It's like Spring!

So warm and windy. Taunting us.
There potentially could be a lot happening in the next 3 days.
Trix may get wisdom teeth pulled. Liz might viz. I will proctor an exam then be exam'd then grade an exam. There is paperwork associated with my exam that is confusing and maybe a year overdue.

So I'm gonna try to straighten that out today.
I came in today thinking I might pick up the research I put on the back (off) burner when I started preparing for my exam. I hope I can do it!

Some Sorta Sidewalk Syzygy

Here's how it happened:
Trix got me a new maroon hoodie. I was wearing it.
I was walking down the sidewalk on my way to buy a greasy breakfast sandwich (didn't happen).
A boy in a maroon jacket was walking in the same direction as me, but slower, and in front of me to the right. As we walked forward, a girl in a maroon jacket was walking towards us to my left on the same stretch of sidewalk. Right when I passed the maroon boy, the maroon girl was in line with both of us.
M A G I C A L
A
R
O
O
N

Dream

I was just awoken at my folks' house by a phone call from trixie. She is still on the road after leaving early this morning and it's taking forever because of snow and turkei traffick. Get home safe trix!
In my dream, though, I was one in a group of actors and actresses competing for roles in a vampire movie. I had just been called in to see the casting director again and she asked me if I'd received a check for $2 million yet. I said "you must be joking!" she replied,"oh, right! it would be more like $10 million. -- but I am joking." and then I woke up. I'm not sure if I got a part or not... but I don't think I wanted to be the star.

Mustard

My bank's nearest ATM is enclosed in a booth which is also home to an intense pungent smell resembling honey mustard.

The air is warm, moist, and fragrant this morning. It makes me think of spring. The added fact that I recently have a career goal is reminding me what it's like to be eager for the future. As in "Oh right, that's what it felt like before eight years of postsecondary education." Sorta like wanting to be an astronaut or a firefighter (which I never did. So ... the comparison is theoretical.)

My remembered dream last night featured a recurring location. My father, myself and two other people were driving around in the countryside, possibly trying to evade someone without much urgency. I forget why we were out and about. We pulled over off a dirt road and started crawling through some pine forest where the lower branches were all brown and the floor was carpeted with dry pine needles. Eventually the landscape to the right looked like farmland. Soon the pine forest became a thicket of enormous bamboo, though it too was dry and brown and growing up through pine needles.
We came to a small house which I immediately recognized. The house belonged to a middle-aged woman. I believe that we had explored the house before she bought it. Now that she lived there, we sometimes snuck in and visited while she was away and ate her cookies and looked at her family photos, then remembering to try to cover our tracks.
This time, there were an assortment of homemade cookies out. One looked like a blueberry baklava and the taster displayed some disgust. I went for a different cookie. There were stacks of them, round pale cookies about the size of your hand, loaded with chopped macadamia nuts and candied pineapple and maybe some coconut shavings and something else yummy. I ate it and bragged to my unfortunate blueberry-baklava-eating friend that I had picked the better cookie. I checked the floor to see If i'd left any obvious crumbs.
The last thing we wanted was to be caught yet we could have been a lot more cautious. We examined some of her family photos, picked up tiny picture frames which had fallen off of the desk, dusted them off and wondered about those pictured. I put one on a shelf then remembered that something little like that might be noticed. So I put it back in the dust on the floor and hoped for the best.
I reminded one of my companions that making phone calls was probably not a good idea if we didn't want to be noticed. Turning on music or talking loud also was not too smart. I figured it was time to be getting out of there!

What a Jerk!

In my dream right before waking, I was teaching my calculus class. The board seemed much bigger than usual, and there was a student I didn't recognize. He was being a wiseass. So I spent a long time erasing the not-quite-clean board to begin class, and while doing so the unknown student asked me some question. I went over to him to talk a bit, and for some reason told him my name was Ben. I think I was planning some smartass comeback in advance. When I got back to the board it had been filled with information about video game bosses, including pictures and stats, all in colored chalk which is a bitch to erase. I started erasing again and then decided that I'd had it. I canceled the day's class right there and walked out angry. Almost all of my students were pissed off too because they had a quiz coming up and they had questions for me. One of my (very dilligent!) students in particular was running late and she would be very angry to not have class. She would probably track me down to ask questions anyway.

I realized after walking out the door why the blackboard was so big, and perhaps why there was an unknown student in the room. I had not been in our usual classroom -- I was in 315, not 215. But why was most of my class there? It can't have been the wrong room. So I figured there was some temporary room change, but I couldn't ask any of my students about this or comment on figuring the reason for the big blackboard because they were all angry at me now.

Dollar Short.

I remember a dream from yesterday, though not much of it. I was drinking beer, and had been drinking beer for quite a while. I recall noting (erroneously?) that beer in bigger bottles with prettier labels was easier to drink. I also recall thinking "only a few more to go, and I'll have drank all the beer in the house!"

This made me remember the hangovers which have historically followed such observations.

Oh. Our car is finally ready. Don't ask.

My Book on Infinity.

Please turn to page Omega+2 when you hear the chimes sound, like this: *

At least twice this past few weeks, it has re-occurred to me that infinity is big.
Let me clarify.
In math there are two broad categories of infinity: countable and uncountable.
Uncountable things are way way way way (way way .....) bigger than countable ones.
So you start to think that the countable infinite things arent really that big at all... after all, there are things that are so much bigger!
But they are big! There's always room for $n$ more.
:-B

Cash Only

Dream Update:
Johnny Cash was singing in my highschool gymitorium, doing Long Black Veil, standing about 4 feet from the first row. Student photographers got in close. Everyone was standing up and singing along. When Johnny was taking a lengthy pause to soak in the moment, a bunch of people kept singing, and the next verse was done by a certain Ms. Kuhn in a quiet scratchy voice.
GO FOLSOM HIGH!
JKJKJKJK

BUMP

Well, I got suckerpunched metaphorically speaking.
The prospect of a teaching-free semester was dangled in front of me, then snatched away. I'm not really that mad. Really :-)
I am slo-lee but shirley progressing on my talk preparations. I wrote up a worksheet for my class that is probably way too hard. It took me a while to do it... but then again, I don't expect them to do it all in one day. I am thinkin' that maybe I will do some math tonight along the lines of
beer + trixie + mancala = fun!


UPDATE
I started doing the math early and have some interesting results. If we postulate that
trixie = fun
then
beer + mancala = 0
which seems to say something about the merits of playing mancala under the influence, as long as trixie = fun

Fringe Benefit of Marriage

Trixie listens to me talk in my sleep, and I say some funny stuff.
Last night, apparently, I had a dialogue by m'self:
Voice 1:"How often do you feed your child?"
Voice 2:"mmm -- pretty much zero!"

Bee Czar.