The Eleph and the Ant

I do not, strictly speaking, have time to write this. And yet, here I am. Nothing for it, really. Now, then. Let's chat.

I have several things that I wish to write about, and not much time to write them in, so I've decided to eschew transitions in favor of a more aetherial (sic) sort of new-age "experience." We'll see what happens.

I'd been feeling real sad yesterday, in that way that is specifically not depression because problems don't really exist until you acknowledge them, and I tried to stop myself from crying in front of everyone by playing music. Who's to say how successful that was, but it did result in me re-listening to my Proximity playlist. I'd forgotten how great my music had been back then.

I started on New York City, because that song never fails to wrench an emotional reaction out of me (except that it did fail this time, but again it's fine as long as we don't acknowledge that). By the time I got to My Sunshine, it was late enough that I thought I'd better get to bed. Started back up on Blackout, right when I started this post.

I only have four chapters left in the last book of the Broken Earth trilogy, which is stupidly called The Stone Sky. Honestly, I still think they just switched the last two titles by accident. Regardless, I'm due for one more chapter with each character, followed by an epilogue of sorts. I look forward to it.

I really need to get around to writing another book review. I've made a deal with myself to withhold certain amenities from myself until I write a certain number of reviews, and it's been tough. There's a lot that I want to do but can't.

I looked through some of Ben Orlin's list of books he loved in 2018, and realized that my life was woefully lacking in both books and lists. That's not about to change any time soon, but it might change later. I will, as always, do the best I can.

I read two short stories, Sally by Isaac Asimov and The Aleph by Jorge Luis Borges. Neither left that much of an impression on me, but they were both great stories. I'd recommend Sally more, as The Aleph is a bit opaque, which might have something to do with the translation.

When searching for Borges' story on Google, I typed in a=l, attempting for "aeleph (sic)," and a frankly ridiculous number of equations popped up in the autocomplete, but before I could process them I had deleted my search. It did not work a second time.

I tried to find The Morae River again, but it had disappeared. It seems the artist is doing well, however, so I'm happy for him. You can still find some of his drawings in some places. I'm sad that it's gone, though. If only there were like archives of the internet or something.

I have a new computer now. It's strange and all, but it does well. The battery definitely lasts much longer than my old one, probably.

I just finished the song You. I think I'll stop here.

Here I Stand in the Light of Day

Mere moments ago, I finished reading Project Palisade. It was pretty good, although I do have one major complaint about the pacing. But hey, overall the story was great, so I can't wait to read the rest of the contest entries. That's not why I decided to write this post, though. Right now I kinda-need to kinda-vent.

So. Right now I'm in the process of choosing classes for the semester. And, you see, I'm having some trouble. The well-behaved part of my schedule are the classes Physics and Galois Theory, which alternate Monday through Thursday in the same time-slot, leafing together nice and neatly. Those together are two credits, and I want a kinda chill semester so I need two more. That's where the trouble is.

I need to take a Spanish class this semester; otherwise I won't move on to be a Junior next year (which probably doesn't have lasting repercussions, but everyone acts like it does). There's two sections that I'm willing to take, one at 9:25 and one at 10:30. At first I thought I liked the 9:25 professor better, but now I'm not sure. I'm going to gather more data.

Then there's the last slot, in which I want to do some math thing, which is either XXXtR3MaL CoMb1nAtOrIX (Extremal Combinatorics) with Pat who is great, or Real Analysis with someone else who is not as great. Combinatorics conflicts with the 9:25 Spanish section though, which was a problem.

So, I've gotta let something go. Ultimately what I've decided to do is to not take Combinatorics. This is the real reason I wanted to make this post; it's a kind of goodbye to the idea of taking Combinatorics. See, I really like Pat as a professor, and he's really passionate about combinatorics in particular, so the class is bound to be a riot. Also, Pat might be leaving after this semester, which means this could be my last chance to take a class with him.

All that said, though, I've made up my mind. I don't think I could stand a second tough problem-set based math course (the first being Galois), and as fun as it would be to take a graduate course as a sophomore, Real Analysis just seems eminently more doable. Also it meets at 9:00 AM like who does that For that reason alone, I've decided to take Real Analysis this semester. As for Extremal Combinatorics, I'm going to have to... let it go. (TITLE CARD!)

So that takes care of the initial reason I wanted to write, but there's also more things I'd like to talk about. Mostly other things I'm having to do without. Like food, for example. (I had no time for dinner today. It was sad.) But there's also silly little goals that I'd had. One example is the "take a grad course as a sophomore" thing. No grad courses on my schedule, unfortunately.

Another was the idea of completing all of my distributional requirements as a sophomore, which I could have done had I taken level 4 Spanish (I'm currently in level 3, but I could go higher if I wanted to work more, which I don't) and a Writing credit. Didn't end up happening. Although I'm honestly okay with that. It would've been rad, but not that rad.

I coulda sworn I'd had more things than that. That's only like three things. Four if you count food. But yeah, I'm letting them all go. Letting go of the graduate class, the finished requirements, the Pat. Don't need them in my life. Whoosh, they vanish.

Okay, to end on a lighter note, I've got a little story. Earlier today at the copy shop where I was getting my Spanish book, for the first time ever, someone mistook me for a woman and didn't then correct to male. I was in a corner of the shop, looking at my phone to figure out what exactly I needed, when she called out to me from behind the counter, "Ma'am, do you need anything?"

When I turned to look at her, rather than responding the way I'm used to ("Oh, sorry, sir, do you need any help?"), she stopped and said, "Oh, uh, I mean–." I didn't react, and not a half-second later she'd composed herself. Then, for the rest of the conversation (in which I did in fact purchase the book), she avoided referring to me by any gender. This small interaction filled me with so much joy that I even forgot for a few minutes the fact that I'd just paid $260 on a single class, which is borderline robbery.

Wait that's not a high note. Uh. Focus on the joy bit. Bye.