I've just come from a physics class that was 50 minutes of unadulterated mathematical wanking. (any physicists who read this, please do not get angry at me. I have a better grasp of the concepts than I generally like to admit.) Basically what we did was take a nice tidy equation like this:
F= q*E + q*v*B
and turn it into a nine-headed beast that looked something like this:
f = (grad dot E)*E + 1/2 (E*del)^2+ (grad dot B)*B + 1/2 (B*del)^2 plus some more terms times some constants.
Not to mention that what we've done is take an innocuous little equation involving, at most, some multiplication and some trig, and decided it would be nicer to have it involve operators, which are nasty byproducts of quantum mechanics, and are sometimes written like this:
|operator>
which is called Dirac notation after the man who invented it/understood it. Ostensibly it makes things easier. What it really does is take old, baffling concepts (I don't know where things are? Of course I know where things are! They're...right here.) and puts them into new, baffling notation. (the hell is this arrow thing?)
Anyway, in class, we defined a new thing as a whole lot of ugly, dumped all the ugly from the nasty monster equation into it, and ended up with another tidy equation:
F = T*volume + S*surface
Which is all well and good, and we're told it's useful. Great.
This illustrates the central problem of teaching physics: do you show the derivations of these new, useful equations, and put everyone right off them because the derivations are ugly, or do you just throw the equations at the kids and just wait for the one prat who sits in the corner to say "but what's the justification for this?"
There's usually a justification. I like to imagine the evolution of chaos theory/fractals: one person sitting in his office fiddling with math and making ridiculously pretty graphs. When people ask him what he's doing, he tells them that any shape they can draw has an essentially infinite perimeter bounding a finite area. He's obviously nuts, right?
This is a demonstration that works much better with pictures, but I'll try to be brief. Imagine you have an island. You take a walk around the island (it's a small island) and conclude that its perimeter is about 500 paces. Okay. But then some pedantic government berk comes out with a set of calipers and concludes that your island's perimeter is actually 18963527 caliper-steps, which is more than 500 paces, because the calipers go in and out and around places that you just stepped over. Then imagine someone with a teeny piece of yarn. Etc.
That's all well and good, but what use is it, other than telling us why people like Jackson Pollock paintings? Well, fractals in nature give rise to this idea that there's order in disorder. And that's another concept that seems like more computational masturbation. An example: Let's say you have a group of friends, and you're walking down the sidewalk. Each of you keeps your own pace, yet there are times when you're all in step, even though you're not a marching band. Useless, right?
Yeah, unless you own a multi-purpose chaotic pendulum (who could come up with one purpose for a chaotic pendulum? The point of pendulums is that they are the same.)
Or if you're a meteorologist, ecologist, or play the stock market. Or a physicist or mathematician. Or if you like differential equations.
I guess my point is, I really like chaos theory. I think it's fantastically inappropriately named, I love the idea that if you shake anything that's disordered long enough and plot the data just so, you'll end up with order, and I like Jackson Pollock. What I don't like are stress tensors. They are rather appropriately named. And that's about enough math talk.
25 September 2006
24 September 2006
The Best Damn Quote About Relationships
I'm not a religious Scrubs watcher. I enjoy Zach Braff on TV (I seem to be the only person who didn't like Garden State) and I not-so-secretly think Dr. Cox is sexy. It's the asshole thing.
Anyway, there's an episode in the first season where all the characters break the fourth wall and talk about relationships, and Dr. Cox has this to say:
Relationships don't work the way they do on television or in the movies: will they, won't they, and then they finally do and they're happy forever--give me a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren't right for each other to begin with and half the ones who get married get divorced anyway and I'm telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic. I haven't. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don't care. Because I do. Believe in it.
Bottom line: the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don't let it take them down. One of those two people will stand up and fight for that relationship every time, if it's right, and they're real lucky. One of them will say something.
This is, without a doubt, the best relationship advice I've ever heard. It's so refreshing to hear that there is no magic formula, that even if you believe in The One and find that person, that there will still be fights, annoyances, times when you go to bed angry. That you can't possibly love someone so much that you'll never disagree with them. That no one can love you so much that you won't blow up at them the thirty-second time they get home, check their email, and wander the halls to see who's around before coming back to talk to you.
Love doesn't transcend everyday life. It makes it better, it gets you through the "discussions" and the tears and the compromising for the fifth or sixth time. But it doesn't mean you'll never have the conversation again. It just means you know why you're having it instead of walking away.
Anyway, there's an episode in the first season where all the characters break the fourth wall and talk about relationships, and Dr. Cox has this to say:
Relationships don't work the way they do on television or in the movies: will they, won't they, and then they finally do and they're happy forever--give me a break. Nine out of ten of them end because they weren't right for each other to begin with and half the ones who get married get divorced anyway and I'm telling you right now, through all this stuff, I have not become a cynic. I haven't. Yes, I do happen to believe that love is mainly about pushing chocolate-covered candies and, you know, in some cultures, a chicken. You can call me a sucker, I don't care. Because I do. Believe in it.
Bottom line: the couples that are truly right for each other wade through the same crap as everybody else, but the big difference is they don't let it take them down. One of those two people will stand up and fight for that relationship every time, if it's right, and they're real lucky. One of them will say something.
This is, without a doubt, the best relationship advice I've ever heard. It's so refreshing to hear that there is no magic formula, that even if you believe in The One and find that person, that there will still be fights, annoyances, times when you go to bed angry. That you can't possibly love someone so much that you'll never disagree with them. That no one can love you so much that you won't blow up at them the thirty-second time they get home, check their email, and wander the halls to see who's around before coming back to talk to you.
Love doesn't transcend everyday life. It makes it better, it gets you through the "discussions" and the tears and the compromising for the fifth or sixth time. But it doesn't mean you'll never have the conversation again. It just means you know why you're having it instead of walking away.
21 September 2006
Children of the Joshua Tree
I've just spent three hours with an ex-boyfriend. Normally this is a condition that would be postscripted with tears, some yelling, possibly some throwing of things and binge-drinking, since usually I only see my exes to argue with and sometimes have sex with, usually when I'm not seeing anyone else, but the ex in question is...special.
It helped, certainly, that we're both reading Neal Stephenson; all three of us, really, his roommate who works at Algrebra and he and I. It gives us a jumping-off point, and from there on out it's all down.
We bullshitted a lot about alchemy and generally gave some of the Algebra patrons the idea that the three of us had spent approximately eighty years together. Mark (referenced a long long time ago in the post about Asian food stores) and I had a conversation that went like this:
M: How are things?
