semester is OVER! (final and pres went.. ok, not great, but ok)

(and my study partner did indeed get the "best TA" award!!)

23 days until analysis prelim.....

yeah, so - finals week (or day rather. all my school stuff is tuesday)

seems like it went fast!

today I need to go to school, attend the last day of my readings course, (thankfully, we got the prof to talk today, so I just have to sit back and soak up knowledge. way less stressful.) do some studying for the analysis final, and maybe make it to the math party for a few minutes before my honey picks me up. (for some reason, every semester, the math dept buys us beer. also, the may party is when they give awards, and I'm rooting for my study partner to get some appreciation for being an awesome TA.)

thank god, the stochastic presentation got moved out to tuesday. so, uhm... I should really get that together. (I've been sick!) at least I'm running out of ways to procrastinate it: I installed and sorta learned to use beamer, so I can make bad pdf slides just like everyone else.

I should probably read those last two chapters of that awful analysis book. just to be able to say I finished it.

so tuesday night, the semester will be over for me. wow.

Side goal: want to plant another rose bush this weekend. NEXT week, I will take the vast amounts of time to start reseeding the lawn.

I hate it when I overdo the water in instant oatmeal.

Is there anyway to recover from this? or is it just an exercise in seeing if I'm hungry enough to eat oatmeal soup?

getting over being sick - main signs of it now are being horribly miserable for the first 40 minutes of the day as I cough nastiness out of my throat. That stuff is a very wrong color.

Thursday: big ass analysis homework due (started), stochastic presentation (the IDEAS are there - I don't even know what software I'm using to create the slides)

Aside about slide software: keep your audience in mind. When you have a teacher who says "the board is fine. you can _even_ use technology if you want. I guess." and smirks, you probably do not want to lay a multimedia ppt on the guy. But if you do a barebones pdf that looks familiarly like many many math talks he's seen before, he's more likely to take you seriously. Or at least that is my guess as the psychology of my situation. Anyway - Ideally I'll figure out how to do the hideous LaTex ones that seem so popular. Otherwise I will try OpenOffice on the basis of a) will make pdf b) rumor says will take LaTex codes in the equation editor.

This is the last week of classes. After that I will have one final - and we will all be in deep fear of the prelims. And that is why I will read another chapter of that horrible analysis book. Also, I want to finish it so I can sell it. We are united in not liking it. (It gives me something to bond with the current crop of Intro to Analysis students on.)

(Yesterday, my advisor tells me "you should take 3 hours every day and work the old tests." Somehow, I don't think I'll be quite that good.)

that sitting in my lap induces dogs to fart?

spoiled animals.

Monday and Tuesday were my first days on the new job. I got a project to work on, and started cramming my head with all sorts of new knowledge so that I can actually work on it. (along with trying to wrap up those two homeworks.)

Tuesday night through Thursday evening,  I was traveling to meet my entire dept, many of whom had not met each other before. I can't say for sure that I like my new job, but I _know_ I love my new dept. We are the friendliest bunch of stats geeks you have ever met. At no point did we have to resort to silly team building exercises to get everyone to talk - it was more a matter of shouting us down whenever a guest speaker was coming. We're the kind of people who can be together thinking about business problems all day, but at 9:30 on the way to the hotel after a huge dinner, we'll still be arguing about what precisely is the best way to measure customer erosion. The only thing that could have been better is if I'd had more than 3 hours and 7 hours sleep to run on each day.... stupid red eye flight.

Friday I went to my first local ASA meeting - yet another group of stats geeks! (still friendly, but maybe a little more... shy? ) Met several area grad students, though in retrospect, I should probably have been fawning at the teachers more instead. MCC, we are totally going to visit the place it was held at next time you visit. You will love it.

I should be reading my extra chapter and working on my project. eep. the end, it is near. (at least I didn't have actual homeworks this weekend. that helps immensely.)

I'll post next week about my new job, once I've officially had a new job (instead of just going to the odd meeting, spending time setting things up, etc.)

In the mean time, I haven't done nearly enough on the two homeworks that are due Tuesday, so I really need to take school seriously for the weekend. (Let us not talk about the project. Hrm. One moment while I try to renew that inter library loan book. Great, now I have it through the day of the presentation. It's funny how people pause and refuse to try to pronounce "stochastic.") Of course, I should also read that extra chapter of analysis. (Ooo. It's Differential Equations. That might actually help.)

I'm debating the "don't leave the house until it's done" method. I was planning on not leaving the house today anyway. At 3:00 yesterday, the forecast said "3-5 inches of snow overnight, with another 4-6 during the day." Now it says "70% chance of 1-2 inches of wet snow." So I no longer have an excuse to not meet my study partner... but I think I need to work on the class she's not in more than I need her perspective on analysis. Hard to tell if that's just the urge to not leave the house saying that though. Screw it. It's Friday the 13th. I should stay in and hug dogs all day.

It looks like more cold, grey weekend days: baking ideas anyone?

today is the first day working from home because of my new job instead of just working from home normally.

the dogs inaugurated it by whining constantly through my early morning phone call. thank goodness for mute buttons.

I appreciate that everytime I get up for more coffee or whatever, I can see tulips in the backyard. much nicer than the office.

it seems like this should feel more momentous.

Last week, I didn't read my (entire) extra analysis chapter. maybe it's because I didn't mention it here. Just in case: I should really finish ch. 10 and read ch. 11 this weekend. Because I really do want to pass the analysis exam, and if there's one thing I learned from the linear exam, it's that being familiar enough to make up some kind of bullshit can get you some much needed partial credit.

no homework due next week, nothing I need to do for the upcoming readings class. BUT, I have big homeworks due the next week, so I dang well better start them.

and I AM an overachiever. I still would really like to do my presentation on an application to economics, so I need to decide for sure this weekend whether I have enough to work with there. My theory on school projects is that they are good excuses to research the things I'm interested in anyway. (Even if the results aren't always satisfying. See: "network flows project that proves taking the bus to work sucks." and "linear programming project that proves that the math optimization guys are not interested in applications to data mining" )

I kind of combined a bunch of recipes and just used whatever we had lying around...

Pastry:
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 8 oz package cream cheese
1/3 c sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 c flour

Filling:
jam (our favorite is raspberry. We also used apple butter and plum jam, which were just fine.)
brown sugar and cinnamon
finely chopped nuts (walnuts are in most of the recipes I saw. But I had pecans so we tried that. I didn't think they added much)
raisins and/or craisins (jury is still out on whether this is "too much")

Cream together butter, cream cheese and sugar. Mix in vanilla and flour. Comes out like a rich and creamy pie crust. Divide dough up into four lumps, make each vaguely disc shaped.

Chill dough for at least 2 hours. (Freezes fine. )

Roll out dough into a rough circle. Spread with jam, sprinkle with a thick coating of brown sugar and cinnamon, add nuts and/or dried fruit bits.

Cut into 16th's with a pizza cutter, roll up with the point end on the outside. (If dough is not cold enough, it is now stuck to the counter. oops.) Place on a foil lined (because they will each be sitting in a puddle of burnt jam) cookie sheet  and bake at 350 for 16-18 minutes or until they are just starting to look golden brown on the edges. (To be honest, I haven't timed them yet.)