| Welcome to hokie.us, the online home of the Sonny Waeshal Louie, beloved teacher, soldier, and hokie (class of 2000). After spending the six years teaching, along with a year-long vacation in Afghanistan, I took a year off to finish my masters, only to have that interrupted by another year-long vacation in the Kuwait. Now, I'm back in the classroom getting ready for a new year teaching at West Springfield High School. If and when you want to get to know more about me, take a look in the About Sonny section or e-mail me at sonnylouie@gmail.com.
GOODMAN has the last word. 0431h on January 23, 2012 |
21 October 2010 0535 EST
Anyway, I've been really busy balancing the Guard and married life and school, and I found myself setting my alarm for 4:00 the last few mornings in order to get up to get some grading done. Unfortunately, now that I've finally caught up, my body got used to getting up in the early AM. I actually had a bit of an anxiety dream tonight and found myself waking up at 4:00 even though my alarm wasn't set. In the dream, I walked into my class and my class was in there (all early, so I should've known it was a dream) along with two vice principals. It was like an ambush and they wanted me to show them that I was a good teacher.
It's been an interesting school year so far. I made a concerted effort to make the course more rigorous this year after reflecting on my final exam from last year. I had so many "A" students who did well in my course; but by the end of the year retention was so low, and I had less independent thinking than I'd hoped. So while we "covered" twice as much information as I have at any other school, a majority of the students didn't really learn it.
The results so far? I think I've fielded more complaints from parents and students this year than any previous year. But interestingly enough, I have actually seen a little more progress (in two classes, at least), and I've had fewer drops thus far. Part of my thinks that my personality doesn't fit well with a rigorous course. Sometimes, I think the same about the military. I think I'm too reasonable and accomodating at times, so students think that it's supposed to be a chill class. So when the curriculum is actually difficult, they can't turn it on. Of the few "good" teachers I've observed, they're like nazis in the classroom and everyone has to do things on cue. It kinda makes sense, but part of me feels like people can perform in a more relaxed environment as well, as long as there is structure and routine (which I'd like to think I have). In any case, time to quit blabbing and get ready for school. I think things are looking up.
P.S. Happy birthday, brother.
So anyway, the phone was delivered sometime around 10:00 this morning while I was at work, and I did not get a chance to see it until a little after 9:00 tonight because I stayed late to wrap up a conference call. So far, I have not been able to play with it much, but I've been able to load it up with all of the software/contacts from my old phone. Only trouble I've had so far is with my Army Outlook Exchange account and the fact that it's taking over an hour to copy all of my media and software. Other than that, I have a few disappointing air bubbles in my screen protector that'll bother me until the end of time. However, for the few minutes I've been able to play here and there, the OS is running so much better than before and everything is working very smoothly. What I haven't done yet = make an actual phone call, but that's a minor detail I can take care of tomorrow. Until then...
Anyway, this year was a lot of fun hanging out with Anna's sibs and setting off some fireworks with the niece and nephew. They were surprisingly calm around the explosions going off...at least compared to other little kids I've seen and the dogs when we came home and saw them hiding behind each other. Aside from that, the food was good and everything was pretty relaxing. Can't ask for much more than that, right?
As for the rest of my week off, I feel like I was pretty productive. I spent Monday closing up at school, though I've sent another dozen or so e-mails since trying to iron out final grades. Common theme is that most people think they should've gotten a higher grade. I wonder if all the teachers get that or if it's just me because I wasn't around for the last few weeks.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, I tried to be somewhat more helpful around the house, vacuuming, doing laundry, taking Anna's car in to get inspected, dropping a couple of her things off at the post office, etc. I worked out a little bit, too, though I slacked off quite a bit on Thursday before hanging out on Friday to donate blood, pig out, and watch the Karate Kid. Anna and I went on a nice long bike ride on yesterday morning before celebrating the Fourth, but I pretty much napped today while Anna got about a foot of her hair chopped off. I guess I could throw in some more details, but it's time for bed. I start on orders for most of the summer tomorrow, so we'll see how much more I keep up this blogging.
On a very, very small side note, curses to FedEx for making this July 5th a service holiday. I'm so close to my iPhone and yet so far.
#3 - Piaggio MP3 Hybrid 300ie - This stunning monster of a moped/motorcycle/car is quite possibly my next purchase. They just released this particular hybrid version earlier this week in Italy, increasing the performance to about 140 MPG. On top of that, the "ie" model is designed with a wider wheel base on the front so that you don't even need a motorcycle license to drive it. I would prefer an all-black model so that I can put a batman emblem on the front. Oh, and Anna reminded me that the nearly $10k price tag for this is twice as much as I paid for my used TL last summer. Boo.
#1 - I got married. Yay!
#2 - I just completed my first year at WSHS. Yay!
#3 - I just finished my 3-week annual training at beautiful, sunny Fort Pickett, VA. Yay!
Okay, with that all taken care of, things have been going great with Anna and me. Financial stability is nice. We replaced the windows in the house and have a nice little nest egg for the time being. Plus I'm on orders for the summer, so I'll have year-round income again. The key is finding something else to spend my time/money doing so that I don't get bored and play the market too much.
Currently, I've been working out more and helping out around the house, but you know that stuff never lasts. In the last 24 hours, I already started some online "research" or window shopping as some would call it. I started off looking at scooters or electric mopeds for Anna. But now, I've started moving on to full-on electric cars, etc. But I won't talk about the Tesla or Karma models coming out. That stuff gets too much press already. Instead, I'll go with some other green transports with less press. Here goes:
#1 - The Paulsen Hybrid Conversion Kit - So the website is pretty ghetto, but that's probably because these guys are spending all of their money on the research side...or at least I'm hoping. In the end, though, these guys have the right idea. Instead of creating a whole new industry of electric vehicles, what about coming up with a way to convert all of our existing vehicles into hybrids. For $4500-$8500, these guys can hybridize your current vehicle to give you a 20 MPG boost. Not bad, huh? I found out about this through a review on GreenOptions.com
#2 - The Aptera - Winner of the X Prize and the #1 reason why I would ever decide to move to California. This thing is so sexy and cool and green...and sexy. It has lambo doors and comes in electric or hybrid versions. I came this close to putting down a $500 deposit.
By the time I returned home on Monday, she was already off on her flight, so I had the added responsibility of walking the dogs both in the morning and the afternoon. I think I did alright, though, and even had time to squeeze in an evening weightlifting session after reheating some leftover noodles for dinner. Oh, I also managed to squeeze in some cake and ice cream for dessert.
Changing the morning routine was the toughest, waking up about 30-45 minutes earlier to water the plants and walk/feed the dogs before heading off to school. I was so motivated on Tuesday that I got up even earlier and threw in a bonus workout, including two miles on the elliptical. School was pretty typical and I came home a little earlier to swing by the grocery store to get some ingredients for cornbread for the science department pot luck on Wednesday. I also happened to grab a bag of cheese curls for $1 (a.k.a. dinner). I think I had some chips and salsa, too...they were vegetable chips from Trader Joe's - very healthy. After dinner, I also had to taste-test the cornbread, and what better way than to sample a warm slice with a scoop of ice cream on top (you may notice a pattern forming).
