Sometimes I'm hesitant to pick up my computer since it seems these days all I do is sit at a computer. Such is my new life though. I'm one of those now. But I cherish the times I can pick up my computer and speak English to it, and "use my words" as opposed to code. Sometimes I don't want to have to tell my computer that for i in arange(len(x)/4): N.mean([T,0]).
I was just laying on my living room floor as I like to do sometimes to gain perspective. Try it some time. Just lay down on the floor. No pillows or anything. Maybe because it grounds me, I don't know. When I'm doing a homework problem I just can't get a handle on, I pull my notebook down to the floor and it's solved within minutes. When life throws more at me than I feel able to handle, I lay on the floor and stare at the ceiling. Straightens me right out.
Today I noticed that I've been talking to myself out loud in public a little more than usual. I think talking to one's self is fairly normal, but for some reason society has deemed it unacceptable in public. Call me crazy, but...well actually you might call me crazy. I think it's the stress.
Tuesday was just one small incident. Not a big deal really, but it started me thinking.
I was overwhelmed. I took a horrible, terrible, nightmarish calculus exam on Monday and then had a surprise quiz Tuesday morning. My headlight decided to pick that day to burn out. I had to pick up a prescription at Rite Aid so I figured after that I'd go in search of an auto parts store.
As I pulled into the Rite Aid parking lot, I saw an O'Reilly's Auto Parts sign. It was in the same exact parking lot!
"The gods are smiling down on me!" I shouted.
Oops. I looked around. I'd like to think no one heard. But what on earth was that?
Also noted was the very small amount of luck that made such a huge difference in my day. I was having that kind of week where any tiny amount of help from the gods was just a brilliant light at the end of a long dark tunnel (maybe from an oncoming train?).
I got my prescription and my headlight and went home and installed the thing. A little tricky but no big deal. Trying to shove a headlight and hands into a tiny area was slightly challenging, but I did it and it worked. Time to study for the next day's physics exam and get some of my meteorology homework done.
Yesterday I woke up at 4:30am, went to the gym and did leg weights and then went for a 5 mile run. I showered, ate, packed my lunch and headed off to school. I finished my notecard for my physics test and did some more studying. Off I went to calculus.
I had to leave calculus early to go to a career panel seminar in the meteorology department. That was almost two hours long. I went back upstairs to my new office to finish my meteorology homework before my physics exam. I didn't quite get it done and the calculations were getting scary.
My physics exam was even scarier. A bullet of mass m is fired into a steel block of mass M and remains embedded and they both slide 6 meters. The coefficient of kinetic friction between the block and the table is .200. What was the bullet's initial velocity?
I remembered doing a problem like that for homework but I'm pretty sure it involved more information. In any case, I think I got halfway to solving it. I found the velocity of the block upon being hit by (and joining with) the bullet but didn't realize that that was what I got. I guess after that I had to repeat my cycle of knowledge and logic and find the speed of the bullet before it hit the block. Bah. Anyway.
However, it turns out that if the potential energy (U) for a pair of atoms is (a/r)-(b/r^2) where r is their separation, then it can be said that those atoms repel each other. So that's good.
I was so exhausted coming home from my physics exam, but I still had work to do.
I got home and pulled out my homework and as I stared down out the equations for calculating vapor pressure and dew point temperatures, my eyes watered and burned. I couldn't keep them open. I went to bed and decided to cancel my workout for this morning so I could get to school early and finish my homework.
4:30am came early this morning. My coffee pot gurgled and sputtered as I tried to pry my eyes open and pull myself out of bed. I grabbed a cup, put it on my end table and curled up under the blankets, waiting for it to cool down enough to drink. I had two cups and managed to get to my office/school before 7am. We were low on water for coffee. I went two floors down and hauled a large jug of water up two flights of stairs and started a pot.
I managed to finish my meteorology homework and entered class just before 9 am partway through my 5th cup of coffee. I thought about Debbie's old blog "It's a Three Cup Day". I should change mine to "It's a 12 cup day."
About halfway through cup 5 I decided I should not have any more coffee. But I didn't want it to spill and I'm pretty sure it's a crime to dump coffee, so I downed it while furiously scribbling notes on adiabatic lapse rates.
Then our meteorology lab started. I knew there were leftover cupcakes in the grad room (I forgot how awesome cupcakes taste! I love sugar!!!). I kept dreaming of them. I tried to grasp the difference between mid latitude and tropical cyclones while my body tried to handle too much caffeine and fatigue.
Cupcaaakes.......
I kept taking notes. A couple of the girls fell behind in the notes and the instructor had to repeat them. I already had them down. I was highly caffeinated. Now would be a good time to go get that whole thing of cupcakes and bring them in for everyone. Most of the people in the class are undergrads who are afraid to venture into the grad room.
I turned in my chair to eyeball the door. One of the guys had snuck out and was coming back in with a cupcake.
"Seriously?" I said. "You didn't bring any for everyone else?"
