Oct. 6, 2009 "Problem Session"
In preparation for tomorrow's math test, my linear algebra professor set up a "problem session" for the class to come and review stuff for the test. In class last week, he gave out review sheets with problems from an old test for us to review, and at the problem session we ask him questions about any of the problems from the homework or the review sheets that we had trouble with. So, one person in class asked him to work "Problem 8c" and the following conversation ensued:
Student: "Could you work problem 8c please?"
Prof: "OK. 8d?"
Student: "No, c. 8c."
Prof: "Oh, 8b." He proceeds to write problem 8b up on the board.
Student: sighs and shakes head
At this point, another student in the back intervenes to try and get "8c" across to the professor.
2nd Student: "No. Number 8c. C as in 'cat'"
Prof: "Ah, as in 'cat.'" He writes the number 8c on the board instead of 8b. But, then he starts working problem 6c. Yet another student raises their hand and explains that we were hoping to see him work problem 8c. Eventually, we did actually get to see problem 8c.
And then, at 5:00 pm, 15 minutes before the "problem session" was supposed to end, another professor came in and explained that her 5:00 class was supposed to be taking their test. Our professor apologized and explained that when he reserved the room they'd told him it would be open until 5:15. But I couldn't help wondering if that was another hearing problem. I can totally imagine it...
"5:00"
"Great. 5:15."
"NO! 5:00."
"Yup. 5:15; that's what I said."
*Sigh*
Anyway, he does do a great job of providing comic relief for his linear algebra class, even if he's not quite as good at teaching. |
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Well, I took Oswald out of his cage and made him exercise today. He's so cute rolling around in his ball. Unfortunately, Jez took an interest in the rolling hamster, and wanted to "help" him get across the living room floor. I caught Jez before she'd shoved him too far, though. And I took advantage of the empty cage to refill Ozzy's food dish. So, when I put him back in, he found a bowl full of new food, and he spent the next fifteen plus minutes eating twice his weight in food. Oswald will only eat when he is actually sitting on his food, as well as stuffing it in his face. See below: Oswald sitting in his food dish and eating.
As you can see from the mess, whenever Oswald eats, he kicks out all the food he doesn't like, which then ricochets off the cage bars, the wall, and anything else nearby, and eventually makes its way all over my floor, and I end up having to vacuum up all of Oswald's "rejects."
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Aug. 15, 2009 Yay! Finished!
I got an email today from my accounting professor. It said that he had put up the class schedule and syllabus online and that we should print those and bring them along to class. Great, fine. That's all well and good. Then he mentioned what accounting book we needed; I already knew that and had long since bought the book. He also said that since the class only meets once a week, we'll be going through a minimum of one chapter at every meeting. And we should have the readings done ahead of time so as to be able to follow the lecture (duh, right?). Then I looked at the class schedule which said that on our very first meeting day, we'd be going through all of chapter one and part of chapter two which totalled the first 53 pages of the textbook. So, basically my accounting professor just sent out 53 pages of assigned reading homework that needs to be completed before we even have our first class meeting. *Sigh.*
But, I spent all day reading about assets, liabilities, stockholders' equity (which consist of common stock and retained earnings), depreciations, dividends, all things "payable" and "recievable", operating activities, investing activities, and fincing activities, all sorts of financial statements (Income Statements, Retained Earning Statements, Balance Sheets, and Statement of Cash Flows) and the notes associated with them (Management Discussion and Analysis, Notes to the Financial Statements, and the Auditor's Report), etc., and now I'm finished! In all honesty, though, as fun as it is to complain about, it was actually kind of uber-cool stuff. |
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Well, I made a cooking error today, and I wasn't even tired. Of course, I guess I do make quite a few mistakes even when I'm not tired. I mean, both times that I set the stove on fire I was well-rested. (That's probably why I had the sense to squeal at Luke, who came and doused the burners with water.) And when I lit that potholder on fire, I wasn't the least bit tired either. Oh well, I guess my excuse wasn't very valid.
Anyway, today I was making the marinade for our fajitas. Mom told me that we needed to double the recipe. That was going well until I got to the part about the 3 garlic cloves. For some reason, at that point I forgot about the doubling thing. I just put in 3 garlic cloves. And when I went on to the next ingredient, I had the number "3" stuck in my mind. So, I tripled the whole rest of the recipe. Then I got to the end, and suddenly realized I'd been tripling everything since the garlic, but that everything before the garlic was only doubled, and the garlic wasn't even doubled at all. So I went back and fixed all the proportions, making a triple batch.
