Summer is over (Oh bother)

I did get to spend a little over a month all told with my other half, including about a week spent up here with me. (He hadn't been able to come up before.) That was really good on the one hand, but spending so much time together also made me remember I miss him a lot. I was pretty bummed when I had to leave.

It doesn't help that he had lots of adorable kittens living with him at the time, before they were going to go off to homes. One in particular decided I was the best bed EVER. I'd feel a couple of little paws grab my ankle and hear a "mew!", which I discovered translated to "Sit down so I can lay on you and go to sleep." That's hard to leave behind, too.

In terms of productivity, I went to a conference on Moore method teaching, tried to get back into some research, got (partially) ready for classes, and worked on some projects related to our library. (In particular, given the large temporary budget we had for books last year, I wanted to find ways to encourage students to go visit the library and take out some books. This ended with what I personally consider a rather nifty poster I made and hung in our hallway featuring cool new books we have. I plan to keep swapping out the featured books periodically.) I suppose I could probably count that I did clean the apartment pretty well, even though you can't really tell anymore...

But classes started last week, so I'm through my first week. Highlights from that first week:

• I discovered two students in one of my classes who had taken another class which duplicates it. On being informed that no one can receive credit for both, one was surprised (it turned out her advisor had specifically selected the class for her), and the other said she already knew that but thought she just had to take this one anyway.
• Get the impression our registration system is a little goofy? It is. One of my colleagues and I have conjectured that it does not actually enforce prerequisites at all. Her analysis class contains several students who have not taken one or the other (or both!) of two prerequisite classes. Some of these managed this by simply failing the prerequisite the previous semester, so that they registered before the system knew they failed, but others seem to have been able to slip in some other way.
• I helped with an introduction to the computer software Mathematica for a group of students on Friday. When we arrived at the lab, it turned out that the software was installed (as we had been promised), but that the license had expired. The first twenty minutes (in a fifty minute class) were spent talking the students through the registration procedure.
• One of my classes went more smoothly than it has before, I think because I successfully managed to cut a lot of stuff out of the class time and just leave the students to read and do it. I feel like I need to add a line to the Tao Te Ching: "I teach nothing, and nothing is left untaught." (This actually goes along really well with the Moore method conference I was at this summer, come to think of it.)
• I seem to have become the "contest" guy in the department. I'm trying to organize participation in one national mathematics contest, seem to have volunteered to take over a college bowl team, offered to help with running a small local math contest one professor is organizing, and have signed on to consult with a computer programming contest team. All this from the guy who basically doesn't like competition. One of my favorite authors is Alfie Kohn. Go figure.

It was a busy week, but I guess not too bad. I'm sort of glad it's a long weekend (even though I normally only teach one class Monday anyway). But it seems a shame this all has to start all over again now.

Terrible realization

I realized that I now prefer short sleeved cotton shirts which button up to T-shirts in the summer because they do a better job of hiding that I'm getting fat.

On the plus side, I've found tons of really cool Hawaiian print shirts over the past year or two, which I love. I note without comment that Homer Simpson says of Hawaiian print shirts, "There's only two kind of guys who wear those shirts: gay guys and big, fat party animals."

Lessons from Cleaning

After the school year ended, I had time to do some cleaning. I uncovered evidence of a bed in the back bedroom early on, and what appears to be carpet all over my floor.

Years ago, I used to do a cleaning of everything about once a week. Now granted, at the time I had an apartment that was probably a third the size of this one, and I had motivation because my then boyfriend would be coming over on the weekend. In fact, part of the reason cleaned this time is because the partner was going to come up here in a week or so. (And he did... yea! Yes, I know; I buried the lede on this one. More later.) It gradually got to be longer and longer between thorough cleanings. I'm not sure how I got to be so bad at it.

I realize now that most of my time is spent picking up something, looking at it, and wondering "What the hell do I do with this?" I keep hoping that if I clean one room at a time, and keep moving the miscellaneous undetermined junk from room to room, the piles will get smaller. Oddly enough, it seems to work.

I've also learned that I've slipped into being a Disney fanatic. I realized an alarming amount of stuff I was picking up and looking for places to put was Disney related. Plus I was listening to an audio stream of music from the parks while I cleaned. It just started getting a little funny when I thought about it.

Not scary

A neighbor's fat little beagle barks at me whenever he sees me outside. But every time he tries to bark it ends in a desperate wheeze for breath. This is not really very threatening.

Perhaps someone should advise him to try the Menacing Stare.

Regional meeting

I went to a regional mathematics meeting last weekend in Pittsburgh, which was fun. One of my colleagues got a van and brought a group of students down to the meeting. One even gave a student talk that evening. Unfortunately, the student government ran out of funds and couldn't pay for the students to stay overnight, but they still got to see some cool stuff. Including a trip with us for Indian food. I think that may have been a rather big leap for them; I've never seen people so happy to see rice and bread. I even got them to try gulab jamun, which is actually the most fantastic dessert ever created, but is described as cheese balls in honey, so I'm not surprised they were a little hesitant. (I told them afterwards, "But now you can go tell all your friends you ate cheese balls in honey.") I did hear that our lunch necessitated a side trip to Wendy's later when the group split up for a while.

I did stay the night, and I actually gave a short presentation on a little problem I started thinking about last summer. So that makes two presentations at meetings this year. I'm beginning to suspect that getting accepted to talk is not so difficult. However, I still have to do the publishing part, and that takes a little more work.

Fun story from the conference: On the first day, the organizers had a survey in which everyone put stickers on a poster to vote for various activities at regional meetings. When we finished, we wrote our name on the back of the sticker sheet and dropped it in a basket for a drawing the next day. When it came time for the drawing, someone stood up and told us, "The janitor threw out the basket this morning..."

Morning excitement

When I was down in the basement this morning, I heard something moving around in the empty boxes I have stacked by the sliding glass door. (I haven't yet come up with a reasonable way to put up a curtain or something that isn't a huge project, but boxes sort of work.) I could tap on the boxes and whatever it was would rustle around some more. (This was disconcerting, by the way.) I finally decided it was fluttering, and guessed it might be a bat, since I know bats have gotten in the apartments before.

So I closed up the door upstairs, opened the outside door, and started peeling back layers of boxes until a bird finally slid out from between a few and flew out the door as fast as it could. I have no idea how the bird got inside. It does not speak to the apartment being well-insulated.

Better

I found out last week that we're getting an Indian restaurant in Erie. It's not open yet, but it has a web address on the sign, and it seems to be a chain which has been well-received in other places. This would be very good news.

And we finally had some good weather this weekend, particularly Sunday. I decided this Sunday must have been my Easter. (I celebrate the return of the sun, not son.) Forecasts call for getting into the 60s several times this week, so I'm happy. I'm sick to death of all the snow.

Which means I actually had some motivation to do a few things. (Not lots, but some.) This is good, since I'm going to a regional MAA meeting in Pittsburgh this coming weekend and I put in to talk. There's a good Indian restaurant near the meeting, so it will be a good trip no matter what. Maybe I'll even learn something mathematical. (Stranger things have happened.)

And I guess it's only about a month or so to the end of the semester and summer, which I'm really looking forward to.