For all you curious minds who have been wondering what I'm up to here in Portland....
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Calendar!
02.11 Visit DeMara
02.22 Amory Lovins lecture
02.24-28 Mom visits!
03.11-13 Graham visits! (hopefully)
03.18-27 Spring Break
04.22 Earth Day!
Renegade Rose Morris!
www.renegaderose.org
Photos!
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Quotes!
"We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered."
-Tom Stoppard, ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead’
"To go wrong in one’s own way is better than to go right in someone else’s."
-Dostoevsky, ‘Crime and Punishment’
"We must not, in trying to think about how we can make a big difference, ignore the small daily difference we can make which, over time, add up to big differences that we often cannot foresee."
-Marian Wright Edelman, ‘Families in Peril’
"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, - that is your success."
-Thoreau, ‘Walden’
Saturday, February 22, 2003
F was for Fried-day, S is for Study Saturday and Sunday.
I'm not kidding about the fried. I got home from work at about 5:30, and within 5 minutes I had taken off my shoes and jacket and climbed into bed. I slept like a rock for three hours or so, then woke up enough to get some food in me (fried rice, to go with the theme of the day), went back to bed around 10:30 and slept for another 10 hours or so. Wow. I knew I needed sleep, but I didn't know I needed that much! I'm better now. :)
I've got an icky math test on Monday, so studying for that will take up most of my workish time this weekend. Fortunately, I don't have anything but a lab writeup due this week, so I don't have a bunch of problem sets to worry about. Oh, shoot. I just remembered the two problem sets that were due on Wednesday that I didn't turn in. Okay, scratch that about not worrying about problem sets. Sigh. I'm looking forward to being done with this quarter. I have to figure out when my final exams are. I'm pretty sure they're on the same day; hopefully not the same time!
Thursday, February 20, 2003
By the way, thank you Graham for your suggestion of "Thilly Thursday." I'll keep that in mind for next week.
:)
I should have let the day run its course before deciding on the appropriate T words to describe it. I'll add to my earlier T's with Terrible Twisting and Turning. Of the ankle, that is (and unfortunately the same one I sprained so badly a couple of years ago). We were dancing Bampton "Simon's Fancy" for six at practice tonight, and working on the chorus figure, especially the bit where the corners are supposed to come in back to back in the middle. I guess we stressed the idea of getting really close together a little too much, because Dave and I ended up stepping on each other somehow and my ankle turned completely under me. I ended up doing one-footed forrie capers, and those of you who know what a forrie caper is know that it's really hard to do them one-footed! But I decided to hobble out of the set and sub David in for the rest of the dance rather than attempt the side-steps on one foot. :} It got better and I danced a bit more later on, but it's still tender and swollen and probably won't be very happy tomorrow. So I came home and rubbed arnica gel all over it and made myself a nice big mug of hot chocolate as a bedtime snack. Because it's bedtime! Yes, folks, I'm going to bed before 10:00! Aren't you proud of me? :) I've been feeling very tired and slow this week, because I've been up far too late for too many nights, so I decided to forego the singing and merriment at the pub after practice tonight for the peace and quiet of a log-friendly bed. Good night!
And just to beat the alphabet game into the ground, T is for Tolerable Though Tired Thursdays. Not much to say about today, except I'd really rather just stay home and go to bed than go out to morris practice. Sigh. It'll be fun, but I'm already tired, body and brain.
I've been reading Graham's and Tina's blogs about the impending Viennese Ball (tomorrow) and have decided that I'm quite happy not going this year. It's a lot of fuss and hassle and dressing up and paying lots of money for a big event when all I want to do is go dance and have fun, which is possible (and highly enjoyable) to do for $2 at Jammix. I am sorry I won't be there to support Tina and the rest of Opening Committee and see them dance, but I'm sure they'll do a fabulous job even if I'm not there. Good luck!
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
So, to continue my alphabet theme of the week: W is for Widiculous Wednesday. (Okay, so you have to get out your baby voice for this one; it's the best I could come up with.) Not funny ridiculous, but "why can't anything go the way it's supposed to" and "can't these people get a clue?" ridiculous. My physics lab took about twice as long as it should have because the equipment is so old and shoddy. One of the rubber feet was missing from our centripetal force apparatus, so we had to put shims under it and clamp it to the table, readjusting the level after every trial when it shifted. Oh, and we had to start over again at one point because one of my lab partners forgot that we were supposed to do another trial so she changed the tension in the spring and there's no way to get it back to exactly where it was before. Sigh. Then it was "Mock Exam" day in my diff eq class, which basically means that we get into groups and are given problems to solve and present to the class, similar to problems that will appear on the test on Monday. It's a 140 minute class and there were six groups, so we should have had plenty of time. And we would have, if the first group hadn't taken an entire hour for their presentation! By the time we got to my group, which was second to last, class was technically over and we didn't have time for any kind of quality presentation whatsoever. What's more, we ran over so late that I missed the bus after the bus I usually take home, so I had to take the one after that, so I didn't get home until 8:00. Ugh and Grrrrr.
On a brighter note, here's wishing a very happy 9th birthday to Kirsty! This young girl is shaping up into quite a fine contra dancer.... :)
There's a pile of dishes in the sink that I don't even want to think about, but I'm certainly not going to do any homework tonight, so I might as well start on them. I'm meeting Gerhardt on Sunday afternoon to go over some diff eq stuph with him (he's an optical engineer, among many other things, and actually asked if he could help me with this class) and hopefully clear up some of the concepts before the test on Monday. Oh, and I did horribly on my physics test. Ugh. Anyway, enough random stuph for now. On to tackle the dishes.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
If I were playing the alphabet game, I would say M is for Monday Misadventures, and T for Tuesday Technology Tie-ups.
