Wonderful News!

A little over twenty-five years ago, our oldest child, Luke, was born. We have enjoyed watching him pass the many milestones of life. Learning to walk. Learn to read. Graduating from high school. Graduating from college. Moving out and going to graduate school.

A few days ago, we were able to share in another milestone in his life. He asked the woman he loves to marry him. And she said, "Yes."

We are thrilled! Lydia is a wonderful young woman and the perfect companion for Luke. We are so thankful to God and are looking forward to a wedding later this year.

Moving Out

This week brought a major change to our lives. Our oldest child Luke moved out. Now we’ve been very spoiled. Our kids have been able to live with us at home while they attended college. (A branch of the University of Tennessee is only a few miles from our home.) And the kids decided to attend there while living at home and thus avoid student loan debt. So we got four more years than most parents get.

But this spring Luke and Ariel both graduated. And Monday, Luke moved to Knoxville to begin working on his PhD in chemistry, focusing on organo-metallics (making an organic molecule with a metal in it).

Of course, the move didn’t go quite like Luke thought. He’d done some sorting and packing in the days before his move, but he didn’t realize he had to pack everything or how long it would take. By lunchtime, Cal and I began helping.

And then, I mentioned to Jacob that the sooner Luke was out of the room, the sooner Jake could move in. (Jake and Matthew have shared a room their entire lives.) At that point, packing went really quickly—Jake is goal-oriented—he put Luke’s stuff in a box, taped it, scribbled a label, and moved it out. So we loaded up our truck and Luke’s car and headed north.

Here’s a photo.

I'm not sure why he likes that hat. It makes him look like Che Guevara, which he thinks is absolutely hilarious.

When we knocked on the door of Luke’s apartment (he’s sharing with two other grad students), braced myself for a grimy mess. A twenty-something guy with curly hair opened the door and invited us in. The apartment was neat and clean. Even the counters and the bathrooms were spotless. I’m still in shock. And I’m wondering if I can hire them.

As for Luke, he’s fine. I talked with him briefly on Friday. According to Luke, work is good, the apartment is good, his roommates are good, and cooking for himself is good. Then, I passed the phone to Cal and they spend fifteen minutes discussing the last Yankees’ game. Yep, everything is good.

Goodwill, Grad School, and Vampires

It’s been a whole week since I’ve blogged. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before. Even when we go on vacation, I usually post pictures.

The good thing is that nothing bad has happened to me. Things have just gotten even busier than before (didn’t know that was possible). Here’s what’s been going on.

1. My parents are moving, so I’ve been helping them pack and thinking how grateful I am that it’s not me who’s moving. Though I’m jealous of the opportunity to cull:

My mom: Do you think I need to keep this?

Me: Have you used it in the last year?

My mom: No.

Me: It gets packed in the going-to-Goodwill box.

2. Luke and Ariel are preparing to visit graduate schools. Next weekend, Luke’s visiting University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and Ariel’s visiting Emory. Now I have to explain to people what my kids are going to study.

Me: Luke, are you studying those cage things that tie things together?

Luke: You mean ligands?

Me: Yeah.

Luke: No.

Me: Oh…

Luke: I’m studying organo-metallic catalysts.

I turn to Ariel.

Me: Ariel, so when people ask what you’re studying…

Ar: Math.

Me: Right. So I can say complex analysis.

Ar nods.

Me: Are there any practical applications?

Ar: I hope not.

3. I’ve been editing my third novel in Screwing Up Time series. Why is it that even though I know it’s the first edit after the first draft, I still hope that nothing needs to be changed? I find myself muttering and blaming my characters. Hmm...When my kids go to grad school and people ask what their mom does, will they say, “She grumbles and talks to herself”?

4. And last of all, I’ve been reading The Historian for my writers’ reading group. Normally, I’d never choose to read a vampire book. In fact, I’d usually view it as a literary punishment akin to reading James Joyce, but I’m loving this one.

I Should Go to Grad School

Two of my kids are graduating from college in the spring. So, they’re in the process of applying to grad school. (Luke in chemistry, and Ariel in math.)

So they’ve been working on everything from personal statements, which are the equivalent of why-you-want-me-in-your-program, to curricula vitae, which is everything-I’ve-ever-done-that’s-vaguely-relevant to why-you-want-me-in-your-program. And, of course, they’ve taken the GRE.

