<insert witty title here>

tired, and sick as well. since the last time i posted (rocky went well btw), de rham cohomology has been eating my life. all of it. i'm really done with this class. i've gotten no research done, and i'm like a month behind in complex analysis. (i'm thinking of just auditing it next semester cause there is no way at this point i can try to take it for a grade.)

i applied for the senior gta position that just opened up since it'd look good on a resume (ultimately, i *do* want to teach, right?), and because i was hoping it'd help me kinda grow a little as an instructor...today, the gta coordinator got back to me today to say that it went to someone else.

today i also e-mailed the guy who arranges preliminary exams to see if i could have some influence on how things got scheduled. essentially, i sent this:

Hello,
I have a question about scheduling of the preliminary exams. Are they similar to the summer prelims in being the weekend before we head back to school? Also, when will the schedule be set?
I ask because I've recently been invited to a friend's wedding on the 16th of January. I would like to attend, but cannot RSVP until I know what my schedule looks like mid-January.
Thanks,
*********

to which, i got back this:

Hi, Mary,
This confirms that you will take the prelim on functional analysis on Jan 16, 2010 from 1:00pm to 5:00pm in 429 McB. If you have any questions, please let me know.
*********

sigh. gee thanks. :(

i'm also stuck with a bunch of work to do for 1205 (grading and contributing to test writing) that i really just don't feel like working on right now.

is it can be end of semester tiem nao? D: i'm so fucking sick of school.

i'm a week and a half behind on my understanding of the stuff we're doing in complex analysis, haskell decided to make this week's homework look about twice as long as his usual homeworks, my 1205 kids have a test this wednesday, and there are two rocky dress rehearsals midweek that i'm still sewing costumes for.

my classes and research are supposed to come first and all, but
1. i don't want my kids to fail (i've been holding extra office hours for them), and
2. i've been looking forward to rocky all year and don't wanna play frank in front of 200+ people topless. o_O

time, why is there not more of you in this week? :(

fuck you... i'm not old yet D:
</3,
mary w.

if i appear to have dropped off of the face of the earth, it's because i'm still sick. two *full* bottles of dayquil in one week, and i am still coughing bits of my lung up. LAME. i guess at least it appears that i'm getting pseudo better.

not to mention i showed up to teach this morning and someone had written "we hope you feel better ms. wilkerson!" on the board. my class is so. effin. adorable. :D

that is all. back to work for the week!

go figure i get very roughly a 4 day weekend with fall break (no classes on thursdays, and friday is a break day), and the day prior to said 4 day weekend i get sick. for the most part it's nothing but a cough, but the cough gives me a sore throat...so much so that i've downed 1/3 bottle of dayquil since i went out and bought the stuff last night.

bleh. i guess i may have ruined my weekend, but in the middle of a busy semester, this was probably one of the best times for me to go ahead and get sick. o_O

sigh...

i figured i'd update to let people know that i'm not completely dead. (some parts are still alive. *some.*) i've been on a cycle of struggle to do homework at kai's, go live in mcbryde for a few hours, repeat 5x, hang out with kai & co. on the weekends. as far as grad school/living in mcbryde/studying goes,
*i'm still slow on research (i am swimming in a veritable sea of prerequisite materials that as of yet seem to have very little in relation to each other)
*i've developed a conjecture which states that i'm only capable of understanding one of the two classes i'm taking at any given time, and
*it's sounding like it's expected that i shoot for making up the functional prelim in january even though i have no clue when i'm supposed to study for it between now and then. at least on the upside,
*i'm for all intents and purposes tutoring people in 3-,4-, and 5000 reals right now. at least *something* these days makes me feel pseudo competent o_O

but, yeah...the lack of updates is due to the fact that for the last several weeks i've done pretty much exactly the stuff listed above. life is kinda monotonous. go figure that a few days ago when i stumbled across one of those dumb little facebook quizzes it floored me when there was a question that asked something along the lines of "which sounds most like your life?" with "usually exhausted, stuck in a cycle of obligations, and longing for escape" as an answer choice. ouch, accuracy. i guess at least the weekends aren't too bad.

