almost 5 year anniversary cruise

Well, it looks like we're back from our cruise. We had a pretty amazing time for those 9 days. It's so relaxing being able to spend all day hanging out together, playing games, reading books, doing the various activities on the ship, and having absolutely no stress. I think I could sit in a chair and read as the waves pass by for weeks. Further reducing the stress, you never have to think about food. There's always as much as you want, tons of variety and great quality, and it's already paid for. Anyway, I will now attempt to summarize our awesome trip. Beware, this is my most picture-laden post (actually, I'm not entirely sure I've ever put a picture in a post, but this one has many).

I'm legally obligated to inform you that Sharayah was the overall victor in both minigolf and shuffleboard on the ship. I gave her a good run, but she wore me down in both. I think she technically won at ice-skating, since I fell once and she didn't fall at all (excepting when she fell during my fall because we were holding hands and one of us [cough] did not let go). She claims she won at reading (she finished 5 books to my 2.5), but I didn't know we were racing at that until just now when she said she won. I definitely won at Mad Gab (there is a room on the top deck with board games and tables, and they have Mad Gab, and we didn't know what it was so we tried it out). Apparently I am awesome at it. It's one of those "here is a nonsense phrase, but if you read it just right it sort of sounds like some real phrase or someone's name or something" kind of games (ex: "ask rude arrive her" is "a screwdriver"). It turns out I have some kind of innate ability to decipher those things pretty much immediately. I never knew I could win a game primarily involving verbal skills. I think I narrowly won at napkin folding, although we were both good at that, definitely the top two there (although most people who go to that are old, so our "opponents" may have had arthritis or bad eyes or something, and also may not have known they were competing...). I beat probably everyone at dessert, which is the game of "who ate more dessert". We did a lot of other stuff too, but as this post will already be very long, I'll just start in on the ports we visited.

I didn't tell her yet that I won at napkins.

I'm apparently a good sport while losing my 4th game in a row.

In Puerto Rico we walked around the walls of the island city of San Juan. They're these really old looking stone walls, maybe 50 feet high. We heard a tour guide (we went self-guided, but we passed by a tour at some point) saying the walls were started in 1630 and took over 100 years to complete. Between the wall and the ocean is a wide stone path you can walk along for a few miles. For most of it there's some grass or foliage (maybe 20 feet thick or so) between the path and the wall, and on the water side of the path there is usually between 10 and 30 feet of boulders, I'd say about 3 feet in diameter on average (though they're not round, so that's more like the larger dimension, and they're smaller in the other dimensions). Sometimes the water comes right up to the path. We walked the path between 5 and 7pm, it was in the mid 70s, and the sun was setting by the end. All you could hear were the waves and the birds. Oh yeah, and there were cats. We started seeing cats here and there on the path, and when it became apparent that there were more than just a few, we started counting. We got to 85. Not "lots, probably in the 80s, maybe 85". We actually counted 85 different cats. They were mostly small, I'd guess under 10 pounds based on their relative size to our cats, and  there were even about 6 kittens. We saw all different colors and patterns of cats, with both short and long hair. It was a little crazy how diverse they were considering it's a small island and we probably saw most of the breeding pool. It was completely unexpected, and just made that beautiful walk along the island wall that much better.

We walked there!

I want to call this a parapet, because it's a better word. But alas. Oh well. Turret!

The cats were many.

In St. Thomas... well, what more can be said about St. Thomas? We've been there a few times, and I'm sure we've brought it up before. That's where we went this past summer with my parents and siblings (and future sibling), and that's where Magen's Bay is. I don't know that we had any new experiences in St. Thomas this time, but your average day in St. Thomas is pretty great. We again went to Magen's Bay, which was beautiful as always and incredibly serene and relaxing. When the boat was leaving St. Thomas, we could see the resort we stayed at with my parents. It was a pretty cool sight.

If I recall correctly: 2nd row from the bottom, 2nd building from the left, 2nd floor from the top, the 3 left-most windows.

