Christmas Eve and Geek Happiness.

Ok, so I'm sitting in my Christmas pjs, drinking egg nog, watching Christmas movies, and enjoying the sight of my Christmas tree. And I do love the sight of a Christmas tree! According to family tradition, I opened one present tonight. I called Momola to tell her which present I had chosen, since it was one of her contributions to my Christmas, and she said, "oh, that's a gag gift, you might be disappointed." Hah, I'm so excited about it not only am I glad I decided I had time to make the pecan pie tomorrow morning, I'm tempted to make it right now, at 11pm, in order to use my gift. You see, she found me a PI plate! I love it so much I took a picture.

How wonderful is this? It's a great start to the holiday, that's for sure. I hope you all have a good morning - I already can't wait for the boys to come over for stockings and breakfast. Then we're out to Virginia for Daddo's turkey dinner with Lady's fixings. I hope Santa is good to you!

Happy Holidays and random trivia.

It was a slightly crazy week, but I was glad it went by fast - it's almost Christmas! I spent Saturday out in the burbs on a shopping frenzy with Momola I'm not going to lie, a lot of that shopping was for me. I needed stuff! Besides, the whole world is on sale! I got bargains, and work clothes, organizational tools for the house, and a fancy party dress for the office party in January that I may miss if my flights don't get in on time. The dress is so wonderful that if I miss the party then I'm making up a reason to go out in that lovely. Also, I "organized" a gathering for the big birthday - nothing big, despite the big birthday, I'm headed to my local, letting people buy me drinks to celebrate my doing nothing but being born, and maybe we'll move on to second bar later in the evening - anyone's welcome to come along, we'll be at Commonwealth around 8pm, AND Lee has promised to come up. No night with Lee ever goes by without a story to tell!

Ok, on my first night out post-disease, I met a new friend who introduced me to this piece of trivia:

What temperature does it have to be outside for spit to freeze before it hits the ground?

I'll tell next time.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Rockin' around the Christmas tree.

This is my beautiful Christmas tree, and this evening, while throwing virtual snowballs on Facebook, I looked up to find this:

a little kittay under the Christmas tree! She even stayed there while I plugged in the lights for optimal effect. And yes, those are dancing penguins on the floor, I have a feeling we went through this last year. Anyway, this year the artificial tree is new(er) and bigger, so the string of penguin lights gets a little lost, which is unfortunate; I may have to think of a new approach next year. But the ornaments are either penguins, glass balls, or glass eggs. I'm still in love with those penguin lights, though:
I mean, really, how great is that? My aunt found them for me a couple of years ago.

So yeah, that cat has claimed a spot under the tree, and I'm not going to put any presents there, because I'm a big sucker like that, and it's cute.

Those headlights are giggle-worthy, as well.

Sleeping sickness.

I was sick as a dog last week, coughed my way to a lone seat on the train coming back from New York, and it only got worse from there. I even stayed home sick one day - without having to use any sick time, which peeves me - but by the end of the day Thursday I was dragging. I made arrangements with my client to be available from home on Friday, but come Friday morning, even that wasn't an option. In addition to the cold that had exploded in my system, nose stopped up, throat raw, and coughing continuously, suddenly Friday morning I found mucus coming out of my eyeball. I know, it's gross, reading about it can't be worse than seeing it, particularly when you're seeing it come out of your own eyeball. A quick google search found conjunctivitis as the most likely cause, especially as preceeded by a sinus condition, such as a cold.

That's right, I had pink eye.

It was 6 o'clock in the morning when I woke up to this mess, and I couldn't call my doctor until after 9am. It was a miserable three hours spent carefully wiping my eye with cotton balls, washing my hands, and calling Momola to yell at her for giving me the grossness. (Note: that's not actually confirmed, but it turns out two people in her office floor were contaminated, and she saw them more than I, and the day before I had noted her red eyes. Also, I didn't actually yell, I merely guilted her into packing up and heading for the doctor herself.) I finally got in touch with my doctor's office and made an appointment, which required I rol into sweatpants, and a hat (bed head only affects me when I want to leave the house without showering) and head for the bus - I'm sure the folks on the bus were pumped to see me, coughing and blowing my nose, with one eye red, puffy, and half-closed.