sigh...back to work. or sleep. something like that...

or maybe it's everything. i'm entertained enough with friends and teaching classes, but i'm still feel kinda empty and am falling behind in my own work.

ugh. back to fucking up on haskell's impossible homework...

conversations i had with drunk people last night:

1. one on the interplay between math/economics, which turned into a discussion on theoretical vs. applied knowledge, which turned into a discussion on philosophy and free will.
2. one on the dynamics of my and kai's [sexual?] relationship. (HA)
3. one on horrible drivers, which somehow morphed into why both i and the other party feel awkward socially when around new people.

on a pseudo-related note, for a short stretch of last night i was being introduced *only* to people who shared names with guys that i've slept with. i mean, i was introduced to like 6 or 7 people last night, but smack in the middle (in order!) i met a mike, then a brian, then a joe. WEIRD.

anyhoo, i need to wake up (i slept through two text messages this morning...i *never* do that), and then figure out how to be productive now, though...getting 4 hours of sleep thursday night/friday was not happy and needs to not happen again this week. off to shower and grab lunch. (breakfast? brunch?)

dr. brown: "ah, the united states as it really should be, eh?"
dr. floyd: "well, it does make texas smaller..."

lol...my advisor is *awesome*. :D

(image stolen from cannon/floyd/parry's "the length-area method and discrete riemann mappings," for anyone who cares.)

there's a whiteboard right outside my cubicle in 461 mcb. one of the last times kai came by for homework stuff, he wrote something along the lines of "Mary <3" on it. i was just looking at it, and squiggled in immediately to the left is now a tiny little "-3<", so that it now reads "-3<Mary<3".
i'm not entirely sure who the culprit is (they're likely an element of {kai}U{math grads}U{my 1205 kids}), but they apparently decided that my absolute value is less than three. lol.

i hung out w/ sheena @ her engagement party at her parent's this weekend.
note 1: her family remind me a lot of mine, except her family appears sane.
note 2: i had so much food yesterday that i actually woke up feeling slightly full this morning. (i normally pull an "ugh, i'm so ful--oh look there's food!...NOMNOMNOM" whenever i go to restaurants and get served largish portions. it was exactly like that this time, except for there was a gigantic table full of tasty goodness instead of half a plate. o_O) holy crap i need to go running this week.
note 3: w00t car karaoke. i feel significantly less stupid doing it when i'm not the only one! ^^

that aside, this weekend was a rather nice break from school...except for the coming back to school part of the break. (i noticed on friday that the 1205 coordinators decided to squish something i've previously taken two days to go over into one lecture. add to that that i'm a quarter lecture behind *and* that i'm being observed in class tomorrow...ugh.) i don't want it to be monday tomorrow o_O

and on an unrelated note completely, a random observation/thought since i just caught the end of the vma's: i missed the taylor swift/kanye debacle live, so sheena tried to show me a video that she'd seen of it earlier. (at the time, this was well before the end of the vma's. holy crap internet, you are fast!) however, when she went to pull it up on youtube, they'd *already recieved takedown notices*. (holy crap lawyers, you are fast too!) anyone else think that the money mtv paid their lawyers to sit around at 11pm and send takedown notices to youtube could have been better spent somehow? like, maybe paying an intern to upload more than 6 videos of the vmas to their website? i'm *sure* people would watch, and i'd bet mtv could earn extra money from their advertisers. gods, copyright law is dumb.

anyhoo, sleep. the pillows and blankets and stuffed animals (shutup) are calling!

