 beers after eating not much else all day makes me entertaining?)

scott: so you're a caustic yet determined non-sequitur?

U.S. customs agent: whose car is this?
me: mine
U.S. customs agent: tennessee? what on earth are you doing in the great white north?
me: it's spring break. canada is fun.

the end. enjoy the pictures.

one word survey.

Can.
Only.
Type.
One.
Word.

Not as easy as you might think.


1. Where is your cell phone?
desk

2. Your boyfriend/girlfriend?
nonexistent

3. Your hair?
long

4. Your mother?
kind

5. Your father?
tense

6. Your favorite thing?
travel

7. Your dream last night?
none

8. Your favorite drink?
water

9. Your dream car?
fast

10. The room you're in?
bed

11. Your ex?
nonexistant

12. Your fears?
blindness

13. Where do you want to be in 10 years?
professor

14. Who did you hang out with last night?
scott!

15. What you're not?
partier

16. Muffins?
scones

17. One of your wish list items.
motorcycle

18. Hometown?
memphis

19. The last thing you did?
airport

20. What are you wearing?
comfy

21. Your TV?
background

22. Your pet?
plants

23. Your computer?
full

24. Your life?
intense

25. Your mood?
content

26. Missing?
sleep

27. What are you thinking about right now?
canada!

28. Your car?
reliable

29. Your work?
fun

30. Your summer?
europe!

31. Like someone?
nah

32. Your favorite color?
blue

33. When is the last time you laughed?
today

34. Last time you cried?
weeks

35. School?
forever

what the world needs is...

we're back... and canada was AWESOME! more pictures/stories later in the week. :)

be parties one and all!

spring break can only mean...

in 2004...

we brought you "a day in delaware"

which, instead of ending with lunch in dover, brought us to maryland,

virginia, and beyond... crossing the chesapeake bay bridge at sunset

running around D.C. in the rain at 11pm

and driving home in a blizzard

until something like 5am. :-P

in 2006...

we brought you "lara and scott's great maine adventure"

which included lots of water

lots of rocks

a life-size chocolate moose

and last but not least, a ben and jerry's factory tour

spring break 2007 is at hand...

and "lara's and scott's amazing 4 day CANADA trek" begins in 12 hours. details thursday! i know you'll wait in eager anticipation. :)

be parties one and all!

can you teach diversity with calculus?

that's the $50 question of the day.

i go to these monthly teaching meetings. there's 7 grad students and a bunch of faculty/dean types. we talk about teaching workshops we've run recently, and then spend an hour talking about teaching issues. last meeting was about why students cheat, today was about the purpose of an undergraduate education.

it's a really cool group of people and i enjoy the discussions, but sometimes i feel like i'm an outsider. the other grad students are english, ecology (2 of them), sociology, french, and italian students, and the other faculty have backgrounds in education and in social sciences. there are occasional comments on how they don't understand engineers, and things like that. on the other hand, i much more relate to the engineers than to the social sciences, so there are points where i have no idea what to say even when asked directly.

case in point: today while discussing the purpose of an undergraduate education the following comments were made:

* "we teaching critical thinking, etc.,etc., with the goal of eventually getting students to do some sort of integrative research. i don't know that you can do this in engineering or math where they deal with the literature, but..."
(i interrupted and said on the surface it looks different but there are analogs of all these concepts in math too)

* "the engineering department says one of its objective to to teach students interpersonal interaction skills"
(the room responded with laughter, i was quiet)

or... on my mind most of all...
* "it's important for students to learn skills to deal with the real world. issues like diversity and time management should enter the classroom. but how do you do that in math, lara?"
to which i commented, "math doesn't open itself up the same way to a discussion of diversity, but then the skills like time management and study skills become even more important."
the sociology grad student said "i disagree. i've commented while running teaching workshops that it could be hard to make your examples come to life in the hard sciences, but my participants who teach physics interrupt and tell how they make concepts into stories of when such-and-such a bridge was built, or whatever. you CAN bring diversity into the classroom with your story problems."
i temporarily shut my mouth and let it lie because i hadn't quite formulated my thoughts at that point, but now, 2 hours later, i've been thinking:

the point of many disciplines is to teach critical thinking about that area. formulate your own opinion and support it. math and engineering are definitely NOT about formulate your own opinion and support it. they're about things that ARE black and white, and understanding where the black and white comes from. while i think it's important to build realistic examples in calculus class, even concrete ones that you can physically play with, i don't think a word problem should open up a discussion of diversity implicitly or explicitly. the point of math is that it is true or false and NOT up to cultural interpretation. i was a little bit shocked that someone from another discpline thought that those issues do belong in the math classroom.

i actually suggested the fundamental differences between math/engineering/hard sciences and the rest of the academic world as our next meeting's discussion topic. we'll see if it happens.

but really, what is the answer? am i closed minded about what the purpose of math class is? are the social scientists too broad in their idea of where social analysis should happen? i don't know.

i just know that i'm constantly amazed both by the insight other people bring to these discussion meetings, but also by the seeming lack of understanding between some disciplines. we shall see...

reactions?

my eyeballs are going to explode...