L: Things are great.
M: I meant in general.
L: Intermittently okay.
And thence followed a huge cloud of vague that held absolutely no meaning for anyone listening save Phil, probably. Maybe it was a state of mind, maybe it was that the reading had synced our brains up again, but we fell naturally back into the old trick of knowing exactly what the other was saying, even when all that was happening aurally was "are things the same as they were the last time we really talked?"
I teased him a bit about leaving Case--about a night that has a certain significance to both of us, a story that may at some point show up on this blog, though it's not as good as "the night I took naked lesbian pictures with my best friend" might suggest. About the past in general.
He took umbrage at some point and said "you can't do that to me anymore, you know." I don't know if he meant teasing, or reminding him that once we were in love like it was gravity, or what, so I said "do what?" like any rational person would. We made eye contact and I could feel the years of separation waver between us, on the verge of vanishing, and he and I back on the edge of love and obsession and the best damn love letters I've ever received or written, probably. The smell of lavender and "pianist fingers" and being the only person to ever keep me up talking all night long.
I looked away.
I fucking did this for R. Because I love him, and I'm tired of carrying around all my lovers with me. Because I want to believe that he's enough. That I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, and logic is the better decision, and the kind of love that loses you all your friends isn't the kind of love that lasts a lifetime. Because I've done stupid things for love, and they've always ended badly, and I want to know that not doing stupid things ends well. Because if I'm not right then I am making a very big mistake.
When I looked back, the moment had passed, the years were solidly back where they should be, and we continued our friendly semi-flirtatious banter. Mark will probably read this and internalize it and maybe write it in a song two and a half years from now.
It helped, certainly, that we're both reading Neal Stephenson; all three of us, really, his roommate who works at Algrebra and he and I. It gives us a jumping-off point, and from there on out it's all down.
We bullshitted a lot about alchemy and generally gave some of the Algebra patrons the idea that the three of us had spent approximately eighty years together. Mark (referenced a long long time ago in the post about Asian food stores) and I had a conversation that went like this:
M: How are things?
L: Things are great.
M: I meant in general.
L: Intermittently okay.
And thence followed a huge cloud of vague that held absolutely no meaning for anyone listening save Phil, probably. Maybe it was a state of mind, maybe it was that the reading had synced our brains up again, but we fell naturally back into the old trick of knowing exactly what the other was saying, even when all that was happening aurally was "are things the same as they were the last time we really talked?"
I teased him a bit about leaving Case--about a night that has a certain significance to both of us, a story that may at some point show up on this blog, though it's not as good as "the night I took naked lesbian pictures with my best friend" might suggest. About the past in general.
He took umbrage at some point and said "you can't do that to me anymore, you know." I don't know if he meant teasing, or reminding him that once we were in love like it was gravity, or what, so I said "do what?" like any rational person would. We made eye contact and I could feel the years of separation waver between us, on the verge of vanishing, and he and I back on the edge of love and obsession and the best damn love letters I've ever received or written, probably. The smell of lavender and "pianist fingers" and being the only person to ever keep me up talking all night long.
I looked away.
I fucking did this for R. Because I love him, and I'm tired of carrying around all my lovers with me. Because I want to believe that he's enough. That I'm right, I'm right, I'm right, and logic is the better decision, and the kind of love that loses you all your friends isn't the kind of love that lasts a lifetime. Because I've done stupid things for love, and they've always ended badly, and I want to know that not doing stupid things ends well. Because if I'm not right then I am making a very big mistake.
When I looked back, the moment had passed, the years were solidly back where they should be, and we continued our friendly semi-flirtatious banter. Mark will probably read this and internalize it and maybe write it in a song two and a half years from now.
19 September 2006
Nothing New of Note
still addicted to Neal Stephenson. For the third time. Expect nothing coherent out of me for another ~2000 pages.
18 September 2006
Rhetoric and Treason
I made the fatal mistake of picking up Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver to take to Algebra with me last night to read. I'd forgotten how absolutely addicting he can be, in his own particular tangential long-winded pedantic pretentious sort of way.
(all of the above was a compliment, for some reason)
So now, of course, I'm 250 pages in and will probably have to read the entire trilogy over again.
Neal Stephenson, for anyone who doesn't know and cares to find out, was one of the begetters of the "cyberpunk" genre: aka lit for hardcore computer geeks. I bought his big breakthrough book, Cryptonomicon, after seeing it had circuit readouts in it. It's a beast of a book, full of math (delightful!) and WWII history (fun!) and in the middle of all of it, some crap about online banking security. I'm not kidding. This book spans three generations (it skips the middle one) of Waterhouses and Shaftoes and examines them in extremely intimate detail. And lots of computer stuff too.
The Baroque cycle deals with the same families, plus the Comstocks, at the time of the scientific revolution (1750sish). Plus a character who tends not to die, and thus is in both books at the exact same age. And then it's all wrapped up in Charles II era political intrigue, and the foundation of calculus, economics, piracy, slavery in all sorts of exotic places, alchemy, and of course there's a love story, the male part of which lacks half his penis due to an operation for syphilis which failed. It, too, is a beast of a trilogy.
I'd really like to lend my support to Neal Stephenson and say that if you'd like to keep dropping overly intellectual Waterhouses and overly dumbassed Shaftoes into any period in history you'd like to write about, I will always buy your books.
Of course he's written some complete shit too, but what's really nice is he admits it. His first book, called Big U, I believe, went out of print because it was so terrible. When he found out his fans were paying enormous sums of money to get their hands on copies, he had it rereleased. He said the only thing worse than people paying money for the book was people paying lots of money for the book. I read it. It was awful.
Speaking of pedantic and pretentious and possibly awful, does anyone want to tell me whether I should buy Mark Danielewski's new book? I read about 32 pages of it and can't decide if it's worth the narrative gimmicks.
(all of the above was a compliment, for some reason)
So now, of course, I'm 250 pages in and will probably have to read the entire trilogy over again.
Neal Stephenson, for anyone who doesn't know and cares to find out, was one of the begetters of the "cyberpunk" genre: aka lit for hardcore computer geeks. I bought his big breakthrough book, Cryptonomicon, after seeing it had circuit readouts in it. It's a beast of a book, full of math (delightful!) and WWII history (fun!) and in the middle of all of it, some crap about online banking security. I'm not kidding. This book spans three generations (it skips the middle one) of Waterhouses and Shaftoes and examines them in extremely intimate detail. And lots of computer stuff too.