And they’ve been getting emails. Luke’s are from chemistry departments. Ariel’s getting spammed. Recently, she got an email from the University of Colorado encouraging her to apply to their Quantitative Biology program. She said, “Shoot me now,” even though they were offering buckets of money. Matt said, “Does that mean you’d be counting sheep?” Ariel moaned about another program wanting to use her for her math skills. As a parent, that doesn’t sound so bad to me—not when there are buckets of money involved. I wish someone would want to use my mad math skills.

Lately, Ariel’s been getting lots emails from engineering programs. They all start, “Congratulations on your interest in graduate engineering.” She now talks back to the spam—“I never, ever said I was interested in engineering.” I said, “Well, at least, they don’t want you for your math skills. They want you because you’re a girl. Diversity.” I wonder if they’d give her buckets of money. Maybe I should apply to grad school. I could do Quantitative English. I’d love to be paid to count poems.

Is It Friday Yet?

This is one of those weeks where it’s only Wednesday, but it feels like Friday.

It started Sunday night when Luke complained he didn’t feel well. And I should’ve known this was a bad sign. Luke never complains. But everyone went to bed.

On Monday morning Luke woke up in pain, right lower quadrant abdominal pain. The pain was bad enough that he was very pale (Luke has dark almond-colored skin). Then he said he didn’t think he could go to class—in four years of college I don’t think he’s ever missed a class. He always goes, sick or not.

We took Luke to the doctor who thought it might be appendicitis. And he ordered a CT scan, which the insurance company denied. The hospital told us they gave no reason for the denial. So Cal began making phone calls. Interestingly enough, the insurance company hires another company to make denials, etc. No doubt this is to cover them when they get sued. After lots of phone calls, some person told Cal that Luke was denied because his doctor didn’t order enough tests. Yes, you heard that right, Luke’s doctor only ordered a CT of the pelvis and they thought he needed a CT of the abdomen too. So they denied all services. (Of course, they didn’t give the hospital or the doctor this information.)

By now, it’s after hours on Monday, and Luke’s still in a lot of pain. So Cal called the after-hours doctor, who said he’d be happy to talk to Blue Cross/Blue Shield authorization. He’d had experience with them denying the same procedure before. He said they stall you because if you have to go to ER, where they’ll cover the CT, you have to pay a higher deductible. (No wonder Mr. Incredible couldn’t stand working for an insurance company.)

To make a long story short, Luke got the CT and it turned out that he doesn’t have appendicitis. The doctor has no idea what’s wrong. We’re just hoping and praying that whatever’s wrong passes soon—the current theory is a virus with spasmodic “thingies.” Luke still has a low grade fever and stomach pains, though they’re much more bearable.

And just in time, now our internet is down. I’ve got it jerry-rigged so I can post this. It’s going to be a long week. And I have a writing deadline looming. I’m beginning to think all of October will be shorter than this week.

The Eccentrics

Last week, Cal and I went to the Chemistry Awards Banquet. Luke was receiving some awards and invited us to come. (Actually, we heard from someone else that he was getting awards and insisted on coming. But he was glad to have us come.) If you’ve never been to a get-together with a bunch of chemists, let’s just say it was an experience. We met interesting people.

First, we met girl who’s Luke’s physical chemistry lab partner. She was pretty normally dressed except for the Spock ears that were decorated with a big silk flower that matched her dress. She was very sweet. There was the guy in the white sport coat with a very fancy camera taking pictures of everything and everyone. I asked Luke if he was the official photographer. Luke said, “No. He just likes taking pictures.”

At the dinner, we sat at a table with a couple of professors and their wives. As we got to know each other, they asked about our other kids. And they found out that Ariel is a junior majoring in math, that Jacob will be starting college in the fall majoring in engineering. Luke added that he’s grooming Matthew to be a chem major. Luke’s prof told Luke that he gets a finder’s fee if he convinces Matthew to major in chemistry. Then, of course, the profs wanted to know what Cal and I studied in college. We told them—English Lit and Sociology. They blinked. A long pause ensued. Then, a throat was cleared and one of the wives said, “Um, I guess it must be in the genes somewhere.” Yep, must be. At that point, everyone ate their cake.

After the meal, the awards were given out, and Luke received several awards, which was very fun for us. Then, they announced a scholarship and called Luke’s name. His head jerked up. He didn’t know he was getting a scholarship. That was even more fun. And it was weird/fun hearing Luke’s professor talk about him. Weird because it’s a complete stranger who knows our son so well. And he discussed Luke’s research habits. I remember the words “the most persistent” being used. We see that personality trait at home too, but we called it “stubborn as a mule.” But, apparently it’s a good thing in the lab.