Then I called Mom, who was gone running errands with Dad, to explain and said, "Hey Mom, I accidentally made a triple batch of that marinade. Is that OK?"
And she said, "Oh, well, that's fine, we'll just have extra."
It turns out that I was a subject of amusement for Dad and Mom as they drove home. Dad said, "We were wondering how it was possible for someone to start making a double batch and end up accidentally making a triple batch. But then, we remembered it was you we were talking about. No one but you could do something like that." Hmm...I not sure whether that's a compliment or an insult. But, hey, at least I got the proportions right, so the dinner tasted fine. |
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Aug. 2, 2009 Sunday Scrabble
Mom and I were playing Scrabble this afternoon, and Dad walked into the room. He, somewhat jokingly, inquired if it was a Bible game. I assured him that it was, and then Mom and I went on to prove that every word we'd used had some obscure Biblical referent. Here are a few of the words:
Strained--Relations were strained between Moses and Pharaoh. (BTW, this was my word, and notice that it's an eight letter word. I managed to place all seven of my letters around an "i," thereby scoring a BINGO!)
Flutes--According to Psalm 150, David was a major fan of flutes, along with other instruments.
Coo--Baby Moses cooed a bit too loudly, so his Mom dumped him on the river in a basket.
Sold--Joseph was sold into slavery in Egypt
Raw--The Israelites weren't allowed to eat raw meat.
Tap--Uzzah died because he tapped the ark.
Yet--The Already and the Not Yet. (OK, so that's more of a general theological referent, but still.)
Tails--It's safe to assume that all of Jacob's speckled sheep must've had tails.
Gape--David gaped at Bathsheeba (Sadly, I can't take credit for this one--Mom thought of it first.)
Well, we haven't finished the Scrabble game yet, so I can't announce a winner (although, I'm currently winning). Anyway, Bible Scrabble is fun! Y'all should try it sometime. :) |
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Jul. 29, 2009 Something's Fishy
We have Shakespeare camp this week--which is fun. But, it means I have to get up around 7:00 or 7:15 (of course, I’m not the only one, so does everyone else). And for some reason, I've been unable to fall asleep for the past three nights until sometime near 12:30 or 1 AM. So I'm tired. When I'm tired, and I try to bake and/or cook, I usually end up messing up the recipe. (You know, putting in 1 tablespoon of salt instead of 1 teaspoon, or using baking powder instead of baking soda or vice versa.) But, then again, confusing T. and t. or baking powder/soda is understandable. Yesterday while I was helping Mom with dinner, I almost made a really bizarre and completely not understandable cooking mistake.
I was making the sauce for some fish we were having for dinner. The recipe called for 1 tablespoon of Dijon mustard. For some reason, when I read that, my mind leapt from Dijon mustard to ground mustard. Instead of searching the fridge for some mustard, I walked over to the spice rack.
The first spice container I saw was for paprika. So, my exhausted mind instantly switched from ground mustard to paprika. There I was, preparing to pour a tablespoon of paprika into the fish sauce. Except that the paprika smelled weird. I glanced at the name on the spice container which read, “Smoked Paprika.” (Apparently, we needed paprika and the store was all out of the normal stuff, so we had to get the smoked kind.) Then I wondered if the smoked paprika would work in the fish sauce or if it would just make it taste odd. So I double-checked the amount in the recipe, and realized that what I needed was not smoked paprika, regular paprika, or even ground mustard; it was Dijon mustard. Mom walked into the kitchen just in time to hear my exclamation. Since she knows my tendency to mess up a recipe if I’m cooking while tired, she yelled, “Oh, no! What did you do?” I explained that I hadn’t actually put the paprika in yet, so it was OK. Seriously, though, I never would have thought it possible to mistake Dijon mustard for smoked paprika. It must be a talent… |
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Jul. 21, 2009 Driver's License
I passed my driver's license test today! Yay!!
I went down to this small town nearby to take the test. There, the test consists of driving around the block--hitting a few stop signs and a blind intersection or two and, voila, you pass. I didn't realize it was going to be that short. I thought I might have to drive on the interstate and maybe prove I could park in the parking lot.
But I was afraid my biggest hurdle would be turning the car on. For some reason, I sometimes have trouble getting the car to turn on. I drove on the way down to "warm up." And when I turned the car on then, it was fine. Still, you never know what can happen.