The Baroque cycle deals with the same families, plus the Comstocks, at the time of the scientific revolution (1750sish). Plus a character who tends not to die, and thus is in both books at the exact same age. And then it's all wrapped up in Charles II era political intrigue, and the foundation of calculus, economics, piracy, slavery in all sorts of exotic places, alchemy, and of course there's a love story, the male part of which lacks half his penis due to an operation for syphilis which failed. It, too, is a beast of a trilogy.
I'd really like to lend my support to Neal Stephenson and say that if you'd like to keep dropping overly intellectual Waterhouses and overly dumbassed Shaftoes into any period in history you'd like to write about, I will always buy your books.
Of course he's written some complete shit too, but what's really nice is he admits it. His first book, called Big U, I believe, went out of print because it was so terrible. When he found out his fans were paying enormous sums of money to get their hands on copies, he had it rereleased. He said the only thing worse than people paying money for the book was people paying lots of money for the book. I read it. It was awful.
Speaking of pedantic and pretentious and possibly awful, does anyone want to tell me whether I should buy Mark Danielewski's new book? I read about 32 pages of it and can't decide if it's worth the narrative gimmicks.
17 September 2006
Bad Things to Good People
Months of peace--almost a year of months--have festered into one giant, blinding ball of itchiness, and all I want to do is call almost everyone I have ever slept with and at least one I haven't, and flirt with them until I feel better. About what I do not know. Sad (or maybe happy) to say, no one has been with their phone/at their computer/knocking on my door, and so I am left with my unrest.
This stems I think almost entirely from the prosaicness (prosaicity?) of my current relationship, and the fact that this morning I made the mistake of pulling down some old poetry and reading it, poetry that I had once read with someone with whom I was a little absurdly in love.
Maybe it's just me, maybe it's the time of my life, where I haven't quite locked up all my loves forever, but that feeling you get when you revisit something that was once significant and still holds meaning--it's one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world. Suddenly, just like that--one minute I'm reading Rumi, the next I'm back on Northside watching him play a djembe by his car and wishing he'd never leave.
I'd almost forgotten what it was like, to love someone like it was the only point in life. To physically hurt when they were not near. To see them in everything, to feel their love in a completely disembodied way--from a tree, a drive down Mayfield, the smell of lavender, a few guitar chords.
In my head, all my great loves (and I've had a few) get mixed together, and I end up with a kind of seamless montage of highlights: a first sight in October sunrise. Swedish music. the smell of sweat and clean cotton. a feather bed. the curve of a jaw. a camera lens. snow in Lakeview Cemetary, although this always gets mixed up with the Magic Place and all I remember is the feeling--laughing for joy, full of the wonder of life and people.
This stems I think almost entirely from the prosaicness (prosaicity?) of my current relationship, and the fact that this morning I made the mistake of pulling down some old poetry and reading it, poetry that I had once read with someone with whom I was a little absurdly in love.
Maybe it's just me, maybe it's the time of my life, where I haven't quite locked up all my loves forever, but that feeling you get when you revisit something that was once significant and still holds meaning--it's one of the most uncomfortable feelings in the world. Suddenly, just like that--one minute I'm reading Rumi, the next I'm back on Northside watching him play a djembe by his car and wishing he'd never leave.
I'd almost forgotten what it was like, to love someone like it was the only point in life. To physically hurt when they were not near. To see them in everything, to feel their love in a completely disembodied way--from a tree, a drive down Mayfield, the smell of lavender, a few guitar chords.
In my head, all my great loves (and I've had a few) get mixed together, and I end up with a kind of seamless montage of highlights: a first sight in October sunrise. Swedish music. the smell of sweat and clean cotton. a feather bed. the curve of a jaw. a camera lens. snow in Lakeview Cemetary, although this always gets mixed up with the Magic Place and all I remember is the feeling--laughing for joy, full of the wonder of life and people.
16 September 2006
Water Drops On the Rim of the Glass
the truest thing in the world i can say right now is i love you, i love you
15 September 2006
TSE
Ellis once told me that "drama work[ed] on" me. To this day, I still don't know what he meant, but I took it as a compliment (because what else can you do, really?)
Once I asked my best friend for her best single beauty tip. She told me to always wash my face after I brushed my teeth. I have wondered ever since if I had toothpaste on my face that day and she was too shy to tell me.
I puked three times from liquor at a friend's college. I never told him and we hooked up that night anyway. I never found out if he noticed.
Once I asked my best friend for her best single beauty tip. She told me to always wash my face after I brushed my teeth. I have wondered ever since if I had toothpaste on my face that day and she was too shy to tell me.
I puked three times from liquor at a friend's college. I never told him and we hooked up that night anyway. I never found out if he noticed.
14 September 2006
Caveat: Bitchy.
A conversation which took place tonight:
Older friend of mine: So I was just watching this thing on ABC Primetime. It was basically just teenage girls being mean to each other online. Are girls really that vicious?
Me: Yep.
OFOM: Wow. How do girls survive? Why are you so mean?
Me: Because we don't hit each other.
[pause]
Me: Actually, there is no "survival." It doesn't ever really stop. It just changes from calling someone a rampant slutface because she french kisses or wears a pink bra to calling someone a rampant slutface because she asked your boyfriend drive eight hours to shoot semen on her in the backseat of a car and then hit a deer on the way home nine days before you became official. Not that that happened to me or anything.
(In retrospect, she probably didn't ask him to hit the deer, but it's obviously her fault anyway because she's blonde.)
The thing is, I've done much, much worse things to nicer people than me. I'm sure there are groups of friends out there to whom I am the rampant slutface. (some of them I'd guess a little closer to home than I'd normally feel comfortable with) Let's not forget the way R and I got together in the first place: We hooked up once after a completely platonic sleepover, then I stopped talking to him. For six months. While he pursued me and I had one boy (who I was officially dating) practically living with me and another on the side and one more on the bench just in case. I like to consider this period in my life my make up period for not going slutty my freshman year. I am an overachiever.
Six months down the line he pulled a poor-me line: Should I even try, do I have a chance? After six months of getting shot down, his confidence was just then faltering. I said yes, call me when you get back in town, and promptly got back together with my ex.
Finally, after his best friend sat me down and explained the situation to me in painfully clear terms (Either get together with him, or stop fucking with his brain, because I'm tired of hearing him talk about you) I decided to start seeing him. Ish.