On the way home, Cal said, “I had a great time, but I’m not sure that I’ve ever met a group of more eccentric people.” I agreed. But now we understand why Luke used to meticulously organize his sock drawer when he was two years old. He was born a chemist. We just didn’t know it yet.

My Week Of Relaxation

Last Friday I finished the first draft of the sequel to Screwing Up Time. This week was supposed to be my week of relaxation. Week of Relaxation. I may have said those words, but I didn’t really mean them. What I meant was “my week to catch up on all the things that I slacked off on when I was writing.” (See this post.)

So did I get the yard work done? No, I didn’t even get Round-up sprayed. Instead, precious child number three, Jake, had a midterm in Calculus 2 (he’s taking a dual enrollment class—college and high school credits at the same time). Now you’d think that child one, Luke, and child two, Ariel, who are fulltime students at the university would be able to squeeze Jake into their schedule and transport him to review sessions/office hours. You’d be wrong. Luke and Ariel have jobs with weird hours. I drove Jake back and forth, even one time when guess what—the prof wasn’t available. I just love those car trips with no purpose.

Did I get the ironing done? Sort of. I got a pile finished, but not the one I wanted. I wanted to get Cal’s winter dress pants/shirts out of storage, washed, and ironed. (Our old house has miniscule closets.) I didn’t even get the clothes out of the basement. Child four, Matt, was taking the PSAT this week and needed help with the bizarre writing section—I had to explain that “B” was the right answer because the clause was modifying the correct noun even though it broke a grammar rule. I hate defending bad writing.

Did I get the refrigerator cleaned and washed? No. (Though I did throw out the scary food.) Instead, I helped Ariel get information sent off for a summer internship. You’d think that getting a transcript would be easy. At UTC, she just walks into the records office and they print one up. At Chatt State, she had to submit a request form and wait up to TEN days. And they don’t allow you to call and ask if it’s ready. And you actually have to drive down to the campus to find out. Seriously. When it was finally done, we had to fax everything. Except the fax machine was down at the site Ariel had to fax it to. It was finally back up five minutes before Ariel and Jake had to leave for class—Jake had his midterm waiting. He was doing the “I’d better not be late to my midterm.” I was promising, “You won’t be late. You won’t be late.”

So I’m looking forward to next week and getting back to writing. I never get anything done when I’m “relaxing.” 




N.B. If you're interested in discovering which character you're most like in Screwing Up Time, click here.

Vacation Photos

I promised some vacation photos. Here are a couple.

Ariel doing computer work in the car on the drive to NC.

The boys and a friend at an artillery park.

A photo of the moon rise last night at the beach. It's beautifully pink because there was a controlled forest fire going on.

I hope you enjoyed the photos. We're having a relaxing time.

The Game Philanthropist

We are into games. Probably because we don’t have cable. And probably because I’m very competitive. As a result, our entry closet is full of games—literally full. We own 75 games. That’s good and bad.

Last night, we decided to play a game. Matt and I wanted to play Power Grid. It’s a dominate-the-electrical/nuclear/trash-burning/hydroelectric-market of either the US or Germany—it’s a German game. But Jacob appeared to think playing that game might cause him sudden and instantaneous death. No doubt from electrocution. Luke wanted to play Killer Bunnies. I do NOT get that game. The point is to collect bunnies and carrots while other players dump weapon cards on you to kill your bunnies. Cards like fluorine gas, kitchen wisk, cruise missile prime, quite-irrascible-defractable-cheese-balls, stray asteroid, and nuclear warhead. (Yes, this game was obviously developed by unmarried male grad students in their mid-twenties, which explains why it appeals to Luke.)

We ended up playing Lord of the Rings Monopoly. My personal opinion is any version of Monopoly is equivalent to death-by-boredom. What makes it worse is that Luke peppers the game with random questions like “Who knows what the name of the Shards of Narsil were called when the blade was reforged?” Matt and Jake say simultaneously, “I know.” I say, “They renamed the sword?”