In Samana, Dominican Republic, we went on a 3-mile bike ride on this old road through the jungle. Through the trees on our left, a few hundred feet away, was a 200 ft cliff (we were at the bottom of said cliff, not the top). On the right at about the same distance was the ocean, usually a cliff drop-off into the water instead of a beach. The road was gravely and full of huge potholes, and was mostly through the jungle, but also passed by a few small farms (single family subsistence, less than an acre, if I had to guess). It was really enjoyable. Near the end of our ride, we stopped to look at a mine (of sorts), where they use high-pressure water jets to cut enormous cubes of rock out of the cliff, mostly for the granite. They weren't mining when we were there, but some of the rocks they'd cut out were sitting out (and by some, I mean hundreds, all lined up for a few hundred yards).  The cubes were a little over 6 feet in each direction (they were taller than me) and incredibly smooth. It was difficult to believe they were cut out using water. It was also pretty neat seeing the holes cut in parts of the cliff. After biking, we hiked another mile or so through denser jungle and our guide showed us some interesting local plants. One crazy guy in our group ate everything the guide showed us. I don't know if that gave him any... issues... later, but he seemed to have a good time. At the end of the hike we came to a clearing and a cliff leading down to the water. At the first part of the clearing, as you walk through, hundreds of bees (or something like bees) buzz around you but don't sting for some reason. There was about 50 feet of rock and then the cliff. Apparently the cliff hollowed out into a cave at some points, because there was a hole in the rock through which we could hear the water echoing, and sometimes when a wave came in it would spit mist up through the hole. We also saw a mom and baby goat. The baby goat tiene dos meses! That's what the lady there said, anyway. After that we went to a beach and kayaked for a bit, but the waves weren't quite ideal for kayaking. It was still fun and kind of interesting, but not the best kayaking ever. Still a pretty successful day in Samana.

There are some rocks in these pictures. Also, voids where rocks once were.

He was just a little guy.

Our last stop was Labadee, Haiti. It's a little island owned by the cruise line. We spent pretty much the whole day there alternating between reading on lounge chairs on the beach and swimming. The water there was so calm you would barely know it was the ocean. That was pretty much the most relaxing day ever. Do not mistake the brief length of this paragraph to mean that we enjoyed it less than the other ports. It may have been my favorite stop, depending on when you ask me.

The water moved just enough to make this picture really difficult to get right... Or: wow, boats are heavy.

One of the best parts of the cruise was escaping the cold. It was 40 degrees the day we left (which actually isn't so bad, but it had been colder for a few weeks leading up to that point), and on the cruise it was between 65 and 85 every day (warmer in the middle, since that's when we were farthest south). On our last night on the boat, around 5 or 6 we were playing shuffleboard and watching the sun set. It was still about 65 degrees, with a nice crisp breeze. After dinner and packing, we went outside again to find it was in the 30s, extremely windy, and the biggest waves I've ever seen while cruising. It stormed for a while and we even thought we saw some snow. It was pretty cool. However, when we woke up the next morning in New Jersey, it was 20 degrees and windy. By the time we got to Philly for my mom to pick us up that evening, it was in the teens. Everyone thought it was freezing, obviously, but having come from 80 and sunny two days before, it was pretty chilling for us. I do like snow, though. It just takes some getting used to.

So, this has been pretty long. Apparently I didn't mention any shows (including the ice show), but that will have to wait. I think I'll wrap up. We had an amazing trip. If you ever get a chance to go on a cruise, especially with Royal Caribbean, go for it.

Our boat, The Explorer of the Seas, in St. Thomas.

That's all.

one thing remains

lame workday pick-me-up

[Title clarification:  It is a pick-me-up for a lame workday, and not a workday pick-me-up that is lame. It is an awesome lame workday pick-me-up. Awesome.]

Commence Pick-Me-Up
1) Plan an awesome vacation.
2) Pretend you didn't plan an awesome vacation.
3) Have a lame workday. [This is the unpleasant part, but it's necessary for the "lame workday" part of the pick-me-up.]
4) Throw your hands up in the air (like you just don't care..?) and sputter, "I'm so tired of work. Let's just... go on an awesome vacation. Now. This weekend."
5) Have your spouse/other familial biped/fluffy four-legged friend [last resort due to the language barrier] declare, "Done. I will make it happen."
6) Start packing [tip:  just do the fun stuff and leave the 10 pairs of clean underwears and other such packing necessities for the 2-hours-before-you-leave time slot].

