Wednesday, December 28, 2005
That's well
Thanks for reading my Mystic Blog. If you'd like to read more, scroll down, or check out the weekly archives in the sidebar on the left (I'm talking to you, Libby).
Thanks to Val's mom for her prolific comments, and for other people for reading and visiting and generally making my hit counter happy.
If you'd like to read more of my writing that will actually get updated in the future, you can go to my regular blog or my running blog. You can also look at my Web site, which should be getting an overhaul sometime within the next month.
To contact me, just leave a comment; they go directly to my e-mail.
Thanks to Val's mom for her prolific comments, and for other people for reading and visiting and generally making my hit counter happy.
If you'd like to read more of my writing that will actually get updated in the future, you can go to my regular blog or my running blog. You can also look at my Web site, which should be getting an overhaul sometime within the next month.
To contact me, just leave a comment; they go directly to my e-mail.
Friday, December 16, 2005
I'll get the presents; go take off all your clothes
Here are the reasons why Albion is the best house.
1. Dinner every night
Albion house knew who was making and cleaning up after dinner for the entire semester within the first week. And we did it, too. Albion House was the unrecognized gourmet establishment at Williams-Mystic. Some houses had really gourmet food sometimes and not so good food most of the time. But we had solidly good food all the time.
2. Food on Sale
If it was on sale and we would eat it, Valerie bought it. Some examples follow. This also led to (4) below.
Klondike Bars
We had perhaps 60 Klondike bars over the course of the semester, because sometimes they were on sale. We had regular, dark chocolate, crunch, and peppermint patty-inspired, and we had them a lot of the time. There is a malicious rumor circulating, which I propogated after I deduced it by subtraction, that Valerie once consumed seven Klondike bars in two days.
Grapefruit
Bags of grapefruit were two for one, so we got four. Two weeks before the end of the semester, we had 31 new grapefruit in the recycling room. Valerie and Ashley love grapefruit, but they just couldn't quite keep up with the magnitude of the task. But we ate a lot of grapefruit in the last couple of weeks.
3. Iambic Pentameter with Sexual Innuendo on the Refrigerator:
And I quote:
4. Grocery Fantasies
Some houses with leftover money would be more likely to say, "great, we have all this money left over, let's go out to dinner every night." Not so with Albion House. "Great, we have all this extra money, let's go get awesome groceries!" So we made a grocery fantasy list. I got fresh blueberries, sushi, and Cracklin Oat Bran. We had six pints of Ben & Jerry's and one of Godiva in the freezer. We had brie and crusty French bread whenever we wanted it. Basically, it was like fantasy land, and everyone else wanted to be us.
5. Mary
We had the best advisor, because we had Mary. Mary made the whole program run smoothly. Plus, she came over to lunch and dinner and she thought our food was excellent. She is taking tap dancing lessons, which further cements her reputation as the best advisor. Also, we got her a top hat, a boa, and a cane to further her career as a tap dancer, which further cements our reputation as the best house ever.
1. Dinner every night
Albion house knew who was making and cleaning up after dinner for the entire semester within the first week. And we did it, too. Albion House was the unrecognized gourmet establishment at Williams-Mystic. Some houses had really gourmet food sometimes and not so good food most of the time. But we had solidly good food all the time.
2. Food on Sale
If it was on sale and we would eat it, Valerie bought it. Some examples follow. This also led to (4) below.
Klondike Bars
We had perhaps 60 Klondike bars over the course of the semester, because sometimes they were on sale. We had regular, dark chocolate, crunch, and peppermint patty-inspired, and we had them a lot of the time. There is a malicious rumor circulating, which I propogated after I deduced it by subtraction, that Valerie once consumed seven Klondike bars in two days.
Grapefruit
Bags of grapefruit were two for one, so we got four. Two weeks before the end of the semester, we had 31 new grapefruit in the recycling room. Valerie and Ashley love grapefruit, but they just couldn't quite keep up with the magnitude of the task. But we ate a lot of grapefruit in the last couple of weeks.
3. Iambic Pentameter with Sexual Innuendo on the Refrigerator:
And I quote:
Hadst I my lady yielding wickedlyThis poem is by Ariel and Andrew. It's Hilary's Shakespeare-inspired magnets, and it's our refrigerator.