Yesterday I drew the angel card "expectancy." I joked, saying, "well, I expect I’ll have a physics exam this afternoon." But little did I know what the day would bring. The short (everything is relative) version of my day is as follows:
- Left the apartment half an hour early so I could walk to the post office and finally mail back that silly differential equations book that got mailed to me twice. Arrived at the P.O. only to read the sign that says "Closed Sundays and Holidays," and remembered it was a holiday. Decided it wasn’t fair that, not only did I have class on a federal holiday, I had an exam. Walked back to the apartment and did some more work before catching my normal bus.
- Transferred buses downtown, boarding the only bus going to PCC (the 44) from that direction (there are only two buses going to campus – how silly is that?). Thought it was odd that a) it was not the usual bus driver and b) there were only three other people on the bus, when normally it is half full of students and picking up more at every stop.
- Wrote a letter to Quena sitting on the side of a highway in the pouring rain next to a broken down bus, half an hour before my physics test.
- Boarded the next 44 bus and hoped it would arrive on time. We were very close to campus, and I was convinced we would make it on time, when, at the last stop before PCC, the bus driver stopped, disembarked, and went into 7-11!
- Finally arrived at PCC just in time for the test, which had numerous errors, including one multiple choice question that didn’t actually have the correct answer as one of the choices.
- Decided that my angel card for the day and one of my favorite quotes from The Phantom Tollbooth went hand in hand to describe my day: "Expect everything, I always say, and the unexpected never happens!"
As for T for Tuesday... We’ve been having some significant technology problems at work for the last few days, with everybody’s computers running really really slowly and freezing up and work going at about a quarter of the normal pace. We’ve also been having issues with our newest monitor having orange lines all over the place. Somehow it became my job to deal with that particular issue, so I spent over an hour on the phone today with PowerMax and LaCie trying to figure out warranty information, how to send it back, etc. The stupid thing was that most of that time was spent trying to convince the guy on the other end that the monitor didn’t have a serial number on it. He kept asking if there was maybe possibly another little sticker on it with this sort of number, and I kept telling him, no, what I’ve told you is exactly what is on the monitor. There is no other sticker. The only good part about all this was the nice classical hold music, which I got to listen to for a good long time. I put it on speaker phone and Alan and I pretended we were listening to the radio, except without commercials. :}
And now it’s homework time. Two diff eq problem sets, a physics problem set, and a physics lab writeup due tomorrow. Oh, and a diff eq presentation to finish and test to study for on Monday. Phew! I’ll be glad when this quarter is over! I’m looking forward to only taking one class next quarter. It’s the other physics class I have to take, thermo and optics or something, and it’s taught by the same guy, which I’m not sure I’m too happy with. I don’t really feel like I’ve worked very hard in this class or learned very much that I'll remember. On the other hand, I’ll know what to expect. Anyway, back to work!
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Yahoo! Finished all my problem sets ... before 10:00! Now all I have to think about in the morning is my physics exam at 2:00 that I haven't spent one brain cell's worth of energy on yet. But I'm not going to worry about that right now. I'm going to bed! :)
Well, I had a somewhat more productive afternoon at the library today. There may be hope yet. The guy sitting next to me at the library yesterday said that he was a math major in college (and grad school, I think). He could see I was having problems and asked if he could see my book, out of curiosity about what I was struggling with. He looked at it for a moment and then asked if I'd had linear algebra. I said, "umm, no." He said, "Then this is the first time you've seen matrices and this and that and the other?" "Umm, yeah." He couldn't believe that I wasn't required to take linear algebra before diff eq. Of course, I have no idea what linear algebra is, but apparently I wouldn't be having such a hard time with diff eq if I'd had it. Oh, well. Despite my apparent lack of sufficient prerequisites, tocay I completed all of one problem set except for the parts I need the c.d. for, and a significant portion of the other. I just wish the library was open for more than 4 hours on Sundays -- I was on a roll! Of course, I was also starving.... :P So tonight I'll hopefully finish the rest of those problem sets, then use my time before my physics exam tomorrow morning to study for said exam. Yikes!
Kit discussion for Renegade Rose proved fruitful, and the basic kit (we're still ironing out the details) is pretty much what I'd wanted all along, so I'm pretty happy with it. :) We were debating between crossed baldricks and some sort of waistcoat, and the only thing everybody could agree on was to let everybody choose which they'd rather wear. Now we're debating between short and long waistcoats. :P If you want to see a few versions of the kit we're thinking about, you can check out Lev's sketches and Nancy's sketch. The first page also has the RR business card that Lev designed. We're going to take the basic rose on black background and use that as the design for a patch that will go on the baldrics and vests for the kit. I think it'll look really nice. Now we just have to work on getting everybody's kit together before our first gig at the Pagan Fair on March 22nd!
We had a very sweet surprise yesterday. Around mid-morning there was a knock on the door, and who should be standing on our doorstep but a smiling Phil, soaking wet from the pouring rain, panting from running through it, and holding a boquet of daffydowndillies and a Valentine's card! What a sweetheart! Yay for happy surprises!