While not required, if you are able to find someone who can physically pick you up [and preferably spin you around whilst you use squeals of glee to completely rid yourself of the lame workday blues] right after the completion of this awesome mood pick-me-up, take advantage. Well worth it.

No more lame workday frowns. Happy vacation smiles.

Today is the 10th, which means that Jason and I are celebrating our 56 month anniversary (yes, we do months). That's 4 months away from 5 whole years. Or, as Jason just put it, "On Mercury... On March 4th, it would be our 20 year anniversary." Oh wait, that's not really related...

Anyway. Honeymoon 2.0 begins in less than 3 days. I think a Honeymoon every 5 years is reasonable, right? Super stoked. We will be making stops in St. Thomas, Puerto Rico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. There will be adventures.

To end:  Life loving Jason is grand. I have never been happier.

Also, we currently have a mouse dangling from our ceiling.

it's Adventure time.

Christmas type post

It looks like Christmas is all up on us. Err, upon us. Right. Seems like each year is a little faster than the year before (there's actually an interesting explanation for that around the 3rd minute of this video, though the whole thing is interesting). Anyway it's almost Christmas. We'll be going to Tennessee to see Sharayah's family, which should be fun. We leave soon! We did cut down our own tree again this year. After which, I performed some feats of strength to impress the wife (it worked, by the way). We also made a cool wreath for our door, and made Christmas ornaments by melting bits of crayon inside of a clear hollow ornament. Sharayah has a couple pictures of that and other type Christmas stuff on her facebook. And we went Christmas shopping and bought baby clothes and toys for that salvation army angel tree thing. Sharayah wants all the baby clothes and toys. Not sure how much more of that stuff we can buy before she makes us keep some of it for ourselves (or small people who live with us).

So far, trying to do research has been tough. It's way different from being in a class and being told "know everything in this book." There is no book, no one knows yet what I'm trying to learn. I don't have much interesting to say about that. I'm just working on it.

For some reason Sharayah and I have been watching magic tricks lately on youtube. It's fun to wonder how in the world they do some of the tricks. Lots of them have been on a show called "Penn and Teller: Fool Us", where a magician will come perform a trick for Penn and Teller (and an audience), and try to fool Penn and Teller (who, if you don't know, are very famous and experienced magicians themselves). It's interesting to see which tricks they know immediately and which ones stump them. Actually some of the better tricks they aren't fooled by. Anyway you can just search on youtube to find some. Here, I'll do it for you: link! I'd suggest videos that have a person's name in them rather than the videos that are a whole episode (and you may have to skip past some boring filler about the people before they do a trick). We have also learned a few tricks ourselves. Very easy, silly ones. Because we can't even do basic sleight of hand, so we only do the tricks that rely on math or something.

I just titled my post. Why is "type" spelled with a "y"? Just look at it. Type. It doesn't even look like a real word. Type type type. Nonsense. We should spell it tipe. This has been a Christmas tipe post. Much better. And thus shall it be, forevermore. Amen.

עִמָּנוּאֵל

the most wonderful time of the year

Goodities:

• Fall and all of its colors and leaves and frolicking and all-around gloriousness.
• Harvest times and festive barns and pumpkin-patch-destroying cows.
• Thanksgiving food and Thanksgiving people and innumerable Thanksgiving thanksgivings.
• Never being too warm to cuddle in a huge pile of pillows and blankets.
• The sawing down of Christmas trees and decorating of such.
• Our terribly meager but oh-so-happy red and green and sparkly Christmas decor.
• Christmas music. Christmas music. Christmas music.
• The Snow Wishes.

Oddities:

• While I'm typing this blog, I  keep using the foot pedal that I use to play the dictations for work. Needless to say [but obviously I'm still going to (annoyingly) state it], using the foot pedal while doing non-work typing accomplishes nothing except to make me think I'm still working. :/
• I'm attempting to become ambidextrous in my ability to manipulate a mouse in order to give my left hand something to do on the days when my right hand feels lazy. 
• It actually significantly increases the time to do... anything.
• It makes my right hand type as though it's my left and vice versa. 
• I type sentences like this:  "Ambekixteriyt is gark." Seriously.
• You have to have at least 3 main bullet points in order to have a legitimate bullet-pointed list. 