I'd make full haste lest soon she idle be
But could my saucy tale know wanton grace
If his drunk lordship warrant yonder dream
Like merry codpiece wilt he give me hence
And please her vulgar bosom slander'd here
& ere thine farwell vow you speaketh
The loathsome night comes hither to torment
And lazy winter will besmirch death
4. Grocery Fantasies
Some houses with leftover money would be more likely to say, "great, we have all this money left over, let's go out to dinner every night." Not so with Albion House. "Great, we have all this extra money, let's go get awesome groceries!" So we made a grocery fantasy list. I got fresh blueberries, sushi, and Cracklin Oat Bran. We had six pints of Ben & Jerry's and one of Godiva in the freezer. We had brie and crusty French bread whenever we wanted it. Basically, it was like fantasy land, and everyone else wanted to be us.
5. Mary
We had the best advisor, because we had Mary. Mary made the whole program run smoothly. Plus, she came over to lunch and dinner and she thought our food was excellent. She is taking tap dancing lessons, which further cements her reputation as the best advisor. Also, we got her a top hat, a boa, and a cane to further her career as a tap dancer, which further cements our reputation as the best house ever.
Sunday, December 11, 2005
Minnesota & Set
Anders and Kasia made this Minnesota Heritage Night last night. They made lots of lovely food, including Hot Dish, Orange, Green, and Red. There were also potatoes with cheese and Special K bars. Here is a picture of Ellie, Abby, me, Christine, potatoes with cheese, Red, and Hot Dish:
Then Valerie and I played the WORST GAME OF SET EVER.
Actually, we played a few good games of Set first. Valerie actually got more sets than me. That has not happened since I was maybe 10. But sometimes I got more sets than her, too. You know how when you play Set, you look and you see a set, so you pick it up, and then put more cards down, and the next person sees a set so they pick it up, etc.? This DID NOT HAPPEN in the worst game of set ever. There just weren't any sets. So we'd sit there and try to prove that indeed, there weren't any sets, and after a few minutes either one of us would find one, or we'd put down one more card. It took forever. It was so annoying. After that, we had to stop.
But at least Valerie was willing to play with me. Usually people refuse to play Set with me. But now I have downloaded Set onto my computer, which is quite possibly the WORST IDEA EVER. I can beat the Expert setting handily, but the Pro setting beats me. Fortunately it is only in one color, so that it's not that fun to play. Otherwise I would probably play it all day. Maybe over Winter Study I will program Set on my own so that I don't have to pay $19.95 for the version with all three colors. Does this make sense? Spend hours upon hours programming Set when it only costs $19.95? Or better yet, bring your cards to school?
Yes, it makes perfect sense, because I welcome a challenge. We shall see how that goes.
Monday: 15-page history paper due.
Tuesday: Oceanography or Ecology exam
Wednesday: History and English exams
Thursday: Field Day (clean house day) and closing dinner
Friday: Some of us depart, others don't, still others depart and then come back
Now you know.
Yesterday I went running in shorts. More people than ever before told me I was either brave or crazy. I think it was less about the shorts and more about the ice. It was about 29 degrees out and sunny, so it was not bad at all. On my way back I went to the toy store and CVS and bought Christmas presents. In the afternoon I wrapped them. Here they are:
Yup, Santa Claus is definitely coming to town.
Then Valerie and I played the WORST GAME OF SET EVER.
Actually, we played a few good games of Set first. Valerie actually got more sets than me. That has not happened since I was maybe 10. But sometimes I got more sets than her, too. You know how when you play Set, you look and you see a set, so you pick it up, and then put more cards down, and the next person sees a set so they pick it up, etc.? This DID NOT HAPPEN in the worst game of set ever. There just weren't any sets. So we'd sit there and try to prove that indeed, there weren't any sets, and after a few minutes either one of us would find one, or we'd put down one more card. It took forever. It was so annoying. After that, we had to stop.
But at least Valerie was willing to play with me. Usually people refuse to play Set with me. But now I have downloaded Set onto my computer, which is quite possibly the WORST IDEA EVER. I can beat the Expert setting handily, but the Pro setting beats me. Fortunately it is only in one color, so that it's not that fun to play. Otherwise I would probably play it all day. Maybe over Winter Study I will program Set on my own so that I don't have to pay $19.95 for the version with all three colors. Does this make sense? Spend hours upon hours programming Set when it only costs $19.95? Or better yet, bring your cards to school?
Yes, it makes perfect sense, because I welcome a challenge. We shall see how that goes.
Monday: 15-page history paper due.
