Notes from Mike, the Commutative Algebra Racoon

wildlife siting!

2005-08-28T16:08:00.000-07:00

Kevin and I went out for a bike ride this afternoon, and as we were walking home (because of a flat tire) I saw a tiny snake in the gutter by our driveway. It was really threadlike, writhing along trying to hide under some twigs and dead leaves to get away from us. It was really magical to see such a small snake. I forget about all the animals I used to see at home because in the city here I mostly just see birds and roadkill. Nice so see that the snakes are here too and doing well. I could even see it's tiny sides heaving from scared breaths... fascinating.

lesson of the day

2005-08-25T16:06:00.000-07:00

Here is a fictitious scenario:

You hear a loud popping from the microwave where you are heating some salmon.
What do you do?

If your answer was: "Open the door and peer into the microwave to see what's happening." then you can join the me club.
Now I have a big icky burn scab under one eye. ouch.

wow... moving is complicated!

2005-08-05T15:38:00.000-07:00

As all of you who read Kevin's blog already know, the reason for nothing new here is pretty simple. I moved Monday, cleaned the old apartment Tuesday, and spent the past two days unpacking/buying stuff for the new place. Phew! The place now looks much more normal and livable... only a few things have yet to find new homes. The best part is now having a functional kitchen! I really missed cooking the days when all our pots, pans and other cooking implements were packed up in boxes.

The good bit is that the new apartment is SO much better than the old one. It is much bigger and also lighter as it faces south. I am already thinking about the house-warming party. :) I haven't been in the pool yet (it is right next door!), but I have done laundry in the washer/dryer right in the apartment! What a victory!

Well, that's about it really... unpacking just isn't that much fun to read about, although I actually do like doing it. (You get a chance to reorganize and make things nicer.) I'm off to sushi with my housemate, and tomorrow I'm off to Vermont for a family reunion (six days). Then I get to come home and help my boyfriend, Han, move to Madison... hmm... maybe I'll be more up for that after the vacation. :)

Hotness (not the good kind)

2005-07-25T16:56:00.000-07:00

This post is brought to you by the almighty power of chin sweat glands, which (if mine are any indication) are the answer to most droughts and forest fires. I can't wait until after next monday when I can swim right next to our new apartment.

The most worrisome angle of all this heat is that tonight has been designated "pie baking night". I bought peaches and raspberries and found a new recipe... and now I wonder how wise it is to turn on the oven. Oh well, it must be done in the name of delicious food!

On the up-side, I met a woman leaving our department after a year long sabbatical who wants to give away her furniture! I think I'm getting a desk, which should come in handy if I ever get cool enough to sit at it and think. :)

New Address!

2005-07-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Finally, Kevin and I got a letter from our future apartment complex with our new address. I biked out there today (I've been biking to the place pretty often just to get a sense of good routes to and from the department) but there is some sort of art festival going on. All the central streets of town are basically over-run with booths and gawkers and tourists and art, plus the traffic around there was pretty heavy since everyone was cruising for a parking place... altogether bad for biking. But, I made it just fine! I tried to take a couple pictures of my new place (at least from the outside) so I can show them to my family when I go to the reunion in a couple of weeks.

Altogether today has been a good day so far (despite art fair craziness). My housemate Kevin left town for the weekend this morning and left me yummy food to eat while he's gone. So here I am blogging away on the couch full of really good jumbalaya after a nice bike ride and a shower. Plus the weather has finally broken: still hot and sunny, but significantly un-muggy and with a nice breeze. I can only hope this continues until after my frisbee game sunday. Muggy + frisbee = wretched.

I wish all of you out in blog-land such nice mornings (or if you don't get them at least nice afternoons).

This one's for you Shelley:

2005-07-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

Since it was Graham's advice which fixed Mercury, but you'd like some cookies (and he wouldn't) here is one of my favorite recipes for everyone. In the words of the Nutrimatic Drink Dispenser: "Share and Enjoy!".

Cardamom Cookies

1 cup butter
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
2 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour
2 teaspoons cream of tartar

1) Cream butter, baking soda, cardamom, and salt. Add sugar and eggs.
2) Combine flour and cream of tartar. Blend wet and dry ingredients.
3) Chill dough. Shape into balls and press with a fork onto a greased baking sheet (as with PB cookies).
4) Bake 10 minutes at 350 degrees (F).

(Note: As you may have guessed from the flour, this makes a truly prodigious quantity of cookies... luckily for those of us watching girlish figures, the dough freezes very well, and I usually only make half a recipe.)

