school

No time to chat

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In between memorizing steps for how to solve different types and systems of equations and doing practice problems, I browsed my usual sites.  Just a little.  When I needed a break.  Since I still have some stuff to do, I’m going to bombard you with links.  Good ones, I promise.

From Catalog Living, this caption cracked me up.

From reddit, a letter from the Kentucky Commissioner of Education to a superintendent explaining why, yes, KY schools will continue to teach evolution as part of the biology curriculum.  Go Kentucky!

From a Nathan Fillion tweet, don’t get my hopes up about Firefly, man.  It’s not nice.  But could it come back?  Could it really?

Last, the funniest thing I read all day was from Corey’s blog.  The 2nd Harry Potter movie has been renamed permanently.

This is not something I can put off much longer

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Why am I putting off studying for my DE final?  I’m sort of studying now (I’m listening/sometimes watching (because the professor is long-winded and inclined to digress) to a recording of the most recent e-meeting.), and I’m definitely absorbing information, but I’m not in the mood.  Not a good sign when you consider that I have to take this final this week.

Juggling is a skill I do not possess

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Maybe it’s because I’m getting old(er).  Maybe it’s because I was never very good at multi-tasking.  I’m not handling doing lots of things at once very well.  Not at work, not at home, not combining work and home (where home = school and fitness and oh, right, grocery shopping and cleaning and playing with the dogs…).  Something is always getting neglected.  Which something changes day to day, except for grocery shopping.  That gets neglected every day.  Which means we’re eating SO much crap.  Pop tarts for breakfast today, guys.  I can’t remember the last time I even saw a pop tart.  I went to CVS this morning to get more allergy medicine, needed something for breakfast, and grabbed a box of strawberry pop tarts.  Yum, sure, but not good.  Yeah, I could have picked up a box of nutri-grain bars or granola bars.  Or those milk and cereal bars.  Frankly, the milk and cereal bars both fascinate me and gross me out.  They say they’re made with real milk, but who wants to eat cereal with solidified milk holding it together?  It’s probably more like frosting, and frosting for breakfast doesn’t sound all that appealing either.  Anyway, yes, I took the easy, junk-foody way out.  And that was dumb.  But it was quick.  This morning, I’m trying to learn how to solve higher order homogeneous linear differential equations with constant coefficients (before I have to go to Baltimore for work) so I can finish my quiz on time.

Not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. Naturally.

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What I should do: study for my calculus midterm.  What I’m going to do: play on the internet and possibly watch TV.  Then?  Bed.  I have to go to Baltimore again for work tomorrow.  On the one hand, the work I’m doing in Baltimore is the best thing about my job.  On the other hand, I have to go to Baltimore.  It’s far.

I need more sleep.  Roxy was due for a seizure over the weekend, but she never had one.  This is good news (seizures are bad), but it means I’ve been watching her like a hawk when I’m home and I keep waking up at every random sound in the night, convinced it’s her.  I’m tired.  But she just licked my elbow and wagged her tail, so everything must be fine.

Update: I jinxed it.  She just had a seizure.  But at least it was before we went to bed.  (She’s fine.  Walking it off.)  I’ve been playing phone tag with the vet since yesterday.  She wants to talk about changing her medication.  (Roxy’s, not the vet’s, just so we’re clear.)  I’m all ears.

It’s scary how easy it would be to turn back into a pumpkin

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So…you know how the other week I was over the moon about running?  How I ran my race, and I ran faster than I expected, and I felt really good?  Well.  In the two weeks immediately following that race, I ran a total of 3 miles.  Weird schedule, too many crazy-early mornings – oh, I’ve got plenty of excuses.  But, as John so kindly reminded me this morning, you lose your conditioning a hell of a lot faster than you gained it.  So this morning I ran four miles.  I’ve still got it.  And I don’t want to lose it.  I don’t know if I could jump right in and run ten again, but I’m aiming for 7 or 8 this weekend.  That’s doable, right?