One last list:

• Phil Wickham's Christmas album. Amazing. [The fact that I sometimes let myself think that it's Kevin Max's Christmas album is just an extra perk.]
• We get to spend a Christmasy week in Tennessee this year with my family. Looking forward to it? Most definitely.
• Jason has 1.5 weeks left in this semester. Oh my gravy.
• Speaking of gravy, our refrigerator is absolutely packed with delicious leftovers. I'm pretty sure they'll last us until the Christmas leftovers.

OH MY. I almost forgot to mention:  Come January 13, I and my funnier, furrier, friendlier half will be embarking on our Almost-Five-Years-of-Awesomeness cruise vacation. An entire 9 days of loveliness. So much Excitement. 

I cannot possibly state how much I love this time of year.

this just about describes me.

c

Well. It's been a long and difficult roller-coaster ride, but somehow I passed both of my qualifying exams. At different times during the past 2 months, I was fully convinced that
(a) I had no chance of ever passing,
(b) I might pass later on my 2nd attempt (you get up to 2 attempts on each exam, and it is very common to have to take 2 attempts to pass at least one exam), but definitely not on my first, or
(c) (only in a few rare instances) that I'd be totally fine and pass it on my first try.
I guess it turned out the answer was (c), but at times I genuinely wanted to just quit so I wouldn't have to stand there for 3 hours in front of 4 professors and demonstrate my ignorance. I owe a lot to Sharayah, who continually encouraged me and assured me I could make it, and to God who gave me the ability to persevere and understand enough. It was a pretty scary experience, especially the first exam. Apparently I knew just enough, however, so I passed. That being the more difficult test (in my opinion), it gave me the confidence that I could pass the other. So I guess (subject to some paperwork being filed) I am now a PhDc. I think that's a largely meaningless title, but I've only had it for a little over a week so I can still enjoy it.

The hard part now is accepting that the exams were not the hard part. While I likely won't have to do something that scary and intimidating again (I think usually when you do your thesis defense it's not so scary, because if you weren't ready then you wouldn't be doing it yet), I still have a lot to do. In this illustrated guide to a PhD, I'm just reaching the step where you reach the boundary and begin to focus. Realistically, I'm more at the place where I can see the boundary and I have most of the tools to understand the boundary, but I still have a few months of reading and studying before I reach it. And I don't know yet exactly at what point I'll hit. Somewhere within a few degrees of my current trajectory, I suppose. Anyway, I'm sure in reality the "push at the boundary for a few years" step is much harder than what I've done so far. But! I believe I can do it this time.

I have also apparently had another birthday. Sharayah made a treasure hunt with riddles and clues for me to search for all my gifts. She's a pretty cool lady. First I had to solve a crossword puzzle. Some of the letters from the solution were a scrambled clue to the location of my first gift. At that location were 4 mechanical pencils, each with a single letter on a piece of paper wrapped around the base. Those letters were a clue to the next location, which was 5 more pencils with letters. This continued until I had 24 pencils from 5 hiding places. That was my first gift, the 24 pencils. Since I lose 2-3 pencils a day, these should last me until the end of the month. Actually, it is a good gift because I do lose my pencils a lot. I had actually lost my last pencil right before my birthday, so it was perfect timing. I will try not to lose these. I'm sure I can at least make it to my next birthday. The last set of pencils led me to the new Owl City CD. You may recall I have something of an obsession with Owl City. This CD is also really good. It's kind of different and evolved from the earlier CDs, but it's still distinctly Owl City and very catchy and enjoyable. And then finally, inside the CD case was a clue which led me to my final gift (which was closely guarded by her stuffed dog Puppy, who I got her for her birthday a few years ago), the Complete C.S. Lewis Signature Collection, which contains 6 or 7 of his most important and/or well known works, which I am really looking forward to reading. It will take a while, because C.S. Lewis wrote very densely. Not that he was dense. Anyway. Apparently, inside the book were supposed to be tickets to a hockey game sometime later this month between the Flyers and Stars, but those dummies are still on strike, so that part is not going to work out. But since it's really the thought that counts, I appreciate that gift, too. It would have been a lot of fun. So as I said, Sharayah is a cool lady. You should tell her that if you see her.

