Thursday, July 26, 2007

trapper keeper

I'm all in school and everything! Yesterday I graphed a third degree polynomial function! Then I all up and took the partial derivative of a three-variable function!

Then last night, at second work, I started hyperventilating about all the math I will be expected to know come September.

I'm trying to work out what was different when I was a good, orderly student (i.e. 3rd grade), and I have determined the crucial variable is that was the last year I had a Lisa Frank unicorn Trapper Keeper (R) . Therefore, I plan to make an old fashioned back-to-school purchase of notebook paper and a Trapper Keeper (the new Fall line is out), and maybe some mechanical pencils. And a pencil box. And lady-bug safety scissors.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

So, I'm trying to read something public-affairsy, readying for school. I don't think this really counts, but I read this.

But I really feel comfortable summarizing it with the David Cross quip making fun of simplified explanations for terrorism. So not only do I not read the original MIT paper the article came from, I dumb down the article, YouTube style. That's how I roll:


Monday, July 09, 2007

Just as much as meets the eye

Today, I went against every natural instinct I have to Wal-Mart*, in search of a product-placed*, movie-as-giant-toy-commercial* toy tie-in, all-American, gas-guzzling* Honda Civic** Si Decepticon.




They didn't have it in the Transformer Aisle* (perhaps it's not released yet), but they DID have a Mr. Potato Head Transformer**.


Optimash-Prime

Transformers was good! I'm second-guessing a lot of stuff afterward, but I definitely enjoyed it as I watched it. It kind of makes you*** want to drive a Camaro real fast. And then your ragtag convoy saves the world!

*These things bother me.

**These things delight me.

***(me)




Friday, July 06, 2007

I have between 1 and 2 tests tomorrow

Total study time: 10 minutes.

I have, however, done all my laundry and put it away, gone through all my mail, washed the dishes, meditated (then fell asleep sitting up), went down to the gym (which was locked), drawn a bath (it takes a few hours to get to a non-scalding temperature, so I have the actual bath to look forward to still), vaccuumed, and restacked my boxes of bamboo flooring.

I also found this video which claims to show how that egg toast breakfast was made on V for Vendetta. Well, it doesn't make that specific claim. Probably because the end result looks more like my own messy attempts at it rather than the movie version. Their version allows a lot more wasted toast (the chewy center part, too).

Two things about me:
  • I eat only the center of pancakes, unless I'm very, very hungry.
  • I read magazines backwards.

sample space

In my statistics class, I've been forced to find entertainment in my fellow classmates. At first I thought the young man with his arms and neck choked with tattoos would be most interesting--he got irrationally angry when the teacher was not explaining things to him, and would testily say "thank you" and stare pointedly at his hands after each interchange. I also was forced to find humor in the kiss-up girl in the first row so that she didn't annoy me (I later found out she wasn't on-the-ball because she's a statistics expert, but because she's already taken and failed the course once). But for the last few classes, my hero has been the Eating Boy. EB has great timing that makes everything he says unintentionally funny. His timing is because before he says ANYTHING, he stuffs about 5 animal crackers in his mouth, and continues to put them in his mouth as he talks.

The teacher often has to get a tall person to help her do things. EB is pretty tall, and usually obliging, but once she asked him to stand on his desk to turn on the projector on the ceiling, and he calmly put a cracker in his mouth and said "I don't do desks." She had to stare at him a few moments to realize he really wasn't going to budge. The teacher was, for about the fourth time, wanting to show us a slide she has of mammoth and elephant tusks, and how at the extremes, their normal curves intersect, and that you wouldn't be certain what kind of tusk you were looking at if it was in this intersection. This time, she began talking about a museum in Lincoln, Nebraska that has six full mammoth skeletons, and how astoundingly huge they are. For someone so stressed about the accelerated nature of this course that she rarely answers students' questions to their satisfaction, she can get off on a tangent. And with all the interesting examples that are used in the textbook problems, it's easy for all of us to get off on a tangent. Anyway, after a full discussion about mammoth bones and current digs in Nebraska, there was a silence as she sidled back up to the board to segue back into the actually math of the problem. Crackers (I like this name better than EB) finished chewing his mouthful and said "You are crazy about mammoths, lady." The next problem was finding the human threshhold to detect sulfur in wine. Tangent: "There are people who's whole job is to smell things! Like wine! And... perfume! And.... lots of things." Her tangent wasn't especially interesting in this case. And I don't know how many other things people get paid big money to smell. Anyway, Crackers said with uncharacteristic enthusiasm "Have you guys heard that thing about asparagus?" (no response from class) "Some people can actually smell asparagus" (no response) "In PEE." Another girl responds "Yes, it's one of those genetic things--you either can or you can't." I don't know what the teacher was doing at this point. After the class had no further response, Crackers stuffed his mouth, nodded sagely and said to himself smugly "I can. I can smell it."

Furthering occurrences that don't translate well into stories: at a bar the other night, a man came back looking for his wallet by our table, and found it! He was so overjoyed, he wanted to buy us all a beer. He left and came back several times, repeatedly expressing interest in buying us a beer. He said "Thank you! Thank you so much for guarding my wallet! Or... for not stealing my wallet!" (slight awkward silence on our part) "Or, for not having the wherewithal to turn around and look behind you!" He ended up buying us a pitcher of beer at about 1:58am. This was why we hadn't wanted a free beer--closing time. But we were glad to share in the man's overwhelming joy.

And here is something my boyfriend said the other night, about Juliet from Lost. "I would probably watch a porn with her in it." (I glare). "What? I would!" And just for the verisimilitude, picture Cliff from Veronica Mars saying this.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

i've had some feta cheese in my fridge for a week, and I haven't done anything with it. I realized that I wasn't sure what feta tasted like. I knew I'd had it before, but I kept imagining cottage cheese, which I knew was cottage cheese. So I took an enormous bite (because that's how much came off in the fork). You might be thinking "oh, one time I, too, had an enormous bite of feta like that." But let me stop you right there because I'm pretty sure I have taken the biggest bite of feta cheese ever in the history of cheese. And I'm also pretty sure it had gone bad. You know what, I don't even want to talk about this anymore.

I am going to go ahead and have a serving of this peach cobbler which is green and black in parts (and was last night when I took it out of the oven), but I'm not even going to question that. My taste buds' sense of horror threshhold has ballooned ridiculously in the last 10 minutes.

And now I'm going to watch House, which shockingly features a brain tumor according to the summary.