spring tidings

It's so easy to miss the little things in life. The moments. The whispers. The unfurlings.

The small things are important.

I find that some of the most smiling-inspiring moments come when I just... stop. Stop hurrying. Stop worrying. Stop drifting.

Did you know you can smell rain? You can. It is a delicious smell. It's both calming and unbelievably exciting. And when the rain comes, don't run inside. Dance. Twirl. Hands outstretched, face upturned. Peace.

Did you know tiny little Asian girls can't help but sing whimsically nonsensical songs to themselves? They cannot help it*. The songs need not be intelligible, witty, coherent, or in tune. Oblivious-to-the-world wiggling/dancing is likely to be going on simultaneously. Joy.

Did you know that in the span of 4 days, this transformation takes place?

I had no idea. New life takes my breath away. Truly the most awe-inspiring things in life are God-made. Fascination.

It's a shame to let life get cluttered by stress, frustrations, or fears. There is so much goodness to drink in and enjoy. Whenever I let a case of the stomach jumblies [yes, that is a word] start to jumbly up the rest of me, I try to think of the small things. Those things that bring peace, joy, and just utter fascination. Focus on the goodness in the small things and He who is forever good will take care of the big stuff.

With all that said, it's SPRING. Thus, our quarterly blog renovation! Like? Did you have any idea that all those little things in the center of this kind of flower [vague terminology because I sadly have zero knowledge about flower anatomy] had such a distinct pentagon shape?! That little discovery thrilled me for a full 5 minutes. I'm telling you, the little things seriously make my day.

Jason and I have been trying to go to Longwood Gardens each weekend so we can see the transformation of all the buddings into flowerlings [like the one on our background right now!]. So far, I haven't tired of visiting because it really feels like a new place each time we go. They have benches everywhere, so you can even just bring some books and read in super peaceful surroundings. One thing that I really like is that there isn't really a big bunching of benches in one area. Each bench is nicely separated from other benches so you're never sitting there awkwardly avoiding glances with other bench-sitters. Many of the benches are set off in semi-secluded places that allow for more nature immersion and less people annoyance. Ideal.

Spring is here. Smile.

And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good!

*Based on my study of at least 3 random Asian girls under the age of 4.

This pretty much sums up "little things" and "spring." You're welcome.

oh! the free moneys!

Yep, that's right, folks. Free moneys.

I like most things free, and so Free Money ranks right up there under Free Four-legged Furriness and just barely edging out Free Lettuce Wraps. Oh! the non-free things you can do with free money! Special date nights, spur-of-the-moment book purchases, kitchen avoidance [i.e. dinner out], or even just that neato condiment gun that you know you can't possibly justify in your household budget [Sadly, no, I have not yet used my free moneys for such a glorious purchase... yet. Just kidding. Kinda. No, really. Seriously. I think. Hey, don't judge my desires for whimsical awesomeness! No worries, I generally refrain.] Since the money is free, it completely frees me from feeling guilty about using it in a semi-irresponsible fashion [definition of irresponsible:  If the answer to "Can we justify this in our month's budget?" is "Duh, of course not."]. Free money = awesome.

Just this year alone, not even 3.5 months so far, I've earned over $100 in Amazon gift cards and $75 straight to my Paypal account from one particular Magic Well of Free Money. I know that may not sound like much, but it's $175 I wouldn't have had otherwise, so I'm pleased. At this pretty dependable rate, by the time Christmas rolls around [the time of year when we inevitably discover that our budgeted gift money is sadly not enough to buy Super Awesome Gifts for all the fine peoples in the world], I should have accumulated a small pile of Hooray Money, even taking into account the guilt-free Heres and Theres [as outlined above] that may pop up along the way.

So with all of these rambly sentences out of the way, I suppose I should get to the important part of this whole post:  How does one find the tiny pot of legitimate currency at the end of the gigantic rainbow known as the interwebs? Answer:  Swagbucks. [And yes, that is a shameless (almost) referral link.]

I'm not generally one to do the whole referral thing for, really, anything, but this one time I shall make an exception simply because... well, Swagbucks has actually been worth it for me*. And if someone by chance happens upon this post and happens to like what they read and happens to also want Free Moneys, then by golly why not sign up under my name and reward my strange writings with $10?

Ok. So Swagbucks. In a nutshell, they reward various activities that you do on the web like searching, watching ads, signing up for free offers, or shopping online with points that you can cash in for gift cards [Amazon, Wal-Mart, Paypal, etc.]. They also give away points for playing games, finding Swagbuck codes, meeting daily point goals, and a bunch of other random things. The beauty of it is that most of the "earning" that I do just requires idle activity [oxymoron?], things that don't necessarily require being in your browser's focus or your constant attention.

Why I love Swagbucks so much is that it works in perfectly with my job as a transcriptionist. I sit at my computer all day typing horrendously structured sentences from ESL doctors [i.e. "The patient's both eyes is diagnosed as cataracts subsequently to caregiver." (Say hwhaat?)], and all I have to do to earn a little extra cash on the side is keep another browser open with SBTV playing in the background or search a few of my medical terms using Swagbucks' search engine. Easy peas [yes, peas].

There's a learning curve to it all, obviously. When I first started, I made about 20 points a day. Nowadays, I generally make at least 120. [Each point is about 1 cent.] Many people who use Swagbucks would still consider 120 a bad day, as they can often get well above that depending, but I'm happy with it at the moment. Just as a warning, it may start off a bit slow until you find out the most efficient point-earning method for yourself.