... seriously.

well, not quite but almost.

90 some percent of the time, i enjoy being a grad student. however a LARGE part of my research is working on the computer and programming. this does not do wonders for my vision. my eyes are dry a lot, especially when i work with my contacts in.... actually, for the past week, i've had a perpetual dull headache, centered around my eyes, and exacerbated by time spent doing the computer programming i need to get done.

so alas, this morning, i went in for my yearly eye exam. i wanted new glasses (my current ones are 7 years old and i rarely wear them because they're out of date and so scratched up). i expected the eye doctor to comment as usual on how dry my eyes are anymore, but other than talking about which of the over-the-counter eye drops are the most useful, that wasn't the big exciting result of this visit.

whenever you go for an eye checkup, they check the pressure in your eye with the air puff machine. the fluid pressure inside a normal eye is 10-21 whatever-they-measure-it-ins. my eye fluid pressure has always been on the high end of the spectrum... occasionally 22 or 23, but today i set a record: 26! (ocular hypertension... woohoo...). the eye doctor ran the test 3 times to be sure, then decided to do it the old school way (put neon orange dye in my eyes and then poke at them with a different machine) to confirm. presently this means nothing except that i'm high risk for other eye issues down the way (e.g. glaucoma), which would totally suck.

for now though, i just get to enjoy a perpetual dull ache that only gets worse when i do what i'm supposed to. if my eyes would actually explode, perhaps it would hurt less!

the end.

debate of the day

so here's what math grad students argue about on lazy thursday afternoons:

do you say oogle, ogle, or oggle? (rhyming with google, sounds like the o in ogre, or rhymes with boggle respectively)

i (from TN) used the one i consider correct and common at lunch today and baxter (from PA) disagreed and insisted on a second one. when we got to the office to look it up, john (from CT) disagreed firmly with both of us.

regardless of the dictionary, which one do YOU use?

happiness is...

...discovering that one of your current favorite authors is really a psudonym, and that she has a dozen more books written under her real name!

well, yay :)

i got an email this morning from the dean of the rutgers graduate school in response to a teaching workshop i primarily prepared tuesday and gave yesterday. presumably the audience liked what i had to say as she wrote:

Dear Lara,
I saw your evaluations. WOW. Thanks so much for doing an outstanding job. The attendance also exceeded the registration. Thank you for your enormous contribution to... (etc. with comments about the teaching groups I'm involved in this semester)

not bad, eh?

teaching for my advisor in 1.5 hours and i'm still in PJs.. it's just one of those weeks :P

happy thursday!

happy valentine's day!

valentine's day seriously amuses me. every year, people i know who are actually in romantic relationships stress out about getting the perfect gift, etc. to tell that "someone" how they feel. but even more intriguing: the people i know who are NOT romantically involved get frustrated about the holiday, and each year many seem to bemoan the fact that they don't have anyone more and more loudly than before. whichever side of the coin you're on, it seems that just the date of february 14 makes emotion run high, either with joy or with angst.

today, as a girl celebrating my 26th straight valentine's day of being single, i can honestly say i'm perfectly content. actually the past month or so, i've been the most content i've been in awhile. (note: content doesn't mean completely stressfree,... just overall happy with my life and what i have in it right now :P) i can't speak for others, but i know when valentine's day angst has worked its way into my system in years past, it's usually because of a voice in my head saying "look at all the people you know who are in relationships, they have it, you want it, why can't you have it too?" or some variation thereof. and actually, when i think about it, it's a very selfish voice... as if a meaningful relationship is just something you can buy, and i should have one too just because many of my friends do. this year, i refuse to buy into the small selfish voice. don't get me wrong; i'm not anti-love/relationships/etc. if the right person comes along, i'm all about seeing what happens. but it's not something i NEED to make me a complete and happy person.

one of these years (God-willing), i'll be all excited about valentine's day because of romantic love, but for now, i'm resolved to working on patience and being content with where i'm at. and in lieu of all the flowery love notes and whatever you see around today, here's two of my all time favorite love notes that go for you too:

"Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet my unfailing love for you will not be shaken." (Isaiah 54:10)

"'I have called you by name, you are mine', says the Lord" (Isaiah 43:1)

done rambling: happy valentine's day to all y'all. no matter what side of the coin you're on today, make sure to also revel in the fact that "God loves you!". really. :)

i signed in to write about...