So, after I filled out the pre-test paperwork, the testing lady told me to go out and start the car and she'd be there in a minute. All that worry about starting the car, and she wasn't even there to see me turn it on! But anyway, I passed. She basically just wanted to make sure I could turn on my turn signals, stop at red lights and stop signs, and back up out of the parking spot. So now I have an "Intermediate Restricted License" instead of the (third) "Learner Permit" I had before. |
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Jul. 6, 2009 It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...
A bat?
After church yesterday evening, we were all outside talking. And this swarm of odd-looking "birds" were flying around above our heads. They were flapping their wings rather oddly, and they were flying really low. "Huh, strange birds," I thought. Then, suddenly Mom said, "Oh, look at the bats!" My mom has some weird fascination with bats--she thinks they're uber-cool, and that's not solely because the eat mosquitos. Actually, she's even bought a "bat house," although we haven't hung it up yet. And I have some weird fear of bats. Bats aren't as bad as spiders, but they're still pretty creepy.
I think this fear may have originated when we watched an episode of some doctor show thing. The sick lady on the show had some mysterious disease. Finally, the doctors figured out that she had rabies, which she had somehow acquired from a bat. And I also once read part of some book on animals that said bats were the animals with the largest percent of rabies-infected population. OK, so the percentage of rabies in bats was something miniscule, like 3% or 6% or something. But, still, say we saw around ten bats at church. That's a .3 or .6 percent chance that one of those bats had rabies! Yeah, really enormous chance, I know. But, hey, .6 % is .6%. And it wasn't dark yet, either. Bats are nocturnal. So, maybe the ones we saw were really a lone population of rabid bats!
Still, despite the rabies thing, the bats actually were kind of neat. Here's a picture. (No, I didn't take it, I got it from freestockphotos.com.)
The bat looks pretty dead to me, but apparently it's "sleeping." |
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Jun. 30, 2009 Lipgloss and Epi-pens
I've never been noticeably allergic to anything. Ever. In my whole life. Until two days ago. Guess what I'm allergic to? It's not dust, or mold, or some kind of animal, or peanuts, or milk, or anything semi-normal. I discovered that I am allergic to some kind of lip gloss. It's a lip gloss that I've worn dozens of times before with no problems. Well, OK, it sort of burned my lips every time I wore it. But it wasn't that bad. And sometimes lip glosses are that way. I mean, just because something burns your lips doesn't mean there's anything wrong with it! Right? Oh, I also woke up with weird, dry, scabby patches all over my lips 2 or 3 times, but that happened with weeks in between and on random days. I couldn't figure out how the incidents were all related--until two days ago.
I applied said lip gloss and went to church. My lips were all itchy during the 2-year-old Sunday School class, but I thought nothing of it. When we got home from church, however, my lips were burning, so I glanced in a mirror. Have you ever seen Monsters, Inc? Remember Randall's scream machine thingy? The one he tries to hook Boo up to? Except Sully and Mike rescue her and stick Randall's assistant (I think his name is Fungus) in the scream machine? Yeah. Well, my face looked like Fungus's does after Randall comes back and turns off the scream machine. Of course, that Sunday we had guests for lunch, and I spent the whole day trying to hide the fact that my deranged, alienish lips were about 3 times their normal size. I don't think it worked very well. Whatever. By the time we had evening worship, it was somewhat better. And now, today, my lips are a normal size despite being dry, irritated, and scabby.
Mom and I have decided that I must be allergic to the lip gloss. And my reaction to it is getting progressively worse. If I were to accidentally put on "the wrong kind" of lip gloss again, who knows, I might even have an anaphylactic reaction! Something tells me, though, that if I were to go to an allergist and explain that I needed an epi-pen to carry around because of "lipgloss allergies" they'd blow me off. Ah, well, I'll have to be careful.
Maybe I can do some sleuthing (like comparing some good lip glosses with the bad lipgloss) and figure out which ingredient must be the problem. And, in future, if I have anymore epi-pen-less lip gloss problems, it'll be au naturale for me. In the meantime, "Elementary, my dear Watson!" |
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Jun. 9, 2009 Cold-blooded Murderer!