Last Sunday our soccer team had our first win. There have been games we should have won, and games we had a fair shot at, but this was the first one where we actually kept it together and won. That's actually a little sad. But we let anyone play with us, whether they know what they're doing or not. And we're old. I just had a birthday. So, we won, and it was a good time. I think there are a few teams we have yet to play who lost to this team, so we might even win a few more. Who knows.

Is it illegal to throw eggs at a tree? We looked on the google, but it just tells us whether it is illegal to throw eggs at a person, or a house, or a car (moving or otherwise), or if it is illegal to shoot at someone who eggs you or your house, or if it is illegal to throw pine cones at a person, etc. We really need to know. Urgent. Thanks.

Also, I might have accidentally typed hows instead of house up there. Twice. But my brain was already on the next sentence and my fingers just don't know how to spell on their own.

neither knowledge nor understanding

years, plans, and warm chairs

Well, we did it. You may recall that last year we each started on a one-year plan to read the entire Bible. At the end of August, we finished our plans. Sometimes we fell a little behind, but we always managed to catch up (I think we actually finished 1 day behind, but since it was a leap year, we should have had 366 days anyway, right?). It was actually pretty easy once we got into the habit of reading a little every day (and knowing how much to read was easy because the plans on YouVersion tell you what to read).

Anyway, we now started the chronological plan together. They tried to put everything in the order it probably happened. It's also helpful when multiple books were written at the same time or about the same events, because the plan has you read through them simultaneously, which gives better context to each. Right now we're in Job. Sharayah likes me to read Job's overly-dramatic pleas and complaints, while she reads his friends' not-so-compassionate responses. Pretty entertaining. We're not really sticking to the schedule too strictly, we're just using the plan to keep everything in chronological order.

On a slightly related note (and probably more interesting), this weekend at our church was another Hot Seat Weekend, where the pastor answered questions on the spot without ever having seen them (hence the name). People submitted questions (about anything from evolution to homosexuality to catholicism, if the service we went to was any indication) over the past few weeks and the church staff consolidated the list to 35 questions, 7 of which were answered at each service (yea, he had to do it 5 times in two days, ouch). He's a pretty smart guy with well-thought-out responses (at the service we went to anyway, I haven't heard the others yet :-p). At some point tonight all 5 services will be available on the podcast, so you should check them out. People did not ask easy questions, and he still gave pretty good answers. (Side note: there are also a few years worth of old services on the podcast. If you want to listen to the main pastor, that's Mark Johnston. There are also messages by Andrew Wilson, the assistant pastor.)

Sharayah made eggs and hash browns for lunch, and I just ate them. Good.

it's a long way home

the art of sploosh

I'm not a baker. I'm barely a cook [er?], but I have managed to keep both of us alive with my concoctions these past 4 years. With baking though, I have just enough following-a-recipe-is-boring-and-predictable-and-tedious syndrome to make most of my baking experiences result in the classic "So, baking is a lot like chemistry class... " lecture.

I'm not a baker. Give me flour and a recipe, and the promised "moist and fluffy" will most likely end up dry, dense, and "Did I just break my tooth?" I think flour is my nemesis. It's such an exciting ingredient that I might just get caught up in the moment of "creating" [the things you can make with flour are practically limitless!] and "splooshing" [that's when the flour dust goes all "ploosh" in the air] to remember the specific recipe instructions.

I'm not a baker, but I do have one redeeming factor in my baking equation: Jason, the "if it has flour and at all resembles a bread-like food, I will eat it, no questions asked" variable. He's quite the morale-saver when it comes to my kitchen experiments. As long as we're not talking about some kind of leafy vegetable or mushrooms, he will eat anything that I put in front of him. Mushy beyond recognition? No problem. So hard it needs to be soaked in a soup before you can ingest it? Again, no problem. And he'll eat it all, complete with the sounds of enjoyment [possibly for my benefit?] and requests for seconds that all meal-preparers want to hear.

Anyway, as of late, I've had urges to sploosh things up in the baking arena. Perhaps it was the purchase of some new flour a few weeks ago. Or maybe it was my craving for pizza. Or maybe it was just the fact that I knew Jason has been studying/stressing hard about his candidacy exams coming up and I just wanted to make something I knew he'd really like [I'm pretty sure his love of pizza just stems from the idea that pizza, at its simplest, is just bread and cheese]. Whichever the case, I decided to make a pizza, and not only was the splooshing a success but, for the first time ever, the doughiness was a success. It actually turned out crust-like and not super dense or purely hard and crunchy as my flour products have a tendency to do.

