Judgement Day

Monday, September 26th, 9:30-11:30 a.m.

Prayer request

Apparently this is not a good month to be my grandmother. My mom's mother is suffering from Alzheimer's, and things are getting worse (as they tend to do). Apparently, this morning she didn't recognize her husband of 53(ish) years. My aunt and uncle are considering moving them into their place, but that's a tough commitment to make (in terms of time and space). So, prayers for my grandmother, my grandfather (who has to take care of and put up with his wife losing her mind), and the rest of my family as we deal with this situation are very coveted.

An idea...

Who thinks that, assuming I pass my TIER, I should throw myself a party at the lake? I think it'd be cool to get about 8 people up there and just chill and have fun and hang out and relax...and eat pizza. :) See what Shawn thinks about when he should be either studying or sleeping?

Why do I not post for 10 days, and then twice in one day?

Start of school year stuff

Well, there are 3 days until school starts on Monday, which means that the next few days are going to be crammed full of all kinds of orientation garbage. I have a swing demo tonight, course orientation on Saturday, and C-Group orientation on Saturday. Plus, I'm in the proces of planning for Big Red Swing Weekend, my TIER III exam (just finding a date to have it is becoming hard enough), my C-Group, and eventually my classes. Oh yeah, and some time in there I actually need to study for the exam. Plus, technically speaking, my advisor hasn't approved the class list for the classes I've signed up for, which includes a reading course with said advisor. Today was spent reviewing topology (let's hear a big bleh for covering spaces!), and hopefully a little bit tonight will be as well, but there's poker and the aforementioned demo, so we'll see. Fortunately, there's swing dancing tomorrow night to help me unwind a little bit.
I just kind of wish I had a few days to myself right about now to study, spend time with God, and fellowship without having meetings and or exams looming overhead. I guess I'll have to settle for a few hours of poker... :) Actually, last two games we played I won convincingly, so I'll probably get busted out in the first ten minutes of this game...

Almost famous once again

It feels nice to be a part of national news....kind of. One of my office mates was actually in the math office when the incident below occurred. Apparently, it was quite the fiasco. :)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050815/ap_on_fe_st/math_mystery

I need to run

So, I have 45 days until October. Which means I have 45 days max until my TIER III takes place. And, understandably, I'm feeling stressed about it. To the point, I think, I'm going to have to start running. Nothing helps
1) focus me
2) relieve stress
like a good run. So, maybe an unintentional benefit of this exam will be getting in shape, as I have the feeling I'm going to have a lot of stress to relieve.

I really want to spend some evenings with friends and catch up from the summer, and yet I don't know if I have the time for it... :(

Aaack!

So, Shawn is starting the whole process of studying for his TIER III exam, a 2-hour oral exam in algebraic geometry. I'm studying with my officemate David. We basically need to know chapter 2 of a book by Hartshorne, as well as a paper written by Serre. However, there was some issue about which paper is the one we actually need to read, just that it was about Cech Cohomology. So, David and I in our naivety assumed it was the 8-page article entitled "Cohomology in Algebraic Geometry". Rather, we found out today that it's the 82-page article entitled "Algebraic Coherent Sheaves". Why would you need to read about cohomology in the article entitled "Cohomology"? Silly me... Oh yeah, Serre defines coherent sheaves differently than Hartshorne does, so it's not even something we already know. I almost forgot the best part--I failed to mention that this 82-page article we have to know by the end of September is written in French. Clearly, just learning the material won't be enough...we should have to translate it, too.

So, to translate for those non-math majors I may have lost out there--my workload just dramatically increased. :(

6 weeks of no fun

So I finally got back from Oregon yesterday. My time out there was a lot of fun. I got to see some of God's gorgeous creation, including an amazing view of the entire Willamette Valley, the Cascades, and the ocean from Mary's Peak, which we scaled (well, we scaled the last 200 feet of the 4,097 foot peak). We even got a nice geology lesson at the peak from a guy who knew Indiana had a lot of caves, which was a lot more surprising before we found he was a geologist from Oregon State University. Overall, the trip was very enjoyable, and it was a lot of fun getting to spend a few days with Heath.

The excitement began on Thursday, my initial day of leaving. Leaving four hours before my flight (it's a 2-hour trip to the airport) seemed like a safe plan until a car wreck on I-5 made the trip last 3.5 hours. I was fortunate enough to get my boarding passes and through security in ten minutes, though, in plenty of time to get to my flight, which proceeded to be delayed, and then delayed, and then cancelled. So, over three hours after I was supposed to have left Portland, I was finally given a hotel room to crash for the night before my new flight, which left at 6:00 a.m. It was a $200 room with two queen beds, but only 12 cable stations, so I was a little bummed out.

Anyway, when you arrive at an airport at 5:00 a.m., there are very few places open at which you can eat breakfast. So, yesterday my food selections were a little lacking, since "lunch" took place mid-flight and was a couple of iced oatmeal cookies.

It's good to be back home in Bloomington, though, and starting to get back in the groove of things. I was looking over some information about this year, and saw there's an October deadline for my TIER III oral exam, meaning that in about 6 weeks or so, I will have no choice but to take my orals. That's not going to be a lot of fun. In fact, I'm already stressed about it. I was nervous for most of the summer, but it's really starting to hit home that it's really really soon. So, here's to a month and a half of stress and pressure...