Traveling (and Other Observations)

About a month ago, I returned from my trip to Italy.  Although most of you reading this have heard about the trip, for the sake of completeness, I'll post the high- (or low-) lights here:

• I still don't eat a whole lot when I'm nervous.  And I get nervous traveling alone.  As such, by the time I arrived back in the United States, my belt was fastened at the last hole and was still loose.
• I missed the derecho on June 29th.  Fortunately, it appeared that my apartment didn't lose power.
• The city of Padova does not have many English speakers outside the university or train station.  However, Venice is practically bilingual.
• I was glad that I decided to book a hotel next to the airport the night before returning as the organizers did not call me to let me know when the airport shuttle was supposed to pick me up the next morning.
• One gets a lot of food with a meal in Italy.
• My adviser found out about Victoria and me, and is very happy about it.  I think she may have been happier for Victoria than she was for me.
• I had to give my talk in front of one of the experts in compressible fluids.  Yeah, my first talk at a conference--no pressure.  But, my adviser says it went well, and was extremely excited about it until, well, see the previous point.

In other travel news, my parents and sister went to Hawaii for about two weeks.  I didn't go, and am glad I did not since I would have just gotten back from Italy and I need to save up for a couple of upcoming trips.  First, I have to go back to San Diego for the AMS/MAA Joint Meeting in January (and hopefully will get to take Victoria with me, but probably not), and then next spring or summer after I defend, I am planning to go to Greece.  You can probably guess why.  So for someone who didn't fly at all after the summer of 1994 until November 2011, I have and will have done a fair bit of flying from November 2011 through the summer of 2013.

Oh, and for those of you who missed the Facebook update, this post has been typed on my new computer (thank you Nick for getting it ordered).  Yes, after nine years, I have retired the Gateway.  I still have it as a backup, but it has earned a bit of a rest. Thanks to Jon, the computer is properly equipped in the way of software (i.e., Portal and Portal 2).  Now if I can find a nice LaTex editor and compiler, I will really be set.

Whoooooooooooooooooooooo!

First of all, congratulations to Laura and Nick on their wedding, and thanks for letting me be a part of it. 

Second (and the reason for this post), after 2195 days (I did the calculation waiting at a red light while driving home this morning), I have a girlfriend, whom most of you met at the wedding, so I will refrain from gushing about her here. 

Now comes the hard part: telling my adviser this week.  That should be interesting.

But yeah, it may be a while before the smirk disappears.

Mate In Two?

On Saturday, for the first time in my life, I will be bringing a date to a wedding.  Yes, that means those of you at Laura's and Nick's wedding will get to meet Victoria.  As such, I believe I may be well into the endgame of things (the chess reference leading to the title, despite how dirty you may want the title to be--*cough* Jess *cough*).  It couldn't hurt that I had barely finished the question when she said yes, right?

So, yeah, today was a good day.

The End of Uncertainty

So, it seems my last post was back in January.  I believe that means it is time for an update (okay, several updates).

• The proofs for my first published article have been reviewed and submitted.  So in a few months, I think, I will be a published author in a mathematical journal.
• My talk about that paper and a slight extension was accepted for the conference I am attending in Italy at the end of June.  However, I still have to cut 15 minutes of it out.
• My advisor and I submitted my second paper a couple of weeks ago.  We'll probably find out about it by the end of the year.
• My dissertation prospectus has been approved.  I am planning to defend in March.  Fortunately, I pretty much have over half of it written.
• I will in the next few weeks be getting a new computer.  I think it is time to retire, with full honors, the Gateway after nearly nine years.

But none of the above items even comes close to the biggest news in my life right now--I may be on the verge of no longer being single.  (A couple of you already know about this, and can skim this part of the post.)  She's a fellow applied math graduate student at Maryland, and, well, I'll refrain from gushing too much.  I have gotten farther in dating her than I have in dating anyone else since, well, since I had a girlfriend.  Over the past couple of weeks, I have attended a game night and potluck dinner with her, spent lots of time on campus talking, attended one of her choral concerts, had dinner with her out in Silver Spring, ate a lunch she made and brought to campus, and Saturday spent the day touring EU embassies with her and her roommate.  And today, we spent about 90 minutes to two hours just talking.  So, I am more than slightly optimistic. 

Yet, there is still uncertainty.  We will be going to lunch together sometime this week.  I'm not sure, but I think I may have THE talk with her then.  Hopefully, I can judge if it is a good idea.  But I have to do something; the uncertainty has started killing my mathematical productivity.  And while my advisor would almost certainly understand, I can't tell her why.  (Unless I want my life to get VERY interesting.)

So, yeah, expect a mood extreme from me in the next week or so.  I'm not sure which way it will go, but I am hopeful.  Wish me luck, because I am going to need it when I check Schrödinger's cat.

2011: A Look Back

Yes, I know it has been a while since my last post.  Granted, the only major event in my life that has been missed in that time was the trip to San Diego for a conference.  Now, in what has become an annual tradition, I give you a recap of my 2011.

