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My Ecosystem Details

I just downloaded a boatload of pictures. Rather than inundate you all in one day (and to save time), I'm going to upload them one or two at a time.

This one was on my trip to the Big City in March to check out the Really Big University (U of MN - Twin Cities...it's three times the size of NDSU). On Saturday, the dept. administrative goddess took a couple of us on a driving tour of the area, and we went to Minnehaha Falls (I hope that's what it was called, because I didn't write it down anywhere!). Apparently it's a popular spot for the dept. resident ice climbers. I just thought it was pretty.

Minnehaha Falls Taken 3-29-07

Or maybe it's just my kid. But still, I feel like my husband pays the bills, and I pay for all the fun stuff the kids get to do.

So let's look at some of the major expenses for older son over the next three months:

$730 Concordia language camp for one stinkin' week
$230 Architecture class he wants to take this summer (I couldn't believe he really wanted to take a class)
$150 Testing for the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth - so he can take online classes through them in place of a couple of his regular classes
~$3500 for one year of two classes next school year through JHU (no...I'm not kidding...I wish I were)
$135 for an overnight program at a planetarium (through JHU again, but since his dad is supposed to bring him and the check isn't cashed, I'm not sure that'll happen)

Then he mentions that Mensa keeps sending him emails to join, so he is thinking about that. (I've been hesitant since we don't have a very active Mensa chapter...but he might meet some other kids through that.) That would be another $54.

So when I ponder why my family never did these sorts of things for me and my sisters, it sort of makes sense.

BTW, I'm not saying I begrudge my son *any* of this. I think it's awesome that he is able to do these things and I'm very happy to be able to pay for them. It's just that when they get out of daycare, you expect them to get cheaper. That assumption was a huge error on my part. :-) (Of course, I also made the assumption that public schools are willing to accomodate gifted kids. Another major fail on my part.)

Maybe we'll get lucky with this school in Minneapolis, and I won't have to hack up all that dough.

At least my kids won't be teenagers at the same time. Right now, the only "extraneous" thing for younger son is gymnastics...and that costs about as much as a month of daycare, but it's spread over a year.

I wanted to be sure before I posted, but the consensus on the quakers seems to be that these gators are, in fact, Friendly. (My LOLspeak is lacking, so I asked.)


moar funny pictures

First, what shall we call them? Quaker Crocs or Quaker Gators?

Also...what type of meeting do they attend? Are they conservative, liberal, programmed, unprogrammed?

(Is the canoe wood? Or aluminum!?)

I saw this on Dr. Pion's blog and thought it was pretty cool.

Researchers use microwaves to clear ballast water of invasive species.

The low-down is that some species of marine life are being carried from native waters to, well, non-native waters where they are setting up shop and over-running indigenous dwellers. (I was a the Bell Museum in Minneapolis last month and they have a large display area talking about this.) Anyway, some researches at Louisiana State apparently developed a system using microwave radiation to heat the water and kill surviving organisms.

Another cool article I happened to wander across discussed adding nanoparticles of aluminum oxide to diesel to cause it to ignite at lower temps. Sounds like a cool idea, but I have to wonder...does it gum up your gas tank after a while? Since it's already oxidized, I don't know that it would burn all that great. (Of course, my chemistry isn't all that great, either.)

And since I'm on a kick about things heating up or burning, the IEEE Spectrum has an article about what sounds like a terrifying re-entry for the Soyuz spacecraft. (It had on board South Korea's first astronaut, Yi So-yeon, who replaced Sally Ride as the youngest astronaut to date.)

Finally, the the Spectrum also has an article on robot kits for kids or engineers who have never completely grown up.

I handed in my last homeworks of the semester. I thought it would feel good. Instead, I just feel less stressed...but not much. It makes me realize that much of the last semester has involved me stressing about my thesis. I feel like at least I can focus on it now. But, in the meantime, I'm still worrying. I have 2 1/2 weeks to have a coherent first draft.

I'm still not over the cold. I'm still hacking like crazy. I'm still having to take massive amounts of cold medicine to sleep at night.

