Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Everyone's a loser in the modern world
Recently, AU's math department joined Twitter for reasons I don't fully understand, but we did. You can find it at twitter.com/AUMathematics. Along with the rest of the department, I have the login info for the account and I can post to it as much as I want. I have this strange desire to just post my honest, yet probably quite unprofessional thoughts regarding my experiences as an AU math professor on it. For example, 6 of 27 students didn't turn in the first Stats homework. I would love to post something along the lines of 'Good job on not turning in the homework as it keeps me from feeling bad about failing you.' Discernment has gotten the better of me, at least so far. I seriously debated creating my own twitter account tonight so I could post such things and at least not have it be on an official AU site. I'm definitely protect the site so only those following me could see what I have to write. Once again though, discernment won as I'd much rather stay employed than have my students think I'm witty. Perhaps after tenure....
Thursday, January 23, 2014
What you're calling the cause, I call the cure
There are precisely 50 days left until spring break. I have decided that I will not purchase any alcohol until that point. I figure there will be three main benefits to this.
1) This will help my weight get back to where it should be. I've spent all of 2014 so far in the 175-180 pound range when I should be in the 165-170 range. This certainly isn't all just booze weight. I've definitely been lazier this year when it comes to working out. In my defense though, marathon training is significantly harder when the wind chill is consistently 15 below and you're allergic to treadmills. Cutting back on the drinking will help though. The biggest issue is that one drink frequently becomes two or three and when I've had those couple of drinks, I look for food to accompany them because my will is reduced and also, it feels better on the stomach. Its certainly not brown rice and baked chicken I'm ingesting either; the vast majority is sugar-laden or drenched in grease.
2) Alcohol is expensive. My grocery budget is higher than I'd like anyway so this will be a nice boon for that in February. I certainly don't drop as much on booze as some people, but two six packs of decent beer and two bottles of wine will run me $40 for a month.
3) I may have once accidentally drank the 64 ounces of water you're supposed to get each day. I am perpetually dehydrated and its my own fault. Drinking less will certainly help with that and that will be nice for things like my skin.
I've tried this twice before. For consecutive years in grad school, I gave up alcohol for lent to see how hard it would be. The first year, there were a few struggles, but not much and I felt really good at the end of it. The second year, I didn't see the need for it as much and I killed it right around St. Patrick's Day. Note here that I'm not doing the same thing exactly. I haven't said I'm going to stop drinking - I'm not going to buy. I've still got a couple of bottles of wine and that will have to suffice for the next 50 days.
1) This will help my weight get back to where it should be. I've spent all of 2014 so far in the 175-180 pound range when I should be in the 165-170 range. This certainly isn't all just booze weight. I've definitely been lazier this year when it comes to working out. In my defense though, marathon training is significantly harder when the wind chill is consistently 15 below and you're allergic to treadmills. Cutting back on the drinking will help though. The biggest issue is that one drink frequently becomes two or three and when I've had those couple of drinks, I look for food to accompany them because my will is reduced and also, it feels better on the stomach. Its certainly not brown rice and baked chicken I'm ingesting either; the vast majority is sugar-laden or drenched in grease.
2) Alcohol is expensive. My grocery budget is higher than I'd like anyway so this will be a nice boon for that in February. I certainly don't drop as much on booze as some people, but two six packs of decent beer and two bottles of wine will run me $40 for a month.
3) I may have once accidentally drank the 64 ounces of water you're supposed to get each day. I am perpetually dehydrated and its my own fault. Drinking less will certainly help with that and that will be nice for things like my skin.
I've tried this twice before. For consecutive years in grad school, I gave up alcohol for lent to see how hard it would be. The first year, there were a few struggles, but not much and I felt really good at the end of it. The second year, I didn't see the need for it as much and I killed it right around St. Patrick's Day. Note here that I'm not doing the same thing exactly. I haven't said I'm going to stop drinking - I'm not going to buy. I've still got a couple of bottles of wine and that will have to suffice for the next 50 days.
Sunday, January 19, 2014
Steady as she goes
After just six short weeks, my farce of a relationship with Krista is over.
The rest of this post has been edited. It was written out of frustration and while I felt those things needed to be said at the time, they no longer need to be here. My apologies to Krista for leaving those words up as long as I did.
