Travelogue

I caught the embers of a beautiful sunset over Denver which was a great ending to the day. Of course, that was six hours ago and I am still awake, but by now the word "day" has taken on a very malleable meaning. But, I am back on break, so it is time for me to resume putting up blog posts. I shall endeavor to get two a couple of topics I was asked to elaborate on, but today we shall discuss my Monday/Tuesday.

For reasons of sleep and stress, Monday and Tuesday have sort of been one big day to me, one in which I took a lot of naps, but a day nonetheless. Monday started with the usual semester end "celebration," proctoring, then spending six hours in a room with the other MTH 133 instructors/TA's grading 500 or so exams. However, instead of finishing grading then proceeding to enter grades and relax, instead I spent much of the evening attempting to scratch the arcane surface of my number theory homework. The less said about that, the better. I whiled away the rest of the night watching TV on the internet packing. Then I went back in to the math building, where exhaustion caught up with me and I grabbed two hours of sleep on my office floor. Why did I come to school then fall asleep first thing, rather than sleeping in my own bed, probably out of fear that I wouldn't wake up on time from my own bed.

After scraping myself off the floor, I "finished" my assignment, as well as some administrative tasks, ran some errands, and prepared to venture to the bus. The Wi-Fi was not working on the bus, so I grabbed another hour of sleep in between stops. Unfortunately, I debarked at the wrong terminal, so I was heading into security when my flight was "officially" beginning boarding. Fortunately, security, while crowded, went very smoothly, and I made it to the terminal before the flight actually started boarding. As mentioned, landing in Denver I was treated to a beautiful post-sunset sky. Unfortunately, I landed in Denver at the same time that my next flight was, again "officially," supposed to begin boarding. In reality, we were to the gate at about the same time as boarding began. Since my next flight was just one terminal over, this gave me time to purchase and scarf a sub, since I hadn't eaten in about 12 hours.

Fast forward, I am safe in Oregon. I have no idea what I am doing tomorrow, but I'm sure something will happen, and hopefully it will be good. I have some further thoughts inspired by traveling, but this post has been quite long enough, so expect those tomorrow.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping express lane, 10 items or less.

1) Did a bit of tweaking to the site layout, thanks to everyone who gave feedback *aHEM*

2) I was worried that my great walls of text were daunting prospective readers, and since I don't really want to edit or present half explained ideas, I redesigned the site mainly to make it wider, so the entries seem shorter.

3) I am also worried that the volume of posts are discouraging, so, while I promise not to update more than once per day, I shall try to take some days off. Please respond to the validity of these two fears, if you want less of me feel free to say so.

4) In light of item #3, I am expecting to take tomorrow, Monday, off.

5) In addition to Thoughtful Fridays I think I shall institute Response Tuesdays, where each week my Tuesday update asks for a specific type of contribution. Last Tuesday I asked for subjects that people would want to see posts about.

6) I provided the first requested post yesterday, Saturday, so I do aim to please.

7) You may still send in subject ideas, even if I put up a new Response Tuesday before you take the time to.

8) If a suggested subject seems, in my sole consideration, appropriate for a Thoughtful Friday post I shall save it for a Friday after Femminist July. I am trying to get enough to make a Response August. Thankfully August only has 4 Fridays, so I only need four more topics to fill it up...

9) Today is a month since my bus pass expired, walking more places has enabled me to ride the buss 5 times this month, which saved me $17.

10) I'm doing something a bit different with my sleep schedule. If I seem loopy, all is well since I always seem loopy, if I seem really loopy, let's just let it slide since I really do want to try this. If I seem off my rocker insane, please give me a heads up so I can take that into consideration.

Timely timely

Timely as in it is less than a month since my last post, not that 4:30 AM isn't a fan-freakin-tabulous time to update. I miss having people around to talk with late into the night, apparently when most people are getting sleepy I get the conversational equivalent of the munchies. On that note, here is a thought that I wanted to write about last night, but I had the willpower to force myself to just lie awake in bed, not succumb and get on the computer. No such restraint tonight.

Previously, when thinking of the brain as some state-based computing machine, I had restricted my consideration to the purely electrical, the firing of neurons and whatnot. However, last night it occurred to me that since things like serration affect our mental state, there must be a chemical component to the working of our brains. I found this to be an interesting thought. Since computers are so ubiquitous in my culture, I can relate to a purely electrical brain. Considering a chemical component is like dunking your computer in a stew pot and having it give different outputs based on how the soup tastes as you add different ingredients. Except the computer also controls what is going in the pot. Trippy.

anywho, moral is: surrendering to insomnia leads to better blogging habits.