I really love muscle memory. I haven't taken step in almost a year now, but I didn't even have to think today before my body fell back into the patterns we were doing. Which, okay yeah, were the most basic intro patterns. But! It required very little attention and went well. Unlike the abs part of the class, which was a sharp reminder of just how little ab work I've done in the last six months.
But anyway. Muscle memory is fun. Math classes not so much. No, I lie. The classes are kinda fun. Even abstract linear algebra, which is a TTR long class, is interesting and fun to be in. It's just, you know, the mass quantities of homework (Proofs! Many of them!) and the frighteningly impending tests/quizzes that aren't cool. For example, here are some of my recent notes:
Linear notes. It should be taken into accountthat we're all learning the really weird notationas he's scrawling it across the board.
Diff notes. Partial differentials this semester! More difficult than I was anticipating, to be honest. Stats notes. Very easy class, conceptually. And the math isn't tricky either. Just a lot of homework on with which to be getting.
Why my life has to be consumed with things like that, rather than things like like this:
It's beyond my understanding. Truly.
But mostly, I'm just complaining. After all, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it (Fred). I asked a girlfriend to day, as we sat pounding our heads against a linear proof, whay we chose to be math majors, again? After all, there are apparently majors where you can graduate in four years with your bachelors, and still go out and like, party every night. I have heard stories of such things. It makes me think I'm doing something wrong here. (Not the not partying, which I'm happy with. But I bet these drunken, hypothetical (business!) students have time for adequate sleep too. Jerks.)
At any rate, she told me we were math majors because we're crazy. So at least there's (an explicitly defined) madness to the madness.
No post tonight, but soon, to wrap up the trip. Tomorrow, with lots of pics. But it's now 23:52 here, and I require sleepage before the major goings-on of tomorrow. Sufficed to say that much fun has been had the past few days, and it will be recounted. Here is a sneak preview:
It should preliminarily be noted that I'm running on three hours of sleep- mosquito bites made me too crazy to fall asleep last night until about 3 this morning, and then I got up again at six. Don't ask why, I've no idea. At any rate, I'm starting to get a bit sleepy now, so I thought I'd blog before I tottered off to bed.
A bed all to myself, since I'm at Oma's tonight and most of tomorrow, spending time with her and working on her computer. Norton is installed and is now running a nice full system scan, then there are major Windows service pack downloads to do tomorrow. Still haven't figured out why her hard drive thinks it's full, though...
Yesterday was fun and exciting in a shopping kinda way- we were originally going to go to the mall, but time got away from us a bit and we ended up going to Plato's Closet and Savers instead. I'd never heard of either of them, but J knew of Savers, and was blown away by Plato's. I admit, it was pretty fun. Jay got a long sweater top thing ($10), and a pink homecoming/prom dress ($8) that she bought herself, and I snagged two pretty new t-shirts ($3 & $6). So that was fun. I didn't find anything that particularly stuck my fancy at Savers, but J got another couple of tops there, I think. Bad memory is what I get for blogging late :)
Also, I keep reading "savers" as "slayers". Too much Buffy.
Girls before leaving for the shopping expedition.
J in her $8 dress. It's even nicer in person.
Then we had barbecued burgers and chicken for dinner; Oma and AK come out, and it was a very pleasant evening. Cooking for big groups is fun, especially when lots of people are working together.
Sadly, it was our last time with UD- he left this morning to go back to out of town work. I missed him by just a couple of hours, since I was up so late futzing with Norton. Oh yeah, that was the other thing I did yesterday, was fought with Norton and Windows Updates to get the second vista service pack so that stuff would run right. Anyway. That finally sorted itself out around nine last night, and I was up many hours later to watch it complete its first full system scan :)
So it was just me and AJ for quite a few hours this morning after I got up around 6. I showed her around norton and some of her new stuff I'd downloaded last night, and then we went to work ripping her music and syncing her iPod. So much tech, so little time!
While the girls were still abed, we went out to Walmart to pick up some meat for our grand afternoon meal with cousin Mike and his girlfriend. It was the girlfriend's birthday, so J and Sylvie decorated the living room and we got a very attractive meal together:
Isn't it pretty! So summery, which is what I loved. Corn, little bowls of fruit, shredded meat, buns, and coleslaw (not pictured). And nametags on the place settings!
The nice meat mix: boneless pork, zucchini, bouillon, wine, and some other stuff I'm forgetting. It was absolutely delicious.
The Decorator and The Chef! (Timelord Names?)
The visit was a lot of fun; after lunch and birthday cake we sat outside on the back porch for hours, just enjoying the day and learning about the restaurant industry. Fun stuff.
But now AK is at AJ's, since there's airport travelling to be done by AK in the morning before AJ goes to work. Aaaaaand, we're back at the beginning of the post! Still waiting for the scan to finish; contemplating just slapping on some hydrocortisone, leaving the scan to finish itself up on its own, and heading to bed.