And then came the situation with the phone call and the mental illness and the best friend with whom I was possibly still in love but had just gotten engaged. And I woke up, little by little, and realized that fate had handed me one last chance to get my head screwed on straight before I ended up banging married guys.
Now--god, I can't believe it. And I'm still apologizing to some of the people I hurt. But I'm a better person for it, I hope.
Older friend of mine: So I was just watching this thing on ABC Primetime. It was basically just teenage girls being mean to each other online. Are girls really that vicious?
Me: Yep.
OFOM: Wow. How do girls survive? Why are you so mean?
Me: Because we don't hit each other.
[pause]
Me: Actually, there is no "survival." It doesn't ever really stop. It just changes from calling someone a rampant slutface because she french kisses or wears a pink bra to calling someone a rampant slutface because she asked your boyfriend drive eight hours to shoot semen on her in the backseat of a car and then hit a deer on the way home nine days before you became official. Not that that happened to me or anything.
(In retrospect, she probably didn't ask him to hit the deer, but it's obviously her fault anyway because she's blonde.)
The thing is, I've done much, much worse things to nicer people than me. I'm sure there are groups of friends out there to whom I am the rampant slutface. (some of them I'd guess a little closer to home than I'd normally feel comfortable with) Let's not forget the way R and I got together in the first place: We hooked up once after a completely platonic sleepover, then I stopped talking to him. For six months. While he pursued me and I had one boy (who I was officially dating) practically living with me and another on the side and one more on the bench just in case. I like to consider this period in my life my make up period for not going slutty my freshman year. I am an overachiever.
Six months down the line he pulled a poor-me line: Should I even try, do I have a chance? After six months of getting shot down, his confidence was just then faltering. I said yes, call me when you get back in town, and promptly got back together with my ex.
Finally, after his best friend sat me down and explained the situation to me in painfully clear terms (Either get together with him, or stop fucking with his brain, because I'm tired of hearing him talk about you) I decided to start seeing him. Ish.
And then came the situation with the phone call and the mental illness and the best friend with whom I was possibly still in love but had just gotten engaged. And I woke up, little by little, and realized that fate had handed me one last chance to get my head screwed on straight before I ended up banging married guys.
Now--god, I can't believe it. And I'm still apologizing to some of the people I hurt. But I'm a better person for it, I hope.
12 September 2006
American Beauty
I've just remembered: My high school boyfriend and I used to have sex back a lane, surrounded by fields, and then lie on our backs and look for shooting stars. It's amazing how many you see when you're looking for them.
I miss that.
I miss that.
11 September 2006
Drunken Cherry Cobbler
I have an addiction. It is a very serious addiction--one that adversely affects my life. I run out and stock up once or twice a week so that I can feed my addiction at least once daily.
I have a very serious fruit addiction. Pears, pineapples, pomegranates--whatever, as long as it's crisp and sweet and juicy, I'm in.
Notable exceptions:
Bananas. Bananas are an abomination against nature--they feel like paste and taste like cheap perfume. I have in the past claimed to be violently allergic to bananas (like a friend of mine) just so I don't have to eat them.
Coconut. See above about perfume, also--who wants to eat something that rolls around your mouth like sawdust?
If I had my choice, every grocery would stock nothing but Cameo apples (they don't go mushy! and they're just tart enough!), pomegranates would be $.50 and in season year-round, and Starbucks would be a fruit-juice chain. I don't "do" caffeine. Caffeine and I do not get along well. Caffeine makes me jumpy and cold-sweaty at best and twitchy paranoid at worst. So instead of coffee, at Starbucks I get the Pomegranate Juice Blend, which in addition to being a lovely color guaranteed to stain all your clothing purple also tastes like fucking heaven.
I have a very special place in my heart for pomegranates. I'd never tasted the things until last year when I (literally) ran to the sorority house in the wake of a breakup, fighting tears all the way, and N sat me down on a folding chair and fed me pomegranate seeds while I sobbed incoherently until I felt better. After that, I was rarely without burgandy fingertips. It was a very good winter.
Title of this post comes from the time Current Roomie and I decided to go grocery shopping before we lived together and made chicken and bought a thing of cherries. Rather than eat them all myself in a giant binge (which happens frequently to things like cherries and blueberries and grapes) I decided to make cherry cobbler. While pitting the cherries, we realized that people sometimes brandy cherries and set them on fire and serve them with ice cream. This struck us as such a good idea that we opted to soak our cobbler cherries in amaretto. Then spike the batter with amaretto, as well as the topping. It turned out fabulous, and I've since gone on to use amaretto in lots of other baked things.
I have a very serious fruit addiction. Pears, pineapples, pomegranates--whatever, as long as it's crisp and sweet and juicy, I'm in.
Notable exceptions:
Bananas. Bananas are an abomination against nature--they feel like paste and taste like cheap perfume. I have in the past claimed to be violently allergic to bananas (like a friend of mine) just so I don't have to eat them.
Coconut. See above about perfume, also--who wants to eat something that rolls around your mouth like sawdust?
If I had my choice, every grocery would stock nothing but Cameo apples (they don't go mushy! and they're just tart enough!), pomegranates would be $.50 and in season year-round, and Starbucks would be a fruit-juice chain. I don't "do" caffeine. Caffeine and I do not get along well. Caffeine makes me jumpy and cold-sweaty at best and twitchy paranoid at worst. So instead of coffee, at Starbucks I get the Pomegranate Juice Blend, which in addition to being a lovely color guaranteed to stain all your clothing purple also tastes like fucking heaven.
I have a very special place in my heart for pomegranates. I'd never tasted the things until last year when I (literally) ran to the sorority house in the wake of a breakup, fighting tears all the way, and N sat me down on a folding chair and fed me pomegranate seeds while I sobbed incoherently until I felt better. After that, I was rarely without burgandy fingertips. It was a very good winter.
Title of this post comes from the time Current Roomie and I decided to go grocery shopping before we lived together and made chicken and bought a thing of cherries. Rather than eat them all myself in a giant binge (which happens frequently to things like cherries and blueberries and grapes) I decided to make cherry cobbler. While pitting the cherries, we realized that people sometimes brandy cherries and set them on fire and serve them with ice cream. This struck us as such a good idea that we opted to soak our cobbler cherries in amaretto. Then spike the batter with amaretto, as well as the topping. It turned out fabulous, and I've since gone on to use amaretto in lots of other baked things.