We ended up making a new rule. When you land on someone’s property you must announce it to them and pay them the rent. (Cal is always in his own world so the rule was made by him after he missed about 7 instances of rent.) Of course, this removes the one non-random aspect of Monopoly. So my competitive/sneaky streak died. I decided to become the Monopoly philanthropist. I didn’t build on my properties, and l loaned money to anyone who needed it without charging interest. Interestingly enough, I played the entire game without landing on anyone’s fortress (the LOTR Monopoly’s version of a hotel). I bragged about how I was being blessed for my philanthropic generosity. But the truth of the matter is that I spend most of my board time in jail, which is the best place to be in a killer game of Monopoly. 

Highlights

I’m writing this blog post pre-coffee so it’s probably going to be a bit skatter-shot. (Is that a word?) Maybe I shouldn’t be writing without coffee. Oh, well.

Here are the highlights of the weekend.

Friday: I weeded the grass. Why is that I can grow beautiful flowers and my grass looks scrofulous? I think it’s my neighbors’ fault. They both grow weeds and are allergic to lawnmowers. Luke used to mow the neighbor’s yard until he got frustrated that she never cleaned up her dog’s poop—it was like mowing a field of landmines. Maybe that’s why she doesn’t mow, the ground’s got to be solid dog poop by now.

Saturday: We watched the Derby. Everyone rooted for a different horse, except my 93 year old grandmother who wanted to cheer for the horse Matthew was rooting for—they yelled for Dialed In. We were all cheering for our horses, and then some horse named Animal Kingdom won. None of us were rooting for him. We didn’t even know his name. I guess that it’s good that none of us plays the ponies. We suck.

Saturday, later in the evening: After the race, we decided to watch a movie. My dad had never seen Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so we started it. My grandmother asked me, “Is this one of those Potter things?” I said, “Yes. Do you like them?” After making a Dutch expression of distaste that sounds like a cat gargling a fur ball, she said, “No, they are strange.”

For Mother’s Day, I got a lovely Cross pen with red ink. (I asked specifically for one.) My teacher/homeschooler friends and writing friends all know why, and I’m sure you’re drooling with envy. I am so tired of editing and correcting with those lame Papermate pens that run out of ink or goop it in piles across my manuscript pages. And even though I have a drawer of red pens, they disappear—stolen by my children who like red ink or don’t want to bother looking for a pen in their own pen box. And the cheap red ink pens that I do have get chewed on by a child who will remain nameless but has long blondish hair.  Now I have a pen that writes with a constant flow of ink, cannot be easily stolen because it’s distinctive looking, and it can’t be chewed because it’s metal. Yeah, baby! I’m moving up.

Friday Five plus one

Friday Five

Luke and Ariel finished their finals yesterday. I remember that there was always a surreal feeling afterwards. What are/were your five favorite things to do after exams are over?

1. Sleep in. Yesterday, Luke and Ariel announced they were sleeping in. Except they didn’t. They were both up earlier than during the school year.

2. Watch a movie. We saw The King’s Speech. When I was in college, my friends and I went to see Cinderella—lame, but this was in the days before the ubiquity of VHS.

3. Eat junk food. We had candy bars. Cal ate his in the first two minutes, then he wanted part of mine. I’m very protective of my peanut M&Ms. And selfish. I didn’t give him any.

4. Wrestle. Personally, I’ve never done this. But Luke and Matt have been wrestling almost constantly, though in all fairness, Matt is the instigator.

5. Clean. Personally, I’ve never had to clean after exams—I dealt with exam stress by cleaning. My room/apartment was always pristine during exams. Ariel’s room is also cleaner than it’s been in a long time. Luke, who’s normally neat, must have exploded something in his room—clothes, papers, books, notecards everywhere. He announced that he is cleaning this morning.

6. Yeah, I know this is supposed to be five, but I couldn’t resist. Number Six is Act Totally Weird. Matthew is currently practicing the piano and he and Luke are “singing.” Actually, they’re moaning in tempo to Dussek’s Sonatina and they’re calling themselves The Moaning Musicians.

We Laughed

Our power came back on Saturday, our phone and internet came back Sunday, and cell phone coverage is back to normal. One of things that back-to-normal has allowed is for us to see the devastation not only of places far away, but those nearby like Ringgold, GA.

But I’m reminded of something my grandmother said. My grandparents lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and suffered loss, hunger and betrayal. And in the midst of telling me about it, my grandmother said, “Never forget, we laughed.”  Not that the suffering wasn’t real or they had some kind of weird philosophy of pretending the pain didn’t exist, but that through it all they enjoyed what they could and not only survived the suffering but conquered it by God’s grace.

