Cute kitties

I finally made friends with Sylvester, one of the tabby cats that was born in my attic.  Walter, the one that got stuck in my wall is still skittish but is slowly warming to me.  Sylvester on the other hand has started coming up to me, rubbing on my leg, licking my hand and playing a lot.  Fun stuff.

I’m still alive

It’s a hot, lonely day in South Louisiana.  I miss my sweetie terribly.  I took her to the airport in New Orleans yesterday and as usual it was so hard to let her go.  Even knowing that the Feast is only about a month away I still hurt knowing that she’s going to be so far away for such a long time.  At any rate, if any of ya’ll are interested in what’s been going on recently, here goes.

Summer came up last Tuesday (the 7th) and we drove out to my parents’ house in East Texas.  As I said previously on Wednesday we were car shopping (see the previous posts).  Thursday was spent doing a lot of legwork relating to my purchase.  I had to sign papers on the car, get insurance taken care of, and pay off the loan I had taken out to purchase the Malibu.   Summer also made me go to a couple stores so she could shop (ugh…there’s no hope for a guy when the store is called “Dressin’ Gaudy”).

Friday Summer and I went on our little picnic excursion to Tyler State Park.  We sat on the ground, battled the ants, drank root beer, battled the ants, ate chicken, battled the ants, and relaxed.  Really though, it was a good time.

The Sabbath was different this time:  the Hawkins church had a public Bible lecture.  We had a short church service in the morning and a half hour lecture that afternoon on the True Gospel of Jesus Christ.  It was fairly successful in that we had 19 new people show up and several of them said they planned to come back (we’ll see if they actually do).

On Sunday we spent the day with the family more or less.  Summer had asked mom to teach her how to sew, so they went to a fabric store while dad and I went to a gun show.  We spent the afternoon running around Tyler and havin’ a good ol’ time before heading back to the house so that Summer could start on her sewing project.  Now, I’ve never seen anyone so excited about learning how to sew, but I couldn’t get Summer away from that machine.  She spent most of Sunday night, all Monday morning, and a large chunk of Monday night working on her new dress.  I don’t have any pictures of it or I’d post them, but I bet Summer would post pictures if you ask nicely.

Tuesday was our roadtrip back to Baton Rouge.  We stopped off at the Boardwalk in Bossier City to do a little shopping (there’s a Bass Pro Shops there–GLEE!).  That evening we had supper with David and Jen, which was nice.

Alas, Wednesday, how I hate goodbyes.  We spent the morning walking through the Louisiana Arts and Sciences museum.  We got to see all sorts of cool stuff in the planetarium, the galleries, and even a “dead” mummy (aren’t all mummies dead?).

With that behind me, I suppose it’s time to turn my focus to the semester that lays ahead of me.  Should be a busy time.  I’ll be teaching Calculus again this fall, and taking some tough courses.  Looks like I’ll be praying for some extra help.

Glee!

As promised, here are some pictures of my new ride.  Click the links, you know the drill.

Car1

Car2

Car3

New (sorta) car

Summer was a bit premature with that last post.  The deal on the Chevy Malibu was all worked out, but then when I went to pay for it and pick it up, the bank said they couldn’t get the title.  Basically they wanted me to pay them for the car and wait two days for them to get the title and then I could come back and transfer everything.  Not happenin’.

 So, we came back to Longview and looked around at a couple places.  I checked with the guy I bought my truck from.  He had a little Nissan Altima which looked pretty nice, but when I got in to test drive it, it wouldn’t shift out of park.  Then he came out and got it into drive, but then I couldn’t get it into reverse to get out of the parking lot.  He knew what the problem was, and already had the part he needed to fix it, but I didn’t really want a Nissan and it was a little out of my price range anyway. 

My folks then suggested the Buick dealership (they’ve bought a couple cars from them in the past).  When we got there I just knew all these cars were well out of my price range, and didn’t even want to look because of that.  Hoever, I did get out and look, and while we were looking a salesman came out and showed me a couple that were within reach.  I test drove a couple and finally settled on an ‘05 Buick LaCrosse.  It’s gold and has tan leather interior.  It’s awesome.   I’ll post pictures later.  Summer turned her nose up at Buicks intially, but when she saw this one, and when she rode in it, she LOVED it. 

