Day 472

Well... the chronicles of fridge-less-ness continue.  The rumor for the landlord is that someone is supposed to come over at 10am tomorrow to fix it.  We'll see what happens.

So I started the morning with breakfast and going to class.  This chapter I'm teaching is on scheduling.  I don't like how vocabulary heavy this book is, but since they need the vocabulary to do the homework... I'm not quite sure what to do.  Anyhow, I was about halfway into my lesson when I decided to break from the notes and get a little classroom involvement.  So I talked with them about how they make schedules and calendars, and how it applied to the theories we're discussing.  That seemed to get them marginally more interested.

After class I worked on homework with Timbo.  Then we got some lunch and discussed being actuaries and what all we have ahead of us for the next five years.  It's going to be a lot of work, that's for certain.

Class was fine.  I actually felt like I was able to follow along reasonably well. It's funny (not really), but when I took my Linear Algebra course at Mount Vernon, I knew that it would be useful someday, but I had no idea how.  As it turns out, Statisticians use matrices a lot.  In other news, I'm convinced that if someone looked at my notes or homework, they'd assume I was just throwing symbols around haphazardly.  There are rarely numbers in statistics... mostly just letters.

After that I came home and talked with Kimmy about her day, then attempted to do some work.  My brain was just tired... so I took a short break.  Then we made some chicken and canned corn for dinner.  It was fine.  I'm quite ready to have a working fridge.

I just remembered something.  Before I went to class this morning I cleaned out some of the rotting food that was in the fridge.  Oh my word... it smelled so bad.  It's going to be a while before I can smell carrots or look at mashed potatoes again.  It was so gross.

Anyhow.  We made dinner.  And ate it.  Then froze the left overs since... well, that's the only option we have.

Then I worked on my resume.  I gave it a major overhaul (again), so I'm going to see if Mr. Owens has time to look at it tomorrow.

I was going to do some grading, but my brain is just done.  I was tired from three consecutive long days and stressed because of our fridge situation.  And kinda hungry.  It's going to be a long weekend, but I needed a break today.

And now it's about bedtime. Night!

Day 471

Well.  We made it through another day!

Today's adventured began with homework for a couple hours.  Our refrigerator still wasn't working, so our food is getting pretty limited.  Hopefully it gets fixed soon.

I had a meeting for graduate assistants today.  It was five minutes long.  After we were done I finished up one last homework problem.  Then we went to class.  Oh!  I had an exciting and brand new experience today.  I got my quiz back and received a 65%... but all of my answers and methods were correct.  On the last two questions I (and many of my classmates) did it two ways to show that you could get the same answer both ways (I'll say Method A and Method B).  However, we were apparently only supposed to show Method A.  Therefore... we missed 7 out of the 10 points for each questions.  So that was neat.

In between classes I worked on some homework with Alex and Timbo.  We got it mostly done, but I need to take a look at a few more things before I turn it in.  I'm going to try to do that tomorrow at class.

During our other class we did a little review.  We've been doing a lot of problems of the same type, so I've been able to get really good at them.  It's been helpful.  Mr. Owens also discussed a project that will be due later on in the course.

After class I came home.  Kimmy had her first day of training today, so I asked her about that. Apparently today and tomorrow are mostly training videos.  Woo!  I did some grading, then we had dinner.  After dinner I graded for a little while longer, then worked on my lesson plan for tomorrow.  I had intended on working on my resume, but I was just too tired from going nonstop all day.  So I didn't!  I'll do it tomorrow. I don't have a lot of work... just a few things I'd like to change.  So that's tomorrow.

And now I'm off to bed. Night!

Day 470

These days need to stop feeling like they're a week long.  It's painful.

I got up and got ready for class.  I got a bit of a late start today, but I was able to make it to pack my lunch and make it to the library to print off the tests... and even made it to class a few minutes early.  So that's how most of my students started their day: with a test.

