still alive

For the time being, anyway.

I apologize for the abrupt conclusion of my "project 365" after five days, but, well, break has been... boring, to be perfectly blunt. I cannot believe I'm going to say this, but I think vacation was too long, and I can't wait for the semester to start up again. I'm not crazy, I promise.

My reasoning here is that I require some sort of goal in order to feel productive. During the fall semester, there was no shortage of goals. Do well in my classes. Help out my students in the basic skills math lab. Make sure all bills get paid on time. These are all real, attainable goals with specific deadlines, specific rewards for completion and specific punishments for failure. They helped me to feel like I was being productive with all of my time, even the time I would spend relaxing on weekends to recover from the rest of the week.

For the past month of vacation, I haven't had those same goals. I was happy to get the apartment clean, happy to start having time to cook for myself as opposed to eat out several nights a week, etc. But really, the only overarching "goals" that I've had over break are to start going to the gym again and to continue leveling up in Modern Warfare 2 so I get killed less often. Neither of these has either a specific deadline or a specific punishment for failure.

(A couple of notes here. First, I don't see my inability to get into a gym routine [yet] as having a punishment for failure. I'm in good enough shape in general that I don't have a pressing need to go to the gym; I'd just like to build more muscle on these skinny bones. Second, I don't count repeated death-by-headshot in MW2 as a punishment, because after all, it's just a game. I'm talking real-life punishment.)

Granted, it's been nice to relax, especially in advance of what I know is going to be a crazy 2010. Spring semester is going to be another 12-credit course load, on top of having comprehensive exams to worry about. The summer brings my final 3 graduate credits and, likely, a job search that has me start teaching in the fall. I may not have this much time to myself again until summer 2011 (and even then, I may have certification classes).

That said, I'll be happy to resume my journey towards being where I want to be -- my vision of finally being at least a little bit "successful".

Project 365, Day 5

Guess where I'm going again, starting this week and hopefully continuing throughout the semester? (And yes, I am proud enough of my font-like handwriting that you're getting it for two pictures in a row. Actually, I'm even more proud over the completion of this little notepad project.)

Project 365, Day 4

Using one of my lifelines early here. I knew it'd be tough figuring out what to take a picture of each day, but I didn't realize I'd be stuck taking pictures of crossword puzzles to fill the void.

Then again, this is an accomplishment -- after falling miserably out of practice (safe for the Friday puzzle that Sarah and I managed to plod through), I managed to complete a puzzle solo*, even if it was only a Monday puzzle. (Compared to the weekend puzzles, Mondays almost seem like freebies.) It seems appropriate that the first of these I worked on by myself would include the answer "Yale" (14 across, "Harvard rival").

Click to get the full-effect -- the lack of discernible eraser marks and my font-like caps lock handwriting.

EDIT: Upon further review, there are a LOT of discernible eraser marks. I suppose it's good that I'm not yet confident enough to go back to doing these in pen.

The puzzle includes a quote that they say is relevant to crossword solvers, but I find it works for anyone who's ever been to college: "The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." Thank you, Bertrand Russell, for enabling my procrastination.

* I say "solo", but I can't take complete credit; I did have to ask Katie for help on one clue. For some reason, it completely slipped my mind that "Old Japanese assassin" could possibly be "ninja". Oops.

From the New World

Perhaps I'm being a little bit too dramatic in comparing my move to the apartment to Dvorak's famous symphony? Nah, not really. It's my first venture out into the real world, and so far, I approve greatly.

What follows is a photo tour of Apt. 1-D. Captions will be below the photo they represent.

Here's the entrance area of my apartment, which also doubles as the dining room.

Help! My apartment has a kitchen and I don't know what to do! Well, okay, I'm getting a little better at it, though there is still plenty of frozen pizza to go around.

The kitchen, dining area, living room and my "office" are all in one large room upon entering my apartment, sorta like the common room of a college dorm. Only difference is I don't have to share it all with anyone. Here you can see the half-wall that separates kitchen from living room, as well as my TV and appliance table.

The view from the living room out into my "office". I spend a lot of time at the desk on the right. I don't spend nearly enough time at the desk on the left. (Oh, and please ignore the fact that my couch is straight out of the 70s. Remember, I'm a poor grad student.)

Another view out from the living room, this time including the dining area and the awesome chair that matches nothing. (Refer to the above comment about the 70s and poor grad students.)

A view of my desks from the apartment door. The dark area in the back there through the threshold will be explored after one more picture from my common room.