With this smashing success, I had the immediate desire to do it all over again. More yeasty smells. More splooshing. More rolling pin action. With Jason's first day of school being a stupid long day [he leaves in the morning and doesn't get back until 7 or so], I knew that he would completely appreciate coming home to a fresh pizza and... pie.

The last time a pie was baked in my kitchen was when Colleen was here and she was doing the baking and I was doing the pretending-to-be-baking. Best pie ever. Sadly, this time around there was no Colleen in my kitchen. And no fresh fruit [except for grapefruits... as odd as I am, I couldn't quite convince myself that grapefruit pie would be a good plan]. The only fruit available for a filling was the bag of frozen fruit that we use to make smoothies [apple juice, frozen fruit, blender: delicious]. Now, being a very inexperienced pie filling maker and a very experienced just-throw-things together maker, I put some honey, water, and flour in a pot and dumped in as much of the frozen fruit as I could fit, gave it a stir, and waited for something magical to happen.

Lessons learned from this pie filling experiment:

• Honey is quite sweet. You do not need a cupful of honey to sweeten a pie.
• If you heat up honey in a pot without stirring it, it will start to burn onto the bottom of your pot. Making a candy-like substance. Tasty, but not really desirable (for your pie or your scrub brush).
• Frozen fruit totally works. Peaches? Good. Strawberries? Good. Pineapple and honeydew? Goood. 

we may have already started to eat the pie crust by the time i took this picture...

Anyway, on a scale of failure to success, I would give the fruit pie conglomerate a 7.0 with point deductions for the honey overload and the sketchy crust consistency [still haven't quite mastered non-pizza flour products, I suppose] but bonus fractions for the artistic nature of the crustwork [duh] and the fact that I didn't burn myself the entire time.

As for the second go at the pizza making, it was ridiculously delicious. Jason would take a bite and then convulse [in a good way] for 30 seconds. I was quite excited. This time I wanted to season the crust and so, part of the way through the baking, I sprayed some olive oil on it and sprinkled some garlic powder, salt, and pepper on it. It toasted perfectly and tasted like 20 bucks [i.e. it's going to be hard to convince me to buy from pizza chains anymore].

Well, I was going to write about a couple of other things, but I think they'll save until next time since this went on longer than expected.

To yumminess!

i promise i don't have to do this to jason...anymore.

we made a pizza! and other things.

Apparently I never made any posts after my summer course ended. So, the course that I taught this summer ended. I no longer have to wake up at 6:30 every day. Also, I no longer have to have those mutton chops growing all up on my face. It's not that I'm against facial hair. They were just too much work.

Anyway, perhaps I can post some thoughts about the class now that it's over. It was interesting having the responsibility of the entire class resting on me. I've been a TA for 4 years now, but I've never been in charge of a course myself, where I was the one setting the policies and the content and everything else. I think my students enjoyed my teaching as much as anyone can really enjoy being taught math at 8 in the morning for two hours every day for 5 straight weeks. My teaching evaluations were all positive. Of course, in the space at the end where you can leave comments (the rest of the evaluation is just multiple choice, rating me on several factors) only two of them wrote anything. One of them said they didn't like the textbook (it's really not a good book, but the choice of textbook was the one thing I couldn't control), but the other one said I was smart and knew the material (I would hope so after this many years of calculus). I wish more of them had written something, but I almost never do that part either so I can understand.

Since then I've been continuing my studying for candidacy exams (which I'll have to do this semester, ugh), and trying not to think about the fact that fall classes are about to start. Yep, it's that time again. However, talking about classes and studying is boring, so I will stop doing that... now.

Also in the last couple weeks, I've been playing tennis with Sharayah. She had never played, and I'm still very much a beginner, but I'm teaching her what little I know and we're playing every now and then. It's been pretty fun so far. I'm trying to enjoy that brief period of time where I'm still better than her. I know what's going to happen soon, just as it happened with ping pong... She passed me in ping pong so quickly. One day I was winning pretty much every game, the next day she was so much better she not only won pretty much every time, she could decide how much to win by. (Yeah, I ended a sentence with a preposition. What are you going to do about it?)  I'm hoping we're not too close to the day where she decides how many sets I get to win, and how many games in each set. I'm pretty sure it's coming.