The Bloggess (who you should really be reading regularly because oh my god Snuffleupagus) pins some hilarious and beautiful things on her pinterest page.  You should check in on that every once in a while, too.

I just turned in my third calculus quiz of the semester and I have to take the midterm before next Wednesday.  So I’m going to watch some TV because the band is rehearsing in the basement and who can study through that?

Great day in the morning!

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Seriously, could today have been any better?  Only if it had unicorns and sparkles.  And it’s not over yet.  There’s hope.  Sure, we got up super early on a Saturday, but it was only so we could go to the giant used book sale that happens every six weeks in a warehouse in Annapolis.  Worth it.  AND I had a croissant and my favorite candy-coffee from Starbucks for breakfast on the way (tall, skim, no whip white mocha with two pumps of toffee nut – yes, I’m one of those now).  Extra worth the early wake-up.  AND we hung out with Jess while looking for books and then having bagels.  Better than extra worth it.  And THEN we went to IKEA and bought two more bookshelves, upper shelf extensions for those two plus the six at home that didn’t already have them, plus two wall shelves to go over the couch (and hold more books – maybe the graphic novels?).  We’ve spent the afternoon since then putting the shelves and the extension together while watching Law & Order: SVU, and now we’re going to pick up dinner from somewhere and settle in and watch a movie.

A day like today makes me so very happy.  Books, best friend, shelves, dinner, and a movie, a whole day hanging out with John, and sure, I didn’t do any calculus like originally planned, but John and I worked it out on the way home from IKEA.  Today we get the furniture part out of the way and relax a little.  Tomorrow, we’ll run, mow the lawn (it grew, like, two feet in 8 days), and do homework (my calculus, his thesis).  Sunday is the responsible day.

Happy Friday!

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This week was a short week (thank you for Labor Day – I love three-day weekends) that still managed to feel like a regular week, but Friday is finally here.  Tomorrow I get to see Jess at a great big book used book sale and then I’ll spend the rest of the weekend immersed in calculus.  Except for Sunday morning when I have to run.  And except for later Sunday morning when I’ll help John with the lawn, assuming it dries out.  I’ll have to pretend the internet doesn’t exist, I think.  Give it the cold shoulder.  Hope it doesn’t take offense and will let me back in later.  How forgiving is the internet?  I know it never forgets, which is somewhat (a lot) scary.

I turned into an octopus one morning when I was six to avoid going to school. The kind that screams.

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Will I ever finally get rid of the first-grader who was convinced she couldn’t do math?  (I’m referring to the one in my head, not, like, a neighbor kid or anything.  That would be cruel.  And possibly illegal, depending on how I got rid of her.) I used to fake stomach-aches so I could skip that part of the day.  Obviously I got past a lot of that; I love math.  I like to do it and I’m fairly good at it, but last night I read the first chapter of my differential equations book and SO much of it went over my head.  I had the same oh-no-I don’t-understand-this-is-hard-what-if-I-can’t-do-it? feeling I used to get.  The biggest difference between me-then and me-now (in terms of math, I should say – there are other – way bigger – differences, like I’m no longer four feet tall and I have a job) is that I’m not afraid to ask my professor for help.  I’m able to work through the examples, but I don’t understand why.  (Why is that equation a solution of the other?  What’s the relationship exactly?  What makes that one linear and that one non-linear, and what does the order have to do with anything?)  I’m fairly certain my questions have short answers (I could be wrong), so I just need to send an email, but this is one of those times the online format is not an advantage.  I wouldn’t still have this question if I’d gone over that chapter in a classroom.  On the other hand, I can request an e-meeting and get one-0n-one time that’s almost face to face, and then I can ask questions ’til the cows come home (which is CRAZY late – cows are party animals).  One way or the other, I’ll ask the questions and hopefully understand the material.  Then I’ll go hang out with the cows.  We go way back.

