Holy Smokes!
Wow, I heard about this on the radio this morning. Evidently in U.K. cigarette packaging is going to be a little different. Instead of just the warning written on the side they will now print pictures on the front, including a diseased lung, a dead body and a picture of someone with their chest opened for heart surgery. Wow.
On a personal and sort of bizarre note, I had a student in my precalculus class this morning ask if I would be the faculty advisor for the archery club. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll have time, but that could have been really neat. She (the lady starting the club) evidently placed third in a national archery competition. She uses a recurve bow; I’m too much of a wimp for that.
After a few mishaps which “will only take me a minute” to fix, my code is now up and running (again) and I hope to collect some decent data over the next few months. I reckon I can go ahead and write the majority of the paper and just leave the appropriate holes for the data and graphics. There are a couple of technical issues I will need to work out and so this might be fun to try to do with some unsuspecting undergrad. I’ll just have to see. I also contacted a fella that proved a particular case of a conjecture I had in my dissertation. With his ideas I think we can push through and prove the conjecture outright! That would be really neat. I sent him my thoughts yesterday, so I just have to wait and see if he responds.
Melinda, Drake, and Scout have headed off to the Explorium (the local science museum) this morning. Drake really likes playing there. They have a large area dedicated to kids under five years (the wharf of wonder) which is a boat sitting in a sea of those plastic balls you find at places like Chuck E Cheese. There’s also a light house (including light and a foghorn, which Drake loves) and a dock including a shop. It’s really a marvelous place for kids. It’s gated too, so you don’t need to worry much about your kid escaping. The Mom’s club frequently makes trips there. I can’t wait to hear about it.
The other night, I guess it was two nights ago, we were all marching upstairs to put Drake to bed. I can’t remember exactly what Drake and I were talking about as we walked upstairs, but I do remember that he asked my “why?” That’s a first. I expect I’ll be hearing a lot of that soon.
Scout is still winning the award for sweetest baby around. Unless she’s really hungry or really tired, she is always smiling and laughing. Especially at Drake. She absolutely cackles when Drake plays with her. She now has two teeth in the bottom of her mouth and we think that she may be getting another one in too. I think she’s also getting close to puling up.
Sounds like progress on all fronts. I will offer the computer farm here again for running your code. Might have to install additional cooling to your old room if they are all operating, but your mother complains about it being too hot up there anyway. Not that I ever hear anything about it being too hot, of course.
If you have to have special insurance to ferry old folks around, as is the case in Peachtree City, I wonder how much is needed to be the advisor of an archery club. Too bad you don’t have the time but I think you are probably right. Of course there are the hours between 2:00 and 4:00 AM , provided Scout permits, that could be used. Light might be a little dim then, however. I expect that the fact that you know what a recurve bow is must have impressed her. I don’t remember having heard of it before. Sounds like you use an ordinary bow, but bend it backwards.
The Explorium sounds like a neat place. I expect, and hope, that it will be as much of a challenge to find things that are sufficiently complex to hold Drake’s attention as it is for Austin. Bright kids are seldom boring. Frustrating, exasperating, demanding, sometimes frightening, of course, and sometimes incredibly rewarding, but not boring. You are right about the “why”. I expect that was the first of an at least a countable and possibly uncountable number of them that you will get. What made it difficult for me was that some of the whys (or fors) did not make much sense considering what came immediately before them. It was difficult to keep in mind that kids have such a limited background to call on that even the “obvious” is far from it. They are indeed strangers in a strange land. It will be very interesting to see if Scout and Grant develop the same level of curiosity that Drake and Austin have. I certainly hope so even though it might have the parents climbing the walls.
I just got a call that my other contact lens is at the optician’s office. I guess you know that these are multi-power lenses that provide a sharp focus for distant, near, and close objects. One of the lenses I got worked well, but the other seemed to have no correction for distance and the near vision was little different from no lens at all. I don’t know where the ball was dropped, but somewhere along the line the prescription was misread, miscopied, or otherwise bungled. I don’t know then, whether the new one will correct the problem or not. At any rate, the one that does work is amazing. I still don’t know how they work but work they do. I don’t really know yet how well I will like them since I have only one that seems to be correct, but I am optimistic for good results.
Guess I will go get the lens.