Sorry I haven’t posted much lately–it’s been a difficult couple weeks. For those who haven’t heard, Katie and I broke up a week ago at her request. I am doing okay, but mourning. Thanks for your prayers for both of us.
Here are a couple photos from a President’s-Day visit to Discovery Park in Seattle with the housemates:
While trying to find a place on my new, large desk to work on my tax forms, I had a flash of insight which led me to the formulation of what I shall call Glick’s Law (a.k.a. the Law of Conservation of Desk Space). Namely:
The percentage of free space on a desk remains constant as the area of the desk surface increases without bound.
Glick’s Law can no doubt be attributed to the fact that paperwork exhibits the behavior — much like compounds in the gaseous state — of expanding to fill its container.
Figure 1. Notice the graph’s distinct lack of slope as the size of the desk increases.
I am learning not to panic too much when my housemates erupt in impassioned cries of “It’s not working!”
There was the furnace. It didn’t run for half a day, a few weeks back, which was annoying when I got home to be greeted by 58 degrees. But the fix was as simple as replacing the batteries in the thermostat.
And this evening, we discovered that the refrigerator had gone on the fritz. We had to throw out the milk and ice cream and some other assorted perishables, and cram the remainders into fridge #2 (which fortunately exists and is large). However, upon my inspection, I unplugged the fridge, re-plugged it, twiddled a few knobs inside, and lo and behold, it roared back to life. It’s very satisfying when a non-sentient being like a refrigerator responds so readily to the magic touch, if I do say so myself.
Incidentally, it seems just a bit incongruous that we have one device designed to keep things warm, and another designed to keep things cool, operating in the same domain. Why can’t we just store things outside in the winter?
Happy 2008, everyone!
Late, you say? psssh.
I have a new room! (Thanks to Trent finishing his VS term and the subsequent reshuffling.) It has all sorts of goodies…a window seat and sconces and a spinny chair. Not to mention over twice as much space as any room I’ve had in recent history.
Here is a shot of my handiwork on the western wall:
You can tell it’s staged because the bed is made.
I’d better write this, lest I procrastinate any longer…it’s already been a week since Thanksgiving!
A few things I’m thankful for today:
(Sorry about the poor-quality photo…there was an Amishman running the camera and he forgot to turn on the auto-focus.)
And for those of you looking for an update, here is a brief visual synopsis of my Thanksgiving weekend…
Thursday: dinner and general laziness at Sean and Aaron’s
Friday: I met Katie downtown after detouring around the big parade…
…and we headed up to visit her aunt and uncle on Camano island. It was a wonderful, relaxing weekend of Christmas decorating, playing Ti Chu, dozing by the fire, baking shortbread cookies, and generally pampering ourselves.
Life is good!
I remember the first time I didn’t know the answer to a question in school — in first grade. We used to have a game where we would be counting by tens, say, and each person would have to go in turn. Well, one time it got to me and the previous number had been 990. The only thing I could think of that could come next was “ten hundred,” but I knew that wasn’t right. So what could I do? I burst into tears.
Of course, I much prefer the times when I have the answer, however unlikely. Today, this happened twice. The first was this morning when a colleague asked about an obscure bug that, coincidentally, I spent all of yesterday afternoon tracking down. I was able to tell him not only where the problem was occurring, but why and how to work around it. And then this evening a friend from church was telling me about an old electronic tuner he used to have which would register just above an A three octaves below middle C, even when his instrument was silent, and even when used in multiple places. Without trying, I had the sudden insight that this would correspond exactly to the 60 Hz of electricity used in this country and emitted by things like fluorescent lighting. Voila — mystery solved.
Since first grade, I think I’ve become a little better at dealing with all the questions that simply have no clear answers…of which there are many (and most of them more troublesome than counting, believe it or not). Mystery and ambiguity are rich and meaningful things. But all the same, there’s definitely something extremely satisfying about having someone ask me something and knowing exactly what the answer is, and knowing that I’m right.