Tuesday: Oceanography or Ecology exam
Wednesday: History and English exams
Thursday: Field Day (clean house day) and closing dinner
Friday: Some of us depart, others don't, still others depart and then come back
Now you know.
Yesterday I went running in shorts. More people than ever before told me I was either brave or crazy. I think it was less about the shorts and more about the ice. It was about 29 degrees out and sunny, so it was not bad at all. On my way back I went to the toy store and CVS and bought Christmas presents. In the afternoon I wrapped them. Here they are:
Yup, Santa Claus is definitely coming to town.
Friday, December 09, 2005
We made a snowman
This is the snowman.
It looks like I have a really weird expression, but actually I don't, which you can see if you click and see the full-sized version. Valerie took this picture.
It snowed really hard today for about an hour. First there was rain coming down so hard it sounded like hail. Then it snowed like a blizzard with little tiny flakes blowing sideways. We had to go to the library, but we really couldn't, because it was so snowy out. Finally we put on all of our foul weather gear because we really had to go to the library. But then it was beautiful and sunny out, so we made a snowman. You see that we are both wearing foul weather gear, except that I took off the plastic pants when I went to get the camera.
The snow was really sticky, wet and heavy because it had both snowed and rained. When I rolled the snowball around, the whole layer of snow came off and it was green grass below. That was a little weird. The snowman has a carrot nose, but you can't really see it in the picture. You can see it fine in real life. Valerie found the rocks. I made the head and the bottom and Hilary made the middle. We basically think it's a great snowman. He's a little tilted. "Artistically crooked," one might say.
The snowman does not have a skinny waist. We put extra snow there to keep the snowballs together. "This is a Williams-Mystic snowman. He has had his snack." I said that.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
Exeter, snow, hats, it's all good
I had a good talk at Exeter. The math club kids were very blank-faced and uncommunicative at the beginning, but they got more into it as it went along, and asked a bunch of great questions at the end, as did the teachers.
I stayed with Mr. Wolfson, who has these big windows in his house facing the woods, and when I woke up, there was this wonderful puffy snow falling out the windows against the dark trees. So, that was really nice. I had to study a lot on the weekend, but I was studying in my favorite place to study, so that was fine. When I was in the library, a kid came up to me and asked if he could ask me a math question. He asked what math class I was in. "I'm not taking any math" didn't seem like a very good answer, so I said "I graduated in 2003," which really doesn't answer the question at all, but you know, I answered his math question, so that's good.
If you have a solid sphere of radius c, and you take a drill bit of radius a and drill out a cylinder through the center (with spherical caps on the end), the amount of hollowed-out-sphere stuff you are left with has the same volume as a sphere of radius b, where a2+b2=c2. If anyone can give a geometric explanation for why this makes sense, I'd like to know about it.
Our policy exam was on Monday for three hours. My arm hurt afterwards. And there were some things I forgot to write, but there were a lot of things I remembered to write, too.
Dan came. So we met Dan. And we liked him.
Our English and science papers were also due. That was all right. We didn't get much sleep, though. And my science paper is 1.1 MB; Hilary's is 27 pages long (because of the figures), and Ashley's is 36 pages long. So, we wrote a lot, and killed a lot of trees (because we had to print out three copies).
In better news, we got our Team Zissou Standard Issue hats, and we wore them to history class this morning. I did not know what Zissou hats were when Hallie said she was ordering them for all of us, and I looked on Google and saw people wearing red hats, but I didn't really know what the deal was. Then Hilary and I watched the movie (Life Aquatic) yesterday after we turned in our science papers, and now I know what the deal is. They just wear red hats with their blue pajamas, and that's just the way it is. So now Williams-Mystic wears them, too.
Here is a picture of us walking to history class wearing hats. You can see all of them on Shutterfly here. You will notice two members of Albion house at the extreme left of the picture.
I stayed with Mr. Wolfson, who has these big windows in his house facing the woods, and when I woke up, there was this wonderful puffy snow falling out the windows against the dark trees. So, that was really nice. I had to study a lot on the weekend, but I was studying in my favorite place to study, so that was fine. When I was in the library, a kid came up to me and asked if he could ask me a math question. He asked what math class I was in. "I'm not taking any math" didn't seem like a very good answer, so I said "I graduated in 2003," which really doesn't answer the question at all, but you know, I answered his math question, so that's good.