And even though what we’ve experienced may pale in comparison, I have some pleasant memories of the storms.

While Cal and I were feverishly putting together a generator to run the sump pump to keep the basement from flooding, the kids were bailing the basement with buckets by candlelight and singing. They sang a variation of a Zelda song to the water, “This is our house, this is our house. It’s not your house.”

Speaking of the generator, there’s nothing like two people trying to put together a mechanical thing by flashlight, especially when you have only one flashlight.

I’ll always have a mental picture of Luke and Ariel studying for finals by candlelight. They were sitting at the dining room table with every candle we own, which is a lot, and Luke was studying for Quantitative Analysis and Ariel was studying Sports Economics. (Yes, seriously, she hates sports but loves the professor.) I hope the professors take candlelight studying into account when they grade.

With the power outage, a local county lost the ability to pump water up to Lookout Mountain. So a local Christian college was told that they had 24 hours to empty campus. (Classes and finals were immediately cancelled.) One of the students came and stayed with us.  When you’re missing power, telephone, cellphone coverage, internet and water, homes that have water are palaces. Plus, we had fun huddled around a charged-up laptop, watching a Netflix disk episode of Merlin.

Now that things are back-to-normal, I guess we need to remember to laugh as we tidy up and pick insulation out of the rose bushes. 

Humpty-Dumpty

Yesterday was the major project day of spring break. After some cups of coffee, Luke and I started sanding the bathroom. Of course, we had the wrong grit of sandpaper—too fine. When I thought my arm would fall off, I found some courser sandpaper in the basement. Everything went well. Until I could no longer stand on a stool on top of the counter.

I wanted to sand the ceiling above the bathtub. Luke was sanding there, but it was the worst area so I decided to help. I put a barstool in the tub and then put a smaller stool on top of the barstool. Luke said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” The walls of the tub are sloped and the barstool rocked a bit. I said, “It’ll be fine.” And it was. Until it wasn’t. And then, I fell. Into the bathtub. And my arm bumped the faucet handles on the way down. So when I landed, cold water streamed out of the shower head on top of me.

Thankfully, Luke waited until I said, “I’m okay” before he started laughing. So I picked myself up, wrung out the edges of my shorts and tee-shirt, adjusted my goggles, and sanded the window frame. I let Luke finish the ceiling since he’s 6’1” and only needs to stand on a barstool to reach it.

Here are some photos.

Oh, the Places You Won’t Go

Two of our kids are on spring break, and two aren’t. Which means no vacation. It means we stay home, instead of visiting friends (Darren and Maggie, we’ll be by in August). But I can’t let an opportunity pass.  Luke + Ariel + vacation = slave labor.

Luke is the official dissection director. I did enough dissection in high school and college, plus I did dissection with Luke and Ariel. Now Luke is the teacher. He’s on his second student, Matthew. Apparently it’s going quite well and Matt is taking pictures of all the organs. EUW. 

Ariel is my spring break cruise director. She insists that I do fun stuff even though I’m not on vacation. She highlighted my hair. I did hers. I discovered that they give you those plastic gloves for a reason. At first my fingertips turned white. Eventually the color came back. But now they’re slippery. And I find myself wondering if you could use a peroxide-based chemical cocktail to “burn” the fingerprints off your fingers... Imagine.

Federal agent 1: Hmm, no fingerprints here. But there are traces of hydrogen peroxide, potassium persulfate, and sodium metasilicate.*

Federal agent 2: Sir, this must be the work of the nefarious highlighting terrorist.

Federal agent 1: Let’s stake out the nearest drugstore.

Of course, I have more plans for tomorrow. The bathroom ceiling needs to be sanded and repainted. (Note to Luke—this means me and you.) The only problem with this is that the ceiling is at least ten feet high. And our ladder won’t fit in the bathroom. So I’ll probably stack pieces of furniture on top of each other until I can reach the ceiling. At which point, Luke will explain to me why I am taking ridiculous chances. I will explain that it doesn’t matter because I have really good balance. Luke will say, “Does Dad know that you’re doing this?” And I will say, “Hey, Dad’s the one who does wiring without turning off the electricity.” Luke will sigh heavily and wonder how he can be the offspring of two such parents. But he’ll help me anyway.

I’m not sure what else Ariel has planned, but I’m sure it involves chocolate chip cookies, lattes with whipped cream, and dark chocolate. Which just goes to show you that you don’t need to go anywhere to have a perfect spring break.