09 September 2006
Just a Young Singer-'Bouter
I have a very special relationship with wood. I love washing dishes, because I use one wooden spoon often, and it feels fantastic under my fingers. One of my roommates used it once and burnt tomato sauce onto it, and wouldn't listen to me when I said it was fine if it stained. That spoon's got history.
I come from an antiques family--when I go home, I sleep in the same bed my great-grandfather did. Different mattress, though. One of my earliest memories of my paternal grandfather is sitting out in the old pigbarn, which had been converted into a shop, smelling the wood-burning stove and watching him file down old pieces of scrap metal, or sanding a piece of furniture for refinishing.
My home is jam-packed with furniture that my grandparents have stripped, refinished, and given/sold to us. In addition, my parents have run around the Midwest looking for pieces that "match"--100-150 year old oak. If you've seen it, you'll know it. There's no color like it in the entire world.
I suspect it's no coincidence that the apartment I chose when I moved off campus has beautiful thick woodwork, buried under fourteen coats of paint. If I owned this place, I'd move out for a weekend and strip the entire apartment. It's 80 year-old oak under all that white paint, and it's a damn crime. My brother's dresser sits in my room. It creaks, the joints are wobbly, but when the sunlight hits it the grain is miles deep and I could stare into it for hours. The mirror's original, too, with that lovely smoky feel that mirrors get after about fifty years.
My parents ran into a table in an antiques shop while they were waiting for a dinner reservation. The shop, apparently, was a complete pit, but my mom went in, stared at this table, and then moved on. My dad went in after her, stared at the same table, came back out, and they bought it. This is the same table I knead bread on in Cleveland.
Speaking of kneading bread, in my entire grandparents' house full of many, many things (in addition to furniture, they collect model tractors, Aladdin lamps, postcards, marbles, buttons, dolls, china, and clocks, to give you an idea of what their house is like) over which the entire family will begin to quibble the moment they go, the only thing I really care about is my grandmother's breadboard. It's huge, about three feet by three feet, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only grandkid to have ever made bread with her on it. One Christmas we turned out thirty loaves of snitzbread and gave them away to all the family.
Snitzbread, if you're not familiar, is a fruited German bread that's usually made for holidays. It's delicious, but I think the recipe only exists for epic porportions.
In my room at home there is also a desk. The desk is the catalyst for the Furniture Wars in my family. One year for my birthday, we went shopping all over Ohio for a nice oak desk for my room. We only found this one that was reasonably priced and small enough to fit up our stairwell. I hated it on sight. But we bought it and brought it home, and once it was up in my room, I fell completely in love. It had drawers and hidey-holes and an ink stain from maybe eighty years ago in Pennsylvania where someone had overturned an ink bottle. It had lovely original hardware and pretty curved legs and folded out to a perfect size to spread out and do work.
Now, the problem is that my parents love this desk just as much as I do, and they insist that it was just bought for me around my birthday, and thus belongs to them. I of course maintain that it was a birthday present, and as such is mine to take with me when I move into a more permanent dwelling. Since the advent of the table, however, a whole new campaign in the Furniture Wars has been launched: the Trade.
"The desk is mine," I say, "but I'll trade it to you for the table. I love that table."
"It is a nice table, isn't it?" says my mom.
"Too bad the desk isn't yours," says Dad.
Then I start offering to take their wardrobe off their hands (ash, perfect for children reading C. S. Lewis,) or perhaps loading up the kitchen table in the middle of the night. They always offer me the secretary or the sideboard. I remind them that I don't want the sideboard or the secretary, and say that my brother's wife can have them someday. Mom always points out that the piano is mine, which it is--her parents bought it for her when she started taking lessons, and it will mean a lot to someday have it in my house for my kids to bang out "heart and soul" until I kill them and go to jail.
I will have a very, very hard time helping them move out of that house someday. It's a fantastic house, and we've remodeled it a couple of times, so it's completely ours. I picked the paint colors that everyone raves about. Mom and I went back and forth on the kitchen cupboards, whether it was smart to put hardwood in the kitchen, with all the foot traffic. We lived in it when the stove was in the TV room and you had to walk a plank to get into the house, looking down into the basement on either side.
I remember when the kitchen was just getting finished up and my grandparents came over to visit. Mom and I had agonized over the placement of the island--if it should be at ninety degrees to the rest of the room, or at more of an angle. We decided on the angle, and my grandfather walked in and said "You're not going to leave it that way, are you?"
We left it that way.
I joke about Jake (the brother) having to move back in there someday, but there's truth to it. I'd hate to ever see another family, someone I didn't know, living in those rooms, touching that stair rail, trying to touch those ceilings. Kate, a high-school friend, once told me that she'd buy it from my parents and live there someday with her kids, and that'd be second-best. She loves our house, and it'd be the perfect place for her future family.
I remember telling Mom over and over that the darker blue was right for the kitchen. She didn't think so. I won, but she disagreed with me so much that she was nearly sick when the paint started going up.
Now, of course, she loves it and wouldn't change it.
My grandmother said she wouldn't marry a farmer.
My mother didn't want anything to do with "that old stuff" when she furnished her new home.
I said that my home didn't mean anything to me, that I would leave it behind almost effortlessly when I came to school.
Now, of course, we love it and wouldn't change it.
I come from an antiques family--when I go home, I sleep in the same bed my great-grandfather did. Different mattress, though. One of my earliest memories of my paternal grandfather is sitting out in the old pigbarn, which had been converted into a shop, smelling the wood-burning stove and watching him file down old pieces of scrap metal, or sanding a piece of furniture for refinishing.
My home is jam-packed with furniture that my grandparents have stripped, refinished, and given/sold to us. In addition, my parents have run around the Midwest looking for pieces that "match"--100-150 year old oak. If you've seen it, you'll know it. There's no color like it in the entire world.
I suspect it's no coincidence that the apartment I chose when I moved off campus has beautiful thick woodwork, buried under fourteen coats of paint. If I owned this place, I'd move out for a weekend and strip the entire apartment. It's 80 year-old oak under all that white paint, and it's a damn crime. My brother's dresser sits in my room. It creaks, the joints are wobbly, but when the sunlight hits it the grain is miles deep and I could stare into it for hours. The mirror's original, too, with that lovely smoky feel that mirrors get after about fifty years.
My parents ran into a table in an antiques shop while they were waiting for a dinner reservation. The shop, apparently, was a complete pit, but my mom went in, stared at this table, and then moved on. My dad went in after her, stared at the same table, came back out, and they bought it. This is the same table I knead bread on in Cleveland.
