One thing I can tell you is you got to be free

And just like that, the semester is over and I'm free until January 13.  I finished up the last of my grading and submitted grades at around 11:30 on Thursday, meeting my desired deadline of noon so I could partake in my traditional Five Guys' celebration lunch.  The plan was then for me to relax and be lazy that afternoon before hanging out with Krista once more before the break.  Instead, Krista's teacher body realized she was going on break and so she ended up getting sick and we didn't meet up at all.  I'm fine with that as we're not in that stage of the relationship where my first thought is to go comfort her; I'm glad she didn't want me to see her puking and she kept her gunk to herself.  Friday morning, I cleaned up my office, as in, I threw away all the non-important papers on my desk.  For some reason, we don't have obvious paper recycling at AU and this needs to be changed and soon.  I saturated my plant with water in the hopes that it won't die before heading back to finish packing.  I took off around 11:30 and outside of some issues with greatly reduced visibility due to fog in Northern Indiana, made it home around 4:00 to begin Christmas break.

The question now begging though is "What do I do with all of this time?"  I don't have a clue what I'm going to do for all of the next two weeks.  I should have gone for a run this morning, but based on how icy the driveway was when I pulled in yesterday, I gave that up as a bad idea.  I'll get around to running soon enough, seeing as how I'll be doing novice marathon training to get ready for the half I'm running in May.  Obviously, I'll do a lot of reading over the break as well.  Once the sisters get here, I'm sure some games will be played and there's a puzzle or four that will be done.  Heck, I might even go back to Skyward Sword and see if I can't finish that off.  Besides that though, who knows?  Its 10:00 right now and all I've done so far this morning is eat breakfast and write this blogpost.  It feels good, man.

Tick Tick Tick Tick Boom

Somehow, someway, the end of every semester always seems to sneak up on me.  Its not like I don't know its coming up, as I'm always very aware of it, but there's just always so much work to do and then you get to that Friday afternoon and then boom!, all of a sudden I have free time.  I actually get to spend today doing what I want, instead of worrying about all of the stuff that needs to be done before Monday.  Sure, I still have a Linear Algebra exam that I should write, but I can knock that out on Monday.  Today will be spent reading, working out, running a few errands, etc.  I'm hoping it will be a good productive day and that I can even enjoy the beauty of the snow storm that's accumulating outside of my window.

As promised before, a few more details about my relationship with Krista.  It's still a little weird for me.  Everybody who had me dating a liberal, quasi-vegetarian, yuppie/hipster, raise your hands.  Liars.  There are a lot of differences between us, but there's a lot that's the same as well that isn't obvious on the surface.  This could be a great thing and there could be immense growth for both of us.  Alternatively, it could very easily blow up and be over in a month.  Needless to say, I'm hoping for the former.  The list of what we've done together so far includes the Indy symphony orchestra, a Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture, an Iowa football game, an art museum, trivia night at the local pub, abundant games of trivial pursuit, and making fun of Lisa while at the zoo.  Like I said, this could be great or the differences could get to us and sabotage it all.

I'm the same as I was when I was six years old

I must first say that I am very ready for Christmas break and the end of the semester.  The students I have in my sections of Finite are fine, but the material just isn't that exciting.  It's my actual math majors in my other classes that have my frustration levels starting to boil over.  Admittedly, I wasn't a great student my first year or two at Trinity.  All I cared about were my math and chemistry classes and so the other classes weren't a priority and I blew them off occasionally.  Its not something I'm proud of, but I'm not terribly ashamed of it either.  However, when its actual math students not showing up to math major classes, I get angry.  I have ten students in Differential Equations.  It isn't uncommon for there to only be three students there at the start of class and five of them have skipped on a frequent basis.  Similarly, I have 14 students who will finish Linear Algebra and at the start of class yesterday, I had seven of them there.  That class has started with as low as four.  Once again, there are four or five that skip on a fairly regular basis.  It is just mind-boggling to me that you can pay $35000 a year for tuition and then blow off the stuff about which you supposedly care.

Rant over.