The whole class turned around and gave him hell. Suddenly all anyone could think about was cupcakes. Who could focus on warm and cold core lows when this was going on? I stood up and started walking out. One of the girls leaned over and grabbed my arm.
"Are you really going? Are you?" She raised her eyebrows a couple times. "Are you bringing some back for the rest of us? Really?"
I think we were all a little strung out. Most of us are also in the same physics and calculus classes together. A couple hours earlier they had stared blankly at me while I tried to explain how I had gotten the answer to one of the homework problems.
I came back in the room with a box of cupcakes and two boxes of cookies. I put them down in front of the pre-diabetic guy. Oops. Everyone dug in and he asked how they tasted.
Back to cyclones. Three of us girls huddled around a computer now high on caffeine and sugar, watching the paths of cyclones and computing the energy they put out just from latent heat of condensation alone. More than some Soviet bomb that happened some time ago.
But then there was Katrina and Catarina and we were supposed to compare them. Apparently our excited buzzing about which hurricanes or cyclones we were supposed to be comparing was drawing a lot of attention. All three of us were so out of it we didn't even notice.
"Wait, who are we comparing?"
"George and Isabel."
"We didn't see Isabel."
"Yes we did, back at the beginning, look."
"No, that was Wilma."
"No, it's Isabel. Look....oh wait. Hmm. That's Wilma."
"So we're comparing George and Wilma."
"I think we're supposed to get it out of the text."
"What text?"
"George and Katrina."
"Wait, what was that video on?"
"That was George."
"Hmmm...wait, let's see what it says right here. Hmm...comparing side by side."
I should note at this point we had been staring at two cyclones sitting side by side on our computer screens for quite some time now. None of us picked up on the fact that what we were supposed to be comparing were literally staring us straight in the face.
"Hey, look at this! What is this?" I clicked on the photo of Katrina. I clicked on the photo of Catarina. "Look! Catarina, Katrina, Catarina, Katrina, Catarina, Katrina (as I clicked back and forth between the tabs, highly fascinated). This one says Katrina, but this one says Catarina. Is that a typo? Look at that."
"That's two different cyclones I think."
"Really? Oh, that's dumb. Who would give names like that?"
We stared at the screen a little longer.
"Comparing side by side. Hey, I think we're supposed to compare these two....let's see....oh yeah! It says so right here. Compare Catarina and Katrina!"
We turned around when we heard chuckling behind us. Two instructors and the rest of the class were all sitting, listening and observing. We might have been pretty loud. We were pretty spun up.
We finished the lab and I set about trying to pick my classes for next semester (or rather which sections of my classes to take as my classes are decided for me). My meteorology classes are set in stone and I have to figure out how to fit physics and calculus around those.
Ahhh....tricky situation though as calculus III (yeah, the third semester of calculus if I ever get through this one) only has 8 sections, 3 of which are out of the question because they butt up with meteorology (you know what? It sucks trying to spell meteorology all the time....from hence forth it shall be MET and you will either understand it or you will not. I quit. Right now.....anyway) classes.
The calculus classes are filling up already and as a grad student I can't add an undergrad class until the first day of classes when they're all full anyway.... unless I can schmooze an add code from an instructor. Turns out I can do it for physics. It has yet to work for the math department. Jerks.
I came crashing down from my coffee/sugar high about the same time that I realized there's a possibility that I won't be able to get the classes I need due to some retarded rule no one has bothered to fix.
I went up to my desk upstairs to sulk over my salad for awhile.
And....as it turns out, when you replace a headlight on your vehicle, you're not supposed to touch the glass with your hands. I guess the oils on your hands heat up more than the glass, which causes the glass to heat up unusually...which causes the damn bulb inside to explode. Who designs these things and why is this warning not printed on the box? Seriously?
So I replaced the headlight again today....
I started this blog to discuss my talking to myself in public habit and apparently got off topic. Today I caught myself having a full on conversation out loud up in the lab, which fortunately I was the only one there. The thing is, when I'm in these little, well, I don't know...moments? I just don't even realize I'm doing it until I snap out of it and realize I'm doing it out loud. It's not just in my head anymore. Should've stopped the voices while they were still in my head, "harmless".
Yesterday walking to my physics test I was kind of doing it but not really out loud....except that I was making all the facial expressions (and possibly hand motions) of being in a conversation. My eyes focused on a girl coming at me who was looking right at me. Shit. I smiled and said hi, she smiled back.
Eeek. I wondered how much she saw. I also wonder how much the 200 other people walking by me in between classes saw. How is this happening? Am I schizophrenic? And now that I think about it, does the "phrenic" part of schizophrenic have anything to do with the phrenic nerve? Hmmm....is there a phrenic nerve or am I making this up?
Oooh! Ha! There is a phrenic nerve. Googled it. It's important. It's in your cervical spine. Keeps you breathing. Probably has nothing to do with schizophrenia.
I had so much studying to do today when I got home from class......
Nope.
It's almost Friday. I need to breathe.
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