Labs!

While tucking Sue into bed tonight (she's a very early to bed person, for those of you not in the know), she likes me to regale her with stories from my sordid and sorry past. So, tonight, I took the leap back to High School.

Oddly enough, I could remember who I had for every class, and stories were pouring out. I was recalling the time Freshman year, in Honors Introductory Physical Science (HIPS), where I semi-orchestrated a change of lab partner. I was partnered with a friend, as was my friend Brian. For a big project (the Sludge Test, perhaps?), I knew that working with my present partner just wouldn't work. Brian may have felt the same way about his partner, so I think one morning, before we started, I just said, "Brian and I are working together, you two can work together on the Sludge Test."

I don't remember there being a lot of personal hub-bub about changing partners, although I could be just blocking that out. I do know that Brian and I remained lab partners through sophomore year Honors Biology. We might have remained lab partners throughout High School, had it not been for Honors Algebra II during Sophomore year.

In our High School, like many, if you were in 3 honors classes, odds were you were going to be in the 4th. That's how I ended up in Honors Algebra II for my sophomore year. I was generally okay at math, but no superstar. However, that year in Algebra II, I didn't get a quarter ending grade above a 78, I believe. I didn't fail, but I came pretty close (failing in our school was 69 or below).

Admittedly, I was not the best at math, but the teacher I had that year just was not good at explaining the material. I know this, because the next year, when I was in level 2 pre-calc, the teacher I had (Mrs. Mechura, the best math teacher I ever had) explained everything I didn't get about Algebra II in the first 3 weeks of the review of material from the previous year. I went on get 90's and above each quarter senior year in Calculus, and getting a 5 on the AB Calculus AP exam. So, take that!

Anyway, at the end of sophomore year, when I met with my guidance counselor to go over my schedule for junior year, she told me that I was going to be in Honors English, History, and Chemistry. Great! But then, she said that I was also recommended for Honors Pre-Calc.

Hold the phones! I barely passed Honors Algebra II! Why would I be in Honors Pre-Calc?

Well, it was what I was recommended to go into, and if I was in the three honors classes, there was no Level 2 pre-calc class to enroll in. So, I made the choice, sadly, to forgo the Honors AP Chemistry class, and took Level 2 pre-calc and chemistry. And did quite well in each class, thank you very much.

I can't recall, but it is possible that it was also the same teacher from Honors Algebra II, who was going to teach Honors Pre-Calc. That may have also played into my decision to not be in that Honors level class.

Brian, any memories from that HIPS lab partner changeover that I'm missing? Did I make anyone cry? Was I a good lab partner? I need affirmation for stuff from 20 years ago. Really.

Actually, I don't. But it's fun to talk about this stuff. I like to talk about the past, to focus on the future. It's not to be maudlin or depressing, although sometimes it can go in that direction.

Generally, I enjoyed Junior and Senior year of High School more than Freshman and Sophomore year. Freshman year, people were still kind of immature, and we're freshman, so we get the short end of the stick in everything. Sophomore year was fun, but it was really the last two years where I felt like things were firing on all chambers. Good times. Glad it's over.

NP: The Mars Volta - Cygnus...Vismund Cygnus

Snow!

So, today at work, we got a delayed opening until 10am, so I could rest/sleep a little longer...

Then, at 10:45am, we get a call at work that the College is closing at 11am because of the snow. Was it even worth it coming in for a short period of time? Did people in charge not realize how the roads were?

Living in VT/NH for the past eight years, this is minimal snow, but I can see it being hard for people driving who are not used to it. I will certainly take the afternoon off, and be all good with it. I've cleaned up a bit, listened to some music, and am reading my book, "Monster Nation" by David Wellington.

It's a good fun quick read, but if "World War Z" is a meal of a book, this is a good snack. I think Brooks in his zombie world thought through the zombie issue a bit more thoroughly than Wellington in his. I am still unclear if you have to be bit in order to become a zombie, or whether you can "catch" the zombie sickness in some other way.

In other news, I'm going to shoot for getting tickets to see The Police at MSG this coming August. Tickets go on sale on Tuesday, so we'll see if I can get some. The most expensive ones are in the $200 dollar range, I'm going to shoot for the $55 range tickets. You could join the Police fanclub for $100, and get access to a presale, but that seems a bit much to join a club. At least when Genesis tickets go on sale, there's no charge for members of their message boards.

More later!

Taxes!

Just finished doing our taxes on Turbo Tax tonight. We're getting refunds on all three returns (federal, NY, and NJ), so yippee for us!

The state ones are tiny, but they usually are. This is the first time we're filing state taxes since 2001, since we've lived in New Hampshire since then, and there's no state income tax there.

It helped that our moving expenses were deductible. That's a big chunk of cash right there.

It's snowing out. Yay!

NP: Led Zeppelin - I Can't Quit You Baby

Show!

Joe and I recorded a new episode of Pseudocertainty last night. Included this week are reactions to 1-31, Atlantis news, the aurora spacecraft, the Doomsday Vault, and a long discourse on the Harry Potter books.

Joe has been reading the books for the first time, so we were able to have a good discussion about aspects of the books that we both recognize, as fans of epic storytelling. We had prior phone conversations earlier in the week, that we should have just recorded for the purposes of the show, that dealt with a lot of the Potter stuff we discussed yesterday.

If the show's not up at the site already, it should be up pretty soon...

I finished reading "Monster Island" by David Wellington, the most recent book about modern day zombies that I've finished. It tells the story of DeKalb, a UN Weapons Inspector in Somalia, who has to bring a group of soldiers to the zombie-fied city of New York, to get AIDS medication for the leader of the group of people who are holding his daughter as a "guest." While in NYC, DeKalb meets Gary, a med student who intentionally turned himself into a zombie, figuring that he'd get eaten if he didn't. He did this by infecting himself, and then keeping himself on life support while the transformation occurred. In this way, he kept his brain from lacking oxygen, so he didn't get stupid like all the other zombies.

The book overall was a good quick read, and I'm starting the sequel today, "Monster Nation," which actually tells the story of the outbreak, so is actually a prequel. I think I still prefer the zombie approach that Max Brooks takes in his books "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z," where the zombies don't have any glimpse of humanity, but it's good to read something that is a different flavor than what I'm used to in my zombie literature.

I actually didn't even realize, before reading Brooks' books that there was a zombie genre of writing out there, but I really shouldn't be surprised.

Yesterday, Sue and I went to go see Smokin' Aces. I won't bother summarizing the plot here, there are plenty of other sites that do that type of work. We did both generally enjoy the movie, although the ending got stretched out a bit longer than it really needed to be. I did like how in the first 20-30 minutes, you leared that any character could get killed at any time, because it's usually so predictable who will live to be the hero to the end of any film.

More to come! Battlestar Galactica is on tonight, so I have to get ready for that...

NP: Fish - Institution Waltz