Dude

This so totally happens to me.



I once had this dream, where it was suddenly announced that it was time for the final in the Swimming, Diving, and Ancient Egyptian History class that J and I were taking. Except that I'd forgotten I had that class, for the whole semester. And J was like, "Where have you been?" And we were swimming/diving in this big pool surrounded by giant gold Egyptian statues and heads.

That wasn't the only time I've had the dream, but it was probably the most bizarre.

And now the Matrix is on, demanding my attention. Sweet dreams, everyone!

My 'I Don't Have to Run' Day

Stew came out fantastic. Meat just fell apart, which was what I was hoping for but not expecting. I'd cut the potatoes into smaller hunks next time, though; they cooked through fine, but they were too big to eat without breaking them up with the spoon. Also, I'm hoping if I make a few of them quite small, they'll cook down and thicken it a bit; it was a little thinner than ideal.



Still, it tasted wonderful, the carrots cooked perfectly, and the meat turned out much better than I'd expected, having read about tough the cut it. Definitely something I'll make again. It made enough for me to have two bowls last night, plus a tupperware full for today. It was a little oily, but I was able to skim the leftovers this morning, after they'd been in the fridge overnight. Overall, though? Success!





Spence was napping when I went to take the pics, though, so these ones are from my phone. They're...a little sad, comparatively. Ah well.

Meanwhile, back in Chico, it's raining again. Still. More. I walked to campus to meet up with a friend to study for tomorrow's linear algebra test (which? not going to be fun) but she gave me a lift back (after we hit taco bell. starving mathematicians in training gotta eat). I have to run over to the student admin building tomorrow to get some transcripts ordered to send to the REU campuses that require official transcripts. And... it's supposed to rain all of tomorrow, too. Sigh.

On a lighter note, it's that time again. Yes, time for New Words Teddy Has Learned In College (the parent-friendly edition). Up today we have:

Peripatetic

Philippic

and

Rebarbative

I was going to try to go with all words that started with P, but rebarbative was too good.

Right. Words delivered, my work here is done. *Teddy wanders off to eat stew*

I can do the laundry,

and make dinner while I'm on the phone...

Saturday, day for errands and housekeeping. Started last night, really; finished the last batch of rice when I got home (from a rugby match, but that's a later story) so I made another pot. Had that for dinner, along with the last of the jar of masala sauce J got me for Christmas:


So that was nice. Only had about 1/4 of it; half went into the freezer, and the rest into the fridge for consumption in the next few days.

So, that was last night. Got up this morning at ten, went to the bank where I got quarters for the laundry that seriously needs to get done today, came home, and started...



Stew!

I bought a little over a pound of top round (labeled London Broil) steak at Winco about a month ago for two bucks; took it home, stuck in the freezer, and stared researching what it was I had purchased. I got the crock pot for my birthday last year, and haven't really had a chance to try it out. Pay no attention to the oatmeal experiment behind the curtain. Soooo, stew!



My crock pot is only...3 quarts, I think? So the amount of meat I was able to slice away from the fat on the steak was just about perfect. Put down a layer of 3 eighthed (well, quartered isn't accurate) potatoes and covered it with a bunch of Spencer's baby carrots chopped in half, about a third of a head of chopped garlic, 2 cups (or, one large Star Trek mug) of beef broth, and the meat cup up into little hunks.



So now it's sitting down on the kitchen table, cooking on high for a few hours. I stabbed the meat for a while to tenderize it (and because it was fun). Spencer was looking at me very oddly. Also, it should be noted: raw beef and coffee are not really smells that go well together.

What I really don't like about cooking with the crock pot is that I can't fiddle it; I like to mess with my food while it's cooking (stir, taste, add to, poke with spoons), and that's really not a good idea with the crock pot. Sigh. So I'm upstairs, trying to resist the temptation to take off the lid and stir the stew every five minutes.



I started at 12:45, so I'm gonna give it about 6 hours on high and then see how it's going. I don't know how many times I'll have given in and poked at it before then, though :)



Right, load of laundry is now in. Kitchen smells all garlicy, yay!

Just got an email form the other professor I asked to write me a rec letter for the summer REU programs to which I'm applying; he says he'll do it. Thank goodness. All but two of the campuses require 2 rec letters, and I've only had (minus this semester) two math professors. Now, they've both agreed. Phew. I'm applying to seven programs, including the one here at Chico. I'd be really, really happy to get accepted to even one of them, though I have no idea how many applicants they get. Hmm, need to arrange to get transcripts sent on Monday...