Now I hate Microsoft more

2005-07-18T20:11:00.000-07:00

(subtitle: a desperate plea for help)

Tonight Han wanted to show me a funny Dutch comedy skit on the internet... but it required Windows Media Player. So we downloaded that, and then downloaded another program to let us install it. Unfortunately the video still wouldn't play (possible bad interaction with my browser maybe? I'm not sure...) so we gave up, at which point I decided to throw the programs we'd downloaded off my computer. Well, all of them trashed just fine except for Windows Media Player itself which apparently contains "locked files" which I tried to just click "continue" enough times to get through, only there were about forty billion of them and at the end nothing erased. The worst is now when I try to open the program it says it is "damaged or incomplete".

I don't really know what else to do. Poor beautiful Mercury is now host to a useless icky windowsish file I don't want and can't get rid of. I guess I'll have to wait until my friend Brian gets back in town at the end of the summer (he's getting a PhD in CS) and turn him loose on the problem. (I think he has the 17" version of my computer even...)

In the meantime, does anyone out there in blog-space (with more than my pitifully limited computer skills) have any bright ideas? devilish plots? plans for a daring rescue of Mercury?

(what if I promised cookies in the mail to the hero who rescues us?)

dreaming and waking up

2005-07-16T06:20:00.000-07:00

I just woke up from the strangest dream to a totally out of control thunder storm with rain pelting down everywhere and thunder crashing. First I dreamed that I had inadvertently become the best friend of a somewhat tyrannical arabian ruler and consequently felt responsible for hiding an escaped prisoner from him. This dream was black and white like an old movie and even had breaks where the movie switched for a little bit and I could relax and just watch the alternate movie for a while.

Eventually the dream shifted gears and I was at the wedding of the man I had helped escape to the star of the alternate movie, only now we were in the present and also in color. I was helping the bride dress (only in the middle of the crowd) when I looked up to see a little bi-plane overhead. I suddenly knew that it was going to crash into the roof of the wedding (intentionally) so I dragged the bride out of the room, shouting warnings as I went. The two of us hid under a down comforter until after the inevitable crash and then regrouped with the people who had come down our wing of the building. We decided that going straight out the back door was too risky because (of course) people might be waiting to shoot us.... so we climbed up onto the roof and then down another side of the hall.
When I got back inside it was pretty empty but I saw Graham sitting down on a step, smeared with blood and little pieces of glass. I asked him where Moira (his girlfriend) was, and he just gave me a little nonchalant wave of his hand toward a hospital van parked outside. Then I woke up... strange no?

ouch. (no sushi bandaid for me)

2005-07-15T20:13:00.000-07:00

Today Kevin showed me how to lube bike chains... and after cleaning, Max (my shiny red bike), no longer makes the ominous clanking chain sound he used to. I should have cleaned him up a long time ago instead of wasting my time with mechanics. The only downside is that I stepped on a staple (or some other similarly sized bit of sharp metal) which I had to pull out of my foot. Sadly I have only ordinary boring bandaids. Also sadly I am overdue for a tetanus shot and now feel sort of like I should get on that. (isn't tetanus the one they call "lock jaw"?)

But Max is happy at last, so it's all worth it to me.

popsicle days

2005-07-15T12:51:00.000-07:00

If there is in fact a supreme being, I am now convinced that I want absolutely nothing to do with him. This past week in Ann Arbor has been the muggiest I remember ever living through. (Although I also believe that the human mind is fundamentally incapable of remembering the exact sensations of anything which makes it really miserable, so maybe I just can't tell and this is normal.)

The only thing to be done it seems is to keep realitvely still and drink water by the gallon. It is too hot to go for walks, cook, have sex (or even touch other people for any prolonged period of time), climb into the car, bike, have your laptop on your legs... my only consolation is that soon Kevin and I move, and then we will have a pool!! Ah the blissful cool kiss of cold water, I can hardly contain myself except that it is too hot to be excited.

driving is hateful

2005-07-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

(or why is madison so far from me!?)

Han's cousin got married friday and so I have spent a truely obscene percentage of my weekend in the car... driving over on thursday took about 8 hours and then driving back saturday took about 7.5. Plus since Han still doesn't drive standard I drove all the way both ways. I think I wouldn't have minded so much except for the thought that soon this will be a familiar experience. (that and the A/C in my car turns out to be broken!) Next semester I'll have to make the same drive on mostly the same schedule, only I'll be alone in the car with no navigator/companion/CD changer! ick.

I must remember to try checking out the train schedules... I'm sure they'll either be prohibitively expensive or time consuming or both, but that would sure be a much nicer way to get back and forth.

Oh well, the things we all do for love right?

It's official!

2005-07-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

My fabulous computer at long last has a name.

Mercury.

Swift, silver, perfectly lovely.

(feel free to congratulate us)

first impression = good!