If I cared about symmetry, I’d skip the title

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I have been busy.  Good busy and bad busy.  The bad busy parts stress me out.  The good busy parts are things I could do all the time, every day.  And if I could get rid of the bad busy parts, I’d have time for things I like to do when I’m not doing the good busy parts, like playing on the internet.  Like READING.  John looked over at my book the other night, noticed I wasn’t even halfway through it, and told me it felt like I’d been reading that book forEVER.  I’m not sure in exactly what way how long I spend reading a particular book affects him, but if he noticed I haven’t been reading much, then I really haven’t been reading much.  Tragic.

I spent most of the last three days (all weekend and much of Monday) working on my statistics project.  (This is one of the good busy things.)  Nothing about it was hard, but there were a lot of pieces and the instructions were confusing.  I tried to get clarification from my professor, but since I never heard back, I made some decisions based on what the instructions would have said if I’d written them.  I hope they were the right decisions.  I turned it in late last night.  One big task done.  Yay!  Actually, that was the main good busy thing.  The one that took most of my time.  I talked to Corey finally (he’s going to disown me if I put him off any longer) – hooray for change!  Also, I, uh, bought more wine from my favorite local wineries and went to Borders.  Again.  These were very important errands.  Really.  Oh, and I saw Crazy, Stupid, Love Saturday night with a woman I know from the gym.  It was cute.  Ryan Gosling’s ears are too small to be believed.  Seriously tiny ears.

I did one other kinda major good busy thing this weekend.  Big accomplishment for me.  (Big.)  I ran 10 miles Sunday morning.  Ten whole miles.  I wasn’t very fast, and I walked a little bit, but I did it.  I am no longer afraid that I won’t be able to finish the race in October.  I did it.  The last mile was really hard (it wasn’t early morning anymore and the sun was high and the shade had disappeared and I’d been running for nearly two hours and it was my tenth mile), but I realized as I started it that I’d never run this far before (8 miles – two weeks ago – was my longest run until Sunday morning).  And with every step I took, I was running farther.  Each step was one more than I’d ever run before.  There aren’t very many times I’ll be able to say that.

So that was my weekend.  The good busy stuff is all cool and great (now that I’ve turned in my statistics project), but it doesn’t end there.  I have two more quizzes and a final to complete by next Thursday for statistics, and my next calculus class (differential equations this semester) started yesterday.  I’m so glad my classes only overlap by a week and a half.  Any more than that and I’d be seriously considering quitting my job.  I don’t know how people manage working full-time and going to school at the same time.  With just one class at a time and no extra-curricular work activities (don’t get me started), when I can leave work at work, I can manage.  Anything more and my head starts to spin, Exorcist-style.  (It’s not pretty.)  But yesterday, even though it was a Monday and I had work to do and a project to finish, was a really good day.  The weather was perfect, I had the windows open to catch the very breezy breeze, I got a lot done, my legs didn’t hurt from the run the day before, and my strength class that night was calming.  (I really like my gym.)

———Break for earthquake———

This post was going to have an ending, but then there was an earthquake.  Nothing else got done today.  The earthquake ate my ending.

Too many whiny posts…

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…that so far, I’ve managed to keep only as drafts.  You don’t need that crap.  You need this, though.

I want to see this movie.  You do, too, admit it.  (Okay, Margaret might not, and Mom almost certainly doesn’t, but the rest of you do, I know it.) Found it following a link to a Scalzi article at www.filmcritic.com from his blog post from the other day. I mean today. What day is it?

This (from The Daily What) made me cry.  A little.  At the end.  Margaret and Mom (and the rest of you) will probably like it, too.

I have nothing else for you today. Worked from home (worked a LOT) and then studied. I’m getting tired of statistics being all I do. But I did get an A (100% ’cause I’m a nerd and it was absurdly easy. Did I mention it was 20 multiple choice questions? No? Well, it was.) on my midterm. So…there’s that.