What does it say about me that my best relationship occurred when I was 19?
The rest of this post has been edited. It was written out of frustration and while I felt those things needed to be said at the time, they no longer need to be here. My apologies to Krista for leaving those words up as long as I did.
What does it say about me that my best relationship occurred when I was 19?
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
We Need Body Rockin', Not Perfection
I need school to start back up again and soon. I'll survive the week it takes until we start on the 15th, but I'm not sure how well I'll survive it. I've survived Snowpocalypse '14 (Do we keep calling them this if we get them like every other year?), but for the most part, its kept me inside and I'm going a little crazy getting bored inside my apartment. On top of that, because I'm on break I have this tendency to be lazy and when I do, the bad habits reappear as idle hands do the devil's work. This has brought me into a little bit of a downward spiral lately. I haven't been real pleased with myself since I'm not accomplishing much. I need to just forget about all of the nothing that I've one lately and focus on what I do well and force myself to be productive each day. At least today was good in that regard as I sludged through a 3 mile run in the soft snow and with dogs abounding. I also got in to campus to knock out all of the syllabi for the coming semester. I do need to double check those against my first draft of schedules though to make sure everything is cohesive. All that's left to prep me for the first week then is updating the moodle pages, making sure I know where my classrooms are and what they're like, as well as actually my prepping my first few lessons. Come next week, I can hopefully say that I've got things turned around.
I do have big plans for this year though. I'm still waiting to hear back from CURM about whether or not I successfully got a mini-grant this year. If not, there's the possibility of applying for a small grant from NASA in connection with work that one of the Physics profs is doing. I'll be traveling quite a bit as well, Lord willing. I've finally decided to head somewhere warm for spring break and this is the first time the main direction I'll be traveling is south and it only took 14 spring breaks for me to figure it out. I've booked a vacation in Puerto Rico and it should be fun. Along with that, I should be going out to Vegas/Utah for a lot of hiking in May; hopefully getting back to the Pacific Northwest in August; and there is the same cabin as last year in August as well. I've picked up an extra class this semester as well as three classes in the summer to help finance all of this. The other decision I've made is that I need to get back into actual research. Hopefully I can get a grant through AU to fund some research in the summer with some trips to Lansing to work with Andrew again. All of that would actually have to occur in the spring as I think Andrew will be back in Korea for the summer again. This would give me another reason to focus on something other than my classes over the summer though. Combining those last two thoughts, East Lansing is going to get lonely for me come this summer. My old roommate Luke is graduating as well as Richard and Adam and pretty much everyone else I still know in the math department. EL may mostly consist now of Andrew, Steph and Coop and Steph's in a serious relationship as well. I guess that means I've got to find more stuff to do out here in Indiana. At least I found a game group that meets once a month in Muncie so at least that's something.
I do have big plans for this year though. I'm still waiting to hear back from CURM about whether or not I successfully got a mini-grant this year. If not, there's the possibility of applying for a small grant from NASA in connection with work that one of the Physics profs is doing. I'll be traveling quite a bit as well, Lord willing. I've finally decided to head somewhere warm for spring break and this is the first time the main direction I'll be traveling is south and it only took 14 spring breaks for me to figure it out. I've booked a vacation in Puerto Rico and it should be fun. Along with that, I should be going out to Vegas/Utah for a lot of hiking in May; hopefully getting back to the Pacific Northwest in August; and there is the same cabin as last year in August as well. I've picked up an extra class this semester as well as three classes in the summer to help finance all of this. The other decision I've made is that I need to get back into actual research. Hopefully I can get a grant through AU to fund some research in the summer with some trips to Lansing to work with Andrew again. All of that would actually have to occur in the spring as I think Andrew will be back in Korea for the summer again. This would give me another reason to focus on something other than my classes over the summer though. Combining those last two thoughts, East Lansing is going to get lonely for me come this summer. My old roommate Luke is graduating as well as Richard and Adam and pretty much everyone else I still know in the math department. EL may mostly consist now of Andrew, Steph and Coop and Steph's in a serious relationship as well. I guess that means I've got to find more stuff to do out here in Indiana. At least I found a game group that meets once a month in Muncie so at least that's something.
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