* how i am going to be tight pressed to cover 6 sections of the precalculus textbook in 45 minutes when i teach leigh's students later today

* major philosophical differences that i recently discovered between maple and mathematica (two math computer programming languages)

* how EXCITED i am to buy my own bowling ball finally later this afternoon

* how AWESOME my church's first annual women's retreat was this past weekend.

but then i read a bulletin from an old grade school friend. her mom died less than 10 months ago from cancer. then, her husband of 1.5 years was killed in an accident yesterday morning. she's 24.

i only met her husband once briefly, but i read that and my heart just ached for her. when things are going good, it's the little things that make life entertaining and fun. when something major like this goes down, all those little things pale in comparison to how transient life really is.

so instead of all those lots of things, here's the short version: pray for peace for sarah as she goes throughout this week and beyond, and make sure to hug the people you love today.

the end.

two quotes

"positive thought of the day" from a local radio station earlier in the week:
triumph is just oomph added to try. :)

advisor quote of the day:
before class today, i was talking to a friend about how i substitute taught precalc on tuesday while sounding like a frog from my cold. my advisor overheard and quickly chimed in:
"but lara, having you sounding like a frog is much preferable to most people sounding like princesses."
(i.e. to be translated as: he'd rather hear my teaching style even with a bad voice, than plenty of other people who are not as dedicated teachers even if their voice is fine. :P)

it made me smile.

happy thursday! :P

one of these days, i will learn....

...how to relax.

one would think that relaxing is not hard to do, but for me... oi.

i have this amazing knack for getting involved in way more things than most sane people would tackle at once.

this is easy to do since i don't have what one would call a "typical" job. i am a grad student. what's more, i'm a 4th year graduate student, and i've finished ALL my class requirements. all that's left between me and my degree is writing a thesis. so i don't work 9-5, or have anything remotely close to a "normal" schedule. my life is more or less a giant to do list, and i can work whenever and whereever i want as long as i meet periodic deadlines and don't miss lunch meetings i'm expected to be at.

sooo, besides my research (which is already more or less a full time job), the past week (for example), has included:

(1) a two hour lunch meeting with two dozen other grad students and faculty who have the same bonus fellowship i do this year to discuss why students cheat and what to do about it
(2) lunch at a fancy women's club in princeton to meet with people from an organization that gave me another grant this year
(3) reading and reviewing 50 of the nearly 200 REU applications we have for the summer research program i help run
(4) telemarketing on behalf of my undergraduate university
(5) substitute teaching for my housemate leigh (who is at a conference in france for the MONTH of february) all day yesterday, and THEN spending 3 hours grading quizzes from all 100 of her students

i'm generally very good at being busy and keeping people in all 50 million aspects of my professional life happy. then there comes weeks like this one. where, on top of the list above, i
(1) end up fighting a cold and going through 3 boxes of tissues in 4 days and dealing with intense sinus pressure
(2) lose my voice and keep up with my usual schedule and more anyways (i seriously taught leigh's 3 classes worth of precalculus yesterday while sounding like a very quiet frog because that's the only noise i could get out of my throat)

when i woke up today (my 5th consecutive day of being sick) with a headache, i physically needed a dead day to not do anything. what's more, the whole "my life is a giant to do list without a concrete timeline" gig, gives me the freedom to totally not do anything all day if i don't want to. there's no one to call in sick to and no one wonders what's up. it's totally just me being accountable to myself.

and that's totally what i did (a lot of sitting around and a bit of typing on my laptop while curled up in a recliner), but nonetheless, i felt incredibly lazy about it, and feeling lazy makes me mad. it was a huge mental battle most of the day to convince myself that i was doing a good thing by not physically pushing myself to the limit for another day in a row. i felt like i should be somewhere doing something productive.

one would think that most people are totally happy for the freedom to veg out for a day. not me. don't get me wrong. like the month of may, where i PLAN to relax, i'm fantastic for taking a break from work, and reading lots of fiction and doing a bit of travelling. but that's scheduled relax time. taking time to chill out because i physically need it when i still have lots on my immediate to do list. soooo hard.

end of essay..... does anyone else have this problem? or have i officially classified myself as a workaholic? 1,2,3,...react. :P

last night...

new personal all time highest bowling score!!!
(and my first 4-bagger!!! = 4 strikes in a row)

say hey, it's a good day!

* i've run into several of my favorite students from past semesters this week who all wanted to chat with me about life, the universe, and everything. that makes me happy.

* i earned a nickel in my advisor's class today. that makes me laugh...

furthermore,...
in response to my post full of complaints from last week:

(1) the telemarketing for valpo deal is going well. 3/5 kids talked to. 2/5 houses never give me anything but answering machines... i'll try once more, then email the kids.

(2) after brainstorming with lots of people, i have a decent idea of what to do for an hour in the workshop i have to teach next month, and having an outline figured out, i feel much better about it.

(3) last but not least: i just met with my research advisor. i told him that i think i proved that the plan of attack we've been using to count restricted multiset permutations has been milked for all it's worth and i can prove that the remaining cases are impossible using our plan of attack. that made him a little sad.

then, i told him i've been working on a new plan of attack. he said that an improvement is good, so have at it. i explained what i'd done so far and when i finished... he got SUPER excited. he said it was more brilliant than he had hoped before i described it and he was really impressed with my creativity. we're really hopeful that it works well in other cases too besides my one example.... research really IS a rollercoaster... i guess i just need to really enjoy the highs when they come around. :)

summary: it's a happy day.

the end.