"Dear Mary,
The Functional Analysis Prelim Committee was ambivalent about your performance on the Functional Analysis preliminary exam, and ultimately decided it was not satisfactory. Please be assured that this was not an easy decision. The committee would like you to use this as a learning experience and turn in a more solid performance upon retaking the exam in the future. You are welcome to come by my office if you wish to discuss this matter further.
Sincerely yours,
George A. Hagedorn"

the kicker? i really thought i passed :(

so, after a second attempt, i got my second textbook ("differential forms in algebraic topology") for haskell's class. i'm used to buying books online and getting them shipped from individuals rather than companies, but this time, the previous owner decided to pass along some extra papers in my book.

in the front cover when i first opened it, there were two obituaries and my packing slip, on which was handwritten a note. the first of the obituaries was of one of the authors (raoul bott) of the text. the note-writer explained that her son had attended math seminars given in bott's home during his final months. i google-stalked her son, and apparently he's a prof @ cornell now. (interesting sidenote: there are pics of him dressed up as one of the characters from katamari damacy on his site. similar costume idea to what i did for rocky a few years back.)

the second obituary was of the note-writer's husband, who was the former owner of the book i had purchased. according to the obituary, the guy worked as a financial exec at CBS:
"Early in his career he was asked to determine what CBS should bid for the Olympics and NFL contracts. For the latter, Don's first step was to ask what the letters NFL meant."

on one hand, it's a little creepy to have been shipped a math book with obituaries in it, but i usually *am* one of those people that wonders where things have been and whose hand's they've passed through before getting to me. also, given the above randomness, i somehow feel like it's fitting that i got the book. no?

a longer weekend before school started would have been nice to help recover, but i guess it's saturday now, so i shouldn't complain.

highlights:

*i think i've been claimed (rather unintentionally) as an honorary furry. o_O for whatever reason, all of the people in s.o.a.p @ vt really like me. so. confused.

*sleep schedule is completely gone. i think i blame the fact that i go from 8ams MWF to no classes TR. i think i also partially blame kai, as i've been fulfilling my wifely duties by living at his place for the last several weeks. (facebook finally quit being buggy and decided to acknowledge our sham marriage. i'm still waiting for people who haven't spoken to me in years to ask when i got married so i can tell them that this "kaj verschra" kid needed his green card.)

*the roomie just got a new doggie. :) her name is daisy and she's very affectionate. (read: likes to lick you in the face. just sayin'.) the void in my life that was left after ben and gus moved off just may be filled!

*i feel like i'm quickly going to have no idea what's going on in dr. haskell's class. dr. rossi's class seems ok, but then again, we're still in the "this is what a complex number is: lookit! it has an 'i' in it!" stage of the course. i'm hoping auditing this will help me out more than taking it the last time did. research...is still kinda nonexistant. whoops. i meet w/ my advisor again next thursday tho, so maybe i should fix that. o_O

*i think i really like the 8am class i'm teaching. (well, minus the time it's at, obviously.) they're almost all frosh, so the whole college thing is novel and new and they haven't learned to abhor waking up around 7 or 7:30 to head off to class yet. i think i've had more distinct kids come to my office this week than i've had come to my office in any previous semester that i've taught. there may be a minor snag, tho...

*evil dead was/is this weekend. rocky had a booth at gobblerfest, trying to do the same thing as the show: recruit new members. (it appears that lots of veterans may be quitting this semester due to school... i.e., what i would be doing if i was smart.) while i was out at the booth with jacques and he was doing his marketing major thing and schmoozing with the n00bs, we got hunted down by one of my students. (maybe 2/3-3/4 of the people we signed up for the listserv were passers-by. the remainder, including this girl i think, were people who had previously heard of us in some way or other and then purposefully stalked us down.) i can't be certain, but for anyone who came to the show last night, i'm pretty sure she was the *really* active and loud audience member. so my guess...very likely she'll join.
i'm excited because last night's show went really well--we haven't gotten that sort of reaction at a welcome back show in...ever, as long as i've been here anyway. we may be able to pick up a lot of new people at a time that it's needed, but...given the nature of rocky (and rocky social events o_O) on top of the whole social-group-equals vs. teacher-student thing with the fact that one of my kids may be joining, i see tremendous potential for awkwardness. advice?