2005-07-05T09:57:00.000-07:00

This morning Kevin, Nancy and I went for a first look at the apartment Kevin and I are renting next year. (Planned moving date is August 1st.) We'd seen an exact duplicate floor plan at the same place, so today was more about location/direction of our future unit etc.

And... it was great! I remain convinced we made the right choice. It is only on the second floor, but I think that'll make it easier for bikes, moving in etc. We are facing the road, but separated by enough distance that you really can't hear it or look right out at the cars. Plus, we face south for great light and are right next to the pool!

I can't wait!

why don't my friends all have blogs?

2005-07-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

I have recently learned that I may very well be the only person attending the Snowbird summer school (in local cohomology in case you wondered) to have a blog. This upsets me because I am pretty bad at keeping in touch with people through the traditional channels of email and phone calls (nevermind actual letters). I am, however, slightly better at checking blogs and posting comments.

What exactly am I to conclude from this? Should I just give up and assume that I'll see those math friends again in the future where they will forgive me for never talking to them? Perhaps that is my message from the universe... don't worry so much. I will probably need to hear it several more times.

On a more serious note, my housemate is going through a pretty rough time, and I can't really do much more than try to indicate that I still consider him a kind person. I wish he could just see a little more objectively, but with emotions running high that is pretty hard. Everyone out there in blog-space take a little time to be nice to Kevin if you run into him.

To end on a positive note, Nancy (my mother) has added a wrap skirt over the top of the TV around Marla (the head from my previous post) so that it looks like she has shoulders. I'm still deciding whether to think it makes her more awesome or twice as creepy...

old vs. young, which are you anyway?

2005-07-03T11:45:00.000-07:00

I am surprised by my mother's reaction to visiting me here in ann arbor. She thinks I am very grown up... especially so since she saw me last. I sometimes feel that I will never be really grown up seeming to anyone older. I seem to vascilate between feeling ashamed of that, since perhaps it is off-putting to people I like and respect who will perceive me as a silly child, and hoping I never lose that quality because often it can make life more fun.

I wonder if living a reflective "examined" life is really worth the self-conciousness it can bring... or is it better to know you're probably always being ridiculous no matter what and just get on with things.

I think this post is mostly prompted by my recent conference experience where I met several ages of mathematicians whom I really liked (and hope liked me). With each crowd of them I found myself acting differently and judging my actions differently... so the inevitable overlaps were a bit odd. I felt that I was watching myself through what I imagined they would think of me. Frustrating to someone who likes to feel she is older than that! Maybe everyone else has this too, but the differences in crowd type continue to shrink as we go along.

my mom is awesome (plus a head)

2005-07-03T07:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, since my mother is in town for a week, we decided to walk to the center of town and then to my office just to see the city. On the way from the library to the math building we spotted a head lying in the street. It's one of those mannequin heads only with much better and more realistic hair. My mom, Nancy, immediately picked it up and since we couldn't see anywhere that might have lost it decided we should keep it. (We were surrounded by copy shops and pizza places etc.) The next step was inevitable... she had the brilliant idea that we should put set it up in my roommate Kevin's bed. (He'd been in New York for a weekend and was due to return home that afternoon.) Genius! We came home and washed the head's face and made a fake body from pillows and a wadded up sheet and then attached the head. Nancy even left some clothes and underwear lying on the floor next to the bed!

When Kevin came home he was so fooled that he quietly took his suitcase out of the room and turned the light off again so as not to disturb our extra "guest" before realizing that she really looked very short! What fun!

The only question left is what to do with the head now... at the moment she is on top of the TV watching the room. First, Kevin thinks she should have a name and then possibly status as our new mascot/figurehead. Thoughts?

Help name my computer.

2005-07-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, I have a few ideas... I will list them with associated pros and cons to help you understand my feelings toward each one.

(i) Titania

Pros: it is a titanium machine and Titania could easily be the name of a bond girl from Russia so this is both appropriate and sexy.
Cons: everyone will think it is named after Oberon's queen.

(ii) Ganymede

Pros: Ganymede was a boy so beautiful that Zeus fell in love with him and carried him up to mount olympus to be his personal ambrosia dispenser, plus it is cool name and the largest of Jupiter's moons.
Cons: there is an online game company by the same name.

(iii) Lyra

Pros: I've always loved this name and it is the constellation of Apollo's lyre.
Cons: maybe I should try something new.