After the test was over I went up to my office and started grading.  Then I worked on some homework with Timbo and Alex.  We got a decent portion of it done... and then we got to class and found out that we have to do it out by hand.  We'd used a program called Minitab, since originally our professor said that our homeworks would have to be done in some statistical software.  But today in class he decided that since this material would be showing up on an exam, we should learn to do it by hand.  Therefore: we'll be doing the homework again tomorrow.

I hadn't had enough to eat at lunch and I was tired.  So I was a bit cranky when I got home.  On top of that, our refrigerator is officially not working, so all of the food in there that needs to be refrigerated is spoiled.  Yay.  I emailed our landlord yesterday about it... the serviceman is supposed to come tomorrow to fix it.  Hopefully he gets it working... because I'd like to keep at least some of my food (like produce) though I think pretty much everything has gone bad at this point.

I graded for a while, then got hungry.  I considered making stir-fry, but a) I didn't want to just waste any leftovers we had, and b) I really didn't feel like cooking.  So we looked through our coupons and found one for steak 'n shake. Apparently almost all of our coupons are for pizza and oil changes, so we had to do a little looking for something else.

After dinner I attended a resume workshop.  They had some good advice and I think I'm going to make some changes... tomorrow.  Not now.  Now is bed time because I'm tired.

So good night!

Day 469

Today feels like it was such a long day.  It was really good, but I'm actually quite astounded at how long it has seemed.

I got up around 7 to get started with the day.  After I finished showering Kimmy got up to get ready for her interview.  Macy's called her back and wanted to set up another interview.  So while she got ready I got some breakfast and worked on homework problems.  I did that for the rest of the morning.  It was such fun.

Kimmy came back from her interview and she got the job!  Yay!  Now we can pay the bills.  Life is wonderful.  She needed to get some new clothes to wear for work, so she went to a couple stores and did her thing.

While she was gone I got some lunch and entered some grades into Blackboard.  I also made my dish for our potluck.  We had some potatoes, so I just chopped them up and made fries.  I need to get some good spice mixes.  The ones I have....well... I don't really have many.  So usually I just have to hazard a guess and mix some spices together.  Usually it turns out well, but I've gotten some weird results.

Anyhow, after Kimmy got back we got ready for the potluck.  We made sure we got there at the beginning because I volunteered to cook the chicken.  The potluck was at Kathryn and Erica's apartment, so we got over there and I started doing my magic.  And by "magic" I mean "putting chicken in a dish and cooking it."  I think that someday I'd like to try something really fancy.  Something that tastes amazing, looks good, and isn't just a functional dish to satisfy an appetite and be edible.  It would be fun, provided that I have the time and resources for it.  We'll see.  Once I start studying for my next exam.... I really don't want to think about that.

So the potluck was fun.  There was this show on TV... I don't even remember what it was called but it was about this family Georgia, like super rural Georgia.  And the entire point of the show was to point out how ridiculous, uneducated, and pathetic these peoples' lives are.  Their drawl is so heavy that subtitles are often used, and most of the time the "sentences" don't even make sense.  At first I was just mesmerized by this show... then I just felt sick.  I have no regrets concerning our lack of cable TV.  None at all.

Later on Tim and Erin came with one of their friends.  Tim and Erin tend to be the conversational center in our outings.  Which is really amazing because the rest of us are significantly sub-par at carrying on a conversation.  Alyce (the aforementioned friend) is starting a grad program in Actuarial Science in New York, so she had all sorts of questions for us.  Actually, since about 5 of us were new faces to her she had many questions to ask everyone.  It was entertaining.

After well all left we came home and... did something.  Hmm.  I'm sure it was super important.  But then Kimmy and I watched some more Firefly.  I'm sad that there is only one season of it, because I have been enjoying it.  Oh well.

Tomorrow is going to be a busy day.  I got nearly all of my homework done, I just need to finish a few more problems.  So homework, I give a test tomorrow, I'm working on homework for another class with some classmates, and then grading.  I have much, much grading to do.  Joy.  And there is a resume workshop tomorrow evening, which I will be attending.

Well.  Cheers!

Day 468

It's not quite bed time, but I feel like writing this now so I don't forget about it.