Maybe the coolest thing we've done the last couple weeks is make a pizza from scratch. Well, we didn't crush fresh tomatoes for the sauce, but we did everything else. We made dough! It rose! It turned out pretty awesome. We even did stuffed crust! There was cheese in our crust! So cool. And it was delicious pizza. Just the right seasonings in the sauce (that part we did do ourselves), nice crispy crust underneath, soft enough around the edges (and with cheese inside!), great cheese. We will have to make another pizza. You should all be jealous of me and my pizza-making wife.

Yup.

time is fiction

progress

The thought of "How did I get from there to here?" is something I've always found intriguing. Time, change, progression... Sometimes it's hard to appreciate the process of it all. Getting from Point A to Point B can be ridiculously stressful, frustrating, scary... But it can also be incredibly exciting, fulfilling and, in the end, life-changing...

You just have to get past the "How do I get from here to there?" It's daunting. There's no denying it. The process can be rough. But the end result? Worth it. 

Everything is a process. All you have to do is recognize you can do it, and then go and show the world what's what. Progress may come slowly, but the day will come when you're suddenly asking yourself in amazement, "How did I get from there to here?" You may not be able to break down the process, but that's okay. Because it's all about the little steps.

Dedication. Confidence. Courage. Trust. Day in. Day out.

And the most important part?  Consciously recognizing that the Process is oftentimes more than you can take on by yourself. But, that's okay. There's a Helper, and He's just waiting to be asked.

You can get from here to there. It's a daily process, but it's completely doable. You're going to get to Point B and look back, just as you've done at every other milestone in your life, and think, "How did I get from there to here?" Because you can totally do it. 

I've always wanted to capture one of these processes in daily photos. Unfortunately, the subject matter is either not photograph-able (?) or I just don't have the diligence to follow through with the desire. As an example? Our little saplings that Jason mentioned in a post a while back. We got them for free at Longwood Gardens' Arbor Day celebration. We bought some dirt and a pair of matching pots, and, just like that, we were tree owners. I wanted to take a picture of them every day and watch their progress, but I didn't want to do it if their "progress" just meant "die in a week." So, instead, Jason and I diligently watched them every day while we sat at our desks working/studying. And for the longest time, nothing seemed to be happening. They had their little buds and thin little branch-trunks, and that was it. I found myself too bummed to even think of possibly capturing their non-growth with daily pictures. 

But then, one day, all of a sudden, completely out of the blue, there were leaves. Real, live, beautifully green, truly leaf-shaped leaves. I felt like a complete success [it's all about the little things]. Those two little leaves brought such happiness, enough so that I wasn't even bummed about missing the opportunity of doing the whole "take a picture every.single.day!" Unfortunately, since I didn't start the whole picture thing from the get-go, I chose not to do it at all. But that's okay. Even though I don't get to see the entire process through each step, it doesn't keep me from enjoying each new stage [which, oddly enough, inevitably occurs overnight..?] in all of it's leafy goodness. 

Sometimes Jason and I like to sit and plan out the life of our little trees, what with the coming fall and the turning of their leaves, the [probably sad] shedding of the leaves come winter, the upgrading of pots as time goes by, and [fingers crossed] the planting of successfully grown trees into the backyard of our all-of-our-own-one-day house. This is an example of one of those pleasant "From Here to There" scenarios. We have grand plans for our trees to fulfill.

Mario [left] and Luigi [not left]

Another process of interest at the moment is the transformation of Jason's face, er, facial hair. Luckily, the mutton chops are a thing of the past. Jason finished teaching his calculus course, and the mutton chops were removed post-haste. The scary part? I think Jason actually liked having them... I'm just glad that I have enough wifely sway in his actions that getting him to shave them off wasn't an issue. Whew. It could have been disastrous. I can't help but love his face, so if he'd kept them much longer, I might have ended up loving the Chops just because he was the one who had them. Ishck. Disaster averted.

i love you, mister

Last process of note:  Work. I can't remember if I ever mentioned it, but way back in the beginning of February I had my initial QA review. I had been incredibly nervous about it because I was still pretty sure at that point that, surely, I would screw up and they'd have to fire me and I wouldn't be able to be hired by anyone else and I would be a disappointment to Jason and, even more, myself. Of course, I tend to over think everything, usually to the negative end [still working on that], and nothing could have been further from the actual situation: I received a 99.7 on my first QA review. I had 2 miscellaneous errors [i.e. not knowing to have 2.5L instead of 2-1/2L], but nothing of consequence. 