So, let me know what you think...

pool frisbee

2005-06-28T15:17:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening, I played ultimate pool frisbee with some of the people here at this math conference. It was simultaneously fun and strange... sort of like regular ultimate frisbee, but very slowly. Plus it's hard to jump and catch things while treading water. The field strategy is very different with people staking out sections of the pool and not really moving around too much because it's hard to swim really fast while watching the frisbee. I was guarding Shelley and she yelled out at the guy with the disk "I'm cutting!" and then we both collapsed into laughter because we were moving so slowly that it in no way qualified as a cut. :)

It is enough to make me really miss my cleats! Today I think I realized we can probably play catch in the parking lot since it is probably too wide for me to hit anything important and is sort of close to flat. (One downside to living in a valley is an incredible lack of level places.)

Hopefully I'll get another chance to throw the disk around whether on land or in the pool... which does have the advantage of being very close to the hot tubs.

Meanwhile, back at home my frisbee team won last sunday's game! I can only hope they'll still take me back. :)

Reedies Rule!

2005-06-27T15:42:00.000-07:00

I figured out over the past few days that one of the summer school speakers is another Reedie (Math 1995). We spent a bit last night out on the balcony swapping stories and comparing professors. It was nice to talk with someone who properly appreciates nitrogen day etc.

In other news, I am tired from staying up too late, but have two bridge puzzles from Anton aka Tony aka Al to solve. I hope I can figure them out... any requests and I will post them here. Plus the really big-shot speakers from the conference are trickling in so I have to try extra hard to seem alert and exciting. Hopefully they'll remember me in a few years when I'm on the job scene.

At any rate, right now I'm off to score some dinner-mates and then maybe take a quick nap before the conference hospitality room heats up for the night.

hiking in the snow

2005-06-26T16:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I think I set a personal hiking record: left at 9am and arrived home around 4 or 4:30pm.

We (the math kids and instructors) decided to hike up to a pair of lakes a bit farther down the canyon. The first parts of the hike were up a path between aspen trees looking out on some of the most spectacular scenery I have ever hike through. The mountains across the valley are granite (I think) and you can see their tilted layers of rock on the upper slopes (which I think is interesting). We crossed a number of small streams which were basically only a few hours from being snow (read very cold) and headed up towards the head of the crease we were in. After a few miles, we really were climbing and started to see patches of snow... which was fine until we had to climb slopes I personally would be nervous to ski down... and I was in shorts and a tank top. Surprisingly I wasn't cold (perhaps the extra strain of the high altitude was keeping me warm) although I was a little worried about what would happen if I fell. The group I hiked with ended up eating lunch on the shore of the first lake and then turning back because of some ominous clouds in the sky. It actually did turn into a little lightning storm as we hiked the last mile or so back to the lodge, but the only tree I saw fall was behind us and one of the instructors lent me a long sleeved shirt so it wasn't too bad.

After the hike I went straight to the hot tub (aren't posh resorts great!) and then a bunch of the girls and I went to a nice restaurant for dinner. (Great creme brulee!!)

Sometimes I wish I could stay here longer: fantastic natural beauty, sociable math people, more hot tubs than we know what to do with, even a good bridge player who seems to like playing with me... but I do like cooking and I miss Han.

Either way, clearly math is the career path of the wise... someone else is paying for my trip here!

math camp rules!

2005-06-20T16:12:00.000-07:00

So I'm now in Utah at a summer school about local cohomology... it is up a canyon among beautiful mountains at a ski resort. No complaints from me except that I get out of breath climbing suspiciously small hills (must be the altitude!) and they don't serve earl grey tea. On the positive side, I get to hang out with tons of friendly polynomial lovin' math people who seem to like me. :)

Today I learned over again that actually computing Ext is hard and that thinking about hemispherical covering sets of RP^2 and their intersections makes me happily frustrated and confused. (Happily only because I got to do it with a group of the aformentioned nice math kids.)

Lots of girls here too! I'm glad of that. Kevin you should become an algebraist! (just kidding...)

I am in love.

2005-06-17T18:02:00.000-07:00

I have a shiny burnished metal brand spanking new powerbook! I can't stop touching it... I even love the sounds the keys make while I type.

It was a pretty agonizing decision for a girl who doesn't really like decisions anyway, but I'm glad the chips came down where they did. Go me! Go Apple!

Now I just have to think of a name for it... (after determining the appropriate gender of course).

feeling the scar tissue knit

2005-06-06T07:42:00.000-07:00

I think I may be on the road to recovery from one of the worst experiences of life... middle school PE. I just signed up for a summer ultimate league after years of swearing never again to be on a sports team. (visions of laughing preppy girls making fun of me for not being able to serve a volleyball danced in my head whenever I thought about it)

However, my team is super nice and actually seems not to care that I have no clue how to play frisbee (beyond some games of catch after dinner with my boyfriend Han). Instead they seemed genuinely excited to have new people on the team and ... they actually threw me the frisbee. And... I actually caught it! twice!

