I am at Adelle's and I think I'm going to get some homework done. Judging by my inability to even start this blog post (which I am self-required to write before I begin any homework), the plan may not go off without a hitch or twenty. Anna and Michaela are here; that should explain it to you.

As it turns out, I will be playing the mandolin tonight so I expect to be up late and am not worried about having coffee at 5pm. What got me out of the house was my need to find a bit of cardboard to turn into an artist's palette - for those who don't know: I will be Bob Ross for Tonight - and decided that, given the state of my room, I would have a better chance of making headway of homework at the coffee shop. Oh well. At least I can spread out here.

I went to Agway to get soil-fixin' stuff, a rake and a trowel so's I can tuck the garden in for the winter. They were listening to NHPR and when I asked the counter girl for help finding what I needed, I also complimented her on their choice of radio station. Actually, what I said was, "I think it's really cool that you're listening to NHPR," to which she rolled her eyes. I guess it wasn't her choice; now that I think back on it, I realize that I didn't say anything to the woman who likely was responsible but it's not like I work for NHPR so that all isn't important.

This morning, I hauled brush for Al. I hope I didn't tired out my pickin' hand.

On Friday, our Linearity professor read us the riot act with respect to our collective performance on the past two homework assignments and his passive rage was fueled by the fact that we have a difficult test on Monday but I couldn't help working myself up by repeating (internally) the question "Where do I find the time??" As it turns out, I didn't do poorly on the assignments so he probably wasn't talking to me and it looks like I will have some homework time this evening (yeah yeah yeah) and tomorrow. I have cooled.

Now to work.

Remember,

The dog is watching us.

The dog is watching us.

The dog is watching us from the kitchen.

Just gimme a chance!

This will have to be the abridged version of the blog post I have been forming in my mind because it is 1am and I am particularly bed-worthy.

I went into today feeling a lot worse about my academic situation than I do now because I have reached the point in the semester where I'm doing more surviving than learning and that always irritates me. What I mean is that I'm cranking through homework or studying for tests and my grades come out fine but I have the pervasive uneasy feeling that I don't retain much of the material. This comes from having a tightly packed schedule that is fine for the first month because it keeps me busy, but by mid-semester, I have trouble maintaining all those commitments. Part of the difficulty is that there is always something interesting to do on the weekends! We took that trip to Rangeley and I spent about a day up in NL this weekend doing fall clean-up work and enjoying my family; I can't become such a geek that I never see my own family.

That said, I am leaving this coming weekend open as a buffer so that I can be sure that I can catch back up to speed by this time next week. I have a good head-start after tonight Numerical Methods marathon.

Oh, and I can't forget about the garden! My mother has been coaching me on green-thumbery and I want to make sure I tuck in the two raised beds behind our apartment before the cold really hits. I guess I should be reasonable and leave it for a Saturday project but I'm anxious to start.

Okay that's it.

Progress report 2 of many.

I got a good grade on my recent physics exam and my AGU abstract was accepted so I feel comfortable sitting down to post this howdy during the few minutes before my next class. This, however, is a rare and fleeting moment of free time. Without much notice, Hurricane Workload has hit my little corner of the mental universe and I seem to find exactly enough seconds between Monday and Friday in which to accomplish all of my UNH-related tasks but not much else. Well...Melisa and I do have plans to make dinner tonight so I guess I won't be spending every second doing school/lab work but it'll be close.

We had a great hang in Rangeley last weekend. Mom, Dad, Steph, Melisa, Buddy, Mazie and I spent Friday evening through Sunday morning at Barb and Steve's "cabin;" we hiked Bald Mountain (it was no mere walk!) and went moose sighting on Saturday. The five(?) meese I saw were my first in twenty-seven years, if you can believe it.

Uh oh...class. I think that was about it for recent updateables.

Anti-fail

So I had hopes leaving the MIRL tonight with my computer still on and cranking out all the beautiful plots I need to start the Pi1B study (that's the one for which I submitted an abstract to AGU) in earnest but just before I left, the process hung up. Instead of fixing it, I shut 'er down and I'll get at the problem tomorrow. It seems like a simple fix. Seems. In truth, though I be disappointed, I am fortunate that I caught the hang tonight so I won't go in tomorrow expecting Christmas, only to find state testing.

