Friday, January 26, 2007

At the Crest of Winter

Walking into my Statitics class at 9:40, all I could think about was getting something warm, anything warm. Hastily I disposed of my belongings into a chair, and shuffled off to the cafe', where I ordered a warm croissant and medium coffee. After I paid and thanked the lady, I thought to myself, "Coffee? Why did you get coffee?" I usually get tea, and after my accidental discovery of the 25 cent coffee machine on the fourth floor of Amos Eaton, I vowed to never buy coffee anywhere else on campus again.

The thing is just cool to watch. You pick your choice of coffee, each kept in this specially shaped container, which looks like a larger version of those single serving half-and-half containers you see at the store, each with (surprise) a single serving of coffee. You put the unopened container in this compartment in the coffee maker, put a cup underneath, press a button, and tada! 15 seconds later, a freshly brewed cup of coffee. And there is no cleanup; the machine mysteriously disposes of the container. Perfect for the cheap, lazy, and the impatient. I fell in love with it as soon as I pressed the "start" button.

So why did I actually buy a cup of coffee? Then I remembered. The past two nights, I have been staying up until 2 am, 3 am, trying to study for my Computability & Complexity qualifier. I say "try", since I am not succeeding as well as I like. Part of the reason is due to internally generated pressure to work on the slowly accumulating schoolwork that I have ignored thus far. The other reason is that since winter break, I have been on a continuous sprint to study for three quals that I planned to take this semester. Well, I've passed two of the three so far, and my last one is next wednesday. But I'm stressed, I'm tired... I don't know if I will be properly prepared (though I will try). Worse comes to worse, I take it at the beginning of next semester (though I would rather that not happen). But it doesn't seem like there's an end to this sprint till wednesday, though I can feel myself slowing down internally. Which leads to some very interesting segues of thinking.

It was cold this morning. Cold. 2 degrees. And it was windy. Deciding not to risk it, I decided to opt to not wear my usually warm chocolate brown coat, and to instead wear my sturdier green one. This turned out to be an excellent move, considering how I doubt the brown coat could have resisted the wind as well as my green one. I got into Statistics, and I was cold. The wind was howling outside, and I could hear it grasping and shaking the windows of our classroom, like some frost-laden demon desperate to break in and make our lives miserable, howling at its unsuccess. I crawled inside myself a litte deeper and shivered.

I should make a scarf, I thought. A long, fuzzy warm scarf. One that I could wrap myself up in and stay warm. As the wind continued to howl, I could see in my mind's eye my fingers working the crochet needle, rapidly making a scarf that was a yard long, both beautiful and versatile. All this was going through my head as I rapidly took notes during the Statistics lecture.

Statistics is a high pace course. You need to sit down, listen intently and write rapidly in order to catch everything. Our professor uses a tablet PC. A very nifty thing for giving lecture, since you can easily project what you are writing and can even export it to pdf and post it online. Kevin had talked about getting a tablet, but I had my doubts, since it would tie me to the Windows operating system. I doubted linux had tablet pc software that was advanced enough to compete with the windows versions. But what about Apple? Oooh. There was a tempting thought. If Apple produced a tablet PC that ran OS X, I think I would have to buy that as my next computer purchase. Maybe they'd have one by Christmas? "Dear Steve Jobs Santa, please give me a tablet PC with 2 GB of RAM that runs OS X. And a pony. XOXO, Suzanne."

You have to believe me that I was paying attention. We went over continuous and discontinuous single and joint transformation methods, as well as order statistics, and calculating Jacobian values. But I couldn't get the scarf out of my thoughts. The more I tried to push it to a corner, the more persistent it became. My scarf would be a cream, no, beige color. It would be long. A yard is too short. What about two yards? Will it have frills on the end? How do you crochet things with frills at the end? Or is that just for knitting and weaving? I ignored the fact that I have never finished a single crochet project that I've started. Lecture continued. I started visualizing the ends of the scarf, fanning out like a fishtail. That will be cool, I thought to myself. The yearning to make a new scarf grew so persistent that I resolved to go to Wal-mart right after lecture; never mind that I was going to eat something and then work on C+C afterwards. The scarf was what needed to exist, and it had to exist now. I excused my impulsivity by reminding myself that I needed to pick up some other things anyway, so the trip was warranted.

Lecture ended, and I ran home. Grabbing my purse, I went to the bus station, and caught the first bus to Wal-mart. On the way there, the scarf continued to possess my thoughts. A beautiful, long, beige scarf, that I can wear with both my green coat and my brown coat. Two yards? No. It could be longer... And as my mind's eye turned internally again, the scarf started to grow, first to three yards, then five, till it seemed to stretch out perpetually for miles and miles. And I thought about wrapping myself up in it completely, creating a warm, beige cocoon that I could stay in until the quals were over, until the cold was gone.

I was back later than I wished, but finished everything I had to do, as far as extraneous necessary errands go, by 2. Rushing back to my office, I grabbed a pop-tart and started looking at the C+C questions. Nothing. Pushing away my frustration, I start skimming through the questions, and remembered how I wanted to finish an entry in my blog that I had started this morning in statistics. And that I want something more substantial to eat. Clacking away on the keys to finish my last sentence, I wrap up my entry and decide to grab a quick bowl of chili before resolving to get back to work.