So, if this continues perhaps I'll be at least partially cured. Although I really don't think I'll ever like volleyball.

Hooray for nice people!! Down with middle school!!

sunshine and hard drives

2005-06-01T11:54:00.000-07:00

It is a beautiful day here in Ann Arbor, but I am stuck inside trying to select exactly the right laptop. The main problem is the following: everyone whose advice I've sought (these being the friends most in the know about computers) seem to think mac's are the way to go. I tenatively agree with them since I had a mac in college and faithful Trevor was everything a girl can ask for as far as laptops go. However, the online bridge software used by my boyfriend (who will move away next year) is written by the man paid to play bridge by Bill Gates. Meaning it won't run on a mac without special fancy software which would cost about $230 and possibly enable window's many viruses to infect my machine.

I think I'm about ready to just decide on the mac and let it all go. But I don't have to decide yet... they're on sale at the university's computer shop until June 25th.

Strange Image

2005-05-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

A few days ago Kevin and I made a foray into the photography section of our local used book store. There we saw a picture I keep thinking about a lot... I know Kevin has been too because sometimes I look at him and I can just tell.

The photo was of a Disney princess Jasmine doll (from Aladdin) placed on the legs of a naked man in such a way that she was wearing his scrotum as some sort of strange headdress. The photo only extended a few inches below the doll's feet and not even up to the man's belly button. Somehow this image is very powerful... it is stuck in our heads. I have never before had a picture stuck in my head... only songs.

Things like this make me realize I am not nearly so unusual as I think... I am not capable of creating such a picture.

Herb Garden (of Doom!)

2005-05-28T11:38:00.000-07:00

Today Kevin and I went to the farmer's market and bought herbs. Now they are all snuggled down into their miracle-gro potting soil and they look so cute and happy. It makes me feel good looking at them.

Plus it will save us both from having to buy too-large quantities of fresh herbs from the grocery store at their truely outrageous prices!

Legs!

2005-05-25T02:02:00.000-07:00

The tadpoles have finally grown legs! Well, some of them and only two legs per tadpole, but I still count that as progress. It is nice they did it before I leave here too. (I leave tomorrow.)

In other news, I am pretty much back to okay... yesterday Han and I went to visit Sarah (his younger sister) and being away from the house for a day was good for me I think. By this morning I'm ready to just call it Ruud being upset at both me and Han for a number of things and taking it out on me for something weird. (This is Han's theory, which is why I think it may be right.) So, I'm just trying not to speak english to Ruud (which means I really can't say much to him, but oh well... and Ela, Han and I go on much as before. Plus I'll be home in a few days now.

I dreamed last night that I was saving the world by going grocery shopping with Kevin. I'm not sure why that saved you all, but I will accept grateful thanks. :)

funny blue lump

2005-05-22T02:54:00.000-07:00

I think it might be a bruise from catching the frisbee, but it is a small roundish blue lump over the bone at the base of my first finger (palm side, left hand).

Remind anyone of anything?

one more thing I like

2005-05-21T04:06:00.000-07:00

Bumble Bees.

I don't know quite what it is about their immense fuzziness and eratic flight patterns that so appeals to me, but there you have it.

I interpret their message to me as: don't worry and just keep bumbling along because life is really pretty good with more flowers than you expect. :)

celebrate ambrosia incognito

2005-05-21T04:02:00.000-07:00

let's hear it for Strawberry Shortcake!!!

(not that I am making/eating it currently... more the pity)

However, I declare today Strawberry Shortcake Day! Let us live this beautiful sunny saturday celebrating the flaky buttery biscut bottom, sweet tangy berry middle and gloriously fattening whipped cream top!

(hopefully this can destroy/replace "sweetest day"... ick)

pilgimage frustrated

2005-05-20T04:46:00.000-07:00

Every day (at least once) I go to the pond in Han's backyard to check on the mulitude of tadpoles. They are from both frogs and toads... but none have any legs. I check every day for legs, but still today nothing. They are waiting until I leave. hmph!

small dogs+small kids=fun chaos

2005-05-20T01:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday evening Han and I went out to the common lawn in the middle of his circle of houses to throw a frisbee. (We do this pretty often after dinner, well after a digestion break after dinner mostly...) There we were joined by a very short-legged but happy dog. It clearly wanted to be involved, but wasn't tall enough to grab the frisbee from the air... so it ran between us under the frisbee. If I had even a small fraction of the energy of this dog I could really leap tall buildings in a single bound, or maybe even finish my thesis in a single day. :) The best part was that when someone dropped the frisbee the dog would almost always get there first, but then didn't really know what to do with it, so would wait and pant and look happily up at you.