Well.  Let's see here... I got up around 9.  I took today as my relaxing day and will be absolutely taking advantage of having a three day weekend.    Tomorrow I'll get things done... but today was for relaxing.  We didn't go to church today because there was a combined service (I don't remember Pastor Mark saying why) and with the timing of Kimmy's parents having to check out of the hotel we would not have been done with church in time.

Kimmy and her parents and I went to the south side Walmart to pick up our mattress topper.  Which.... is still in the dryer.  I need to go get that.

Meh. It's not going anywhere.

When we got back Kimmy and I did some cleaning of our extra room to try to sort boxes.  We've started a box of Goodwill things, so as we sort we can decide what we need and what someone else (at Goodwill) might want.

So we worked in there for a while, then I did some grading.  That took a good chunk of the remainder of the afternoon, as well as playing a game with Jared.  Kimmy took a nap.  When she woke up she started making a pie for tomorrow, then we got dinner.  I think that we're going to have to have someone come fix our oven because it never got hotter than about 350.  Which is not good, since we had the oven at 400.

We started watching the Fellowship of the Ring during dinner, but neither of us really had the attention span for a long movie.  So we stopped for now.  We didn't really do anything productive after dinner, which was nice.  I know I won't be able to do this very often, so I'm taking full advantage of having an extra day tomorrow to get more things done.

That's about it from over here in Muncie.  Ciao.

Day 467

I successfully had a Saturday!

I slept in... a lot.  Like, until 9!  It was wonderful.  After I got up I showered and things.  Then Kimmy and I had breakfast.  After breakfast we did our grocery shopping for the week.  The only thing we got from the farmer's market this week was a pepper.  It seems that the only fruit at the market is watermelon.  Speaking of watermelon, ours started to ferment in the fridge, so we threw it out.

After lunch I got to work on writing the exam for my students on Tuesday.  And... that was the rest of my afternoon.  Yep!  I think I have it pretty well finished though.

We went to dinner with Kimmy's parents at Chili's.  It was nice.  Then we came back and talked for a while.  I had to go get some more work on grading and test-making done.  Kimmy and her parents made a trip to Wal-mart after a bit and I finished up my work for the evening.

After I finished working (and applying to another job) I played a quick game with AJ and his cousins, then had some ice cream with Kimmy.

And now it's bed time.  Good night, friends!

Day 466

It appears that I slept in today.  And it felt amazing.

But I didn't sleep in yesterday.  Yesterday morning I got up early, paid some bills, applied for a couple jobs, then did some studying.  Apparently when I applied for the jobs on Thursday I didn't realize that they all had questionnaires, so I did all that nonsense.

After studying I had lunch and went to class.  We just had our quiz, no real class worth mentioning.  And since the quizzes are just questions off of the homework (this is his way of making sure we do the homework, instead of turning in the entire assignment), I was done in a couple of minutes.  During our other class we continued out discussion on "The Binomial Pricing Model for European Puts and American Option for 3 or more periods."  It was pretty intense.  But it was really just an extension of our discussion on the Two-Period Binomial pricing model for European calls from Wednesday.  After class I stuck around and talked with Mr. Owens about teaching.  He and I are both teaching the same math class, so we talked about different methods we use.  I told him that I avoid using Powerpoint slides because I tend to go to fast, but if I write things on the board I maintain the same pace as the students.

When I got back I talked with Kimmy a little bit, then we went on a date to Pizza hut!  We decided to be adventurous and get a stuffed crust pizza.... it was really good.  I imagine that will be happening again sometime.  When we got back we played some Left4Dead, then a game on Kinect.  Kinect is basically a web-cam that you attach to an Xbox.  It tracks your body movement and there are certain games you can play with Kinect.  The one we were playing involved some jumping.... and apparently our ceiling is really low.  I hit my head on the ceiling.  It didn't feel good.  But surprisingly I didn't get a headache or anything.  So after that I didn't really feel like playing anymore.  So we watched an episode of Firefly, then went to bed!