* (I have no idea what that means. I just copied it off the box.)

Ultimate Secrets and Honesty

My son Luke is the ultimate secret keeper. If he doesn’t think he’s supposed to say something, he doesn’t. And there’s not even a hint of it on his face.

So when Luke said that something interesting happened last week, we listened.

Two bits of salient information: One, Luke is a teaching assistant in a chemistry lab at the university he attends. Two, Luke is scrupulously, painfully honest. If you ask him, “Does this skirt make me look fat?” and he thinks it does, he’ll say, “Yes, that skirt makes you look fat.” Luke hates dishonesty, even if it’s “polite.”

So last week, he was helping to oversee a midterm and noticed that a student was cheating. The student had a list of formulae on an index card slipped between his calculator and the calculator “slide.”

Luke reported it to the professor that runs the lab. The prof was a bit hesitant about doing anything immediately. The student had to be caught red-handed, documentation, etc. Luke continued to keep his eye on the student, who continued cheating. At one point, the student went to the professor’s desk to ask a question. Then, Luke grabbed the student’s calculator (everyone has their name on their calculator because they are so expensive), took it to the front of the room, slapped it on the prof’s desk, and pulled back the slide (revealing the crib note), and said to the student, “How do you explain this?”

The student came up with a lame excuse—the head professor gave him permission. The lab professor checked with the head professor, who had NOT given the student permission to cheat. Luke ended up being interviewed by the head professor. And the student was disciplined and had to go to the honor board.

At any rate, it became public today. And professors are now checking everyone’s calculator slide for cheat sheets during midterms.

But what amazes me is that while all this was going on last week, Luke never said a thing. Not one word. Now I wish I had some wonderful, amazing secret so I could tell Luke. But I don’t.

And the moral of the story is don’t cheat and don’t ask Luke if a particular skirt makes you look fat.

Real Math People

If you’ve grown up as the one non-math person in a math family, you probably know this. If not, this may be interesting to you.  Real math people don’t do numbers. Seriously.  In our family, I am the token non-math person, which means that I have to keep score when we play games. Kind of pathetic really, given that I reverse numbers.  Is it any wonder that I usually win games?

But this is what many serious math people are like. (I know since I have several non-math friends who grew up in math families.) The other day, Ariel was at the library finishing a matrix when Luke and Duncan arrived (they’d just finished Spanish class). Ariel said, “Quick, I’m almost done with this matrix. Tell me what’s 12 – 6?”  Duncan whose siblings are not total math geeks said, “uh, six.”

Luke, who has experience, said, “Seven.”

Ariel said, “It’s not seven because seven is odd. When you subtract an even number from an even number you get an even number.  I can write a proof for that. So, seven can’t be right.”

Duncan said, “How can you know the proof and not know that 12 – 6 = 6?”

Welcome to our world, Duncan.

It’s not usual while Ariel is doing homework to hear her call out, “What’s 8 x 4?”

I yell back, “32.”  Then I grumble about that state of her math facts ability.

This semester Ariel is so impressed with her Advanced Linear Algebra and Matrix Theory professor because he “can actually divide two digit numbers in his head.”  A lot of math profs can’t.  I refrain from saying, “I can divide in my head too” because I know it wouldn’t be nearly so impressive—I’m not a math person so apparently it’s not an accomplishment.

So those of you who can’t remember math facts...apparently you’re just real math people.  Aren’t you glad that you know?

It Feels Shorter

Yesterday evening we were driving to my parents’ house, and Cal turned off a different exit from the interstate and announced that he was taking a short cut.  As we took the short cut, Luke said, “You know, it’s not really a short cut because the vectors are the same.” Jacob wasn’t sure whether he agreed with Luke’s assessment and they began drawing diagrams on the van’s windows. Then, Cal said, “Yes, but there are fewer traffic lights.”  To which, Ariel said, “This is an urban economics’ issue that relates to the problem of distance versus time.” Then she said that traffic flow calculations could determine which route was faster. Luke and Jacob didn’t respond because they were too busy arguing over algorithms for curve analysis.  At one point, one of the three said, “But that doesn’t apply to real life.”

During the hullabaloo, Matt leaned forward and said, “I feel sadly left out.”  I told him not to worry, in another year or so he’d take his place in the math discussions. And then it will be only Cal and I who are left out.  Don’t worry about us though, we can always say that the short cut feels faster.