Then several small neighborhood kids came by and started playing too... tussling and grabbing the frisbee from eachother only to be surprised as the small dog grabbed it up and ran around chased by all of us! It was really a blast.

strange things are afoot in the chimpanzee cage

2005-05-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Han, Ela and I went to the zoo. Specifically the chimpanzee cage. There we watched a pretty amazing thing: There was a little pool along one edge of the pen, and in the pool was a whole green pepper (floating because they are hollow). One chimpanzee had spotted the pepper, but apparently didn't want to get its feet wet, so it had picked up a stick and was using it to reach into the pond. At first we thought it was trying to reach the pepper (which wouldn't have worked because the stick was too short), but it was instead using the shorter stick to reach another longer stick. Once it had the long stick it used that to push the pepper closer to the shore. Then, with the short stick again (which was sturdier) it pushed the pepper close enough to grab.

It was pretty amazingly complex for a creature we usually lump in with things like deer and emus and things in a zoo. (At least I was impressed.)

Emergency Humor Test:

2005-05-18T08:48:00.000-07:00

Ruptured Pudding Cup At Large In Area Backpack

(courtesy of the Onion)

If you failed to find humor in the above statement, you should immediately seek professional help.

Hannah goes to Dutch fat camp

2005-05-17T04:01:00.000-07:00

I really feel like that sometimes here... most of what I do is walk, ride my bike places, eat yoghurt with muesli, hike, throw the frisbee, eat more yoghurt, drink tons of tea, etc.

I am clearly the weak american in this bunch, but I do feel some improvements. Today Han and I went biking to the grocery store and I made it up over the bridge across the river with a big load of appelmoes (applesauce) and beets in jars without too much trouble and pain. Last time I attempted this bridge it was much, much harder (and that was without the groceries!).

I think maybe instead of federally funded PE programs in school all american kids should be farmed out to Dutch families instead. I guarantee that they would come home much skinnier and in much better shape. Plus it would really benefit the biking industry! The only downside is that they might all come home and eat their french fries with mayonnaise, ick! The correct way to order fries here is to say you want fries and then say either "with" or "without", this indicating whether or not you want mayo on them. I have a personal theory that human taste buds crave something sharp/sour/acidic tasting with very greasy foods (think about examples on your own) but this throws my theory all out of whack. Any Dutch bloggers out there want to comment on the origin of this trend?
(For the record, I doubly don't understand since I hate mayonnaise in everything except deviled eggs.)

Camping at Lies

2005-05-16T02:59:00.000-07:00

Han and I just spent four days on the island of Terschelling off the northern coast of the Netherlands. It is incredibly beautiful in a strange alien way to someone used to the lush forests of Oregon. The whole eastern end is a hugebird sanctuary, much of it closed to humans and all closed to motors. The landscape is very empty and still,and the wind washes over it in waves. Along the nothern edge is a ridge of dunes with beach grass along the higher parts and down the southern side until it mixes with (and is replaced by) low bushes, some with fearsome thorns. Past the dunes is a huge flat meadow with tall grasses mixed with hidden ponds and small succulents. Han and I were often the only people in sight, alone on this immense open space with only the gulls swooping over us. Also, it was full of hidden birds which were not so afraid because they are so protected and the island has not many predators. We saw two male pheasants running by, a little hawk, a bird with a feather plume on it's head a little like a quail and many more. I wished we had brought a birdbook, but I don't think they would even be in mine!

The rest of the island was nice too, in a more ordinary way. It had the slow unchanging close-knit feeling common to small isolated places like that. The towns were very tiny and people were not so rushed.We rented bikes there and biked and hiked over most of the island. The terrain shifts very suddenly from pine forests to dunes to meadows with horses, cows, goats, and sheep to stretches of a plant I haven't seen but think might have been heather. Han tells me it is the only place in the Netherlands which grows cranberries and the story is that this is because long ago a barrel of cranberries washed up on the beach. We had cranberry cake with coffee because it is the local specialty.

machine repair

2005-05-10T02:58:00.000-07:00

I spent breakfast watching Ruud, Han's father, repair the pedal of a bike. It was really fascinating to see... the inside coming out and the ball bearings. He was very methodical and thinking about everything, feeling the pedal turn with his hands and eyes and almost turning back into himself with it. Seeing that made me want to learn to do such a thing myself, but it is hard to know where one starts. If you have a teacher then it is probably easier, but I don't think I know a good one. I don't really have hopes of learning to fix my car since cars are so complicated and also so big they are hard to work with, but a bike somehow seems easier because you can move it around yourself and the mechanisms are not so secretive and complex.