I was super stoked about the high praise from both the QA manager and head manager for all about... 10 minutes? And then I started the stressing out of, "But now that I did so well from the start, how in the world am I going to improve for my next QA review in 6 months? There's no way I can improve a 99.7, so I'm going to get a worse score 6 months from now, and they'll think that my first score was some kind of fluke, and then they'll fire me and blah blah blah." Ridiculous? Yes. But sometimes I just can't help it... 

Anyways, today marks the 6 month mark. And I received the QA review results today. And you know how you improve on a 99.7? Get a 100. Yep. The QA manager sent a note of congratulations for the perfect review and mentioned that not only did I not make any point-reduction errors but I also had zero revision notations [i.e. things to keep in mind that aren't medical errors but that should be changed for future transcribing]. 

Such an unbelievable relief. Ever since the beginning of August, I've been periodically stressing about the upcoming QA review, but since I had no idea when in August I was going to get the results, I just kept pushing it out of my mind. Whew.

Talk about progress. How in the world did I get from where I was in December to where I am now? I'm a consistently productive, exceptionally accurate medical transcriptionist. I'm totally doing this job in spite of all of my self-doubts and many, many moments of utter frustration. job.owned. </brag session>

As always, this blog is all over the place, but I think I've said everything I've wanted to. One last thing:  While writing this, it reminded me of one of my old xanga posts [blast from the past!]. Read these old writings if you are so inclined. I was just as rambling back then as I am now. Some things just don't change no matter how much time passes...

Sometimes you just have to close your eyes and take the plunge. You can do it. 

the intersection of calculus and big sideburns

Well I started the first week of mutton chops by growing what were essentially just slightly big sideburns (down to the bottom of my ear, but wide at the bottom instead of even with the top), but Sharayah called foul, so since then I've been growing proper mutton chops. Once you get past the itchiness stage they're not so bad. I've at least gotten to the point where I don't think I look bizarre every time I look in the mirror. Still, I'll be glad to shave them this Friday (don't worry, there will be pictures taken before they're gone). It's just too much work to keep them shaped the right way and making sure they're even. Also, they are mutton chops, so... do not want.

Teaching a class has so far been an interesting experience. I'd say it's very easy to teach but very hard to get students to learn. Some of them are self-motivated and I don't have to worry about them. Others, though. They're tough. I can be thoroughly convinced that I've made something clear, and then someone will ask a question that proves... well, that it's definitely still murky to them.

I think the main problem is that many of my students don't have the proper foundations. There are just so many things that you already need to know when you get to calculus that they seem to have never seen before. I can't say whether that's their fault or the fault of their previous teachers. At any rate, the big problem is that many of my students don't have the prerequisites for my course. Maybe they have them on paper, on some transcript, but they don't have them in real life. Somewhere along the line, some previous teacher did them the disservice of passing them in a class where they didn't learn what they were supposed to. I don't think they've been done any favor when they're told they understand all they need to and they really don't. It's also the system as a whole's fault. I understand in high school there's huge pressure on teachers to pass all of their students. I guess you look bad if students fail your class? Still, I think some of my students have been set up for failure by being inadequately prepared and simultaneously being told that they're doing just fine.

End rant.

Still, overall it's been a positive experience. I think it's confirmed to me that I'd like being a professor, though it's also proved to me that I'd very much prefer to teach more difficult classes with students who actually want to learn math. Presumably math majors, although being a TA for discrete math in the spring taught me that apparently math majors also ask what the point is of learning to prove things... Well, if you don't want to prove things, then you don't really like math. That's what math is. Otherwise it's just a bunch of arbitrary rules that someone made up and now we all memorize (that is not the case!). Anyway, if plans work out, I'll be doing original math research and, yes, teaching math. If a student comes along every so often who tells me they used to hate math, but now I've made them like it (this happened to me!), maybe it won't be so bad.

when the rockets came to life