One more view of the living room, which was first seen in yesterday's picture. The only difference is that we've replaced Sarah with an air conditioner. Worst trade ever.

Bathroom, complete with wooden duck atop the toilet's water tank.

Walk-in closet in the hallway between common area and bedroom. It's the second most impressive walk-in closet in my apartment.

This one's in my bedroom. For those who don't know me that well, yes, this is completely normal and not at all over-the-top for me.

My wonderfully comfortable bed, complete with bed frame that wasn't here for the first two months of living here. (Yes, my nightstand is supported by milk crates. I believe I mentioned I'm a poor grad student?) These two and the TV stand are the only pieces of furniture in the apartment that I purchased prior to moving in -- everything else is hand-me-down. I honestly think everything looks a lot better than that sounds.

And finally, the dresser on which my stereo sleeps. If you thought the walk-in was meticulously organized, you should see the contents of the dresser. There are three drawers for socks alone.

And thus concludes our first tour of the apartment. I admit, I'm fairly minimalist in terms of decoration. It's a mixture of not having enough time when I first moved in (four days between move-in and the start of the semester) and not being sure how long I'm staying here. My lease is for a month year, and whether I stay here past next August depends on where I end up working next school year, so I haven't been very inspired to decorate the place just to have to tear down in a few months. We'll see how that plays out once the job hunt begins.

Project 365, Day 2

I need to come up with a cleverer title for the posts where I have nothing more to add than a picture and a caption. This is descriptive, but I feel like I need to name my endeavor somehow. (If I ever come up with something, I'll just go back and remove this paragraph entirely. Enjoy reading it while it lasts!)

Meanwhile, hey look, it's Sarah!

Sarah was kind enough to stop by the apartment today between family functions in nearby Teaneck. Much fun was had between Rock Band, Scrabble and a Friday crossword puzzle from the New York Times crosswords page-a-day calendar. That poor puzzle never stood a chance against our combined forces -- few puzzles ever do. So yeah, take that, puzzle from January 5, 2007!*

* No, I am not so hard up that I am using a 2007 page-a-day calendar for this year. The 2010 edition simply takes puzzles that were actually published in the NYT in the past. You'd think it would go chronologically and I'd be basically doing the entire 2007 library of puzzles, but no; apparently these puzzles jump back to 2006 about halfway through the year.

Behind the awesomeness that is Sarah, you can see what resembles a clean living room. That's because my apartment is finally clean! This means that you'll soon be getting the after-I've-moved-in pictures I promised a long, long time ago. And no, I won't be lame and post one a day for a couple of weeks to cover for the time when I have "nothing else" to post -- you will get them en masse, so that you can have fun mentally putting them all together like a puzzle to form the image that is my humble abode.

oh, ten

So. Hi, blog.

It's been a while since I've talked to you about anything other than math. I'm sorry about that. As it turns out, grad school eats souls. Its gaping maw devoured any free time I otherwise would have devoted to keeping my readers enthralled with stories of how freaking busy I was all semester long.

But in the tradition of New Years' and all that goes along with it*, I figured I would resurrect the blog and maybe let y'all devoted followers (I believe there are four of you? Good show!) know how I'm doing, what I'm up to, and any craaaaazy thoughts and ideas I might be having.

* Let it be known that I don't actually believe in New Years' resolutions, or the celebration of New Years' Day in general. (Actually, I could expand this into a whole post of its own, so I'll stop short of describing exactly why I feel this way... for now.) It's just a very convenient excuse for me to be resurrection the blog at this particular time, so I'll roll with it.

I believe the first thing I'm going to do is start posting pictures every so often. I doubt I'll be able to expand it into a full Project 365 as I was originally intending -- let's face it, folks, my life ain't interesting enough to be posting a new picture every day -- but hopefully I can be a little more interesting than what you've gotten so far. Not that the math stuff wasn't interesting (I actually came to like that technology course), but it's interesting for a certain audience. I know those of you out there who would sooner sign up for an unnecessary root canal than ponder math on your free time.

Being that it's now 2010, if I do manage to expand this into a Project 365, I figure January 1st is a good place to start. (I know it's January 2nd now. Hush. The picture was taken on January 1st and that's what's [mildly] important.) Somewhat fitting that the first picture on this blog in 2010 is my first meal in 2010, a feast of epic proportions.

In hindsight, I probably should've taken the top off of the hotcakes and sausage, to give the full effect. (Say what you will about me being generic; hotcakes are freaking delicious. That alone could be another blog post, too. Endless possibilities now that I have free time again!)