Speaking of kneading bread, in my entire grandparents' house full of many, many things (in addition to furniture, they collect model tractors, Aladdin lamps, postcards, marbles, buttons, dolls, china, and clocks, to give you an idea of what their house is like) over which the entire family will begin to quibble the moment they go, the only thing I really care about is my grandmother's breadboard. It's huge, about three feet by three feet, and I'm pretty sure I'm the only grandkid to have ever made bread with her on it. One Christmas we turned out thirty loaves of snitzbread and gave them away to all the family.
Snitzbread, if you're not familiar, is a fruited German bread that's usually made for holidays. It's delicious, but I think the recipe only exists for epic porportions.
In my room at home there is also a desk. The desk is the catalyst for the Furniture Wars in my family. One year for my birthday, we went shopping all over Ohio for a nice oak desk for my room. We only found this one that was reasonably priced and small enough to fit up our stairwell. I hated it on sight. But we bought it and brought it home, and once it was up in my room, I fell completely in love. It had drawers and hidey-holes and an ink stain from maybe eighty years ago in Pennsylvania where someone had overturned an ink bottle. It had lovely original hardware and pretty curved legs and folded out to a perfect size to spread out and do work.
Now, the problem is that my parents love this desk just as much as I do, and they insist that it was just bought for me around my birthday, and thus belongs to them. I of course maintain that it was a birthday present, and as such is mine to take with me when I move into a more permanent dwelling. Since the advent of the table, however, a whole new campaign in the Furniture Wars has been launched: the Trade.
"The desk is mine," I say, "but I'll trade it to you for the table. I love that table."
"It is a nice table, isn't it?" says my mom.
"Too bad the desk isn't yours," says Dad.
Then I start offering to take their wardrobe off their hands (ash, perfect for children reading C. S. Lewis,) or perhaps loading up the kitchen table in the middle of the night. They always offer me the secretary or the sideboard. I remind them that I don't want the sideboard or the secretary, and say that my brother's wife can have them someday. Mom always points out that the piano is mine, which it is--her parents bought it for her when she started taking lessons, and it will mean a lot to someday have it in my house for my kids to bang out "heart and soul" until I kill them and go to jail.
I will have a very, very hard time helping them move out of that house someday. It's a fantastic house, and we've remodeled it a couple of times, so it's completely ours. I picked the paint colors that everyone raves about. Mom and I went back and forth on the kitchen cupboards, whether it was smart to put hardwood in the kitchen, with all the foot traffic. We lived in it when the stove was in the TV room and you had to walk a plank to get into the house, looking down into the basement on either side.
I remember when the kitchen was just getting finished up and my grandparents came over to visit. Mom and I had agonized over the placement of the island--if it should be at ninety degrees to the rest of the room, or at more of an angle. We decided on the angle, and my grandfather walked in and said "You're not going to leave it that way, are you?"
We left it that way.
I joke about Jake (the brother) having to move back in there someday, but there's truth to it. I'd hate to ever see another family, someone I didn't know, living in those rooms, touching that stair rail, trying to touch those ceilings. Kate, a high-school friend, once told me that she'd buy it from my parents and live there someday with her kids, and that'd be second-best. She loves our house, and it'd be the perfect place for her future family.
I remember telling Mom over and over that the darker blue was right for the kitchen. She didn't think so. I won, but she disagreed with me so much that she was nearly sick when the paint started going up.
Now, of course, she loves it and wouldn't change it.
My grandmother said she wouldn't marry a farmer.
My mother didn't want anything to do with "that old stuff" when she furnished her new home.
I said that my home didn't mean anything to me, that I would leave it behind almost effortlessly when I came to school.
Now, of course, we love it and wouldn't change it.
07 September 2006
05 September 2006
Blueberries Cured My Hiccups
You wouldn't think making a simple histogram would be such a royal pain in the ass. I hate MS Excel.
I cannot focus on this ecology lab. That could be because it's royally boring (measure trees! see if they make a Gaussian curve! of course they don't, you didn't measure enough!) or just because it's gorgeous out and I really want to be at the Algebra, possibly trading baked goods to Sean in exchange for conversation, and possibly writing about Lex Luthor, and possibly just talking to the random denizens of the Algebra.
Instead, I have an apartment ridiculously full of sweet things that no one wants to eat, one ex-boyfriend and one never-boyfriend on my mind instead of my real boyfriend (who looks damn good in black) and a piss-poor attitude towards my class work. I have senioritis like whoa.
Actually, I have tired-of-not-being-a-real-adult-itis. I'm twenty-two now, and I get a huge kick out of saying that, no matter how much I talk shit about younger girls. I'll be out of college soon. I'm reaching the age where things start to get real, and though that scares me shitless it also excites me.
I cannot focus on this ecology lab. That could be because it's royally boring (measure trees! see if they make a Gaussian curve! of course they don't, you didn't measure enough!) or just because it's gorgeous out and I really want to be at the Algebra, possibly trading baked goods to Sean in exchange for conversation, and possibly writing about Lex Luthor, and possibly just talking to the random denizens of the Algebra.
Instead, I have an apartment ridiculously full of sweet things that no one wants to eat, one ex-boyfriend and one never-boyfriend on my mind instead of my real boyfriend (who looks damn good in black) and a piss-poor attitude towards my class work. I have senioritis like whoa.
Actually, I have tired-of-not-being-a-real-adult-itis. I'm twenty-two now, and I get a huge kick out of saying that, no matter how much I talk shit about younger girls. I'll be out of college soon. I'm reaching the age where things start to get real, and though that scares me shitless it also excites me.
04 September 2006
Chick Flicks, Romance, and Domesticity
So I'm sitting here listening to some of the best summer music ever recorded and wishing it were hot enough for it to be the late 60's and me in cutoff shorts washing a car. This weather and this era gets me down. Luckily I've been baking all day, so I have blonde brownies and mini cheesecakes to keep my company in my dumps.
I read Matt's blog for the first time in a while today, and his post from 21 August has given me food for thought. That and the fact that I watched my favorite chick flick ever today--My Best Friend's Wedding. For those of you who haven't seen it and care, I'm going to spoil it. You've been warned.
The reason I love this movie is that it's a chick flick that ends right. Julia Roberts plays this beautiful, crazy woman who suddenly decides she's in love with her (male) best friend when he tells her he's getting married four days before his wedding. She, of course, decides to stop the wedding, steal him back, and make him hers again. Hilarity ensues.