I could get super detailed about how to get the most money for the least amount of effort, but I will spare you. If you want more details, feel free to ask away. Instead, here's a brief bullet-pointed (!) list outlining a couple of helpful tips:

• Use a dummy email address, maybe one that you use for junk mail or, better yet, even one designated solely for Swagbucks. 
• There are often points to earn by allowing Facebook apps for various companies/products and so a dummy Facebook account is advisable. The name on the account doesn't matter as long as you use the same email address you used for your Swagbucks account [another reason to use a junk email as mentioned above].
• Speaking of Facebook, the Swagbucks' Facebook page is pretty helpful for knowing when codes are out, what special offers or surveys are crediting, or just when people are getting wins by searching [which is a good indication that you could potentially get a nice search win].
• Try not to get caught up in making as many points as you can because, let's be realistic, it is just a few cents here and a few cents there [here a cent, there a cent, everywhere a cent cent!]. Some people let that one video that didn't give them their 2 cents ruin their entire mood/day/life. Not worth it, folks. You'll eventually learn what guarantees points, what will hopefully get points, and what to avoid due to it being a poor use of time and/or good mood.
• It's definitely worth getting the daily point goals each day [consecutively is best!] as there are 1-week, 2-week, 3-week, and monthly completion goals that, at the most, guarantees an extra $5 each month. 

Anywho, this is long enough. I get carried away typing. My apologies. 

To summarize:  Free Four-legged Furriness > Free Moneys! > Free Lettuce Wraps

Go get some.

*My meager earnings may or may not show how low my standards are for something being "worth it." :/ To each his own! 

He's doing the free money dance. Elephants do it best.

here is a post.

Well. I guess I owe you, the reader, aka future me, an apology. It has been too long since I blogged. I am without excuse.

You may recall that I play soccer on a rather unlucky (and also not very good?) soccer team. As a whole we've been getting better but in the leagues we've been playing in we've usually been outmatched. This winter in the indoor league we seemed close to several teams. We went into halftime winning as often as not. Somehow, though, we always ended up losing. That's the unlucky part. Anyway we just started a new season in another indoor league, and I think it's more on par with us. We won our first game 7-0. We didn't play an amazing game, but we played pretty solidly most of the time. It's weird, the team we beat was probably as good as 3 or 4 teams who we've lost to before. Like I said, we're often winning at halftime. For whatever reason, in this game we never fell apart. We never even lapsed long enough for them to score (though much of that is due to our beastly goalie, who is typically the best goalie in whatever league we happen to be playing in. which makes it that much worse for the rest of us when we lose). Anyway, it felt good to finally follow through with a win after a whole season of almost winning almost every game. Hopefully we can be competitive against more of the teams in that league.

Spring is here and we're starting to play tennis again. And by that I mean we played yesterday and today. Shawn played with us yesterday. None of us are any good (though if I recall, Shawn was pretty good back in the day), but it's still pretty fun for some reason. If Sharayah mentions tennis in her next post she will tell you she's better than us, but we're still being lenient with her on the rules, so don't let her fool you. We're big and strong and aren't getting creamed by a beginner little girl. Anyway, hopefully we'll find the time to get plenty of good tennising in for the next few months while it's warm. Then next summer we'll probably hit the pro circuit.

Maths have been pretty tough lately. I'm still working in spectral graph theory, though I've been spending most of my time on a new problem lately. I could try to describe it, but it would just be more gibberish than what I already said. Anyway it's been painstakingly slow, trying to chip away at case after case trying to prove this big theorem. The worst is when you know something is true, you're completely sure, but you can't prove it. Ugh. I'll just keep plugging along.

Our little trees are starting to bud again. We moved them to bigger pots just in time. These new ones are pretty big and should last a few years. Now that they're in the giant pots, they look tiny again, like when we got them last year.

Sharayah has decided to do a silly experiment. I guess she was curious about whether this lotion we have would actually do anything, so she's going to put lotion only on her left leg each day for a week or two and see if she can tell the difference at the end. I don't know how long it should be so that it's a valid test. I'm not actually sure lotion does anything. I guess we'll find out and let you know.

one of a kind

Being the lucky girl to have a mathematician as a husband, I get to make everyone jealous by receiving a one of a kind Valentine's card created with Mathematica. Who else can say they've had that honor? It's legit.

When I asked how he did it, he simply replied, "I just used a parametric equation. I'm a function and you're a function. When I plotted you versus me, it came out a heart."

Indeed it did, my love. Indeed it did.

You, sir, are a one of a kind. Let's get married.  <3

this is us. completely.

collector dilemma

How old is too old to start one of those really cool collections of a billion variations of a given item? How many of the particular item do you have to have before you can rightfully call it The Collection? How do you choose between the appeal of collecting adorable buttons or memorably squished pennies or cleverly seasoned salt and pepper shakers? How do you guarantee that you create a Collection and don't just end up owning 4 random cow statues for the rest of your life?

It's a pickle because I have already established so many parameters for my potential Collection that I may never actually start it. But I do so like thinking about it.

The Collection needs to consist of something that is easily obtainable. I do not plan to travel great distances in search of The Item in all of its distinctive forms.

The Collection needs to consist of something that is relatively inexpensive. I dislike spending heaps of money [even assuming I had Heaps at my disposal...] on things that are not necessary.

The Collection needs to consist of something ordinary and not valuable in and of itself. I want the value of the Collection to be based solely on the fact that I truly like each individual piece and not on some predetermined value of each piece.

The Collection needs to consist of something that is easily stored away, possibly in cute little colorful containers that look like tiny barrels [bonus points] that are capable of being stacked to create miniature fortresses for Lego men [double bonus points]. Also, would you believe a Google search for that criteria comes up with absolutely nothing helpful?

The Collection would be seemingly common and yet, hopefully, unique all at once.

I wish to be a Collector.

Whatever will I collect?

these guys apparently don't count as appropriate topic items for The Collection...  

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