One last thing. Cat as martini glass. I love her.

My night off…

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…starts now.  I’ve been eating and breathing statistics for over a week.  I took my midterm this afternoon,  I’m home now, John’s in charge of dinner (I think), and I don’t have to jump right into the next statistics chapter just yet.  I have a glass of wine, random French jazz in the CD player (CDs Mom burned and gave me – no idea what the specifics are, but I was in the mood for something unusual and mellow), and a new book.  And I’m going to slice some cantaloupe.  Cantaloupe will get me through this heat wave.

Grades and grudges

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I feel like I’ve had a big test every week for the past month.  I’m not that far off, actually.  My statistics midterm is tomorrow, and now that I’ve finished the fourth quiz (and covered all of the material that will be on the midterm), I feel much better about it than I did about the calculus exams.  We’ll see how I feel when it’s over.  Speaking of things being over, I got a B in that calculus course.  I’ve never been so happy to see a B.  Maybe now I can find my routine again.

I got stood up yesterday by the loan officer from the bank that holds our mortgage.  I raced home so I could be there when he called (we want to refinance), sitting down (not in the car) and not distracted, and guess who never called?  I was a little annoyed.  A lot annoyed.  He called this morning to apologize and reschedule for this afternoon.  I’ve decided not to hold a grudge.  I’m carrying enough of those.  How many is enough?  Or too many?  I only have grudges against three people, and I think they’re justified.  I know Margaret agrees.  It might be a little immature, and maybe it would be healthier to forgive and forget, but since it doesn’t affect my day-to-day life, do I have to?

I’ll take all the help I can get in the sanity department

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Thanks to Nancy (who finds some of the most interesting stuff), I get to share this article with you.  And since almost everyone I know is a little (at least) anal about grammar and word usage, I know you’ll enjoy it.  Number 5 is my favorite.  Also, I think I’m in love with that website.  It’s the only thing keeping me sane at work today.

The rain helps.  Out of nowhere (it seemed, although I’m pretty sure it came from over West Virginia), we got a massive thunderstorm.  Felt like it was right on top of us.  Big thunder.  I like.  Even if I’d rather watch it from my front porch, dirty rocking chairs and all, than my office cubicle.

Who’s not managing her time well this week?  That’s right.  That’d be me.  I have 45 minutes to study before I leave again.  I’m going to use it.

Not even close

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What were my goals for this past weekend?  Right.

  1. Complete two statistics quizzes
  2. Run six miles
  3. Buy groceries
  4. Go to Target
  5. Weed the flower beds

Out of five things, I managed to do only one.  ONE.  That’s pathetic.  Statistics is way more time-consuming that I expected.  I didn’t even make it to the first of those two quizzes.  I’m still doing the homework problems. I did run my six miles, but the rest of my list was left undone.

I hate that.

Not so good

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I took my calculus final last night.  I don’t feel good about it.  And that sucks.  But it’s over, it’s done, there’s nothing left but the screaming, and I will do my best not to fret.  Until I get my grade.  But then at least I’ll know.  New focus: statistics.  My goal for the weekend is to get through two more quizzes.  And run six miles on Saturday.  That’s really all I’m hoping to accomplish.  That and get to the grocery store.  I need to buy lots of fruit and other healthy things.  And maybe go to Target.  And possibly weed the flower beds.  Drink some wine.  Oooh, I bought a raspberry merlot (“the kind you buy at a second-hand store”) at one of the wineries Jess and I visited last weekend (did I mention Jess and I went wine-tasting last Saturday?).  It’s really good.  Sadly, it’s mostly gone already.  I might have to buy more…but maybe not this weekend.  I’m in danger of over-scheduling myself.  Focus, please.  Statistics!

Riley loves me, this I know

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Who can resist those beautiful brown eyes?

He’s reminding me that I should be paying attention to him who adores me and not so much to the computer.  I’ll be right there, Doggy-dog.

