It’s Likely Not the Chocolate
Good news and bad news. A while back Melinda had an allergic reaction to something while we were staying with her parents. One of Melinda’s fears was that it was chocolate. Turns out it might have been ants. She was bitten several times today while outside and the individual bites swelled about as much as mosquito bites do for me. Then later on, it looked like a rash was starting to form. She took some BenadrylTM and that seemed to nip it in the bud. She’s currently sleeping like a stone, as are the kids. So, she’s having a potential allergic reaction, but it’s not because of the chocolate.
I meant to show you all one of the most ridiculous things I had ever seen. As you may know, another fella in the math dept. is not at all pleased with the new rooms we have. He evidently asked several times that the rooms be soundproof so that he would not be disturbed while waxing mathematic. Well, long story short, the rooms are (of course) not sound proof and he made quite a stink about it. The real drag for me is that the room opposite his is mine and so he has been dragging me into the mess insinuating that I too am not able to do any work because of the lack of absolute silence. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place. On the one side, I have to work in the same department with this guy, so I don’t want to tell him to leave me out of it. On the other hand, I don’t want to buck the administration either. *sigh* At any rate, during the last meeting which included the science division chair, the head of the builiding and operations department, and the provost of the school (second, third, and fourth in the school’s hierarchy only leaving out the president) it was made quite clear that they were not willing to spend any more money trying to soundproof the walls. They had evidently already double insulated the dividing wall and done some extra duct work in the ceiling. In a last ditch effort a white noise generator was suggested. These things are supposed to supply ambient background noise that would lessen the effect of sharp spikes in noise. Whatever. Well, they came in the other day. I didn’t know it, but I got one too. Check it out.
It sounds like a fan, but according to the directions it’s better. There are two ways to adjust the sound. They each change the level of air that is allowed to escape. The change is not unlike someone having a fan in a room and slowly opening and closing the door. I’m not real sure why this is better. A fan has the added benefit of circulating air.
In more academic related news, I think the math club is now official. So, I’ll get to start helping out with that. I had thought that the math club might be a good forum to excite students about some research. In a grant writting committee I mentioned that I had a project that I was wanting to work on with some students. (Remember all that stuff I mentioned in a previous post dealing with FORTRAN libraries? That’s it.) The real hard part about getting a group of students together is finding some way to advertise. The project won’t need much more than Calc III and some programming skills, so I think that this would be doable by more than just math majors. If the math club thing happens, at least I’ll be able to pitch it to some students and hopefully they can get the word around.
I’m glad Mel could narrow down her allergic reaction. Was she able to spot the ants when they bit her today – the kind of ant might make a difference.
Where is your lazy sister?
Hi to all.
I’m surprised you didn’t get ear muffs. Maybe that is the next step. I’ve never understood the white noise plan either. Laurie wrote her whole dissertation in Crimson Cafe because, she claimed, the white noise of all those people drinking coffee and talking helped her concentrate. There is no way I could have done that. ANYONES’s converstation would have been more attractive than writing a dissertation. I had to lock myself in the living room with everything turned off. I guess multitasking that includes writing doesn’t work for me.
We have a university mystery here. Neither Will nor I have gotten any emails since Friday. I find that highly suspicious. I wonder where they are going and if they are ever going to come back? For some reason our ace phone messaging system often saves them up for three or four days and then all of a sudden dumps them on the phone. You can be sitting at your desk and then all of a sudden the little red light just starts blinking like crazy.
We all went to the air show yesterday. That was something. Austin is on a plane kick. He keeps asking Will to “get more information on planes.” That means he wants to sit in Will’s lap with the laptop and look up u-tube videos of plane stuff. Anyway, we intended to set out from here by 11 to look around a bit, have a picnic, and watch the air show (it started at 1). I was puttering around doing my usual Saturday morning thing (laundry, make muffins, pick up, do dishes, water the plants, play with the boys, etc.). I kept looking at the clock and thinking I was really getting a lot done that morning. Then I looked at my watch. Apparently when the clock stops at 10:05 you can really do a good bit in one morning. It was really 12:45. So we gathered up the stuff (two bottles for Grant, two for Austin, sippy cups, bottles of water for us, diapers, changes of clothes, sunscreen, binoculars, 3 cameras, 2 toy airplanes, stroller, diaper bag with toys, hats, sunglasses, snacks, puffs, the kitchen sink—you know the drill) and headed out. We stopped by Subway and got sandwiches and then drove over. We should have just started walking from here. Luckily every time Austin would say he was tired of walking, a new plane would fly by. We ended up picnicing in a hanger and watching the show. Austin only lasted a couple of hours, but we all had a good time. He was a hoot. He had on quite an outfit. He insisted on wearing his yellow shirt with the plane on it, even though it is part of his pjs. Then he had on a hat, sunglasses, and Will’s shop ear phones. In one had he had a plastic plane and he had his camera in the other. He even had Will’s binoculars around his neck. Grant even watched it. Since he could hear the planes first, he had time to find them in the sky. He just sat there and laughed at the planes. Strange approach to an air show, but whatever. Austin got a new plane that so far has suffered three broken propeller blades and one broken wheel. It’s spent more time “in the hanger” being fixed than out.
Did I tell you that Grant really loves muffins? I mean REALLY loves muffins. Austin and I usually make muffins on Saturday morning and then we nibble on them all weekend. Grant does this little dance that reminds me of an excited pigeon when I finally bring the muffins out to the living room. He flaps his arms up and down and rocks the whole top half of his body up and down. That boy can eat a whole muffin by himself. I don’t know where he puts it. He’ll just sit there with is mouth open until you plop in a bit. If you’re not fast enough, he’ll let you know. (that part, unfortunately, doesn’t sound like a pigeon) Once the muffin hits his tongue, he says “mmmm” while he chews/gums it.
We had a faculty retreat on Friday and I didn’t even get pissed off. They had food, snacks, and coffee, so that helped. The whole point was that we realize that our students need to know much more software than they used to, but we don’t really know what to do about it. They are already taking the maximum hours that we can require, so we can’t really work in any new courses. Everyone thinks that the courses they teach are perfect as they are, so we can’t work new stuff in those. On top of that we don’t really know what they need. Folks generally agreed that they would need to know the Adobe suite (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc.), but that may even be outdated. Who knows? Certainly the faculty don’t. There is, of course, little money available and no more lab space. Did I mention that we have 400+ majors? And two computer labs with about 20 machines in each? You’re the math wiz—see any problems there?
Thanks for explaining the zombie problem. I’ll try not to get bitten.
I loved your post from Friday. I think we had that day once. Before Austin had vocabulary, he had volume. You could hear him screaming in his room from outside in the back yard. I was sure someone was going to call SRS on us.
Melinda was able to spot the ants that bit her…shortly before she pounded them into oblivion. I don’t think there’s much hope of identification. Ant. Six legs. Small.
I reckon Lisa is in Kansas. Probably Wichita.