Aaaanyway. Yesterday (day four) was just so marvelous that it required more blogging than yesterday's entry gave it. So, Oma and AK showed up and stayed the afternoon. I had spent the morning fighting with the printer:
It's an extremely attractive printer, except when it's refusing to print anything black, or giving me messages like this:
UD was finally the one who figured out how to lift up the right bits of plastic to yank out the wedged piece of mangled test paper. It should be noted that this miraculous (embarrassing) discovery came after AJ and I had poked and prodded and tweezered at the thing for literally hours. Ahem. But never mind! So now there is a functioning printer.
The girls went out after lunch, where they went kayaking:
After that, it was water-skiing and tubing off the back of the boat, which UD drove. (Do you drive a boat? Steer it? Helm it? Also, the conjugations of "to ski" are weird.) Here they are getting the boat down into the water:
The fun activities didn't start until after the boat stopped looking like this, though:
Meanwhile, the sensible people were up on the back porch, watching from comfy deck chairs:
And Oma graciously posed for a pic for her entry in my phonebook:
After dinner (meatloaf with rice and salsa!) everyone either went home (Oma and AK) or out to see Angels and Demons (everyone else but me). I antisocially elected to remain at la casa and fiddle with the printer some more. I didn't get the wireless printing working (it required a disc I did not possess) but I did get to curl up with a couple eps of NCIS, and scurry around with the dog in tow closing the windows when another storm rolled in.
The storm receded mostly by the time we went to bed, but cackled wildly back to life around 1:00 this morning; I was just going to sleep, and there were pretty awesome, sky-brightening flashes of lightening out my window. Not, you know, directly out it or anything. Certainly farther away than the cracks of thunder and lightening that woke up (except UD) everyone in the house around 2:00 or so. Tremendously, unbelievably loud. Very awesome.
And now, I would tell you all about the fun we had today (shopping and burgers and Norton, oh my!) but it's 23:10 here and I'm pretty much toast. Sleep now. More blogging and pics tomorrow.
AK, sewing up the wrists of one of J's new (goodwill!) hoodies.
So! Day three come and gone. We went to Sylvie's concerts in the morning and early afternoon- there were individual instrument ensembles first, most of which were really neat to watch, and then the full orchestra concert after lunch at Subway. It was really imprerssive and fun to listen to.
Came back to the house after the concerts, and hung out with Thor for a while (funfunfun!) until we both had to leave for evening activities.
Then off to the VFW for a fish fry dinner. First haddock in 4 years! It was very exciting. And delicious! With hot chocolate once we got home, it was quite a splendid day.
Which leads us into today. Got up at 8:30 CT, ate some cereal, then set to work on setting up the printer/scanner/copier/fax machine/teleportation device. UD finally managed to get off the right panel to remove the crumpled piece of paper stuck inside, and we've been in business since then. Now Oma and AK are over here and we're having meatloaf for lunch; it's all very nice. J and Sylvie are ou for a movie tonight, I think, and I may fiddle with the printer some more.
Ooh, and there was a big thunderstorm last night. Very exciting, except for the bit where we kinda dozed through it. Never mind, it'll be better next time.
Above are jut a few of the results of yesterday's great shopping expedition. We tried Kohl's first, but Jay didn't see anything that called to her, so we hit up the large Goodwill next door. Together, we got a coat, a jersey (Packers, of course), a skirt, a homecoming dress, a top, a pair of shorts, and three hoodies. Lots of win.
Then Applebees for lunch, where is took us all a really exceptional amount of time to figure out what to order. Not that we're indecisive! There was just... a lot of stuff on the menu.
I spent a good bit of the afternoon hanging out with Oma; we took a walk through Riverside Cemetery, and I fought with her computer for a while. I think I'm going to install norton on it this afternoon, see if I can't get that to sort it out.
Had nice chilli for dinner, watched the Daily Show, chatted with Gina. Suffered through J's late-night "relationship discussions" with her (ex?)boyfriend.
Dunno quite what the plan is for today. AJ and Sylvie are off doing work/school things right now, but likely we'll see Oma and AK this afternoon. Weather here is lovely. Lake flies, not so much.
Also, time here is now 11:40. Blogger seems quite determined to keep me on Pacific Time.
Morning all! Jay and I are safely stowed away in the Grand Old Cheese State (GOCS?). We got up around 6:00 CT (4:00 PT), stumbled downstairs, had breakfast with AJ (and Lulu, peripherally) and are now showered and ready to head out and start the day. Have to drop Sylvie off at her camp, and then We're seeing Oma at some point. There are plans!
Airport pic 2
Flight yesterday went well- it was only 3.5 hours, nicely on time, and with no luggage (of ours) lost. They even gave us pretzels and soda! Not, you know, a can of soda or anything, but cherry coke is cherry coke. Jay dozed a lot of the flight, at least after we'd done some calculus together. Differential-equations fun for the whole family! I got a lot of sudoku puzzles done, and tested my phone's music-playing ability out to the utmost. Fun, quick, direct little flight. With pretzels!
Right, off to do...things. Bed is comfy. Dog is kept shut out of our room. Pretty red barns are rustic and kinda red. Lake is nice.
Oh! And speaking of the lake. Jay and Sylvie took a late night (22:00?) dip out in it last night. Jay: "Warm, but the air was cold. [Bugs] weren't actually on the lake, they were just everywhere on the dock."
So there's that.
edit- It is actually 7:44 here. The computer/internet is confused. Poor thing.