off to try to get some work done today, cause i told myself (like every other year) that i'd kick things off by being good. hw, errands, making pizza, and doing the final night of evil dead later. eventful semester. and it's only a week in! :o

the prelim was yesterday. i don't think it went all that horribly--especially considering how i'm used to doing on tests given by hagedorn.

freedom is nice. well...kinda. i still need to get back to research as i've done *nothing* for it for the last 2 months. i'm giving myself this weekend tho...especially since i found my old lesson plans for my first 2 weeks of class and don't have to redo them :)

today: apparently dinner at kai's, and basterds since i missed it yesterday. w00t w00t.

...seeing as how i finally sent in the laptop to apple and got it back. it had a broken wireless card--but now i can get internet and my apartment *without* sitting on top of my router...and they even replaced my battery, which is *totally* not covered by warranty. huzzah!

not *too* much is new. the prelim (it's on FRIDAY O_O!) is still breathing down my neck. i've been trying to be good, but...for the most part i think i've reached my caring limit. i don't really get the stuff from the end of the course, but i think i'm ok on most of the rest of it. even just looking at past prelims, there are select ones that i can work 100% of the way through no problem...but there are also others that i can barely do half of. i think it's really gonna depend on the test that hagedorn writes...and i have no past prelims written by him for comparison. i kinda wanna get it over with, but i kinda don't. sigh.

aside from study-crastinating, for the most part i've just been living at kai's...which isn't too far off from spring semester, except now i can drive to his place without hitting any stoplights. (screw you main street!)

can't believe the semester is about ready to get rolling. game plan:
tomorrow, more GTA meetings and the last of my cramming for functional.
friday, prelim and [hopefully the last of] rocky errands...plus inglourious basterds comes out. ^^
saturday and sunday, un-killing my brain before school starts
monday, classes--auditing a course i've taken but got nothing out of, taking another course that i'm scared of but that my advisor recommended, and teaching an 8am section of 1205. how trippy is it that i get to be like 20+ kids' intro to college? (on a pseudo-related note, the other night i ran into one of my old students--who happened to be drunk. weird experience.)

ahhhhhhh! world slow down!

with the beginning of august came the realization that "hey, my prelim is this month...CRAP MY PRELIM IS THIS MONTH." i'd like to say that my lj-absence has been due to this realization, but really it hasn't been. (you guys should know me better than that by now. i'm just too lazy to write and have been procrastinating in so many more ways than i should.)

anyhoo, since the last post...
*i spent my last summer weekend with OROL. go figure that now that i actually understand how their staging/prop setup works, i check outta town. i guess at least i can visit on breaks and shit. anyhoo, with the short time i've spent down there, i've picked up new callbacks that i can use for rocky this fall! i'm excited.

maybe not as excited as alex, though...
*i've started going to rocky rehearsals for evil dead. w00t w00t. i think i get to be a prop bitch again for the welcome back show. i'm noticing a pattern here somewhat...i'm tempted to go for an actual role later when we do our actual fall show, but...i know ToM's prop shit way too well to not be a transie. and it sometimes looks slightly wonky when club officers get major roles. sigh...transie would be so much cooler if i could get a picture of me taken during the show where i'm not half a pommel horse for once, lol.
*i've run into a crapton of people this week. outside of rehearsals and things, i ran into bastian (a math grad) at walmart, and on the way back from giving him a ride home ran into raevynne heading back from steppin' out. i decided to actually go to steppin' out today and ran into jacques, presumable exiting the tkd belt test going on today, and charlotte manning the wuvt booth. (crap...just remembered i said i'd stop back by...whoops. o_O)
*while at steppin' out, i stumbled across a local herbs/spices vendor. i figured i'd only get something if it was kinda different (still *trying* to make sure i don't screw myself over before the regular paychecks come in), and i found a jar of kudzu jelly.
for those of you who don't know what kudzu is, well, you probably actually do. it's a vine from japan that someone decided to introduce to the united states as ground cover...and now, the sides of all of the highways in the deep south look like this:
they make it from the blossoms, and apparently it's supposed to taste something like a cross between grape and crabapple. learn something new everyday, eh?
*i'm trying to plan some stuff to bake over the next week or two. i had a to do list (well...kinda sorta not really) of stuff to churn out before school started, but since the roomie just started south beach phase 1 i'm finding the need to get a bit creative. (i usually share baked things with all the roomies and don't wanna be a jerk and make a bunch of stuff that's on the no no list.) i think imma try flourless black bean brownies tomorrow, and i might go for splenda meringues sometime soon if i can figure out something to do with the egg yolks (cheesecake?). off hand, does anyone know stuff i can make that doesn't involve carbs (notably, flour)/fruit? mary:diet foods::toddler:astrophysics--help!