Finals, Snow, and Protest

Yesterday, it snowed.  Now if this had been five years ago when we lived in New England, we wouldn’t call this snow.  It would be a smidge of white dust.  But we’ve lived in Chattanooga for four and one half years now, and we’ve adjusted our expectations.  It is snow.

It was windy and the snow was light so that it danced across the roads in eddies and whorls.  We marveled and fell in love with snow all over again.  It was as if we got an early Christmas present.

The gift came with a downside though.  No, it’s not shoveling.  The accumulation is so minor that a broom would do.  The downside is that Luke had an eight o-clock final this morning.  It’s now been rescheduled to Wednesday.  He was supposed to be done with finals today and now his Christmas vacation has to wait two more days. 

Luke isn’t that upset about it.  He’s pretty prosaic.  But Ariel is upset for him.  She thinks that prof should just cancel the final, give the Luke “A” that he currently has, and move on with life.  She’s also incensed for the students who have plane tickets to go home on Wednesday and now may have to pay extra money and try to get their tickets changed.

But that’s not us. And maybe it’s no one.  What we’re hoping for right now is that the university will be open by 11am, which is when Luke’s next final is scheduled.  If it’s not, Ariel might be organizing a protest. 

Birthday Torte

 Today my oldest turns twenty.  How can he be twenty? I still feel twenty inside.  My outside doesn’t look twenty though. Hmm.  

Oh, well, the good news is that we get to eat chocolate torte. Everyone in the family gets chocolate torte for their birthday because:

1. It’s delicious. Of course, given that it’s made of butter, sugar, eggs, chocolate, and more chocolate, it would be hard to make it taste bad.

2. It’s gluten-free so I don’t have to make something different for Matt to eat. Not making two sets of food is so important to me that I don’t mind the fact that making the torte is the baking equivalent of the Ten Labors of Hercules. Melt the chocolate without burning it. Heat and chill a sugar syrup without crystallizing the sugar. Add beaten eggs to hot chocolate without having the eggs cook. Swathe a springform pan in plastic wrap and foil so that the water bath doesn’t melt the torte into a watery brown slop. (Aren’t you eager to make one?)

3. It lasts for days, theoretically. The torte is so rich and dense that I cut only thick slivers for pieces, which is perfect size for a chocolate fix. However, the kids are serious addicts and have discovered that if you wait about thirty minutes, you can eat another thick sliver. And thirty minutes after that, another. The torte doesn’t last long. But don’t worry, I’ll eat a piece for you.

Gnashing of Teeth

Nothing quite equals the gnashing of teeth provoked by college registration.  The university assigns registration times to different groups of students.  Luke got up before 6 am to register for next semester (For reasons know only to the UTC system, Ariel registered at 1pm yesterday—I’m not sure why, they’re both sophomores. The fact that she had early reg time caused outrage earlier this week.  I assured Luke that it was because they university doesn’t want to disturb the delicate balance of the math psyche by making them set an alarm.  I know you think I’m joking, but Ariel will back me up.  For example, most of her math professors actually have bottles of prescription medication in lines across their desk. And it’s not antibiotics.)

Sorry for the digression. When I got up to make coffee, Luke was grumbling.  I asked how registration went.  He said that Organic Chemistry was already full at 6 am, and he couldn’t get into the class.  So, theoretically, sophomore Chem majors can’t get into the class.  It’s a sophomore class. And since UTC only offers O Chem 1 in the fall and O Chem 2 in the spring, you’d think they’d know how many students to expect.  I suggested Luke Force Add the class.  He said you can’t.  Fire laws limit the number of students in labs.  Oh, right.  Are the profs planning to fail a lot of students, and thus don’t need the extra labs?  If so, they should tell the students not to register for spring.  Of course, more likely they will add labs.  But why not do it before reg when it helps to plan your other classes? 

But I think I’ve discovered the answer.  Unlike math majors, who need their balance maintained, the university wants chemistry majors to learn flexibility.  After all, these are people who measure meticulously.  They tend to do everything precisely. At two, Luke had a fastidiously organized his sock drawer (even separated by day socks and night socks).  He was so tidy that when he and Ariel shared a room (they were very young), her idea of cleaning up was dumping her mess on Luke’s side so he’d clean it up.

In other words, the whole registration fiasco is really an attempt at character building by the university.  Hehe.  I suspect Luke won’t appreciate my interpretation.