I love Tom and Lorenzo.  They make fun of people in the most delightful way.

That appears to be all I have to say today.  Oh, wait.

This week, from an I-was-better-about-doing-the-things-I-need-to-be-doing perspective, has been much better than last week.  Last week was all about keeping weird and stupid hours, not getting enough sleep, eating like a piggy little pig, and NOT EXERCISING AT ALL.  All week.  I didn’t feel so hot when I got to last weekend.  I felt downright disgusting.  And very very tired.  So I’ve been better this week.  Not perfect, no, but better.  About that stuff.  I haven’t pigged out (as much), I’ve done some sort of exercise every day since Sunday, and I’ve been getting closer to eight hours of sleep every night.  This week was MUCH worse for work, though.  But I’m not going to talk about that.  (I vented to Jess on my way home today, so I feel a little better.  Thanks, Jess!)

The other thing I feel better about?  Calculus.  I got my midterm grade back over the weekend.  I got a B.  That’ll do.  I thought I did better than that, but considering…everything, I can be happy with it.  I take my final next week.  I turned in my last quiz twenty minutes ago, so the final is all that’s left.  That feels good, but so does knowing I can still handle calculus.  After all this time.

Now what do I get to do?  Clean.  Clean like crazy, like the wind, like I’ve never cleaned before.  Because the house is a WRECK.  It looks like a tornado came through.  See for yourself:

This is what happens when we don't pick up the clutter for a couple of weeks. We just keep shoving it to the side.

Note the calculus paraphernalia and the books stacked all over the dining room table (because the giant annual used book sale I LOVE was last weekend and we just HAD to leave work early on Friday to go before they closed at 7pm that night because we were out of town the rest of the weekend) and the toilet paper, giant bottle of ibuprofen, and tons of mail scattered on the island.  And that’s just this room.

I know where I’m starting, though.  All those new books need to be shelved, and before they can be shelved, they have to be catalogued.  Hey, it’s gotta be done.  I might as well be the one to do it.

Bonfire

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There’s probably an HOA regulation against it (or a county ordinance or an actual law or something), but sometimes I think it would be kinda convenient if we could lug everything out of the basement and burn it in the backyard.  Except the washer and dryer.  And the dog crates.  And the drum sets, amps, guitars, studio equipment, and other musical paraphernalia.  And the books.  Everything else, though – who needs it?  It’s not stuff we use often, if ever, and we’ve already combed through it looking for stuff to donate, so why are we still holding on to it?  Some it is paper – things that should be filed and held onto for a while.  I started that project over a year ago; I’d like to finish it some day.  We have an exercise bike I don’t use – I could easily get rid of that.  John has a weight bench, but he uses that sometimes.  What else?  I really don’t know.  But there’s a lot of crap down there.

In other news, I have no news because I still haven’t gotten my midterm grade and I decided not to bug my professor because why?  I don’t know.  I just decided not to bug him.  It hasn’t even been a week since I took the test.  I can be patient.  For a couple more days.

I’m considering cutting out caffeine.  Cutting back certainly.  Possibly cutting it out altogether.  I’ve been drinking too much of the stuff lately.  Today alone: 1 cup of tea with breakfast at home, 1 cup of coffee mid-morning at work, and another cup mid-afternoon.   TOO MUCH.  I don’t know if I can start tomorrow, though.  I’ve got an 8am meeting downtown, so I’ll need something or I’ll fall asleep on the way in.  And Thursday I’ll be exhausted from Wednesday’s very late night….I’ll start Friday.  You believe me, right?  How is it that I got through four years in the Navy without a coffee habit only to be beaten by a regular 9-5 job?  Hm.  The answer may be in the question.

Night and day

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Statistics quiz is done.  God, that was easy.  (It covered chapters 1 and 2 in Elementary Statistics.  I don’t know why the easy part surprised me.  It probably gets harder from here.)  Back to calculus I go.