And Saturday is the marathon!!! I need to be better by then because I don't know how I'm going to dance for three hours straight if I'm hacking and wheezing. Hmmm...I think I better get my costume in order tonight in case I have to order any "emergency gear" (you know...a new hip scarf because the one I have just isn't the right color/fit/whatever).

I haven't danced since I quit teaching in March. I think it's fallen in with everything else: minor priority until the thesis is done. A friend asked me last week if I was going to do another triathlon this summer. Uh...maybe. I had plans to...but I'm not thinking about until the thesis is done.

And now I'm going to...work on my thesis. I had a nice thought-provoking post cooked up, but it will have to wait for the thesis.

I wish I could sleep like my cat
On a blue and fleecy mat.
Except that his head
Is twisted 'round on his bed
And his tongue is lying out flat.

(Seriously...how can they sleep like that?)

I had a really cool idea for a science fiction story. I told Mike about it, and he said, "You know...I don't think I've ever read anything with that premise before." Since he's so well-read in science fiction, I consider him a good litmus test for original ideas.

SWWEEEEET!

Now I just have to finish my damned thesis so I can get to work on that (and possibly another that's been rotting my brain for a year or so).

And, if I get it done and am feeling brave, I think I'll even try to submit it someplace.

But we'll see how I'm feeling in August.

My friend (former officemate) graduated on Friday. I didn't go to the ceremony because I was not doing well at all. I wasn't sure about last night, either. I was supposed to go to dinner with her, her husband (whom I'd never met before), a mutual friend, and his wife.

I still didn't feel great, but it was my only chance to see her, so I went to dinner last night. It was nice to see her and meet her husband. They have an arranged marriage, and because of their working situation, don't live together (or in the same state, for that matter). They're working on changing that. :-) I wasn't sure what to think before I met him, but I really like him. He's a nice guy, and I think they'll do well together...especially since he's very quiet, and she talks a blue streak. They complement each other very well. (He also knows a bit about geology since his brother has a degree in it...so that helped a lot.) :-)

There was one bummer about the evening. We talked a bit about my PhD program, and I told her I'd gotten offers from Michigan and Minnesota. Her eyes got big. "You got an offer from Michigan and are going to Minnesota? Why?!" She realized as soon as it was out that Michigan wouldn't have worked very well, but it was a little bit like salt in a wound. I mean, I know I'm going to love my PhD program and being in a bigger city again (CULTURE!), but there's a little bit of sadness for the "road not taken".

It's funny how, when I was younger, I used to try to convince myself that I needed to always follow the path I wouldn't regret. I'm learning that may be an unachievable goal because things are not usually that clear cut, especially with a family. Very seldom in making a choice do you have an obvious path-I-will-regret and path-I-will-not-regret type scenario, especially since you never know what sort of things will happen as a result of a choice. If you wait for that sort of dichotomy to come along, the path of inaction which one takes in the meantime can cause huge regrets. I'm trying to content myself with choosing the path I'll regret the least or which benefits myself and hopefully my family the most.

In the case of the PhD, my personal choices would have ranked Michigan, Minnesota, and then NDSU. In terms of family, the exact opposite was the ideal.* So compromise was absolutely necessary. Yeah, all this thinking came out of one comment from my friend.

The rest of the evening was really nice, though, and after dinner, she and her hubby came to the house to see the kids. The kids were ecstatic to see her, and younger one really charmed her husband. (I think she wants kids, so that would be a good thing...for her.)

And good news is, my fever is gone and I'm feeling a lot better today. Unfortunately, there is a lot of work to do. :-/

*Except for older son...I think that, school-wise, moving to another larger city could provide him with better opportunities. We'll see.

Hmmm...that pretty much sums it up.

So all you're getting out of me is some links from World Science:

•A potential evolutionary reason for the presence of gays in society.

•The Grand Canyon may be older than initially believed.

•Becoming powerless makes you more...powerless. Nasty Catch-22 on that one.

•Growing nano-trees. Do you suppose they could grow some nano-ornaments so we could use them for Christmas? (Actually, they look really cool.)

•Researchers at JHU are making a solar probe.

G'night.

I could tell older son to go do his homework.

But I won't.

He came up to me this morning and said, "Mom, I want to learn Matlab."