It made me a little sad because I think it would perhaps be good balance to know very well something you do with your hands concretly. Math is so much the other side of things (as are most academic things I would guess) that maybe that would help to ground some part of me. And I remember the sense of competence and power when I learned to jumpstart a car alone. I can't see any reason these sorts of things should be impossible for me to learn, just that somehow I never have.

frustrated loser

2005-05-10T02:48:00.000-07:00

I have lost (I realize this morning) the end of my last post... I guess it was just too long. But now looking for the rest I can't find it. Let us all have a moment of silence for all the lost blog post and email pieces which are devoured by the spirits of the internet. (Maybe they view them as offerings from their many worshippers and never realize the anguish caused...)

The worst part is that now I have no idea what I said and so can't replace the missing part.

On the up-side, I survived a very long bike ride to visit a friend of Han's from school. I am not a very bike-savvy person, so this was about the longest trip I have taken. It was very pretty though, through fields of animals and along an old railroad track overgrown with little trees and bushes. We scared up a little rabbit riding home at dusk and watched its white tail flash down the tracks in front of us until the rabbit realized we were also following the track and vanished into the blackberry bushes. I also saw a very soft and handsome looking cat, the sort which is black with a little white throat. It was sitting on the top of a fence-post very solidly in the same way cats sit everywhere. I wanted to stop and pet it, but we had to get home before dark.

korfbal

2005-05-09T02:43:00.000-07:00

So, last time I promised a bit of explanation of this strange Dutch pastime... and I will pretend I have an avid reader out there somewhere just dying to know: "What is this korfbal thing?"

As it turns out korfbal is very much like ultimate frisbee played with a soccer ball and where goals are made by shooting baskets. The only flaw with that image is that there are no backboards, only a circular basket slice for a hoop and it is played by both boys and girls together. The court is two squares each with a korf or basket up on a long pole. Each square contains two men and two women from each team. At first I was a little surprised that all the girls play in skirts (here in socially progressive Nederland) but Han explained that this is so they can be easily distinguished from the boys (see my earlier post about haircuts) since girls only can guard girls and boys only boys. Anyone girl who has been assigned to guard someone much much taller will appreciate the justice of this rule, because these players are pretty tall. The play is like ultimate frisbee in that you can't run or move even with the ball but must throw it to another player, the interesting twist is that you must stay in your square... if you are defending and catch the ball you have to throw it across the line to the other square's players. The other strange (to me) rule is that you can't shoot at the basket if your defender is "too close" although it appears to be not entirely clear what that means... I think it is sort of up to the referee.

That is about all I understand, but it was fun to watch and see Han's old team in action. They won too, 13-12. My unreliable dutch completly broke down here as everyone was yelling things at the referee and making jokes to eachother all at once.

The other interesting thing which happened at the match was that Han introduced me to the owner of a gym/sport club who tried to pick my brains about current fitness trends in the US. He explained that dutch trends usually follow after ours and wanted to see if he could get any ideas about what was hot right now. I have to laugh that he picked me! I promised to send him the schedule of classes from the UMove office, which is the best I can do at tracking that s

Vote Here! (and explain)

2005-05-08T02:36:00.000-07:00

Who thinks the Netherlands is a better place to blog than the US? Why do you think this?

(Clearly it is a better place for me, but whether that is the dutch air or the readily available computer w/ internet is another question...)

Saga I: search for a roommate

2005-05-08T02:22:00.000-07:00

Actually the title is a bit of a lie since this is really all over now...

In June I am going to a summer school program to learn all about local cohomology. (For the uninformed this is a useful tool for studying all sorts of algebraic things. I use it for rings and modules, everyone who doesn't recognize those words can think about either polynomials, eg. 3x+4xy+17, or whole numbers, eg. 3, 99, -23.)
I originally had planned to room with another girl from University of Michigan, but while all the other people who had applied received responses, she didn't hear from the organizers of the program. Finally I emailed them to ask if she would be admitted (housing forms deadlines were fast approaching and they asked if you had already found a roommate) and... they had absolutely no record that she had applied. I think she later contacted them and found that they had lost her application emai. However, after all this I don't think she will be able to attend (medical problems) so I had to be put on a long list of roommateless nonsmoking women. :( Happily (I wouldn't want to keep you in too much suspense about the tone of this story) yesterday I got a series of emails from various women describing themselves briefly and asking for roommates. I responded to the most compatible sounding one and she has now agreed to be my roommate! whew. On the upside, she says 1) she is friendly, 2) she needs quiet self-time often 3) she doesn't lick people in greeting. All these things sound good to me. Plus if it works out badly she goes to the University of South Carolina so we won't have to stay in touch. (Sorry for the thought Carrie, nothing personal about it.)