I am looking forward to the break, but I am concerned about it as well.  I know mentioned back on Xanga that things change when I go home.  I revert back to who I was the last time I lived at home.  I don't know what it is, but I just change back to something else.  Its certainly no fault of my family's and I love being around them.  I just let my bad habits crop back up and I don't fight them as hard.  I struggle with eating right, working out consistently and occasionally skipping devotions.  Most likely, its just a case of idle hands.  If I don't have things demanding my constant attention for much of the day, I don't necessarily stay on target for what I should do.  This has gotten me to thinking about what I can do to take care of this.  The easiest thing is just to get out of the house and make myself busy.  I should try to get to East Lansing and Chicago for a couple of days.  I also noticed that Red River Gorge was listed in Backpacker Magazine's list of top 100 day hikes in the U.S. I wonder what hiking in Kentucky in January would be like.  Maybe I'll have to find out; or maybe, I'll save it until spring break and also explore Mammoth Cave and a whiskey distillery as well.

I'd love you to love me

Volunteer.  Seriously, just do it.  Volunteering at the food pantry has quite likely been the most rewarding thing I've done in the past year.  Its not because its a "now I appreciate what I have when others have so much less" type of thing.  That occurs if you only go through and do it once or twice.  Its much better than that.  Today, in the hour and a half we were open, we helped out 173 families.  The number was higher than normal because the pantry is closed for the next two days and its the end of the month and so people are running low on food stamps.  This was a great day for me because this now meant that there were 173+ people who were happy to see me.  Compare that to my usual week, when there are about 8 people that are happy to see me (okay, its higher than that since most of my students like me, but it doesn't approach 100+ on any given day).  Even better is the fact that I work produce which means I'm right after Andre, who has a good way with people and thus, I end up with all these little old ladies who are in a good mood and flirting with me even though all I'm doing is giving them a cabbage and some bananas.  When you get all these people coming together for the greater good, you can't help but walk away with a smile because when 173 people love on you, the stones in your heart haven't got a chance.

We'll show them how its supposed to be.

Just a quick update to cover the past two weeks.  First, I am now dating Krista, but more on that later.

Last Saturday, I went to the Iowa-Purdue football game with both Lisa and Krista since I was able to score tickets on StubHub for $1.11 before various fees.  We ended up sitting in the south end zone bleachers with all the Iowa fans who scored similar ticket deals.  The game was at least close for the first half before ended up blowing Purdue out in the second half.  It was a little cold out and made worse by the fact that the video screen ended up blocking out the sun in our section.  Nonetheless, it was good and now marks both twice that I've seen Iowa play and been to Purdue for a football game.  This one was miles better than the previous game, a 6-3 affair against Penn State.  After the game, Lisa and I went back to my place and went out to dinner.  We got home after that and I promptly crapped out at 8:30 and went to bed because I am the oldest person alive.  I did fall asleep though immediately so at least it was justified.

This past Saturday, I went over to Jesse's place to watch the MSU football game.  It was a good time and nice to hang out with other Anderson friends.  Yeah, that's right, my social life existed for a week or two.  Its better that I went over for that game instead of the MSU-UK basketball game since I got a little more animated for that and should probably go apologize to my neighbors if something like that happens.  Thankfully, none of them have small children.

On this past Friday, I submitted a mini-grant proposal to CURM at BYU in the hopes of getting my first research grant.  Apparently though, you have to submit a grant proposal proposal to the development office here at AU before you submit anything else.  Oops.  I screwed that up so I went around yesterday asking people for signatures and apologizing for the poor timing.  That's currently in Marie's office right now and hopefully I'll get all of that taken care of in the next couple of days.  Wish me luck. EDIT: Wish granted.  The signatures are gathered and no on e even yelled at me.  This is so much easier than trying to get signatures from all my committee members at MSU.

How on Earth did I get so jaded?

Sometime last week, one of my facebook friends linked to an article on Huffington Post discussing how to be insufferable on facebook.  The premise of the article was the author taking issue with a long post from one of his/her friends, essentially recapping all the great things that have happened to them over the past year.  The author then slowly became more enraged with the post as the post was basically a boast of "Look how awesome my life is!".  The rest of the article discussed posts like that and other such posts which would serve to essentially alienate facebook friends.