Now here comes the good part: He marries the other girl anyway. Despite all the significant looks and romantic moments, and despite the fact that he probably loves Ms. Roberts more deeply than his fiancee, he marries the other girl. Because she makes more sense. She loves him in a way that's not complicated and full of issues. She doesn't know him as well, and probably never will. But she doesn't have years of baggage, and she's only marginally crazy, and she just loves him.
In my mind, (and I know I've said this billions of times) love isn't a reason. It's a feeling. And the reason I'm so cynical about love is that I've built relationships on love alone and they have always blown up spectacularly in my face.
I never had one of those "falling in love" moments with R. I can pinpoint the moment when my attitude toward him changed from guy-I-will-never-date to guy-I-could-date-marry-and-make-babies-with, but that's a long story.
I'll tell it anyway: in high school I had two very close girl friends, J (who just got married) and Grace. Both of them were a year older than me, so they both went off to college my senior year of high school. Grace dropped out twice her freshman year due to hallucinations and other complications of schizophrenia. She then transferred the next year and dropped out of that college as well. She's been in and out of jobs and college ever since, dabbled in smoked or ingested drugs, and had a few relationships that were various degrees of bad for her.
One night I was over at R's with a friend, who was downstairs painting something, and I was trying to keep R from making a move. My phone rang--J. She was clearly upset, so I took the call, sitting on R's futon. (something I try not to do) Over the next half hour, it all came out; how Grace's hallucinations were back. How she was cutting again. How she couldn't sleep, and thus J couldn't sleep, because Grace has always called J with her troubles. How she was living with one man and sleeping with another who gave her acid. On and on and on while all I could do was listen and want to cry.
At some point, R picked up my head and laid it in his lap. And when I hung up, exhausted, and the whole story came spilling out, he played with my hair and listened. He didn't ask questions. He didn't offer solutions. He didn't judge, and he didn't diminish or overdramatize anything. He just listened.
I dislike Sex and the City for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that quote at the finale: that what we're supposed to look for is ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-eachother love. I don't want someone to become the center of my life. I want someone who can be my partner. Love like Carrie describes--it's flailing, sobbing, clutching, flashing red and purple love. For me, that's never enough. It sure feels great, but it doesn't last for me.
It has to be someone I love in the quiet sort of way. In the way where I know their quirks and they know mine, when I can tell their "duty" voice from their regular voice. When he knows not to invite me over for pina coladas because I hate coconut, and I know not to order pizza with mushrooms for a similar reason. When I'm comfortable excluding him from parts of my life (like J's wedding, for instance) because I know he'll be there when I get back. R doesn't add anything to my life. But with him, I feel there's a stronger foundation under everything I do.
Finally, I thought for a little bit about the phrase "hopeless romantic" today. Why isn't it "hopeful romantic"? Isn't that the truth, that you're hoping for someone to love and be loved by? You're not hopeless. You're finding and making romance in every corner of your life.
I read Matt's blog for the first time in a while today, and his post from 21 August has given me food for thought. That and the fact that I watched my favorite chick flick ever today--My Best Friend's Wedding. For those of you who haven't seen it and care, I'm going to spoil it. You've been warned.
The reason I love this movie is that it's a chick flick that ends right. Julia Roberts plays this beautiful, crazy woman who suddenly decides she's in love with her (male) best friend when he tells her he's getting married four days before his wedding. She, of course, decides to stop the wedding, steal him back, and make him hers again. Hilarity ensues.
Now here comes the good part: He marries the other girl anyway. Despite all the significant looks and romantic moments, and despite the fact that he probably loves Ms. Roberts more deeply than his fiancee, he marries the other girl. Because she makes more sense. She loves him in a way that's not complicated and full of issues. She doesn't know him as well, and probably never will. But she doesn't have years of baggage, and she's only marginally crazy, and she just loves him.
In my mind, (and I know I've said this billions of times) love isn't a reason. It's a feeling. And the reason I'm so cynical about love is that I've built relationships on love alone and they have always blown up spectacularly in my face.
I never had one of those "falling in love" moments with R. I can pinpoint the moment when my attitude toward him changed from guy-I-will-never-date to guy-I-could-date-marry-and-make-babies-with, but that's a long story.
I'll tell it anyway: in high school I had two very close girl friends, J (who just got married) and Grace. Both of them were a year older than me, so they both went off to college my senior year of high school. Grace dropped out twice her freshman year due to hallucinations and other complications of schizophrenia. She then transferred the next year and dropped out of that college as well. She's been in and out of jobs and college ever since, dabbled in smoked or ingested drugs, and had a few relationships that were various degrees of bad for her.
One night I was over at R's with a friend, who was downstairs painting something, and I was trying to keep R from making a move. My phone rang--J. She was clearly upset, so I took the call, sitting on R's futon. (something I try not to do) Over the next half hour, it all came out; how Grace's hallucinations were back. How she was cutting again. How she couldn't sleep, and thus J couldn't sleep, because Grace has always called J with her troubles. How she was living with one man and sleeping with another who gave her acid. On and on and on while all I could do was listen and want to cry.
At some point, R picked up my head and laid it in his lap. And when I hung up, exhausted, and the whole story came spilling out, he played with my hair and listened. He didn't ask questions. He didn't offer solutions. He didn't judge, and he didn't diminish or overdramatize anything. He just listened.
I dislike Sex and the City for a lot of reasons, but one of them is that quote at the finale: that what we're supposed to look for is ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-eachother love. I don't want someone to become the center of my life. I want someone who can be my partner. Love like Carrie describes--it's flailing, sobbing, clutching, flashing red and purple love. For me, that's never enough. It sure feels great, but it doesn't last for me.
It has to be someone I love in the quiet sort of way. In the way where I know their quirks and they know mine, when I can tell their "duty" voice from their regular voice. When he knows not to invite me over for pina coladas because I hate coconut, and I know not to order pizza with mushrooms for a similar reason. When I'm comfortable excluding him from parts of my life (like J's wedding, for instance) because I know he'll be there when I get back. R doesn't add anything to my life. But with him, I feel there's a stronger foundation under everything I do.
Finally, I thought for a little bit about the phrase "hopeless romantic" today. Why isn't it "hopeful romantic"? Isn't that the truth, that you're hoping for someone to love and be loved by? You're not hopeless. You're finding and making romance in every corner of your life.
03 September 2006
Toffee Stuck and Tongue Tied
No post yesterday because I was moving my brother into college. He's going to Mount Vernon Nazarene, which is a very conservative, very Christian school. Chapel three times a week, no public dancing, no drinking, no R-rated movies.