Wednesday morning was a little harder for me to climb out of bed, and I barely made it to school before first period. Part of it was due to my series of forgetful events that morning, getting to my car without my keys to begin with and having to put down my loaf of cornbread after running inside...only to notice that I wasn't even wearing my glasses on my second trip to the car. I made it to school eventually, and that's what's important. Dinner last night was a little healthier, though I think I had an after-school snack consisting of cornbread and ice cream. Then after a couple of nice helpings of spinach salad, I capped off my night with dessert consisting of more cornbread and more ice cream.
Today was a little more restful even though this does happen to be another drill weekend. After getting back from school this afternoon and having my requisite serving of cornbread and ice cream, I walked the dogs and stopped by the hardware store to get some drywall mounts and washers to help erect the TV mount. In the end, the TV stayed on the wall for only a few minutes before I decided that the mounts would not hold and opted to pull everything down in disappointment (I'll try again next week with some sturdier hardware). To make up for everything, I did some dishes and laundry while I prepared myself some more salad and finished the evening with some apple pie with ice cream.
Anna gets back tomorrow. I wonder if things'll change...
october 24, 1979 returns everything you'll want to know about my birthday And then I started to look at the physics part of the search engine and it was pretty amazing. It allows you to solve some random physics problems by just entering the quantity you're looking for, followed by the initial conditions. But what's awesome is that it doesn't just give you the answer...it works out the solution for you and shows you some of the steps. For example, a search of centripetal force, 5kg, 5m/s, 1m returns an answer of 125N and 28.1 pounds. It even does the dimensional analysis for you. Good thing my students never write down units...because if they ever learned to do that, this search engine would be able to do all of their homework for them (hint, hint, hint). Anyway, I don't know how powerful Mathematica is these days, but WolframAlpha does a great job of letting you use common speech to ask questions. Some other searches that impressed me in the science/math realm include:
time dilation, 1s, 2e8 m/s I did about a hundred other searches, but you get the point. TRY IT!!! There's even a Portal for Educators.
In other news, spring break is almost over. It started off pretty fast-paced with a flight to Vegas to meet up with the boys less than 3 hours after the closing bell last Friday. I don't know how we went 15-20 years without taking a big trip like that, but that looks to be the beginning of a yearly pilgrimage. It's too bad Stora couldn't make it, but we had the most of the crew back together for this...Craig, Thuy, Arun, and Ben. There were a lot of firsts during that trip. Not only was it my first trip to Vegas, but I got to try out the PocketCasino - basically a handheld game that lets you make sports bets in realtime. I did pretty well there, and even got to order a few drinks...Shirley Temples for me as I was the DD for the trip. It was a lot of fun driving around Vegas, though, as there were historic landmarks almost everywhere you looked. Anyway, the time flew while we were there, with lots of eating and poker. Hard to pinpoint any particular highlight, but just an overall good time. Can't wait for next year.
The President's picks:
Everything had been going well for the past few days as we were installing blinds, curtains, shower heads, numeric keypad locks for the front door, tie racks, you name it. There are a few dozen boxes (of DVDs, books, shoes) that we haven't been able to unpack because we have furniture and storage on order specifically for those, but they'll come soon enough. In the meantime, it was hard to stop with all of the house stuff to go back to school today.
On top of that was the great flood of 2010. Well, we don't call it a flood with the insurance company because the policy doesn't cover floods. It does cover water damage, though, and that's what we got. I asked Anna this morning if it was raining because I heard the sound of water on the roof, but I didn't see anything when I looked out the bedroom window. I walked down the stairs, though, and the rain started to get louder and louder. It turns out that the little hose that connects the refrigerator to the water pipe came loose overnight and had been spraying our kitchen all night. I ran down to the basement to find the there were three holes in the ceiling just spraying water below. The carpet was soaked and there was a good inch of water on the cement or the tile in the bathroom. It was pretty horrible. I had just woken up, so it took me a few moments to find all of the water shut off valves (plus, it's a new house and I didn't pay as close attention to the home inspection as I'd thought I did). We tried to pull up some water with towels and with the steam cleaner, but it was no use. Eventually, both of us just had to go to work.
I felt bad because I'd just implemented a new tardy policy in class, but I showed up with about five minutes before school started. And then I left school about ten minutes after the final bell so that I could meet up with the restoration resources guy that the insurance company sent over. On the bright side, the commute from Elevation is about two minutes shorter than my commute from Creekstone. We'll see if that holds up for the rest of the week.
Some other highlights for the last few weeks include my weeklong change of command inventory in Winchester where I sat down with my new team and inventoried some tens of millions of dollars of equipment consisting of over 3000 mostly serial numbered pieces of equipment that I'll end up signing for this weekend during what feels like my 10 consecutive drill weekend. In reality, I just had two in November because of the Regimental muster, three in December because of the snow emergency and my inventory and three this month because of the VNGA meeting and the Commander's Conference. My only weekend off will be to move into the new house. Yay.
So while I feel a little guilty about taking a day and a half to watch October Sky in class this week, I'll live with that decision. I was pleasantly surprised that about half of my class was actually able to solve the projectile motion problem from the movie after a two-week vacation.
Last item to note...mark your calendars for May 29th, 2010. That looks to be our wedding day. MTF.
Anyway, that was the easy part. Friday night, I ended up sleeping on the floor of my new office - I took command of the Winchester unit about two weeks ago during the previous snowstorm, which ironically was enough to cancel our holiday dinner. After a little bit of waiting around and positioning some equipment up and down the road, we ended up taking a convoy all the way down I-81 towards Lexington. The 120 mile trip ended up taking us 9 hours by convoy, but we made it down without any accidents or vehicle issues. We then spent the next 48 hours assisting Rockbridge County. Our guys ran a bunch of different civil assistance missions there, helping the Red Cross with one of their shelters by transporting people back to their vehicles and homes. You see, a few hundred people were stranded on I-81 when they shut it down for a large stretch to begin plowing the road. So those hundreds of people ended up getting evacuated to a couple of shelters, along with their vehicles if possible. Eventually, though, the people needed to get back on the road. For the people who had their vehicles towed to the shelter (...to the right shelter to be specific), it was pretty easy. For everyone else, that's where we came in. A couple of our guys stayed with the fire and rescue stations in the area, using our Hummvees to get to people/areas that weren't as accessible, and the rest of our guys prett much ran patrols along all the local roads in the county. They wound up doing a lot of shoveling and pushing and a little bit of traffic directing.
What did I do? Well, I was in charge, so I mainly sat behind a computer and sent reports and did a bunch of coordination the whole time...which doesn't seem like as much fun while I type this - but you'd be surprised. Anyway, it was a good experience, but we were still happy on Monday evening when we got the news that we could come back home. Unfortunately for some of our sister units, they had to stay for another day or two before things cleared up in the southwest corner of the state.
Yesterday was a pretty good day. I finally had a day off, so I got up early to make Anna breakfast. Then we did some exercise in the morning - started with some boxing and moved on to wrestling (like actual wrestling - nothing dirty). Then we went down the road to the driving range before lunch. That was an interesting experience. We didn't expect there still to be a foot of snow on the whole course, but it was still fun. Top Golf has a bunch of heaters set up in each of the suites, so it's not bad. Then we stopped by Anna's dad to pick up some presents to deliver to the nephew before Christmas.
After that, There was a small sequence of events that led to me snapping at Anna and possibly ruining Christmas. We're both pretty stubborn, so this could drag on for a little bit. But what's frustrating is that Anna knows that I'll always apologize eventually, so she can always wait me out. This looks to be a very Gift of the Magi Christmas.
- I am slacking a lot...both with grading for school and with paperwork on the military side
All the orbits are…elliptical
Now when the Earth’s up
I’m up on ‘r’, he’s up on ‘T’
If it’s Saturn then you know it’s got a ring on it
If it’s Saturn then you know it’s got a ring on it
I got force on my mind, which Newton finds
Planetary motion, did I mention
If it’s Saturn then you know it’s got a ring on it
I cooled off a bit on the last half of the run. The walk breaks started getting a little longer and closer together. By the time I hit mile 18 or so, I'd say I pretty much hit my wall. I was on Braddock Road heading home and my legs were just feeling heavier and heavier with each step. It was then that I saw two figures in the distance, standing next to a parked car at the upcoming intersection. It took me a second, but I realized it was Jane and Ian. They showed up at just the right time because I was really feeling like I wanted to quit. They cheered me on as I passed and I asked them to see if they could pick me up some more water to help me finish. We caught back up with each other about two miles later and they refilled all of my bottles on my belt.
The last few miles were pure agony as I mostly walked with my legs starting to really cramp up on me. I was probably taking 1-2 minute walk breaks in between 1-2 minute periods of jogging. Eventually, I circled Trinity Parkway and fought my way up 29 back towards Oday for my last few miles. Then I circled around Giant and was on my last mile home when I see Art pull up Stone Road in his two-door Ford Explorer with his hazards on. He parked quickly and gave me a little food as he started to run the last mile with me. In the end, I finished just under 5 hours. Not the best time, but not horrible considering my rather abbreviated train-up.
To help recover, I had a couple of protein shakes, along with my birthday General Tso's Chicken and a Mickey D's sweet tea courtesy of EELS. It was a pretty awesome experience overall, though I'm not sure if I'll do it again.
Then in the month and a half since then, there was:
- lots of Redbox
That's all I can think of for now, though I know there are plenty of gaps to be filled in. There's supposed to be a pretty high profile guest speaker showing up at school tomorrow for an assembly, but it's been really hush-hush so no one really knows who it's going to be. Speculation has ranged from the President and/or First Lady to Bill Nye the Science Guy, and just about everything else in between. I have to admit that I am pretty curious/excited, but we'll see how it turns out tomorrow. In the meantime...
The hotel was great, btw, though we never figured out how to turn off the tv. It wasn't until we were checking out that I asked one of the staff...and she said, "oh, it's just the red button." Umm...I know I pressed the red button, along with every other button on the remote control. Anyway, no big deal. Like I said, though, the hotel room was pretty awesome. We stayed at the Intercontinental Park Lane in the center of town. Highlights include the best toilet paper ever, along with this magical mirror that had a section that never fogged up, even after taking a long hot shower. They even tidied up twice a day, so our bed was made even after we circled back for afternoon naps.
Anyway, after our nap, we stopped by a drug store to pick up some toiletries for the next day, and then we went down to the water again to check out the London Eye. Because of the long lines, Anna wanted to make sure that she went to the bathroom beforehand. And because of that, we actually missed the last flight up. I think Anna was disappointed, but it was like 30 pounds per person...so about $100 for the two of us for the half hour trip...so I didn't mind. That was the one attraction we didn't actually ride, but we got a nice view from below.
By then, it was a little after 8:00 on our first night and Anna was getting tired/hungry, so we had to find some dinner fast. I convinced her to walk down to the Golden Jubilee Bridge with me on our way to Covent Gardens, and it had the most amazing view of the city at night. Big Ben and Westminster were lit up on one side of the river and the London Eye was glowing red on the other. Anyway, we paused about halfway across the bridge as the train passed behind us, and just after Anna snapped a few pictures from the most romantic spot in London, I told Anna that I had a question to ask her, to which she replied, "oh, so we're going to do this now?" At that point, I was thinking in my head that I was either going to a) leave her spoiled butt in London or b) ask her to marry me. I chose b, she said yes, and her mood seemed to get better from there.
We grabbed dinner at the Covent Garden Grill, where Anna paused her alcohol boycott to celebrate and where I had a very tasty, fruity, non-alcoholic drink with dinner. Then we took a bus back to the hotel bar where we finished the night with a few more overpriced but tasty drinks.
The next morning, we grabbed some breakfast on our way to Buckingham Palace. We detoured through Green Park before realizing that there was a half-marathon going on in the city, and we couldn't cross the street to get to Buckingham Palace. Instead, we detoured and wandered around the National Gallery before walking down to the Prime Minister's house and hitting Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. By then, the race was over, and the streets were clear again. We stopped by the Queen's Gallery before grabbing lunch and doing some souvenir shopping. Then we climbed up Wellington Arch on our way back to the hotel to recharge with another nap.
I kinda overslept the second day, but we got up just in time to catch the last showing of the London Tombs fright show. It was a pretty awesome experience with actors dressed up as zombies chasing us through the dark as we groped our way out of the tombs. The worst scene for Anna was when we thought we were done and came to a room with meat hanging on hooks. As we passed the second rack, a chainsaw started up and someone started sneaking up behind Anna. After that, Anna was trying to convince me to leave every time we saw a dimly lit emergency exit sign...but I wouldn't let her.
From there, we walked down the Thames again to take a short river boat cruise back to the Westminster area before grabbing some Thai food for dinner. We followed that up with another walk across the bridge to "our spot" and then grabbing a series of desserts and drinks as we hopped down Piccadilly back to our hotel.
It wasn't until that last stop that I found myself a good wireless signal to twitter the days' events for everyone else back home. Anyway, that's pretty much the trip. I'll get the pictures off my phone eventually and post those.
Me, I got myself an early start to the long weekend. One cool note was that one of my old students from Mount Vernon ended up subbing today at West Springfield. He noticed me or heard my voice or something...and he walked over to say hi. He was one of my good students in my IB class that I abandoned when I went over to Afghanistan the first time. Anyway, he seemed to be doing well, wrapping up at GMU with a math major. I'm surprised but glad that I remembered his name. I'd even run into his brother a few years back when I was taking graduate classes at Mason myself.
Anyway, I'll be off to London with Anna in a few hours, so I better sign off and finish packing. I may update my twitter once or twice while I'm away, so stand by.
For those of you who don't know, I'm going on a short little trip with Anna during the long weekend. We're flying to London since she's always wanted to visit...very romantic, I assure you. Anyway, it'll be nice to finally spend some QT together. It's been a tough transition because we really only see each other for a few minutes in the morning and then at dinner. I mean, I guess that's normal for most couples, but we'd been fortunate over the past year or so with my under-employed habits.
There's a bunch of other stuff going on, but a lot of secret squirrel stuff surrounding the announcements. With some luck, things will clarify in a week or two and I can spill the beans on a bunch of stuff. In the meantime, I'll work on posting more frequently. And in case you haven't noticed, comments are back...
I've been doing a lot of web work over the last few weeks, overhauling the page for the Virginia National Guard Association as well as my class webpage PhysicsClassNotes.com (very much a work in progress). You'll note quite a few similarities as I'm reluctant to venture too far from what I know already. It's mainly a product of my incredibly hectic schedule as of late, as I'm still tutoring a handful of kids through Kaplan for the first semester. But I'm relearning my CSS and my Perl/CGI...plus I have a full version of photoshop at my disposal now. So I think we'll be up and running with a decent page in a few weeks...maybe even by the end of this long holiday weekend.
Another random news story I thought was pretty interesting was A Day in the Life of a Twintern about Pizza Hut's twitter intern. Now that's a dream job...though I'm not sure how secure those jobs will be in 6-18 months as this recession continues...of course, if you listen to Edward McKelvey of Goldman Sachs, then there are signs that the recession ended two months ago in June. Maybe his point of view is a little off because everyone at Goldman started getting bonuses again once they paid off TARP.
Anyway, movie-watching has been a pretty enjoyable/relaxing passtime these last few weeks. I saw an $8.50 matinee showing of District 9 with Anna yesterday. The most unbelievable part of the whole movie was that they charged $8.50 for a matinee!!! The rest of the movie was pretty awesome. Interesting how I interpreted the ending as happy while Anna thought otherwise. Other movies we've watched over the last few weeks include: Spiderwick Chronicles, Pretty in Pink, Mystery Men, the Water Horse, the Haunting in Connecticut, and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist. I know - it's a pretty eclectic mix.
Aside from movie-watching, though, I've been hard at work relearning web design and tutoring. I guess I've been doing a little shopping, too. Last weekend, Anna treated me and bought me some nice school clothes during the tax-free sale. I've spent a strange amount of time at Michael's, too, getting little things here and there to decorate my classroom and some things for the house, too. And then there's the dog park. Now that Aurora is licensed and there is no longer the threat of animal control, we've been frequenting the dog park more...almost as much as I've been exercising. I'd almost forgotten about that. Today is the fifth day in a row that I've worked out...starting a new streak now that we're past the midway point of the year and inching up on my 30th birthday.
Some other events include two pre-anniversary dinners for Anna and me. First was at Passion Fish in Reston. That was actually our official fancy anniversary dinner since everything seems to be so busy in a few weeks when our real 3rd anniversary comes up. Then yesterday, we went back to Reston Town Center to eat at Rio Grande, where we met at that happy hour so many years ago. Ahh, the memories. Anyway, good times. And things are looking better and better every day.
The other excitement is the dual wedding event tomorrow for two of my Army buddies. I'm glad that I finally got my car fixed before the 5+ hours of driving this weekend. It took about a month, two visits to the DMV, 5 or 6 trips to the dealership, and about $4000 for the car/repairs/taxes/registration, but I'm pretty pleased with the end result. It'd probably be a different story if I were working full-time during this whole thing.
Oh, I also got a Google Calendar invite from Anna this morning. So I figured I would go ahead and download the software to synch up Google Calendar with Outlook with iPhone. I think I've got it up and running after about half an hour of work this morning.
Other than that, I've got a busy couple of weeks coming up here. First, we have drill this weekend, followed by two more weddings on the following Saturday (no official responsibilities this time). Then, Anna goes out of town to head to Texas to visit with her mother/sister the following weekend, right before our 3rd anniversary...which conveniently coincides with Restuarant Week in DC from 24-30 August this year.
Oh, I also forgot to mention that I ended my carbonated beverage boycott this last weekend in order to help Jane finish off her keg of root beer. I think I had just about a gallon to drink by the end of the night...and it was good. So if you see any funny pictures with me holding a red solo cup, that's what I was drinking.
Anna was responsible for the cake and I was responsible for the "ceremony" for the big day. Both were somewhat stressful, though I think Anna's part was moreso than mine. I even got so excited about the whole thing that I volunteered to "design" the wedding program, to include a little ASCII art, a Jane+Ian word search, a mock equation or two, and a little bit of C++ code (yes, I know it's an infinite loop, but that's by design).
All in all, I think it went over pretty well. For some reason, all of that nerdy stuff seems to come so naturally to me. I know Jane has already posted the transcript, but I'll go ahead and do it here for those who don't read her site...along with the few changes I made during my 50-60 times rehearsing it with Anna in the car, at the dog park, while she was making the cake, before going to bed, etc.
Like the number pi, love is irrational. The digits of pi go on forever without repeating, just as each day of your life together will be marked by new and exciting experiences.
Einstein said that “Gravity cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.” But consider that Ian and Jane are standing approximately 1m apart right now, you could calculate the attractive force between them by multiplying the Gravitational constant by the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them…or approximately 1/3 of a microNewton. Now, one-third of a microNewton may not seem like a lot to most, but consider that this force will only continue to increase as the two of you grow closer and closer.
Is the force of love infinite? Well, if love is similar to gravity or electromagnetism, this would only be possible if the distance between you is equal to zero. Now Pauli might argue that this is not possible for two objects to occupy the same space and time, but Schrodinger might posit that there is nothing to say that your wave-functions cannot and do not overlap. And in that sense, I can say without hesitation that today, the two of you will truly become one.
But what about the power of love? Well, that depends on the distance over which the force of love is exerted divided by the time. Given a small enough time frame, I can also say without hesitation that the power of love between the two of you has an upper limit of infinity.
But let’s not get too complicated. We don't need integrals or functions to derive what it is that has brought us here today. Instead, let us celebrate today with a simple proof. Given the following statements:
- That Ian and Jane take each other from this day forward;
Ian, do you attest to the truth of these statements?
And Jane, do you also attest to the truth of these statements?
- And by an exchanging of rings, that provides a physical affirmation of the promise you have made to one another…
(Best man presents ring to Ian to place on Jane’s finger)
Q.E.D.
By the transitive property…and by the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the City of Alexandria, I now pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss my sister.
My last responsibility as the officiant is to bring all of the paperwork to the courthouse by Wednesday...or else. I hope I don't screw that up.
Yes, I Do
It was a phrase written into our legal documents that declared the destiny of a union…yes, I do.
It was whispered by men and women as they blazed a trail toward love…yes, I do; yes, I do.
It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed toward an unknown future…yes, I do.
It was the call of couples who organized; men and women who reached for new horizons; A President who chose equality as our new frontier; and a Loving couple who took us to the Supreme Court and pointed the way to the Promised Land.
Yes, I do to love and to cherish.
Audience: Chant "Yes, I do" 8 times
Yes, I do for better or for worse.
Audience: Chant "Yes, I do" 16 times
We know the road ahead will be long, but always remember that no matter what obstacles stand in your way, nothing can stand in the way of the power of loving voices calling for unity.
Audience: Chant "Ian and Jane" 8 times
You have been told that this would be a challenge in a society that only grows more detached and independent. You've been asked to pause for a reality check. You've been warned against offering too much of yourselves to each other. But in the unlikely story that is Ian and Jane, there has never been anything false about your love.
Audience: Chant "Ian and Jane" 8 times
Now the hopes of a little girl who grew up in a public school in Fairfax Villa are the same as the dreams of a boy who learned in the streets of Boston. We will remember that there is something happening here in Alexandria. That what we have brought together today, let no man tear asunder; that you are one being; that you are one union. And together, you will begin the next great chapter in your story with three words and an exchanging of rings; with three words that will ring forever in your hearts: Yes, I do.
Audience: Chant "Yes, I do" 16 times (fade to silence)
Ian, do you?
And Jane, do you?
(exchanging of rings)
Then by the power vested in me by the Commonwealth of Virginia and the City of Alexandria, I now pronounce you husband and wife.
Yes, I know that was awesome, but I assure you that try 2 is just as awesome but in a different way. I'll post it sometime after the wedding if it's cool with the happy couple. What I really need to do is hurry up and learn guitar so that I can put together my physics-curriculum-to-song album. That would really be living the dream.
Anyway, in other news, I finally got the title to my car now and I spent about an hour and a half at the DMV yesterday morning ironing everything out. I've got one more minor repair that I'd like to get done, and it'll end up costing me just about $4000 after taxes, fees, and repairs for my 1996 Acura Canadian model TL 3.2 Premium w/100K miles. I do like that it's the Canadian model because I can drive through the streets driving well over 100 with my AC blasting at 19 degrees. I also ordered this cheap-but-awesome FM transmitter that is so powerful it can override any radio station in the spectrum. I feel bad for the people driving near me, but the reception from my iPhone is awesome for music playback through my car speakers. I purchased it from USBFever.com in Hong Kong for $16 based off this geardiary review. It's much less than the $50-100 for the Griffin or Monster models, and the only downside is waiting the week for it to ship from Hong Kong. You know, sometimes I don't realize how much of a spoiled American consumer I am until I read the words I write. I know...what a sacrifice waiting a whole week to get something.
- completed awesome two-week annual training period
I also started looking at cars during the last month and test-drove a couple of nice ones for the first time. I went up to MD on my way up to pick Anna from the airport and test-drove an Infiniti I30 (just like my maxima but better) and then I drove an older Volvo 960 and an Acura TL, which I ended up picking at the end. That's also been an issue of frustration over the last week as well, as I bought it from a guy who bought it from someone else and never registered it during the 30-some days that he owned it. He had the title, but the DMV wouldn't accept a title exchanged between three parties. So now I'm going through the process of getting the title fixed from the original owner. Hopefully, that'll get taken care of within the week.
• A marriage entered prior to the dissolution of an earlier marriage of one of the parties.
In addition to all that, I went in to work a little early and actually got in over five hours of work today, which - minus the $2.10 for a McD's sweet tea and double cheeseburger - still equals cha-ching. It's going to be hard to top this tomorrow.
How did I pre-stage my bike, you ask? Well, that's a very good question. Let's flash back to yesterday afternoon. Some of you may remember that there was a point when it was a beautiful day...with actual sunshine. Running just a few minutes late, I surveyed the weather as I left on my bike, only to have some clouds start moving overhead about 1/4 mile into my ride. That followed with a raindrop...and then a few scattered raindrops. By the time I was under the I-66 overpass, I was starting to worry, but it was barely a drizzle. I figured that I only needed about ten more minutes to bike to work. Surely, it couldn't get too bad in ten minutes. Then as I crossed Trinity Parkway, I knew I was a goner. It just started pouring like crazy and I was drenched in an instant. With three hours of tutoring ahead of me, I was about 30 minutes from teaching my first student, and I was completely drenched and sitting at the approximate midpoint between home and work with my bike. I pulled under a small tree and then later the entrance of the Redrock Canyon Grill to get a little break from the rain as my mind raced to find a solution to the problem. First, I called Lenny, but he was in Springfield. Then I just gave up and called work. One of the full-time staff ended up driving to pick me up and bring me home to change before heading in to work. In the end, after a 90-second pitstop at home to change out of my rain-soaked clothes, I made it in to work only about 2 minutes late. Luckily for me, the first student I had was 3 minutes late and I actually got most of the day's activities pulled and out ready to start when he rolled in.
But yes, that's the story of how I pre-staged my bike...chained up to a handicapped parking sign in the parking lot there at the Red Rock Canyon Grill...which seems like a nice restaurant, btw. I didn't eat there, but my phone was acting up as it was getting wet. So I actually walked in to use their phone to make my call in to work. Perhaps I shall dine there one day in return for the favor.
03MAY09 - In the Barracks, Out of the Closet
Aside from that, Memorial Day has been pretty uneventful. We took another trip to the dog park today and I deleted all of the addictive video games from my phone, replacing them with a bunch of Cantonese podcasts. We'll see how this works, but I'm going to give it another shot trying to learn Cantonese. I also went to the gym as Anna's guest this afternoon. I hadn't realized how little I'd been working out until I started to exercise muscles that'd atrophied over the past few months.
Anyway, let me get to the point before it gets too late and I actually forget why I'm upset. Over the last month or so, as a bit of a distraction, I started to download a handful of game applications on my phone and I started playing video games again. Like I've said before, video games are a big weakness of mine because of my competitive nature. I had issues in college, which is one of the reasons I quit soon after. On the scale of addictions, this one seems rather harmless...a little worse than biting your nails, but not as bad as heroine. But for me, it can get bad, especially with games that post top scores...mainly because I find it very hard to quit before I am number one in the world. For people like me, there's a special kind of joy you get from being able to see that you're number one in the world at something, regardless of how particularly useless a skill that something may be.
So...back to why I'm upset and why I won't be able to fall asleep until I get this off my chest. Earlier this week, Anna decided that she wanted to quit smoking again. Of course, I'm all for it, but she wanted me to give up my video games in exchange. I don't know how silly this seems, but it seemed an even enough trade to me; so I agreed, and we said that we would both quit by the end of memorial day weekend. My reasoning for giving myself a few days was that I could get back on top and quit with a little bit of pride and dignity...like Brett Favre. Anyway, with that in mind, I accelerated my game playing over the last 48 hours, trying to fight my way to number one before having to give it all up. In response, Anna bought an extra pack when she filled up on gas yesterday and she's taken breaks throughout the day to smoke on the front porch, smoke while we were at the dog park, smoke while she was driving, smoke while we were visiting with her sister...even bumming a few extra cigs from her brother-in-law while he was outside grilling.
To be honest, this didn't really bother me all that much today (maybe a 3 on a scale of 10). But as the day came to a close, she had the gall to claim that I wasn't genuine with regards to my end of the agreement. And what compounded the whole situation was how easily she was able to fall asleep before I was able to express how upset I was at her obvious hypocrisy. We were still over 24 hours away from the deadline, too. But since she was ready to stop, the expectation was that I should have no problem bumping up the timeline if I really cared. And then she slipped out a comment that I wasn't going to hold up my end of the bargain anyway...that I would cheat and play games while she was at work.
At that point, I was ready to blow. Seriously?! I couldn't believe that she honestly thought that she would be able to hold up her end of the deal better than I would. I mean, when it comes to quitting things, I have a pretty solid resume. Let me review a few of my current and past boycotts for those at home:
- 6 years without potato chips (current); heck, I even give up my potato sticks that come in my MREs when I'm starving during drill weekends. (side note: Anna had potato chips for breakfast this morning)
Also noteworthy is that Anna was the one who wanted me to end my chocolate and ice cream boycotts. But anyway, I know it's silly for me to get so upset about this, but I can't help it. And the fact that she can say something like that and fall asleep within about 30 seconds while it takes me an hour or two to stew before I can even climb back into bed...I know I'm probably going to regret posting this in the morning, but oh well.
In summary, my video game boycott begins today: May 25th, 2009. I am not upset at Anna for smoking, but because a) she's a hypocrite, b) she's sleeping, and c) she's guilting me into quitting my video games before I can get to number one. Good night.
There is another conversation that Anna and I have been having about food. Earlier in the week, after finishing up dinner at this new Lotus Vegatarian restaurant in MetroTech, we stopped by the Shopper's Food Warehouse to grab some ice cream. Since Anna is into the fru-fruey stuff, she bought three pints of the Ben and Jerry's, which was "on sale" for 3 for $10. Me, I bought the Turkey Hill root beer float flavor which came in a 3-pint container for $3. You don't have to be a rocket genius to figure out which is a better deal, but the bet is not about the money. The bet is about who can make their ice cream last the longest. It's been three or four days now, and I've only had one serving so far. I have the advantage of incredible vulcan-like discipline. The only problem is that I'm pretty much home all day and very often tempted. I'll keep you updated on how this contest progresses.
Anyway, to help fend off this deterioration of the man that I once was (i.e. weight loss), I made sure to pick up about a gallon* of ice cream (bogo on Breyer's at Giant this week) and a few bags of 50% off Easter candy. I've made some decent progress on both so far, but only time will tell if it will have its desired effect.
* I know I rounded up big time on this estimate. I just hate how the ice cream companies have reduced cartons from half a gallon to 1.5 quarts...so now you get three quarts with a bogo instead of one gallon.
On Saturday, I worked the usual shift and capped off a week of biking to work. I went 35 miles over the five day workweek, which I'm pretty happy about. Then we went over to the parents' for family lunch and did some shopping at the Sports Authority for some tennis gear. Oh, before that, Anna and I did some boxing and wrestling. It was pretty fun...more tiring than I expected and only a few bruises. Anyway, after all that, we joined up with a bunch of the other commanders (and SOs) from our battalion for dinner at Alto Plaza. It was a pretty nice gathering...relaxed, fun, good food, and not too expensive.
Sunday was an early start. We walked the dog about a mile and a quarter up to the tennis courts and let her loose while we played for an hour or so. It's kinda funny watching a dog with all of those tennis balls flying around. She settled down eventually and we had a good time. Then we chilled and watched the Devil Wears Prada on the sofa before going out with Livvy and Alex to see Adventureland at Fairfax Corner and grabbing dinner and cheese fries at Brion's Grill in University Mall.
Yesterday was a little interesting. Instead of riding in to work, I got to call in to a conference call from home. That lasted about a half hour, but a lot of interesting news that I probably shouldn't share. Ooh, gossips, I know. But anyway, it looks like I might not be getting a pay raise at my one year mark. Good thing I wasn't really doing this for the money. Anyway, I'll share details at family lunch if anyone cares. Anyway, back to watching the futures market. Opening bell is in ten minutes.
Anyway, I'm a little excited because of the Skype app that was just added to the itunes store, so I downloaded that along with a twitter app while I was at it. I just signed up for that (I know...horrible), but it seemed nice to be able to update from my mobile. And even though twitter said that my password was "weak," I went ahead with the whole sign-up process anyway. Plus, there are a bunch of rumors about Google buying them out, so I'm sure it'll all be part of the empire eventually. Oh well...we'll see how that goes. Hopefully, I can still maintain my newfound updating pace with all of this going on.
As for everything else, things have pretty much gotten back to normal already. We went over to the parents' for dinner yesterday and brought home a bunch of leftovers. We also tried out the new Lotte in Chantilly in Metrotech. It was really nice and provides a closer alternative to H-mart now (cleaner alternative to GrandMart, and cheaper alternative to Wegmans). I'm very excited.
I did two sets of bicep curls when I got home so that I wouldn't feel too bad. Actually, I got a decent amount of exercise in over the course of the week, to include various sets of push-ups and shoulder exercises, swimming, and even a short mile run. I haven't stepped on a scale in a few weeks, but I don't think it'll be too bad when I do.
I watched the Obama online town hall meeting yesterday. As expected, he joked and blew off the marijuana question. As for the other stuff, I think he did a very good job of showing how much he cared about the various issues, regardless of whether or not he had a solution yet.
This afternoon, we hung out at this paint-your-own-pottery place near Lissa's house. It was pretty neat. We spent about four hours painting pottery for each other and it'll get fired over the next week before we get to see the final result. I'm pretty excited to how it all turns out. Hey, I've gotta keep myself occupied somehow, considering how my tournament bracket is starting to fall apart.
As for me, I went to the beach today after tennis. That was fun. I thought the water would be really cold, but it was probably in the 70s...not too bad after you got wet. Don't know what else we've got planned for the last few days of vacation, but it should be fun.
I've been pigging out the last few days, eating part of a bloomin' onion, pizza, salad, chips/queso, a huge burrito, and some blueberry/strawberry cobbler. Yesterday, after eating pizza for lunch, we stopped by a book store/sale and picked up some books. I read both of mine already, a children's book called "Gotcha, Louie!" and a graphic novel called "American Born Chinese."
Today was a pretty chill day considering the late night yesterday. We slept in and then had a nice breakfast and watching a $7.50 matinee showing of I Love You, Man. It was a funny movie, but there were like 20 minutes of previews. Granted, most of them looked pretty good, including the new Star Trek trailer, which looks ten times better on the big screen. Anyway, after that came a nice long nap, followed by some wii and Outback for dinner.
Anyway, there's still a whole week of vacation left. MTF
Anyway, it was educational to say the least. And it's nice (sarcasm) to know that our congressmen don't actually do any research prior to going to hearings. Instead, they just scan the headlines of the New York Times, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, Wikipedia, etc (okay, maybe I lied about the last one, but I wouldn't be surprised). And they apparently don't listen to the rest of the hearing either because they tend to restate misconceptions that were corrected 10-15 minutes earlier.
You can also go to CSPAN for the entire timeline of testimonies if you want to click around or just watch the whole thing here. It also amazes me how many congressmen are proud of their prior lives of lawyers. Excerpts to watch include:
- Barney Frank (app. 0:17:45) - (of course) Liddy had a great response to his questions about the names of employees getting bonuses. He started reading the death threats that have been coming in when Frank wouldn't guarantee confidentiality. Last thing before I go. Happy birthday, Craig!
The full article is on whitehouse.gov
I watched the market go up big time after the FED announcement today (also watched FRE go up another 80% after I sold for a nice 50% profit), after spending about 4 hours of the house finance committee embarrass themselves while asking questions to federal regulators and the AIG CEO, whom I have the utmost respect for after today's hearings. But since there's been so much CEO bashing recently, here's a little extra from JetBlue to throw in the mix. Enjoy.
In addition to throwing up, I began to void myself from the other direction as well. That continued for another day, accompanied by a fever and intense fatigue like I haven't felt in years, maybe decades. What's strange is that I haven't been really sick in a long, long time. I've had a handful of sore throats in the past few years (nothing that a little vitamin C couldn't handle), but nothing that has actually put me out of commission for a full day. I even had to call in sick. I can't remember ever having to do that - not in my five years of teaching or any of my time in the military or any of my 12 years of grade school.
Anyway, fear not. I am now very close to 100% (for those of you keeping track, yes, that means I was running at approximately 0.00990099% repeating on Monday in order to have improved by 10000% - all numbers on this website are exact and not approximated, of course), though my inboxes have already filled out to taunt me. I should be very close to being not contagious again, just in time for my trip to Florida with Anna. MTF
I've been watching all of the news with Wall St. and the US Government, and I decided to create an incentive plan for myself over the next few years. I mapped out my goal of $1 million for next summer and gave myself monthly goals to meet. What I've told myself is that if I get ahead of schedule by two months and make more than my goal for two months from now, I get to spend anything extra on myself. You know, buy a new car, house, etc. I've also started drafting some more sections that might find their way into a book if I ever take the time to complete it.
On the guard side, I had a conference in Richmond two weeks ago and then our drill last weekend...and this last weekend was awesome. It's been a while since I've gotten really excited about training, but we had a great weekend out in the woods, and it felt like a lot of progress was made.
This weekend, I finally got back to family lunch...though sans Anna because of a bout of food poisoning. Interesting how the rumors can fly after a monthlong absence though. A few people thought we were fighting and my grandmother thought she was pregnant. Either way, it was nice to see everyone again and the Chus even made it down this weekend. For Pi day (3.14.09), Jane/Ian brought a pecan pie and I took an extra slice since some people didn't want theirs.
The rest of the weekend was spent in bed watching this last week's run of the Colbert Report with Anna since she hasn't had the strength to leave the basement at all. We also watched The Air I Breathe, which was a 7/10...better than the reviews I'd seen. Of course the weekend isn't over yet. Who knows what else it'll bring. MTF.
Oh, the rest of the day was pretty busy, too. I'm dogsitting for Anna's dad's dog, so that's been interesting. I also tutored for a few hours on Saturday morning before heading over to the parents' for lunch. Yenny gave me a copy of TurboTax, and I've since completed my return for this year. $4,500 back, baby!!! Unfortunately, I had to sift through about six hundred lines of investment transactions totalling about 70K of losses for last year. I also ran into a snag retrieving last year's returns with TurboTax (I think it was on an external HD that went bust on me when I was overseas), so I won't be able to e-file until I get some a transcript of my 2007 return from the IRS in a week or two.
All in all, not too bad. I've got a little tidying up to do and I want to finish up reading Freakonomics before I head out to pick Anna from the airport though. MTF.
"Hobo, Joe!" said one man, "for I am the craziest man." "No you're not. I'm Batman here, and Joker's {*noise*} so crazy that I can stop him! Bye, bye. I am your favorite superhero, Batman."
I hope my transcript is accurate, but it's hard to say. I haven't seen the original in years now, so I'm working off the memories of my pre-teen years.
The weekend prior to that, I actually flew down to Texas with Anna to hang out with her mom, stepdad, and sister. That was the first time in a while that I've flown just to have fun. It was also the first time I've flown with someone else I knew (not in a military setting) in about 15-20 years or so. It's definitely a different feel...in a good way. I also took that opportunity to break my ice cream boycott while we were on our layover in Atlanta. (dun dun dunnn!) Yeah, I know. It's bad - all Anna's fault - and I've gone through maybe 3/4 of a gallon of ice cream since that day. One nice side note is that I think I'm actually starting to get over my lactose intolerance.
Some other things that I've been meaning to declare include:
- Happy Chinese New Year!
- It is a lot of fun watching dogs walk over patches of ice.
Other than that, I'm slowly recovering from what has seemed like a mild winter depression. On Monday, Anna had a girls' night out, so I found myself over at the AMF by my house because they have a Monday/Tuesday special where it's $1.50 a game. I looked up how to curve a bowling ball on wikipedia (not unlike curving a bullet) and made it my mission to learn how to do it in practice that night. I started off pretty weak, with a 96 on my first game. I kept on feeling like people were watching me and couldn't get comfortable. I mean, you see an Asian-looking guy in a bowling alley by himself and you expect he'd be good, right? Anyway, I got a feel for it about three games in and ended up with a high of 178 for the night. I kept on going, though, thinking I'd be able to do even better, but averaged around 130-140 near the end. I didn't realize how long I'd been bowling when they announced the last call over the intercom speaker and I packed my things to go. I ended up paying for 12 games that night...my right arm is still sore from three nights ago and I can barely write with a pen.
Before we start, though, let's review last year's goals:
- Do not lie (I think I was about 99% successful on this one...can't really think of any lie at the moment)
Overall, I'd say that I did better than usual. Here's this year's list
- Limit credit card spending to $600/month
I know I've thrown myself a bunch of softballs this year, but I that's my call. For me, some of these are pretty big challenges. One of the things I can do to help jumpstart the revolution is to declare bankruptcy...well, not real bankruptcy. I really have no debt at this point with Lenny buying the house and all. But I'm making the decision to declare e-mail bankruptcy. I was so excited about inbox zero last year, but I didn't stick with the program. I'll give it one more shot this year and see where it takes me.
- A Christmas card from Lenny in 2004 when he started telling me about this girl he met named Stephanie
Anyway, that was fun and now I have everything gathered in one place in two folders. Not bad, huh? It was pretty cool going through all of that and reading some of those letters again. It really makes me feel so very blessed. It makes me want to watch It's a Wonderful Life now.
06 July 2010 2330 EST
05 July 2010 2130 EST
03 July 2010 1020 EST
02 July 2010 0928 EST
01 July 2010 1700 EST
29 April 2010 2201 EST
28 April 2010 2035 EST
weather in alexandria, VA on 10/24/79...except the weather (it was rainy)
sonny tells me that 1 in 8850 people (or 0.011%) are named Sonny, 244/year, 863rd in popularity
life expectancy 30yr male tells me I will probably live to about 77 and have a 1.5% chance of reaching age 100
high school teacher median wage tells me that the average teacher makes about $49K/year
running 15 minutes 7min/mile 30yr 175lbs male tells me that I burned about 295 Calories
mcdonalds quarter pounder with medium fries tells me that it doesn't matter
fuel cost, 2500 miles, 23mpg, $2.50/gal returns $271.74 in case I'm planning a cross-country road trip
BAC, 6 drinks, 2 hours, 175lb, male returns a BAC of 15% and an estimate of 5 hours 10 minutes before dropping down to 0.08% - Why would I need that information?
US crime fairfax, washington DC compares the national crime rate (per 100000 people) to that of Fairfax and Washington, DC over the last 25 years
e_u_____n returns Ecuadoran, education, emulation, erudition, and exudation in case I'm stuck on a crossword
avatar, titanic shows me that James Cameron's new movie has already made $144 million more than his old one (I still haven't seen either!)
length contraction, 1m, 2.5e8 m/s
length contraction, 1m, 4e8 m/s even gives an error message that the speed exceeds c
distance to sun / circumference of the earth returns 3759
distance to sun, 55MPH tells me it would take 194.3 years to drive there
derivative of log((x-2)/4) returns the derivative, graph, series expansion (at zero and infinity), indefinite integral, and limit
100g of methane returns more than a page of data including mass composition, structure diagram, heat capacity, volume, and number of moles, etc
03 April 2010 2007 EST
18 March 2010 1830 EST
19 January 2010 1550 EDT
07 January 2010 1930 EDT
25 December 2009 0620 EDT
15 December 2009 2145 EDT
- I love the holidays
- I was excited when the HOA finally finished paving the parking lot - not excited now that they re-installed the speed bump at the entrance of the neighborhood again. The snow plow took it out a few years ago.
- Anna and I put down an offer on a house in Franklin Farm and hope to close/move in January.
- I've made one purchase for one of my secret Santa exchanges, and I've got one more to go.
- I get to hear the students' physics carols over the next 48 hours. I have high expectations this year.