I was amazed at how many of my friends liked the article and the discussion that followed.  I know I'm guilty of some of the "inconsiderations" that were listed in the article, but I don't care.  None of my posts are designed to make all of my facebook friends feel better about themselves.  They're there to keep the people that care about me up to date about my life.  I don't intend to create any rift with my posts and if I post about something awesome occurring in my life, its not meant as a brag; rather, as my friends, I want you to celebrate with me.  This was my main issue with the Huffington Post article.  If you find yourself getting angry at someone's comments on facebook, the onus is on you to do something about it, not them.  Its really not that difficult.  In fact, just stop reading the post and move on.  Al Gore did not invent the internet so everyone could focus on making you feel good about yourself.  If the problem persists, either block the person or unfriend them because there are issues if you get angry whenever your friends are happy about something.

Two days later I was a victim of my own words.  I have an acquaintance on facebook who I feel had wronged me earlier and it affected me more than it probably should have.  I saw her discussing things of a similar nature to what was mentioned above and I found myself getting angry.  I haven't blocked/unfriended her yet, but it'll get there soon.  It scared me that I had this thought of, "If you ever cross me, I will become cross with you when you enjoy having nice things."  Thankfully, I know how to remedy the situation since I can't insist that others are responsible for my happiness.

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there.  In the way in which I was wronged, I turned around and did that to someone else just recently, but in a worse way.  When you make someone cry and you know you're in the wrong and there's nothing you can really do but apologize, it really makes you feel like an asshole.  I should've known better than doing what I had to do the way I did because I don't like making people hurt.  Anyone reading this knows my callousness and indifference is feigned.  There's no happy ending here yet.  I can only hope things work out eventually.

Who Died and Made You Suck?

Its official.  Someone here at Anderson University does not have a sense of humor.  Being a math guy, I posted several SMBC comics to my door, including this one, because its roughly the greatest thing ever.  That comic lasted three days.  I put it up on Friday and now I come in to the office on Tuesday morning and find that someone has taken the liberty of taking it down without even having the decency to talk to me about it.  I almost hope someone comes to give me a stern talking to so I can roll my eyes at them.  Boo on unnecessary censorship.

I hate to say I'm starting again

Saturday, it was 43 degrees and raining.  It was definitely fall weather, but one of those days where you want to stay inside underneath a blanket with a book and just wish it was still summer.  Instead, I was out running a half-marathon with some pretty shaky training.  It didn't get off to a great start as I was struggling a little early and my shin was acting up which was new.  Thankfully though, I was able to fall in line right with the pacer for the 3:15 marathon time and that kept me right around 7:30 miles.  Other than a few zipper issues with my jacket, things went fine until I hit the hill at mile ten that Krista and I had joked about.  That hill sucked the life out of me and I started to fade.  Thankfully though, the end was a few short miles away and once I hit mile twelve I was able to put a little more oomph in my stride and finished in 1:38:18, which is a little slower than I would have liked, but given the conditions and my mindset, I'll definitely take it.  I did get beat though by an eleven year old though, which is kind of a kick in the nuts.

After I finished the race and got some food and a space blanket, I went to go look for Krista.  I wandered down to the last turn, roughly a quarter mile before the finish.  I got there at around the 1:55 mark figuring that I'd see her come by in the next couple of minutes.  By the time it got past 2:20, I started getting a little worried that Krista was hurt, nevermind the fact that I was freezing my ass off.  I decided to head back to the finish area where they had a few fires going to warm up.  Right as I get back to the area, the first person I run into is Krista who decided to be all awesome and finish in 1:55, easily a p.r. for her.  We had ended up missing each other by a matter of seconds when I first went to look for her.  After that, it was off for a burger in a tent filled with stinky runners followed by a drive home and a much needed hot bath.

Yeah, the weather made the run fairly miserable and my lack of training certainly didn't help because I would've been screwed without the pacer.  Neither of those things bode well for future half-marathons.  I'd like to say I'm smart enough to take this as a sign, but I've already signed up for my next one and will be running the Indy Mini in May.  I expect that will be quite the experience since there's about 14000 people running it and it finished on the track of the Indianapolis 500.  I have six months to train properly and see if I can't knock a couple of minutes off of my finish time.