My doctor is a taciturn man, whose occasional attempts at humor are those you'd expect from a doctor, "oh, you work for the government, you could tell me, but then you'd have to kill me, eh?" Except imagine that in a toneless deadpan. He seems generally unimpressed with any attempts for the patient to demonstrate knowledge - as he told me how to care for my eyes as if I were a small child I stepped in and told him I had been doing just as he said, and he just looked at me for a moment before continuing as if I hadn't interrupted. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy, just a little short on the people skills. It actually freaks me out less than the doctors who are overly cheerful. I walked away with a prescription for eye drops and an admonition that I was highly contagious for 5 days and told to stay away from the general population. I got back on the bus and headed to Target, where I was told that they didn't have my eye drops in stock. Thinking that if I had to get back on the bus and go to the hospital pharmacy I'd be really annoyed (and already annoyed that I was going to be housebound for 5 days) I headed to the worst CVS ever. They had the eye drops... and every crying baby for a mile around. Here I am feeling awful for standing within six feet of any small person and risking passing the pink eye around, and these mothers keep crowding closer to me in line, cause it's a good idea to stand closer to someone whose eye is slowly closing. While the prescription was being filled, I headed back to Target to stock up on amusement for the next five days.
I acquired:

• new holiday pajamas (complete with holly berries)
• a penguin t-shirt
• a new wrap sweater that I never did get to wear, because they've turned the heat on in my apartment, oh, but it's wonderful
• penguin underpants (they came in a trio with holiday ornament underpants!)
• Arrested Development Season 2
• cold drugs (because when I cave, I cave absolutely)
• enough food to tide me over until the next day's Peapod delivery

And so I've spent the past five days at home, and until today, sleeping. We're talking all but six hours of the day sleeping, and they weren't consecutive. Even yesterday I was afraid that going back to work on Wednesday would be rough, but today I have been awake all day, nap-free! I put up and decorated my Christmas tree (penguins!) , wrapped some presents, did some online Christmas shopping, and even did some laundry - yay, me! I'm sure a full day tomorrow is going to wreck me, but I'm really excited about leaving the house tomorrow!

Oh yeah, and there are pictures of the tree - I'll post them later.

Only mathematicians...

Once again I found myself in a room surrounded by mathematicians and engineers. This time it wasn't beaches and ocean waters outside the meeting room, but the hustle and bustle of New York City, and all the people watching that goes along with it. Staring at equations, I found myself thinking many times, "only mathematicians." Only mathematicians schedule a two-day workshop for Friday and Saturday. In New York City.

So OK. I had my nights off dinner plans made. I could make it through. I was hopping the train at the end of the day Saturday so that I could have Sunday at home and breakfast with the boys. But back on point.

Only mathematicians still use slides and an overhead projector. He'd even written additional notes by hand with a marker. He stood up there looking like Geoffrey's Marmoset and talking so earnestly about Fourier domains. There was also the engineer who poked himself in the nose with the expandable pointer. He was absolutely shocked when it happened, too. I'm not sure why, I saw it coming.

But my absolute favorite is when academics are accidentally dirty while giving a talk. It happens more often than you'd think. Either that or I think about sex entirely too often - also a possibility. This time it was, "if you push me hard, you might not like the answers I give, but if you stroke me softly, you'll be more satisfied." I find myself looking around at these moments to see if anyone else has caught the double entendre. I'm generally alone. Probably for the best - if I caught another knowing eye I'd laugh out loud. And I don't laugh softly.

on travel.

I just got back from a quick trip up to NYC for a math workshop. While waiting for a friend at a restaurant I actually wrote out a post about the meeting itself - mathematicians are funny. But this weekend I haven't had time to log in and type it up. I actually worked both days this weekend, and I started to elaborate on that fact, but just sounded whiny. I've worked the weekend away, and am hoping to take some time off at the end of the week to compensate. We'll see how that goes. I wasn't the only person frustrated with having to work over the weekend, however. As the train pulled into Union Station, a man across the aisle, completely content to hold an inane conversation with his cute, young, co-worker while the train was moving, suddenly became "the guy who must be first off the train." Now I sympathize with that guy, I am that guy - to a point. Saturday night, I wanted to turn around and say, "Look, buddy, sigh one more time. Because that really lets me and everyone ese in front of you in the aisle know just how much we're in your way." You should have seen his face when I ended up in front of him in the cab line... the evil part of me grinned.

poke the bear.

After all of the feasting of Thanksgiving, and the impulsive shopping of Black Friday (who needs to buy Christmas presents? I got a dresser!) I was looking forward to a visit with Eric and Annie, who's baby bump is now impressive at 6 months. We went to the zoo, where an exhausted looking gorilla still hasn't given birth, and saw Golden-Lion Tamarins use a sleeping sloth bear as a hammock - right before they took food from the bear's mouth! Now, sloths are slow-moving creatures, but they do have some nasty looking claws, and I'd be loath to actually reach into the mouth of any creature that much bigger than me. But they did!

It was hilarious to watch. We also saw red pandas, always a hit, and Eric had to be dragged away from watching some copulating orangutans - yes, they do it all the time.

The rest of the visit was low-key, and involved a lot of discussion of baby names. Eric's favorite seems to be Limpkins Oakenstaff, which would involve a lot of beatings on the playground, but might be a character builder.

All-in-all, my holiday weekend was a raging success, and I had a great time. And of course, there's a picture of the bump: