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A few thoughts and notes about this past weekend.... just personal stuff.
We entertained our first guest at Crooked Acre. Yes, I said 'Crooked Acre'. The house has a name. We found a book buried away in the closet, containing information about the physical plant, and the book had the house's name on it's cover.
So... first meal for guests... and it was stir fry veggies over basmatti rice. Extra sauce on the side, quality chop sticks at each setting, and warm bread with olive oil for starters. Fruit soaked in Saki was dessert. Nice... and I really, really enjoyed cooking the meal in our new home.
We are moved in enough to begin thinking about 'decorating', that being the placement of things around the house to make it more like our home. It needs to be noted... the first things hung on the living room barn-wood walls were swords. Yes, I own a sword, and so does Jessi. Why? Because swords are good to have... you know... just in case that whole zombie thing turns out to be real.
The house is heated by an oil fired hot water furnace piping hot water through baseboard radiators. It's gentle, effective, reasonable efficient, and noisy as hell. The furnace kicks on with a 'wump', just after the circulator pump activates. Every pipe in that heating zone then begins it's conversation with the house, creaking and groaning in patterns more intelligible than most news broadcasters. At 5am, the discussion is most vivid, and entrancing to lay in bed listening to.
I hope I don't get so used to it that it passes into the background.
Today, on MLK's memorial selective day off, my school is closed. Penn State, however, does not recognize the good doctors contribution by honoring the holiday, so my college algebra class will still be in session this evening. I will spend a fair part of the day with my nose aimed at the math text, a book written in a strange fairy language that doesn't bear voicing. To make it even more... interesting... the professor writes this stuff out on the chalk board (yes, chalk board... it's PSU, remember?) and only occasionally takes the time to explain to us poor cave dwellers what all the terms mean. Since he eats, sleeps, and even breaths this stuff.... he just assumes we do too.
I think a pot of coffee is in order, and some breakfast. Something simple today, as it's a quiet and simple morning. Princess sleeps in, so I'll enjoy breaking my fast by the fire, book in hand... while watching the sunrise over the trees in the distance.
Life is good.
4 comments:
My college algebra professor claimed that if we'd just devote enough time to algebra, we could learn science, physics, music, and oh, yes, billiards ... without the necessity of taking those mundance subjects, because they're all based on algebraic principles.
I told him he was full of it; you can read all about an eyeball, but it learning to read doesn't mean you never need to see the beauty of an eye.
He told me I was unappreciative; I told him he was a bohemian twit. The semester went downhill from there.
Egads! I've just remembered my introduction to Boolean Algebra and my total confusion over the terms and logic tables. Taught by a TA for a prof who never appeared until the final exam. Scraped by with a C-.
Where I'm in trouble in algebra is this: Math is a *language*.
Long ago I spent several years in high school Spanish trying to learn the language. I failed miserably. As my ship was swirling the bowl, a language instructor told me what my problem is. She said "You are always better at the end of a class than the beginning, but by the next class have forgotten almost everything. You are one of those people who must use new information a lot to retain it. An hour a day will not be enough, you will need all day every day to learn a language".
The algebra makes sense to me as I learn it, and I can work with what I have just learned. A week later, the next class, I have mostly lost everything and the building process starts over again.
The answer is daily study for several hours. The reality is that's not possible. I am taking another course who's professor thinks the world revolves around her subject, when in fact it revolves around my own students who take up my entire day. Add in administration who quite often loses sight of actual teaching in favor of other stuff, like filling out forms and filing plans that will never be read.
I MUST pass this course for my teaching certificate. Failure is not an option.
Good on Your New house, mate and life!!
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