I'm working out, I'm eating right, I'm living well

Local H lyrics to title the post in honor of the band splitting in half.  Admittedly, that's not hard when its a two man band, but I'm sad to see Brian go as I loved the fact that he's an animal-style drummer.  The title isn't even all that accurate.  Outside of training for next week's half, I'm not working out.  I'm definitely not eating right based on the fact that I just went through a batch of peanut butter no bakes with chocolate drizzle in about three days.  I am however living well.  If you're reading this, I wish you lived closer, but other than that I have no complaints about my life.

I've decided I need to stop posting the status "First time doing yoga in forever" to facebook since I only do yoga about once every six weeks now.  I probably would've even skipped Thursday's session, except my hamstring has been screaming at me, which is really bad news a week before a race.  I need to make sure I get another session in tomorrow night and probably a couple of more in the next week.  My running has been off lately because of my cold from the last two weeks, but there's not much left I can do about that except get healthy.  I did get a ten miler in today in under eight minute miles so that's encouraging.  I'm still hoping for my pace to be around 7:20, but I won't be overly upset if its closer to 7:40.  Eight minute miles would be really disappointing however.  I don't know what it is with Anderson, but I still occasionally get a few people who yell "Run Forrest, Run!" at me when I run by.  Most people are pretty cool and several actually encourage me, but I still end up with those jackasses who don't realize that what they're saying hasn't been funny since 2000.  Its just a good way of outing yourself of being incapable of running a mile.

Besides this morning's run, I've spent most of the day cleaning.  This weekend has been a perfect storm for cleaning seeing as how I've needed to clean for the last several weeks along with Iowa having a bye week, MSU playing Indiana and the Giants playing on Thursday.  So far, I've knocked out both bathrooms, most of the kitchen and five loads of laundry.  I still have a little bit of prep work to do for school and the living room to clean, but I'm definitely happy with what I've accomplished so far.  Time to get back to it.

Today's reminder not to complain came from one of my students, a normal 18-20 year old girl.  She wrote me an email in which she apologized for missing class BECAUSE HER PACEMAKER WAS MALFUNCTIONING.  I'm sure its a very scary situation, but her email was very cool and collected like it was no big deal.  I take back everything I have complained about in the last month and apologize for complaining in the first place.  My bad.

You are everything I want 'cause you are everything I'm not.

Okay, I really should be finishing up grading Finite exams, but I don't want to do that because I've been doing for the past three hours and there's still a couple of hours left.  Going through it can be a little disheartening because its low level math and some students struggle with it greatly.  I appreciate a lot of them because the lower levels normally include the hardest workers and I truly love their drive and I want them to know that I will do all I can to help them, but still, this is stuff that shouldn't be that hard.

What I really wanted to talk about was spontaneity.  From my online dating experiences, I've found that most women really appreciate spontaneity and that got me to thinking if I actually was spontaneous.  There was the road trip up to Toronto with LDub, but that was back in undergrad.  Besides, is there total off-the-cuff stuff that I just throw myself into? Probably not, but that's not necessarily the best way to go about it.  My Gatlinburg trip two months ago wasn't a spur of the moment thing, but my decision to do it was; I just then spent the next month or so figuring out all the logistics of doing it cheaply, so you know what, I'm counting it, especially since this may lead to a ritual of traveling somewhere for hiking.  In fact, I just picked up an extra session of Finite for the spring to fund next May's trip to go stomping (very gently because it might kill me) all over the Southwest.  So yeah, I'm considering myself spontaneous, but very much in a poor grad school way.

If you're wondering what the title has to do with this post, the answer is absolutely nothing.  I just wanted a break and 'Makedamnsure' was what was playing so I took that.  How's that for spontaneity? Yeah, its pretty bad, I know.  Whatever.

But Cohesing Is Possible If We Strive

Its been two weeks since I've posted.  Sorry about that, but life just got busy and with the rest of the week ahead looking like more 10 hour work days due to the first round of exams, I decided I needed to be deliberate about posting. 

About two weeks ago, Krista and I went out to Purdue to hear Neil deGrasse Tyson speak and while he essentially turned it into "The Neil deGrasse Tyson variety hour" instead of talking about anything new, it was still a good time.  In fact, its better he probably didn't go into any research because it would've been over my head in about five minutes.  It was quite refreshing to see his support for the liberal arts while still acknowledging that if we want to solve the economy's problems, we mostly need to focus on the sciences.  It was very pragmatic and fairly easily applicable and everything I would've said if I was more eloquent and roughly a million times smarter.  I mean, the man does outrank me in honorary doctorates by a score of roughly 20 to 0. 

The interesting thing for me to watch though was how much some people really got into the rift of science vs. religion during the Q and A session.  Dr. Tyson himself is a skeptic but the viewpoints he expressed seemed to align more with willfully ignorant agnosticism.  Many of his supporters though strongly supported skepticism or straight out atheism and were eager to jeer those who did support religion.  This confounds me because there is no natural rift between science and religion.  Science is there to explain the natural while religion deals with the supernatural.  A strong rejection of one usually comes from a lack of understanding of it while placing too much reliance on the other.  It is a failure to recognize the legitimacy of both science and religion that causes this confusion and contempt against each other. 

Are you gonna get the best of me? We will see.

I don't want to complain since I certainly don't have the most stressful job possible, but life tends to get busy when you make weekend plans.  Krista and I near are going out to Purdue on Thursday night to attend a Neil DeGrasse Tyson lecture and then on Friday, I head down to Nashville for the weekend and to meet Shannon.  I'm hoping it'll be because life is certainly keeping me busy with all sorts of other stuff.  Take today for instance.  I was only on campus for a few hours.  I got in around 8:30 and did prep work until class at 10:00.  From 11:00-12:00 was more prep work instead of going to chapel since I want to get ahead since I don't have any time over the weekend.  After that, I worked at the food pantry across the street until 2:30 and they kept me busy the entire time.  That was followed up by a trip to the grocery store before going back home and getting in what was supposed to be a six mile tempo run.  I went out too fast and ended up doing four at tempo before walking for half a mile and doing an easy run for the rest of the way back.  Since then, I made dinner and have been doing laundry and dishes and I really should try to get in prep for Friday's Linear class so next week isn't as packed as this one, mostly because I'll be leaving for the weekend again to go up to Grand Rapids to finally take in ArtPrize.  Can it go back to being summer?

Gimme Toro, gimme some more

When you can barely bend over to pick something up from off the ground in class, it becomes pretty obvious that adding legs to your weightlifting workout for the first time in two months two days before you have to do a pace run is one of the dumber things you've done lately.  At least, that's what I was planning on writing before I busted out four miles in 28 minutes this afternoon.  I even felt like I could have done another mile or two at the same pace pretty easily. I have no idea how I did it either, as my hamstrings hurt just now as I walked the two minutes to the mailbox.  The temperature having dropped from the mid-nineties to the upper sixties in the past couple of days most certainly helped.  Perhaps I also was just hoping to get home before my right thigh actually exploded, leaving me to stump my way home.  Who knows?  Either way, this will probably lead me to doing something that's actually dumb, like signing up for next May's Flying Pig Marathon if my half goes well in October.

Should I not care and sleep the whole day through?

In our connections (new membership) class at church, by pure happenstance, I ended up sitting next to a math professor from Taylor.  The thing that stuck with me though is that his wife was in disbelief that as a single guy, I'd make the effort to get up early enough on a Sunday morning to make the 20 minute drive to church so I can be on time for the 8:30 a.m. service.  She told me to sleep in while I can, no doubt the words of a mom desperate for sleep because she has four children ranging in age from five years to two months old.  Thanks for the advice, but 1) Yay! Someone thinks I'm not going to die alone! and 2) no thanks.  The biggest accomplishments I have for this year all came from times I got up early.  The vast majority of my training for this spring's 50k came when I was up at six so I could be out running by seven.  The average start to my day for the four days I spent hiking outside Gatlinburg was probably about six as well.  D.C. and the cabin don't really fit the narrative because I probably spent those being lazy and sleeping in until about 7:30.  I'd love to claim that this is a "I'll sleep when I'm dead" thing, but I take way too many naps for that to be true.  In fact, thinking about this caused me to resolve to become more active - less naps and afternoon reruns and more enjoyable running and cooking experiments and just more doing in general.

My first chance to implement this mindset came yesterday.  Mondays call for an easy run and yesterdays was supposed to be five miles.  Ever since about halfway through the 50k training, my running attitude hasn't been great. I'd get up and think "Ugh, how many miles today?".  Why? Why would I do this to myself?  If I'm not enjoying running, what's the point?  That's when I decided I have to be more active in enjoying running.  I got home yesterday and briefly considered not going because of the heat.  My car said the temperature was 95 and sure, it may have been out in the sun, but that's where I would've been running so I'm counting it.  After that half-second of doubt, I got my attitude right, changed clothes, put on my shoes and started running.  I got a few looks from people who thought I was crazy, but nobody said anything.  Did I succeed in enjoying my run? Of course not.  Running in 95 degree heat is crazy and probably stupid and dehydration sucks unless you like having your face taste like salt.  I did, however, not let myself dread the run at any time and I didn't get discouraged when I went slow.  I'll take that as a success and carry it over into today's 1/3 mile repeats in the similar heat.  To that, I give a mostly not sarcastic Huzzah! UPDATE: I'm not running today.  Repeats in 99 degree heat is absurd.  I'm stupid, but not suicidal.

Finally, I think everyone in central Indiana is married.  There were no single people at AU's new faculty orientation.  There were no single people at the church connections class.  I'm starting to think there are about six attractive single women over the age of 25 in Indianapolis and I'm scared I've met them all.   

Little Men Come When Anything Goes

Xanga caved and decided to start charging everyone for blogging space so I've been forced to move somewhere else as seriously, who pays for blog space?  Anyway, I'm disappointed because now I have all of those blog posts since 2006 saved in html format on my laptop where they'll never be read again, much like all the evidence of my love of washed up punk bands and long walks on the beach.  If you got that joke, congratulations on being Jon deHaan.  No, I won't explain it to the rest of you.

Anyway, my stream of consciousness thoughts on life have now moved over here to blogger after searching for somewhere where I could still have the dexter21 moniker, but alas, none could be found.  The guy who's currently using it here on blogger is an Indonesian(?) guy who made eight blog posts last August.  Yeah, pretty sure I'll deserve it more in about a month.

I'm not going to make a big deal of switching blogs because this isn't some big new opportunity for a new start.  I'll just keep on going from where I left off and you're all screwed for context.  Sorry.  So here we go.  Another new semester has started out here in Anderson and I'm excited for my classes.  I'm thrilled to be teaching higher level stuff with linear and diff eq.  I just need to make sure the diff eq guys don't realize I'm basically keeping just a couple classes ahead of them since I don't remember half the techniques that I'll be teaching.  Also, I'm teaching two sections of Finite again, which doesn't thrill me, but at least it doesn't require much, if any, prep work.

Beside that though, I've been going through an interesting range of emotions lately.  While new classes starting is exciting, there have been some frustrating/disappointing experiences from the summer as well, mostly resulting from my utter lack of discipline both physically and spiritually.  How fast my mood turns around may correlate directly with how quickly I can recover that discipline.  The good news is it looks like I'm hopefully getting back on track.  Gallivanting all over for pretty much all of August didn't really help either as now I miss that freedom just to get out and go wherever my heart pleases.  On the drive home tonight, I decided the thing I most wanted right now was to chase the simple beauty of sunsets covering mountains which is an awesome thing to do and thoroughly impossible in central Indiana.

Okay, one last thing about Xanga.  I do miss their "What are you listening to?" feature since I've decided to keep the last couple months pattern of using song lyrics as titles.  For the all of you that don't recognize this post's lyric, it comes from the Offspring's Kick Him While He's Down off of Ignition.  Check out that album.  You're welcome.

More to come soon, I promise.