1. At the beginning of the year, I officially advanced to candidacy.  Thus, my time at the university is spent on my research, with no more classes to take.
2. I served as a teaching assistant for what will probably be the last time as a graduate student.  Luckily, I did get a nice letter of recommendation for my file when I covered two sections at a time for four hours at the end of April.
3. The dateless streak fell on the Ides of March.  Granted, it hasn't led to anything lasting, but it is a step in the right direction.  And it absolves me from any forced blind dates as a agreed to at the beginning of the year.
4. The move occurred.  And after three years of living alone, I'm liking having a roommate.
5. I attended my first professional conferences this fall.  One was in Pittsburgh, the other in San Diego, marking the first time I have seen the Pacific Ocean and the farthest west I have been in my life.  It was also in the San Diego where I found out that I am my advisor's first doctoral student.
6. My first mathematical paper, co-written by my advisor, was submitted and accepted this December.  So in a few months, I officially will be published.
7. I was elected to another two-year term on my church council, despite having warned them that I am not sure where I'll be in eighteen months or so.  Oh well, I gave them an out.

Thus, 2011 was a very good year professionally, and not half-bad personally.  Here's hoping the trend continues.

Next post: A non-political look ahead to 2012.  (There will be plenty of opportunities for politics next year, I think.)

Standards (EC-10)

No, this is not a post about definitions for units of measurement.  Instead, it deals with a more personal issue in my life.  As you can probably guess with the lack of updates on the front, my dating life lately has been nonexistent.  OKCupid has been dry lately.  As such, I'm beginning to wonder a couple of things.  First, are my standards too high?  In a nutshell, they are

• Straight, single, non-smoking female
• Not on drugs
• Reasonably well-educated (i.e., college degree)
• Christian (just to clear up any confusion, Catholics count as Christian)
• Be willing to consider waiting until marriage (I'm not sure that this will happen, but I do want the option open to me.)
• Live nearby (within 25 or so miles)

N.B.: I consider dating a means to an end, the end being finding someone I would marry.  Hence some of the standards.

The other thing I've been wondering about lately is if it is in the cards for me to actually marry someone.  I know it is probably premature for me to be thinking such thoughts (I am only 26, after all), but it has been almost five and a half years of being single now.  It is getting very, very old.  It also doesn't help that I know of three couples getting married next year, and another one who just got engaged.  So, yeah, that explains the emo post.  Hey, it has been ten months since the last EC-10 post (yes, I went back and checked).  But I needed to write it down/verbalize it at some point.

In happier news, research is coming along well.  I give a talk next week, and will likely have two papers submitted in the next couple of months.  At least that part of my life is coming along.

Also, since I haven't had to preach a sermon in a while, but have had some good sermon ideas pop into my mind, I am thinking of starting a second blog for that.  I would probably also want others who are interested in writing their own Christian sermons/homilies/musings to join in as well (you know who you are).  I still want to think about this for a bit though, especially about the details, but if you are interested, let me know.

Okay, that's enough for this post (and hopefully this insomnia, as you can tell from the time-stamp).  I think I need to update a bit more frequently so that I'm not writing a mini-dissertation for each post.

Year Number Four

My fourth, and probably second-to-last, year as a graduate student has begun.  Hopefully the earthquake and hurricane from the previous week aren't omens of things to come.  I don't get to teach this year, mainly so that I can focus on my research and go to conferences like the one in Pittsburgh in October and possibly one in San Diego in mid-November.  If I go to the San Diego conference, I may get to visit my aunt and uncle in Albuquerque on the way back.

Anyway, since it apparently has been about a month and a half since I last updated this thing, I guess a status report is in order.

• The move is completed, as many of you have seen.  I also finally got the move-out voucher from Graduate Hills last week, so that lease is ended with no damage charges.  Looks like those pictures I took weren't needed after all.
• On the subject of pictures: during the cleaning for the move, my cell phone fell into a bucket of water.  Fortunately, after a night of drying out, it worked the next day, but since two years had elapsed since I got it, I was able to replace it just in case.  Thus, I now have a cell phone with a camera, QWERTY keyboard (the one without was more expensive for some reason), and Internet capabilities.  This last feature came in handy for
• Hurricane Irene.  We lost power here for about 24 hours, but I still got to check email.  And I still am adjusting to having water without electricity.
• I have had another date since the last post, but nothing is going to come of it.
• I have watched Frederick County politics devolve into corruption that even the DC government would shake its head about.  The county commissioners are now proposing that instead of county inspectors, developers would hire their own inspectors to inspect new buildings.  Yeah, that's not a conflict of interest at all.  Maybe the General Assembly will consider legislation allowing for recalls of county commissions in the next session.
• And time to rant about CNN: CNN.com recently had a poll asking people if they believed the US is in a recession.  By the definition, the country is not.  However, about 80% of people think it is.  Guess what, CNN--it doesn't matter that the majority of people think we are in a recession.  If the economic conditions do not meet the requirements of the definition, we are not in one.  So I guess that means 80% of the respondents to the poll question do not know what they are talking about.  Of course, a better question to ask would be "Do you think the United States will soon be in a recession?"  That to me is a reasonable question to ask as a poll question.  Chalk it up to another case of the "news" media screwing up our political system.  Okay, rant over.

So, that is my life over the past month or so in a nutshell.  Not very exciting, but productive.