I felt like a hermit crab there without my protective shell of sarcasm and wit. You just can't be sarcastic there, everyone is so smiley and Christian and happy all the damn time and you feel terrible for making fun of anything because they all believe it in the singing with your eyes closed way. So I just put my brother's bed together, rubber-banded all his electronics cords, and was a supportive sister. I didn't cry when I hugged him goodbye, which was a pretty big triumph. I hope he'll be happy there.
My parents have understandably been a little clingy for the rest of the weekend. They've just left after a full day of shopping for the first care package to go to Mount Vernon and browsing bookstores and getting pizza and making CDs. Little do they know...
I've got a big empty nest care package planned. A couple DVDs that Mom loves. Six or seven mixed CDs because all the ones they have are scratched to shit. Cookies, because Mom doesn't bake anymore. And a loving note from their daughter.
I cleaned out some iTunes playlists tonight and was hit by some music I hadn't heard in a while. Whenever I end a relationship I tend to shun the music that reminds me of it, and this was stuff from my "hippie" ex. It's good music. It makes me miss him, miss us. It hits a chord in the middle of all this nostalgia from senior year, orientation, sending a brother off to college.
I miss being young and ignorant. I miss the uncomplicated kind of way I loved him. I miss the complications of polyamory, and I miss the way we worked together--despite all the drama, we had a core relationship that was very similar to mine with R--supportive and friendly and devoted. I miss missing him, having him on my mind always, writing to him. He was the last person who wrote me love letters in the traditional sense. Of course, I still have them. I'm afraid to read them.
I do this with relationships past. I hermetically seal them, afraid that the feelings haven't died, and that something about the music we had sex to, or the scent of lavender, will wake a sleeping monster. That I've never stopped loving anyone, ever, I've just buried them and moved on.
Or, I can't decide which, I'm afraid I have stopped loving them. That love can die and leave no grief. That I can ever go to Asian food stores without him, or sit under our tree, or listen to the folksinger his stepdad played with.
Or that I will never have that kind of love again. I think it's pretty safe to say yes to that one.
I felt like a hermit crab there without my protective shell of sarcasm and wit. You just can't be sarcastic there, everyone is so smiley and Christian and happy all the damn time and you feel terrible for making fun of anything because they all believe it in the singing with your eyes closed way. So I just put my brother's bed together, rubber-banded all his electronics cords, and was a supportive sister. I didn't cry when I hugged him goodbye, which was a pretty big triumph. I hope he'll be happy there.
My parents have understandably been a little clingy for the rest of the weekend. They've just left after a full day of shopping for the first care package to go to Mount Vernon and browsing bookstores and getting pizza and making CDs. Little do they know...
I've got a big empty nest care package planned. A couple DVDs that Mom loves. Six or seven mixed CDs because all the ones they have are scratched to shit. Cookies, because Mom doesn't bake anymore. And a loving note from their daughter.
I cleaned out some iTunes playlists tonight and was hit by some music I hadn't heard in a while. Whenever I end a relationship I tend to shun the music that reminds me of it, and this was stuff from my "hippie" ex. It's good music. It makes me miss him, miss us. It hits a chord in the middle of all this nostalgia from senior year, orientation, sending a brother off to college.
I miss being young and ignorant. I miss the uncomplicated kind of way I loved him. I miss the complications of polyamory, and I miss the way we worked together--despite all the drama, we had a core relationship that was very similar to mine with R--supportive and friendly and devoted. I miss missing him, having him on my mind always, writing to him. He was the last person who wrote me love letters in the traditional sense. Of course, I still have them. I'm afraid to read them.
I do this with relationships past. I hermetically seal them, afraid that the feelings haven't died, and that something about the music we had sex to, or the scent of lavender, will wake a sleeping monster. That I've never stopped loving anyone, ever, I've just buried them and moved on.
Or, I can't decide which, I'm afraid I have stopped loving them. That love can die and leave no grief. That I can ever go to Asian food stores without him, or sit under our tree, or listen to the folksinger his stepdad played with.
Or that I will never have that kind of love again. I think it's pretty safe to say yes to that one.
01 September 2006
Capes and Tights
Went to Algebra today for no good reason other than to read a chapter of ecology. I was warned in advance by the professor that the text is dry, tedious, and difficult. It was the fastest chapter I've ever read. I'm not sure what kind of reviewers the book has had, but I thought it was excellent--well-written, with plenty of information and case studies. Granted, it's a lot of material, but I didn't feel rushed through anything, as I often do with textbooks.
Physics is a completely different story. I have the feeling that all my homework assignments will be completed in the professor's office this semester. I've forgotten most of what I vaguely thought I knew at the end of last year, and electricity and magnetism (read: lots and lots of math) has never been my strong suit.
I came to college thinking I was pretty good at math, and my first couple of calc classes did nothing to disabuse me of my illusions. The upper level physics classes hit me hard. It'd be a lie to say I don't like math. I love math when I can see the point. Proofs for the sake of prettiness don't really get me unless I'm in a proving mood. I'd rather see experimental evidence than lines of equations when learning physics, and qualitative explanations tend to grant me more understanding. After I've got the idea, then I can look at the math and see how it works. But math alone isn't enough for me.
That's because at heart I'm an experimentalist to a fault. I really only care about the theory as it pertains to what can happen in front of me. It's why I love my job/senior project so much--we're making the theory as we do the experiments. There isn't a lot of previous theory to know. And there's very. little. math.
Physics is a completely different story. I have the feeling that all my homework assignments will be completed in the professor's office this semester. I've forgotten most of what I vaguely thought I knew at the end of last year, and electricity and magnetism (read: lots and lots of math) has never been my strong suit.
I came to college thinking I was pretty good at math, and my first couple of calc classes did nothing to disabuse me of my illusions. The upper level physics classes hit me hard. It'd be a lie to say I don't like math. I love math when I can see the point. Proofs for the sake of prettiness don't really get me unless I'm in a proving mood. I'd rather see experimental evidence than lines of equations when learning physics, and qualitative explanations tend to grant me more understanding. After I've got the idea, then I can look at the math and see how it works. But math alone isn't enough for me.
That's because at heart I'm an experimentalist to a fault. I really only care about the theory as it pertains to what can happen in front of me. It's why I love my job/senior project so much--we're making the theory as we do the experiments. There isn't a lot of previous theory to know. And there's very. little. math.
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