BTW, it’s NOT a grandpa car.  Just lettin’ ya know.

Better M-P-G

Ben bought a car.  2004 Chevy Malibu with around 44,000 miles for a really low price.  Not a bad deal.  I’ll make him post more details later.

Uncertain, TX

Did you know there’s a town in East Texas called Uncertain?  I’m not quite certain where it is.

I just wanted ya’ll to know that I am a very dull person.  I go to school all day and write math programs and then when I come home I play games online.  There’s this one I especially like–you shoot cannons and build up your castle.  Oh, and then there’s this other one where you shoot penguins off ice caps with snowballs.  And, if you get enough points you can shoot grenades and rockets.  I finally completed all the levels yesterday.  I’m so cool.  I also bleached my hair blond in the shape of the pi symbol.  Totally cool.  I’m thinking about shaving the rest off, set me over the top.  I’ll post a picture later.

I need that

http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn12141-giant-microwave-turns-plastic-back-to-oil.html

You missed the good one

I started a post the other day to cover my trip to East Texas and South Carolina, but after putting it aside for a bit to do something else, I lost it.  However, in the meantime, Summer has already written about most of it, so I reckon I don’t have to recreate all the stuff I wrote.  The trip to Texas was good.  It was nice to not have to cook for myself for a while.

Since I’ve been back I’ve had lots of time to do pretty much whatever.  I’ve done a lot of banjo pickin’, some cookin’, and kitty chasin’ (more on that in a bit).  I’ve also managed to get some work done on my summer job.  At any rate, so some of you may remember the cat in the wall.  When I got back from SC, I finally saw the three kitties.  However, they’re all VERY skittish.  I spent a fair amount of time last week trying to catch one.  Finally, on Friday I caught the black one, but eventually just let it go (it stank really bad).  So today, the neighbours were trying to catch them so they could take them to some friends’ farm.  So, I caught the black one again (getting scratched and bitten in the process).  Then they debated over what they should do for a while and finally decided to let them go again…*sigh*.  Wish I had known that before I caught the black one.  So, there are still kitties living under my apartment.

Oh, btw, let’s hear it for New Braunfels as a Feast site!  Well, hopefully, but we’ll see. 

One more thing:  apparently finger length predicts test scores.

New theme

I’ve been experimenting with my theme a bit. I’m thinking this is probably what I’ll settle on…unless I find one with a similar colour scheme, and no split down the middle of the header.

http://epidemix.org/blog/?p=72

There’s an article there on what the author calls “the tragedy of the uncommon” on Wikipedia. His basic premise is that there are too many experts writing about technical topics on Wikipedia, and the result is a bunch of articles that are no longer accessible to ordinary people. There does seem to be some truth to it. I’ve noticed in the past when looking up various mathematical articles some of them assume a level of knowledge that is beyond comprehension even for someone who spends all his time studying math. It’s not that having something that detailed is bad, but perhaps a bit more time could be spent preparing a better introduction that is more accessible. In other words, it’s possible to have both. Even the most technical tops in science and math usually can be explained “intuitively” in a way that is easy to understand. When it comes down to it, scientific and mathematical concepts are usually very simple to understand…..it’s writing everything down in a technically accurate way that gets complicated.

End of the line

So if you’re here, reading this, you know that I’ve had to change my blog address. Apparently the kiwigeek is discontinuing his service, and with that my blog had to move. At any rate, it’s all still here, with a few added features courtesy of wordpress.

This has probably been one of my easiest finals weeks in a long time. Mostly because I didn’t have any. I take that back, last semester probably was. Anyway, THAT was really nice. However, I did have to give a final exam to my calculus class. They didn’t do so hot. I curved it quite a bit, but now I’m faced with the decision of who gets what for their final grades. I’ve already had a bunch of students begging for higher grades, but I have to go with what’s actually fair. It’s an interesting position to be in. Some have quite a bit at stake but STILL didn’t do most of their homework. The merciful part of me wants to give them all good grades….but that is impossible for obvious reasons. The ruthless part of me wants to fail a large portion of them…but I probably shouldn’t do that. I suppose the correct course of action is somewhere in between.