But, I promised a rugby story. Yesterday I had a bunch of tests, which is nice in that you can leave when you're done. So, I was loitering in the hallway, waiting for my next class to start, when a girl I know in a we-keep-ending-up-in-classes-together-let's-be-friends kinda way, saw me and bounced over. She's a bouncy kinda person, in a very non-annoying kinda way. She asked what I was doing at three, and upon learning I was free, told me I should come to see the Chico vs. BYU women's rugby match; she's on the team, and was pretty excited about it.

So, I said sure. Friday afternoon, gorgeous day, nothing better to do with my time. And... it was a lot of fun. I left a half time (rugby is played in 40 minute halfs. Who knew?) but it was fun to watch and easy to follow. Not a lot of people there, lots of really pretty dogs to pet, and I think we were winning when I left. I'll have to ask her on Monday how it went. But it was a really good time.

Right. Gotta write back to nice letter-writing professor now with pertinent info. He's really big into grad school/research/self-starters, so I had figured this would be right up his alley. Nice confirmation, though.

Hope everyone's having a nice weekend! *waves to Mom and Dad on their hol* Will post pics of the stew when it's done.

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

I sitting at my desk, copying information about early species domestication in the Andes, while on my computer screen James Bond Rochester declares his undying passion for Jane, rather than Romana I Blanche Ingram. Spencer used the last bowl this morning, so I've just finished my breakfast of honey nut cheerios out of a smallish tupperware. Later, I'm gonig to go sit in a classroom for a couple of hours while a balding Russian man issues death threats and praise at near equal rates.

There are times that I suspect the rest of my life is not quite going to measure up in terms of the occassional bizarreness that is college living.

This is my beautiful home...

Picspam post! Some random photos from Spence's Christmas camera taken over the last few days.

I get to be first, since it is my blog. Spence just took this one tonight, at the math club's monthly pizza night:



So Spence the photographer can be next. I took this one; his expression is a result of me yelling at him to stop glowering at the camera:



Lovely white board, covered in trig identities. They're useful!



And all of my texts for the semester. (Just in case I ever need proof I owned them, or something.)



Our pretty TNG cup catching the water leaking under our kitchen sink. The guys was supposed to come today to fix it, but I don't think he did. Sigh.



And since I don't want anything under the sink while it's leaking... all my cleaning supplies are stashed on the desk that lives in the kitchen. (Note Glad garbage bags, which are so totally worth the extra couple of bucks.)



Nicely tidied lounge; hw on the couch, crisps on the table, sunlight pouring through open windows. What more can a body ask for?



The other side of the lounge. I still need to dump that box in which my new bookshelf came...



Kitchen...



And me stalking down to the floor, to strip it of it's protective covering of grime. Kill, KILL!



Ahem. After the great grime hunt, one needs a snack:



Cheese on toast comes out quickly and perfectly from the toaster oven. Me amore.



Aaaand, it looks like that's it folks.

Oh, school, you ask? School's going well. I really like my math classes, (the prof is acerbic, abrasive, sarcastic, and wonderful) and my geography class (prof is whacked out, unafraid to tell you you're really wrong, and funny and random as all get out) and the econ classes require very little, except my attendance, which I can do. I dropped the American Music class, because it seemed more torturous than it was at all worth.

And I leave you for the night with:

Day is done, gone the sun...

Right, first day of the semester finished. It was fun, if somewhat overwhelming; five straight classes didn't leave a whole lot of time to digest information. Still, everything went smoothly.

Human Geography was first. The teacher was very upset with people who mispronounced their French surnames. ("No, are you sure that's the way you say it? I'm pretty sure that's wrong...") As he went through the roster, he asked everyone where they were from (I said San Jose, just to make things easier on everyone) and put markers up on a google map he had pulled up on the screen. One of the girls was from Hemet; when asked "What you got down there in Hemet?" she immediately, unhesitatingly replied, "Old people. Lots of old people." After everyone had a little marker for there point of origin up on the map, he gave us our first hw assignment (answer some questions from GG&S and some about ourselves) and sent us on our merry way. Very friendly bloke. Kinda stoned-seeming. Never mind.