If you have a solid sphere of radius c, and you take a drill bit of radius a and drill out a cylinder through the center (with spherical caps on the end), the amount of hollowed-out-sphere stuff you are left with has the same volume as a sphere of radius b, where a2+b2=c2. If anyone can give a geometric explanation for why this makes sense, I'd like to know about it.
Our policy exam was on Monday for three hours. My arm hurt afterwards. And there were some things I forgot to write, but there were a lot of things I remembered to write, too.
Dan came. So we met Dan. And we liked him.
Our English and science papers were also due. That was all right. We didn't get much sleep, though. And my science paper is 1.1 MB; Hilary's is 27 pages long (because of the figures), and Ashley's is 36 pages long. So, we wrote a lot, and killed a lot of trees (because we had to print out three copies).
In better news, we got our Team Zissou Standard Issue hats, and we wore them to history class this morning. I did not know what Zissou hats were when Hallie said she was ordering them for all of us, and I looked on Google and saw people wearing red hats, but I didn't really know what the deal was. Then Hilary and I watched the movie (Life Aquatic) yesterday after we turned in our science papers, and now I know what the deal is. They just wear red hats with their blue pajamas, and that's just the way it is. So now Williams-Mystic wears them, too.
Here is a picture of us walking to history class wearing hats. You can see all of them on Shutterfly here. You will notice two members of Albion house at the extreme left of the picture.
Friday, December 02, 2005
Exeter
Yup, I'm going to Exeter tomorrow, partly for fun, and mostly because I'm giving a talk on Sunday titled "What is math research?" I gave my practice talk today, and people were much more interested and engaged than I had even hoped. Let us hope that it is the same for the real thing.
I hear the Putnam is tomorrow. Oops! I was going to try to find a way to take it. I only took the first half last year, and I didn't come back for the second half. Then when I got the results back, I did well enough that it would have been a good idea to take both parts. Oops. I guess there's always next year.
In other math news, I appear in the MAA Fall 2005 Student Chapter News. My name is about 1/3 of the way down, if you bother to click on the link. Also, I now own the orange feather boa that the very annoying woman with the large sunglasses who decided to give a talk aimed at first-graders to college students at a national math convention is wearing in a picture about 1/5 of the way down. It looks sort of pink in the picture, but it's actually orange. She was like "if you solve this problem before the end of the talk, I'll give you my autograph." I didn't want her autograph, but the talk was so ridiculous that it was a way better use of my time to solve a math problem than it was to listen to it. And then she felt bad and gave me her boa. The story is longer than that, but I'll stop there.
Well, my train is early early, so I'd best go to sleep.
I hear the Putnam is tomorrow. Oops! I was going to try to find a way to take it. I only took the first half last year, and I didn't come back for the second half. Then when I got the results back, I did well enough that it would have been a good idea to take both parts. Oops. I guess there's always next year.
In other math news, I appear in the MAA Fall 2005 Student Chapter News. My name is about 1/3 of the way down, if you bother to click on the link. Also, I now own the orange feather boa that the very annoying woman with the large sunglasses who decided to give a talk aimed at first-graders to college students at a national math convention is wearing in a picture about 1/5 of the way down. It looks sort of pink in the picture, but it's actually orange. She was like "if you solve this problem before the end of the talk, I'll give you my autograph." I didn't want her autograph, but the talk was so ridiculous that it was a way better use of my time to solve a math problem than it was to listen to it. And then she felt bad and gave me her boa. The story is longer than that, but I'll stop there.
Well, my train is early early, so I'd best go to sleep.
Thursday, December 01, 2005
You're welcome, Valerie,
but you know, I have an e-mail account. If you want to send me private messages, you can send them to my e-mail account. But since you insist on posting private messages on the Internet, I shall have to post a picture of you on the Internet. Gasp!
This is a picture of Valerie standing in the recycling bin wearing boots.
Valerie actually asked me to take this picture. She said something like "you have a camera, right? Go get it." That is not a direct quote, but it gives you the sense of her sentiments.
We sure compacted that recycling. The entire trash room was basically full of recycling, but after the compacting extravaganza, it all fit into that one little bin. After Valerie got out, that is.
This is a picture of Valerie standing in the recycling bin wearing boots.
Valerie actually asked me to take this picture. She said something like "you have a camera, right? Go get it." That is not a direct quote, but it gives you the sense of her sentiments.
We sure compacted that recycling. The entire trash room was basically full of recycling, but after the compacting extravaganza, it all fit into that one little bin. After Valerie got out, that is.