Also today is korfbal match day: Han's old team are playing a home game and his best friend Marc is on the team. (I promise my readership of zero a post describing the oddity that is korfbal in the near future, ie whenever I feel like it.) The only problem is that it is currently hailing. Oh well, maybe it will clear up by the afternoon... otherwise I will be wet. :)

posting from abroad

2005-05-06T01:52:00.000-07:00

This is officially my first post from another country. I am slowly recovering my personality after a long mostly sleepless night spent crossing the atlantic in a jet. I think now I understand better the parts of Pattern Recognition which speak of the soul-less times of jet lag. But on the upside, I got to go watch a korfbal tournament yesterday and play bridge online with a bunch of Polish people.

My dutch speaking abilities are simultaneously better and worse than I had expected/hoped. I really can speak a little and also understand a few slow-speaking people if they talk to me, but I am relatively hopeless when larger groups of people speak more quickly to eachother. Ruud (Han's father) says that by the end of my visit I will be much better, and the whole family agrees that it is much harder to speak english in the morning, so I pick up what I can. (Usually the idea of the conversation but not all the details.) As always, being here is very good for understanding the sometimes strange (to me) things that Han does. I think that alone would make these trips worth it, but they are also fun. Han's family is more than a little like a dutch version of mine, perhaps one reason why we manage to bridge cultures so well most of the time. Yesterday we all danced in the living room and then after dinner played scrabble (in english). That was fun as we all basically helped make the best words with each person's letters. And, in the end, I narrowly escaped losing to the rest of the family although of course Han won.

I'm off to rejoin the Peters/Hol's and drink more tea. Dag!

Kevin Beware!

2005-04-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

Given your alleged misanthropy... here is an judicious Onion selection:

AMHERST, MA—According to conclusions reached by researchers at the University of Massachusetts, four-fifths of the world's dedicated recluse population were once luckless in love. "We have conclusively linked heartsickness to the behavior of dwelling in remote mountaintop caves, in bramble-covered forest huts, and on nameless unmapped islands," professor of solitary psychology Ludwig Meyer said Monday. "The loss of a lifetime's one true love seems to be enough to drive some people into splendid isolation in arctic regions and trackless jungle wilds." The study noted that the remaining 20 percent of hermits were driven from human contact by the desire to run naked around the woods, urinating though their knee-length beards.

day of shortness

2005-04-02T10:53:00.000-08:00

today is hair cut day. I have had the same hair cut at least the past 15 years... now it is time for a change. the only problem: I am by now fundamentally incapable of imagining myself with a different 'do. Hopefully the lady at the expensive hair salon has enough imagination for the both of us... and she won't imagine me as either a soccer mom or a punk undergrad.

the back up plan is to get Kevin to run the clippers and take it all off... at least then I can't be accused of trying to look good and failing.

tired

2005-03-23T09:52:00.000-08:00

Today I am so tired I could cry. Tomorrow I am going to get up and be somewhere by 5:30am so I can stand on a picket line all day. While I do this I will be energetic and excited and upbeat. That is my job. Now my boyfriend tells me he will cross picket lines to work in his office. I don't understand why he can't work at home for one day, but am too tired to change his mind (or to try very hard since I'm not sure I could anyway). I would be frustrated and upset, but I don't really have the energy. Sort of like when you think you might sneeze soon and then don't quite ever do it only without the urgency. Oh well, if I make it through these two days (today and tomorrow) perhaps the fates will smile and someone will rent my apartment.

Late=Funny?

2005-01-18T08:46:00.000-08:00

I have a new theory about why my blog has been so silent in the days since its creation. (Not that anyone but Kevin reads this, but he has been bugging me...) I had theorized that it was because of the fucking viral invasion (actually pretty mild compared to some last semester) I have suffered. Really just a cold, but it rolled in like Hitler into France. Now however, I think it is because I only really have computer access during the day at the math department while most of the random humor for which I am well known (at least in a 1 meter radius of my current position) is mainly nocturnal. So my new theory is this: funniness occurs mainly at night; the later the funnier. Thus the un-funinness of my current post.

In conclusion, here is my random phrase of the moment:
Flabbergasted Cheesecake Nodules.

Just try and talk to me now...

2005-01-12T18:50:00.000-08:00

Here is a hilarious quote: (all not laughing will be summarily forced into the vat of chocolate beef sauce. naked.)

"The mathematicians are a sort of Frenchmen: when you talk to them, they immediately translate it into their own language, and right away it is something entirely different."
-Goethe

I blame Kevin

2005-01-12T18:40:00.001-08:00

I said I didn't want a blog and that they were complete time-sinks... I am really at heart a commenter and poker of fun at other people's (namely Kevin's) blogs.

And I still would be too... I just want an identity when I say things. Is that so wrong? (It seems the answer is yes.)