No kidding!

So he's plowing through the Getting Started book and keeps saying, "This is so cool!"

And I'm swooning...

Thanks to info provided by yami_mcmoots (i.e. a math image generator at http://mathurl.com/), I can now tell y'all about my mathematical trials and tribulations.

So, see this:



It's not so pretty if you don't multiply the Hankel function by ρ...and because ρ was part of my infinitesimal, I failed to notice that for a while.

Dr. Free Ride has a great sprog blog about trying dissolve avacado in an experiment she did with her kids.

While the post itself was pretty cool, the comments were priceless. The following was my personal favorite:

I would be curious what happens to any of the mixtures if you acidify or...shoot, what would be the word? Alkalinize? Basify?...them.

What IS the isoelectric point of guacamole, anyway?...

Finally, I'm going to be disappointed if you don't get out a microscope to examine the cloudy mixture, and then estimate the volume of liquid which would contain 6.02x10^23 particles (Avocado's number? One Guaca-mole?)

by Epicanis

I had one of those days (weeks?) where I seriously was thinking about homeschooling again, despite older son stating he's not sure it's a good idea.

( Hold on to your hats...it's a long one... )

If you have any doubt, this is why I never considered a career in music. Or poetry.


To the tune of "Oh Where, Oh Where, Has My Little Dog Gone?"

Oh where, oh where did my integrand go?
Oh where, oh where could it be?
The limit of rho as it goes to zero
Has left a singularity.

Ah there, Ah there did my integrand go!
Ah there, I found it indeed!
You forgot to multiply this mess by rho
Giving you a constant, silly!

I woke up with a fever of 100 this morning. This is saying something because my temp almost never gets above 98.

I tried to help Mike get the kids going, but part way through, I ran out of steam.

At least I know I wasn't going crazy last night when I felt so bad. I suppose this is what I get for commenting a couple weeks ago about how I'd been sick so much less this semester. (It helps when you aren't teaching, believe me.)

Unfortunately, I am going to have to leave the house to pick up older son after school. Poor kid. He can't ride the bus home because he's harassed. Then yesterday, he was walking home, and some kids started bugging him. One of the kids grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Older son happened to have my umbrella with him and whacked the kid with it. The umbrella didn't survive, but kiddo got home.

This is really pathetic.

moar funny pictures

Freakin' eh. I thought I'd stay home and rest up a bit because my cold seemed like it was on it's last leg. Now I'm cold, feeling muscle aches, and coughing so hard, my head hurts.

Bah.

On the up side, I finally figured out that I'm in a handbasket heading to a very warm place got a clue on the freakishly impossible homework problem. I just hope Mathworld can tell me what's wrong with my Bessel functions. I was trying to be nice, but they seem to have crawled away.

I'd tell you all about it, but I'm sure you don't want to hear, and I'm not terribly motivated to HTML a bunch of Greek symbols. My goal is to finish this problem, finish the other problem early tomorrow, and then get the last homework done before Monday. It won't be easy this weekend, though, as a friend is coming into town for her graduation and I have to take older son to a musical so he can write a report on it. Since we're going out with this friend, I told my husband he has to grill me steaks on Sunday for Mother's Day.

I love summer because my husband cooks.

The May Scientiae is up at A Cat Nap!

Unfortunately, I had a kid who couldn't sleep until 2 a.m., so neither did I. I will have to wait until I get more sleep to read it. (Hooray for me going to sleep!)

The theme is career changes, and I think it's funny that today, I coincidentally had a discussion on the same topic. Some acquaintances at a birthday party were discussing certain classes that make you want to quit, and I said, "Oh yeah...that ONE class made me decide I didn't like engineering."

"And yet you're going to get a PhD."

"Yeah...in a completely different field!"

Gotta love those career-defining moments.

Another Quaker teacher has been fired because of the loyalty oath:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-oath2-2008may02,0,6280956.story?page=1

Apparently it's CSU Fullerton, and they're being stricter on their interpretation of the law regarding the oath.

I know it's not Quakerly to hope for a lawsuit, but it would be very nice if this oath went away once and for all.

cross-posted to quakers