Next was macro (conveniently, just down the hall). He went over the syllabus, explained to us that textbooks are very expensive (thanks dude), and that we could actually buy used off the internet either of the two previous editions of the text instead of the $143 new one from the student bookstore, since apparently all they'd changed was the cover and the order of two of the chapters. To which I said, "Okay!" and bought off amazon for 20 bucks once I got home. I still have the new one from the bookstore, but as soon as the old one arrives in the post, I'll just return it for the full refund.

Prof then carried on to explain why the economy had tanked. That was fun. He drew really good line graphs up on the board. I think that math profs could take lessons in accurate-graph-drawing-theory-and-practice from this guy. Crowded classroom, but that'll work it self out in the next couple of weeks.

Then there was back-to-back math classes. Things had been changed since I'd last printed out my schedule, so instead of changing rooms, I got to stay in the same room with the same prof for DFQs and algebra. Prof seems like a nice guy. Quite funny. Accent, though very notably Russian, is comprehensible. No homework collected for either class, though it will be assigned; in fact, he handed out a algebra/trig review sheet so that we could all dredge ln and exponent rules out of the far corners of our brains. All of his tests (though not his quizzes) are entirely open book/notes/calculator. Which worries me a little, about how hard the problems will be, but I think (hope) it's more set up that way so as to not stress memorization, which was a problem I had in calc (stupid formulas for stupid shell/washer/disk methods...).

The DFQs class was totally full (about 40 people), with 2 people waiting to get in. However, later talking to a friend of mine in a different prof's section of DFQs, I learned that there are twenty-two people on the waiting list for that section. Dunno why. Pretty nuts, though.

Algebra is a smaller class, mainly because it's not required by as many (if any at all, I'm a little confused on this point) of the engineering majors; I think there are about 26-28 people in there. The male to female ratio in there is a lot more skewed than in DFQs too, at about 4/1 (this is not, it should be noted at least, as bad as physics last semester). There was no homework at all assigned for this class, mainly because very few people have the book yet; apparently the bookstore only ordered 25 copies for two sections of at least 25 each. So yeah, I'm glad I bought mine online, and even more glad that it came today. I was very excited. It's a very pretty book. Especially when I got it for $50 dollars instead of $114. *Teddy grins*

Last up was micro. Another full classroom, another syllabus. He spent most of the time talking about how useful the class/economics in general would be. As Dad pointed out later, we were already in the class; he didn't really need to keep trying to sell us on it. Ah well; he at least had a really nice calendar in the syllabus, with all of readings and tests/quizzes lined up. I approve.

A free hour followed micro, during which I started copying all the important dates into my planner, and then dance. Or really, the first-day-calling-of-the-roll, and then she let us go with instructions to read the syllabus online. So, that was that. I tihnk it'll be a good time.

But now, bed for me. First (only!) class tomorrow is History of American Music at 9:30, but I'm headed to the library afterwards to get the DFQ and geography homework done. Mmm, library...

It's the (hopefully not) final countdown...

And...we're back. Finals did end, Christmas break was had and enjoyed by all, and now it's just about back to the old grind. But with all new classes for our (whereby I mean my) tagging pleasure!

Right. So. Two more days. I'm really hoping my linear algebra book comes today, though at this point, it's not looking good. Dang it. That's the only one I ordered online (saving 60 dollars!) and it would be depressing to have to start out the semester a book short. Worse case scenario, I go buy a copy from the bookstore, and then return it when mine comes. Hopefully it doesn't come to that. Fortunately, I know people in the class who'll (probably) be willing to share until mine arrives, for homework purposes.

In addition to linear algebra, I'm also taking Elementary Differential Equations (shortened to Mom's favorite acronym, DFQs, pronounced diffy-cues), History of American Music, Human Geography (for which we're reading the book Guns, Germs, and Steel), intro microeconomics, intro macroeconomics, and aerobic dance. Six classes (plus dance, which doesn't really count), 20 units, and...no more GE! After this semester, I mean. Except my required upper division theme, but that's only three classes, and I think I can meld most of it into requirements for either the math or econ major.

Hey, you like the new colourscheme? I decided the pink was getting just a bit...pink. I quite like this blue, and the new header is cool.

In other news. Spencer's computer decided to stop making sounds for him this afternoon. Headphones still work, so he's determined it's the speakers that are built into the monitor. As such, he's wandered off to K Mart to buy some external (and hopefully cheap) speakers. I offered to unhook my speaker to let him test his hypothesis, but he declined. Ah well: his time and money, I suppose.

Ack, and now Mom's distracted me into playing on myreads. Dang it. Well, that's all from me, then.