there is still a blog here

Well hello. Welcome back to our blog. Did you enjoy your break? We wrote all kinds of entertaining stuff while you were away. It's such a shame that you missed it. Out of spite we have removed all the posts that were published since your last visit. That'll teach you to go 2 months without reading any of our posts.

The other day, Sharayah and I flew the little kite my parents got us for Christmas. I haven't done that since I was a little kid, and I really enjoyed it. It was just windy enough that we could usually get the kite to fly, but intermittent enough that it was actually sometimes a challenge to keep it up. It made for a pretty fun time. I'm sure Sharayah will post sometime some misleading pictures that make it look like she was much better than me, but it's all a trick. I was an excellent kite-flyer.

We also got two free tree seedlings from Longwood Gardens. Eventually they'll grow into Red Maple trees (if we don't kill them), but for now they're just a couple of twigs sticking out of planters. We're hoping they'll last a few years and get big enough to plant in the ground by the time we actually have a yard.

This summer my parents are taking all their children (that includes me!) to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. We've been there as a stop on a cruise, but never had a chance to stay for more than a few hours. We will relax on the beach and make sand castles. We may get to go deep sea fishing and will definitely get to wander around a beautiful island for a week. After a long and difficult semester, this should be an awesome vacation.

I think I mentioned a few times the candidacy exams that I needed to pass by this semester to remain in the PhD program at UD. Thankfully, I found out I don't have to pass until fall, which is quite a relief. I'm pretty sure I needed more time, so I'm glad to have it.

I gave a presentation in one of my classes this past Thursday that I thought went really well. The talk was titled "Three Alternative Proofs of Tur án's Theorem." It's probably the first time I've talked so long about math to a bunch of people who all know more than me about math (pretty much everyone in that class has already passed candidacy and begun working on a dissertation). Just because it took me so many hours to prepare, I have posted it here for anyone who is interested to take a look. Much of it is self-contained (it contains the definitions of most of the terms used), but you'll need to know the definition of a graph, a complete graph, and a complete k-partite graph. I won't pretend the paper is supposed to make sense to someone who hasn't studied graph theory, but maybe it could be interesting to glance over (if you're really interested, you can find definitions to any of the terms here, or just use google).

Well, that's all for now. After all the posts in the last two months, I'm just out of things to talk about.

look down and keep on singing