Semester's over
The exam's graded, the scores are in, so it appears that I'm entirely finished with the course. This semester was a far better teaching experience than calculus, and I'm hoping that gets reflected in my evals. Now Christian and I are just packing things up in order to leave for Buffalo tomorrow evening. It's partially a survey as well of all the things we'll have to do before we move to France at the end of January. Tonight we relaxed a bit by going to the El Cerrito Speakeasy for a movie and beer. The walk back was especially calming in its tranquility.
Last night we had been grading when our neighbors knocked on our door and said they were having a party. So we decided to go with the whim and head over there for "a few hours" (="until 3am, and even then Christian was still yakkin'!). It was our first real chance to hang out with our neighbors that moved in at the start of the semester. Everyone's just been so busy that beyond the initial introductions we've only had occasional chats when we run into each other in the stairwell. The couple, Julie and Tim, are really nice, down to earth people and extremely friendly and outgoing. It's pretty sad that after all these years of living here and having several neighbors pass through that apartment across from us, we don't get friendly people until just before we move out. :-( We got to talking up a storm with them and I particularly felt a kinship to them because they both had spent several years in Pittsburgh, so we could reminisce about the yinzers. Julie's just a rowdy, no-frills Pittsburgh gal and it was great interacting with her. For instance, we had a huge debate with the lesbian couple from Portland who were lauding their Portland "pizza", to which Julie responded "That's not pizza! That's Western casserole." It felt so good to be around other people so squarely in the "what they call pizza on the West Coast does not deserve the name pizza" camp. Actually, the lesbian couple were really cool as well -- one of them is a landscape architect grad student like Julie, and the other is a water management engineer. We got into all sorts of topics, including a heated debate about Michael Pollan, and for once people gave my research as much conversation time as Christian's! Usually when people hear I do math they patronize me for a minute before switching the topic, usually back to language (which is admittedly an interesting topic, but I often get jealous of how easily Christian can get people talking about his research). Anyway, it was a fun, very long conversation with intelligent people.
Last night we had been grading when our neighbors knocked on our door and said they were having a party. So we decided to go with the whim and head over there for "a few hours" (="until 3am, and even then Christian was still yakkin'!). It was our first real chance to hang out with our neighbors that moved in at the start of the semester. Everyone's just been so busy that beyond the initial introductions we've only had occasional chats when we run into each other in the stairwell. The couple, Julie and Tim, are really nice, down to earth people and extremely friendly and outgoing. It's pretty sad that after all these years of living here and having several neighbors pass through that apartment across from us, we don't get friendly people until just before we move out. :-( We got to talking up a storm with them and I particularly felt a kinship to them because they both had spent several years in Pittsburgh, so we could reminisce about the yinzers. Julie's just a rowdy, no-frills Pittsburgh gal and it was great interacting with her. For instance, we had a huge debate with the lesbian couple from Portland who were lauding their Portland "pizza", to which Julie responded "That's not pizza! That's Western casserole." It felt so good to be around other people so squarely in the "what they call pizza on the West Coast does not deserve the name pizza" camp. Actually, the lesbian couple were really cool as well -- one of them is a landscape architect grad student like Julie, and the other is a water management engineer. We got into all sorts of topics, including a heated debate about Michael Pollan, and for once people gave my research as much conversation time as Christian's! Usually when people hear I do math they patronize me for a minute before switching the topic, usually back to language (which is admittedly an interesting topic, but I often get jealous of how easily Christian can get people talking about his research). Anyway, it was a fun, very long conversation with intelligent people.