Yes, OK, I'll admit to the second word. But, really, it wasn't in cold blood, it was just neglectfulness. (This will be kind of roundabout, but it'll get there eventually. So if you want to know exactly how I'm a "murderer", you'll have to bear with me :)
My mom has a beautiful collection of orchids; they thrive and grow and defy the very definition of orchid. There are several different types of orchids, and my mom has at least three or four different types of orchid, and sometimes multiples of the same type. This one type of orchid is only supposed to get three leaves. That's it; just three. Mom's has four currently, but it's had as many as seven or eight at one point. It's only supposed to bloom once a year, but her's blooms twice. Obviously these must be sentient beings that love her or something because this never happens.
At any rate, I must have inherited Mom's love of weird plants. See, we used to go to this fair when we lived in New England called the Big E. They always had very interesting things for sale. The things that always appealed the most to me were the exotic plants. One year they were selling cuttings of a plumeria tree. They said if you stuck the cuttings in water they'd grow roots and then you could plant them and they'd grow into a tree. I talked Mom into buying one. I think it was a total scam. We put that thing in water, replaced the water every couple of days, gave it sunlight, read poetry to it (OK, not really, but we did just about anything else you can think of to get it to grow), and then, after all that, the stupid plant up and died. So my first experiment with exotic plants failed. You might think I learned my lesson; you'd be wrong.
The next year at the Big E they were selling air plants. Air plants are fuzzy green little things that, and I quote, "Are the easiest plant in the world to care for, don't need any soil, and only need to be lightly misted with water about once a week." OK, I thought, the easiest plant in the world. That should be really easy. If I can't keep that alive, I can't keep anything alive. I should've passed on the plant, but I didn't. I bought it. And really, it did last for about six months, but then it died. I'd been forgetting to "mist it." Seriously, I couldn't even remember to mist a stupid plant ONCE A WEEK!!
I ought to have realized right then and there that I am cursed when it comes to plants. I'm almost positive that some fairy cursed me over my cradle that every plant I own will die. Yup. But I excused the air-plant incident by claiming that once a week is much too seldom--I simply forget if I have to care for a plant so little. So, I opted for a bonsai next. Bonsais are plants that require pretty much the most plant care. That's not something you can forget. Over the space of the next several years, I killed not one but two bonsai plants. I also had an African violet at some point along the way. I don't exactly remember what happened with that. I think I got too enthusiastic with the watering, and it developed root rot.
Anyway, I'm hoping this curse is like a lot of the other ones you hear about in the fairy tales where it wears off at 16 because I bought an orchid either last year or the year before. (Hmm...I may have been 15 when I bought it, but perhaps since it lasted until I turned sixteen, and since that curse has now expired, it will no longer be dictated by my curse.) So far it's doing well. Although, that's all to Mom's credit. I only remember to water it about once a month, and I never open the shades in my room so that it can get sunlight. Mom waters it regularly and opens my shades every morning, and in return it blooms and has way more leaves than it's supposed to.
Still, I suppose ELF must have heard about my past history with plants, and if I ever come across one of their spokespeople, I will be denounced as a cold-blooded murderer. I could probably plead mansl...er...plantslaughter, since none of it was on purpose, but something tells me that ELF wouldn't be very understanding |
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May. 29, 2009 The V-shaped State
I asked Mom a question the other day about the location of something. I can't remember what the question was now, but anyway, she said, "Oh, it's in Minnesota." And I said, "Oh, yeah!" in this voice that meant "I know all there is to know about Minnesota." But after weighing the alternatives, I decided that my curiousity outweighed my desire to seem competent in geography and said, "So, where is Minnesota?" Of course I realize that it's a state, but you know, the USA is pretty large...
Anyway, then Mom asked me just how many states I could identify. And you know, I can do quite a few, actually. I know the places where I've lived and the states nearby them WA, CA, OR, CT, NY, GA, TN, and I could probably get NC and SC. And states with weird shapes: Nevada--that "V" shaped one, Texas, and Florida. So, yeah that's 12 states. Hey, 12 out of 50, not bad, right?
Actually, about 2 years ago I did Geography and I passed with an "A" (Of course I got an "A"; I'm homeschooled. If I didn't get an "A" I'd have to redo. In fact, I had to take the Geography Final 3 times because I missed a few of the names of the mountain ranges and Mom wanted me to get a 100%. I never did get the 100%; I think Mom ended up deciding to be satisfied with a 96 or 98% since it was now summertime; I can't remember which score it was.) I guess I've forgotten most of what I "learned" in Geography, though. But I passed, and that's what's important. Now I'm free to forget, and it's OK because I can always ask Mom, "Hey, where's Atlanta?" |
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