09 December 2009 1909 EDT
All the orbits are…elliptical
All the orbits are…elliptical
All the orbits are
Up on the sun, the speed goes up
Thanks to gravity
Then it starts to slip as it takes a little trip
And the other focus is empty
Don’t pay Kepler attention
Just one A-U for one whole year
For planet number three
You can’t see it but Jupiter’s got a ring on it
They are dark but you can see Neptune’s got it
And Uranus on a tilt with 9 rings on it
Oh, oh, oh…
You can’t see it but Jupiter’s got a ring on it
They are dark but you can see Neptune’s got it
And Uranus on a tilt with 9 rings on it
Got two masses with a constant G
‘r’ goes up, bottom squares up
F is less than you think
Universal Gravitation
Newton had his turn, and now you gonna learn
What it really feels to learn about ‘G’
You can’t see it but Jupiter’s got a ring on it
They are dark but you can see Neptune’s got it
And Uranus on a tilt with 9 rings on it
Oh, oh, oh…
08 December 2009 2100 EDT
- the Regimental Muster, Commander's Conference and 5K in Staunton
- November drill - my last drill in the field with B Co
- double-Thanksgiving
- a four game losing streak in Fantasy Football, though I still made the playoffs with a win this last weekend
- taking command of HHC - I'll use this as one of the many reasons why I didn't devote as much time with Fantasy this year.
- house-hunting with Anna
- deleting all of my addictive games on my iPhone
- a pretty cool experiment with my class where the kids threw a raw egg 65 yards and caught it without breaking it
18 October 2009 1154 EDT
16 October 2009 1912 EDT
12 October 2009 1921 EDT
09 October 2009 1325 EDT
07 October 2009 2218 EDT
06 September 2009 1050 EDT
05 September 2009 2200 EDT
20 August 2009 0858 EDT
17 August 2009 0850 EDT
Watch CBS Videos Online
16 August 2009 1918 EDT
07 August 2009 1051 EDT
28 July 2009 1710 EDT
27 July 2009 0913 EDT
- And that they promise to love and to cherish one another for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, for as long as they both shall live.
Ian: I do
Jane: I do
(Best woman presents ring to Jane to place on Ian’s finger)
23 July 2009 0611 EDT
Yes, I do for richer or poorer.
Yes, I do in sickness and in health.
Yes, I do from this day forward.
Ian: Yes, I do.
Jane: Yes, I do.
15 July 2009 0504 EDT
- my 1SG started a B Co facebook group, so I'm getting all of these new friend requests now
- Anna and Livvy flew out to Arizona for the July 4th weekend to hang out with their friend
- went out with Art/Colleen and Kurt/Porter in Winchester while Anna was out of town
- stated hanging out with Thuy more (watched 10 episodes of the Outer Limits including a couple of 'special' ones with Alyssa Milano and Natasha Henstridge, along with Species II and Captivity)
- Ben returned from UVa and is back in town for good
- made some really funny jokes
- went through a few days of training as Score! transitioned to become Kaplan Tutoring
- Anna came with me to our unit picnic and the closing of the Winchester Armory. It was an awesome event and I got a chance to see a bunch of old vets I haven't seen in a long time.
- did family lunch on Sunday and emergency-fed Lenny's fish while he was in Connecticut
- went to Costco!
08 June 2009 2056 EDT
• A marriage between an ancestor and descendant; or between a brother/sister, uncle/niece, and aunt/nephew, whether the relationship is by half-blood, whole blood, or adoption.
• When either of the parties lacks capacity to consent to the marriage because of mental incapacity or infirmity.
• A marriage between two persons of the same sex.
• "Common law" marriages are not valid if entered into Virginia or any other jurisdiction which does not permit them for its residents.
29 May 2009 0723 EDT
25 May 2009 1709 EDT
04MAY09 - Voices From the Ranks
25 May 2009 0111 EDT
- 17 years without alcohol (current)
- 6 years without ice cream (side note #2: I won the bet from last month; side note #3: I had ice cream for breakfast this morning)
- 3 years without chocolate
- 9 months without showering
29 April 2009 0831 EDT
14 April 2009 2053 EDT
14 April 2009 1954 EDT
08 April 2009 0727 EDT
07 April 2009 1937 EDT
07 April 2009 0919 EDT
03 April 2009 1135 EDT
30 March 2009 2018 EDT
29 March 2009 1123 EDT
27 March 2009 1942 EDT
25 March 2009 2242 EDT
25 March 2009 1201 EDT
22 March 2009 2145 EDT
20 March 2009 2205 EDT
- Judy Biggert (app. 0:59:00) - Just clueless and unprepared
- Stephen Lynch (app. 1:14:30) - One of the lawyers who didn't pay attention to the first part of the hearing
- Edward Royce (app. 1:34:20) - A great reference as to why Congress/Senate should not have a dog in this fight. They put a clause in the stimulus legislation stating that bonuses payments wouldn't be stopped if contracted prior to enactment. They passes the legislation with that provision, and now they have the guts to continue to ask why no one was notified that all of the payments were being made in accordance with the provision they passed.
- Carolyn Maloney (app. 1:54:30) - Interesting conversation regarding counterparty associations and the Federal Reserve...also another example of someone who hasn't been paying attention to the rest of the testimony.
19 March 2009 1140 EDT
18 March 2009 2305 EDT
18 March 2009 0244 EDT
15 March 2009 0817 EDT
15 February 2009 1145 EST
29 January 2009 0915 EST
29 January 2009 0915 EST
- Happy Birthday, Ben!
- Snow day! It's not nearly as exciting when you're not a student or teacher any more, but it was still nice to see the first real snow in years.
- Bankruptcy!!! Okay, just kidding about that. For those who haven't seen that office episode, it's hilarious. I actually got the rest of the papers mailed to me from my house settlement, and it's nice having no debt any more.
08 January 2009 0915 EST
- Some winshield wiper systems are curiously strong. Someone was warming up their car this morning as I walked by (about 4 feet away), and I still got sprayed in the face by the wash.
04 January 2009 1140 EST
- Complete my tax returns prior to the deadline without requesting an extension (Slam dunk on this one)
- Budget to save for a new house; $30K before the end of the deployment; $50K if the new bonus kicks in (I did a great job on saving during the deployment, but I lost it all in the market, so I'll call this one a push)
- (kinda related) Limit non-essential spending; $100/month to spend on self; $200/month for gifts for others
- Read for enjoyment - 2 books/month (Successful during the deployment, but failed miserably after coming home)
- Score 300 on APFT (Failed)
- Update the CSS on this web page so that it's compatable with Macs and IE 7 (Failed)
- Complete Master's degree (No comment)
- Return e-mails within 24 hours
- Reduce investment speculation by limiting call buying to 10% of portfolio
- Give blood regularly
- Cease eating when I am full and reduce snacking between meals
- Drink 1/2 gallon of water per day
- Complete at least one set of exercise each day
21 December 2008 1036 EST
- Homemade picture frame from Mom with farewell photo from Fort Bragg
- Letter from Jane on engineering paper - something I missed from the first time I read the letter was that she even labelled the top "Sibling Letter"
- $5 birthday money from Jane from 2004 and $5 Christmas cash from Yenny - Score!
- Ben's letters from Afghanistan when he would print out random JPG/GIF images of Avril/Care Bears/etc from the internet and add his own captions
- Letter from Roo in Afghanistan when we decided to write back and forth since postage was free
- Signed business card from Congressman Tom Davis
- Letter from Governor Warner thanking us for being in Iraq when we were actually in Afghanistan (maybe he knew something that we didn't)
- Dozens of postcards and Christmas cards from siblings, friends, friends of friends, aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, Match.com dates, random strangers, etc.