Given the headway I made on that program tonight, with the amount of learning I managed to do in classes today, I ought to be content. BUT, seeing as how I am currently eating sausage, cheese and crackers and drinking a Flying Dog Double Dog Pale Ale, I must bump up my mood to epically satisfied.

It's time to watch computer tv!

The space-time conundrum.

I jinxed my weekend winning streak.

Actually, that's not really fair to say. My weekends are still mine and I don't have to spend a second of any weekend day cooking food that I won't eat but lately I have felt like I don't get as much as I would like to out of my Saturdays and Sundays. I suspect that the root of the problem lies in over-planning my time but all the things I plan to do seem so worthwhile! I want to spend time with Melisa (especially now that my weeks are so packed with school work), I want to put extra time in at the lab because I like the projects I'm working on, and I want to see my friends. It's all the usual stuff; somehow I feel so capable of accomplishing it on Friday but when Monday comes, I don't feel like I got it all done. To tell the truth, on this weekend in particular, I am trying to sandbag a bit because I really don't want to have to bring school work to Rangeley.

Two friends are out of town so I (happily) agreed to the job of giving their dog some exercise. He needs to let off a serious amount of energy on a daily basis but he has been acting aggressively toward other dogs and some people so I have to take him somewhere isolated. Fortunately, they have access to a farm so we spent a few hours yesterday and today playing chuck-it and walking around the pasture land. I forgot to wear dog-workin' jeans though, but laundry isn't as much of a hassle as it used to be. There's another weekend activity that I won't get in :-)

We have no classes tomorrow but I think I'll come to campus for a seminar on the computing software (called MatLab) we use in two of my classes. I get the sense that the morning session will be helpful in filling in some of the gaps in my understanding of how it works, while the afternoon session will be pretty intense lectures in how to get the most out of MatLab if you are already comfortable with using it. Either way, one professor promised to give us extra credit if we attend so I think it will be a good use of my time. Maybe it will get me so juiced-up that I'll come back to the lab and get lots accomplished. But, if the weather is alright, I'll probably just end up going home and grilling.

Back to work.

A big deal.

It's nearly midnight. I'm just sitting down after the drive home from campus and a weak attempt to substitute chips and salsa for a meal because I'm too tired to cook anything (parents: I ate dinner). I have a test in Linearity tomorrow and I want to share a thought that occurred to me while I studied this evening. While it may be true that I stay up later the night before a test because I want to make sure I have gone over everything, it is not true that I spend the whole time studying for that test. What I mean is that it isn't just the test that keeps me up; tonight will be a good example, since I plan to work on Numerical Methods homework until I go to sleep. I think that what happens is I get my brain so fired up (and perhaps I drink a little more coffee than usual) in preparation for the test that even after I feel like I have studied enough, I am still motivated to do school work. The point is that I could be well-studied and well-rested for my test tomorrow but will instead just be well-studied.

Now that I have said that, though, I realize that I home, drinking a beer and eating cheese and crackers (I killed the salsa) and those three may well conspire to send me to bed more-or-less on time.

But until then...Polynomial interpolation techniques!

The cheese is habanero and my tongue is about to fall off.

Just Monday.

It's a quiet early afternoon in the physics student lounge in DeMeritt. I am eating lunch while Jason works on Linearity homework and when I'm done writing here I'll either join him in that or I'll work on Numerical Methods homework. As you can tell, we have exciting lives today. I feel drained from an enjoyable busy weekend during which I went to FarmFest IV, hung out with my entire family (including dogs) and Melisa over the course of a day, and participated in the final day of Eric "Epic" Stone's birthday weekend extravaganza. I blame what seems to be an insatiable hunger on that crazy weekend.

This week holds a Linearity test on Wednesday and not much else.

Since I'm not feeling very energetic, I guess I'll leave it at that and get back to work.