now, off to get back to functional. i kinda got sidetracked by cleaning and errands yesterday, and then concluded the night by being too emo to focus and be productive. that's getting better i guess, but every now and then...ugh. whatever. study study (food) study!

spent most of tuesday writing crappy acoustic emo shittiness. i feel slightly better now, although "better" i guess really is a relative term...really, it just means i spend more than 50% of my day out of bed. and that i can think back on the day and remember things i've done instead of having things be a blur. i've kinda started to look at school-related shit after this two-week hiatus i've taken, but really i feel like i'm gonna end up having this conversation with the advisor when i get back since i've mostly just been looking at prelim stuff.

sigh. i'm starting to wonder why i bother with grad school anymore.

on a completely unrelated note, now that i'm done with growing the hair out for robbie's wedding, i finally got it cut. it's a bit longer than in the picture i was basing my idea off of (needed, so i don't look like a boy), and a bit later than i'd anticipated chopping it. i still wanna dye it, but i need to figure out what i think i can get away with for fall semester as i'll likely be teaching (1205?) again--partially on behalf of the math department (i don't think they'd care *too* much...or at least i hope they won't), but also on behalf of myself as i already kinda look like i'm 12 and it'd be nice if i could get my kids to take me seriously. i'm going back and forth between red, burgundy or blonde paired w/ my natural color somehow, since i'm now far too lazy to figure out tri-colored hair. decisions decisions. ideas?

also completely unrelated, i bought apples to apples. and i have like 30 tomato plants that are *just* getting ready to bud (plus 50 bajillion pepper plants that don't really look like anything but leaves) sitting on our deck. and i have rocky to go to (twice!) this weekend. and i go back to tech sometime on sunday.

i'm really looking forward to going back to tech. as much as i like being able to see my friends in the ric, this house is small and privacy would be nice again. (for all my mother's well-intentioned-ness, she's very good at striking nerves that don't need to be struck right now.) also something about actually being able to study that i'm attempting to convince myself of, although i'm not entirely sure that that will necessarily apply right now. not to mention that hanging out in richmond is getting expensive...i'm fairly confident that i can get the savings to run until the next paycheck (didn't get the one mid-july like i'd been hoping for :/), but i'll be even more confident once i'm not here. o_O

so drained. off to bed?

robbie's wedding was beautiful and amazing and perfect, and i had the great fortune of running into a lot of really awesome people who i hadn't seen in a long time. kai came down and poked at me for my first time playing the role of prop bitch for the richmond rocky people. i played cards and omgwtfbbqed with emily and candi on sunday.
the whole weekend was actually kinda nice. in any other state of mind i'd elaborate more, but my heart's just not in it at the moment. now that all the distractions are gone i just feel really lethargic and shitty and can't quit wondering if maybe i've made a mistake.
off to bed since i may need to be up early for roeun's b-day tomorrow. and since sleep is all i ever seem to want to do anymore anyway...

the number of hours i've tried to crash is directly proportional to the number of times i've woken up. when does falling asleep quit being hard?

time for round 2...or round 5, rather. x_X