This will be me this weekend, I guess.

Confound you, Mr. W! I was having fun watching movies and playing with toys, and now you've gone mussed it all up with a truckload of those dag-nabbed equations you love so much.

*sigh*

Well, at least I have the weekend to figure the stuff out . . .

or, well, . . . at least I have the weekend to rack my brain until I give up and go mooch the knowledge offa somebody else - which is the more likely thing to occur.
Much more likely, in fact.

Have a great weekend, everyone!
You are now having more fun than I am.

Hugs,
Em

WAVES

They really are beautiful things.
Although, I must say, I never appreciated them as much as I do now.

Why, you ask?
Because they've given me an opportunity to watch movies and play with toys in lab class.
That's why.

I mean, seriously, you can't say this Bell Labs Wave machine doesn't look like a ton of fun.

Even so it's not half so much fun as watching one ofthese thingys.

It's called a Wilburforce Pendulum. You start the process by pulling on the big weight and of course, being on a spring, it bobs up and down. After a short while the little weights (the little clear disks attached to the metal rods) start spinning round and round. As these little weights start spinning faster and faster the big weight bobs less and less, then it stops altogether for a moment while the little weights spin like mad. Then the big weight starts bobbing again (without further human intervention), and the weights spin less and less until it's back to all bobbing and no spinning. The it does it all over again for quite some time. More or less, it's like a really weird coupled pendulum. I haven't been able to figure out if it's generated by a wave or not, though - if it is, I don't know what kind of wave it would be.

So anyway, just thought I'd let everyone know that . . .

I'm having more fun than you are!
HA!

Lots of love,
Em

We started to think about leaving when . . .

. . . it got to lookin' like this.

This photo was taken by a resident of Santa Paula, along the 150 (the highway that goes past our campus) on Saturday evening.

Then, when it got to looking like this, at about 10:30,

the fire chief said, "You might want to evacuate the students."
and our dean said, "We're getting 'em out of here."

So all 350 of us ended up at a Red Cross evacuation post in Saticoy, watching this

creep over the mountain side.

I have to say that really wasn't very fun.

The faculty and staff took groups of students to their homes.
In the end, only about 30 or so students had to sleep on the Red Cross cots.
I went to stay with Mr. B and family - they were very kind to take in 10 students like that, especially when four of them showed up at
2:30 a.m.

Although, I must say I do wish they didn't have quite so many cats.
*Ah-choo!*

It's now noon on Monday, and we've been officially un-evacuated.
The campus is fine.
There's still smoke, but I hear they have the fire under control.

And I tell you WHAT - I sure hope so.

So, yes, I've experienced yet another natural disaster.
I'm getting quite a list:
tornadoes (three of them, to be specific), floods (two of them),
an earthquake (it wasn't big enough for me to feel it, though, dag nab it), and now, fires.
Next year I'm probably going to gain hurricanes, too.
Horray for life-endangering disasters!
NOT.

Lots of love to everyone!
Please pray we stay put this time.

Em

I have . . .

. . . well, something turned in. It's not much, but it's something.

A strange occurence: I conversationally explained my general thesis topic to my laboratory tutor, Mr. W, this morning, and he came up with a whole bunch of info adressing exactly what I wanted to ask. -?- I think I underrated this astro-physicist of mine. He had a lot of great points, and gave me a copy of his notes from way back when, which outlined much more clearly what question it is, primarily, that I need to ask and also how I need to go about answering it. I'm getting close to forgiving him for his smart comments about my math skills or, well, the lack thereof. He's almost got himself back to a zero on the score card. I'd still put him at about a -2, but I'd say he's working his way up pretty quick.


In the meantime, I need to read Faust like mad.

Lots of love to everyone - especially you, darling. It's less than three months now!
Em

still stressed . . .

Feeling a little bit like this pooch.

This could be a looooong night, at this rate.
Why does everything always happen at once?

In Christ,
Emmers

P.S.This is happenning very close to us.
Do say a few prayers - evacuating sounds like such a pain.

Exhausting week so far

I apologize for neglecting my blog, but my thesis proposal is due a week from yesterday and I still have only vague ideas of what I'm going to do! I'll write when things settle down a bit.

Lots of love to everybody,
Em

The Maxim

Mr. R. said something very interesting this week:

NEVER AFFIRM, SELDOM DENY, ALWAYS DISTINGUISH.

Evidently it's a well-known T.A.C. tutor maxim. I've never heard it (or at least never fully registered it) until this year. It explains a lot about these men who form my mind . . . especially as regards Mr. R., my freshman philosophy tutor.

*Flashback to my first Don Rag*

Mr. R.: "Miss H. is a very interesting girl. Although she is wrong more often than anyone else in her class, I admire her ability to speak up no matter how serious her state of error of confusion may be. Really - I mean that as a compliment! Most people would not have that kind of persistence."

Now, Mr. R. did also say that my confusion had decreased since the dawn of Aristotle (up to that point we had been reading Plato, who I neither understood nor cared for), and he said that if I were going to be confused on philosophy it was better to be confused on Plato, so I didn't end up crying in the end. But, somehow, I still had a hard time taking the "Miss H. is wrong more often than anyone else in her class . . . " comment as a flattering statement. :)

Nevertheless, I think I'm going to needlepoint this maxim onto a pillow for our couch.
It's a good conversation starter, no?

This week has been fairly difficult for me. I've had a capability to focus ranking at about -20 (if any presumptious classmate wants to argue in my comments about the existence of negative numbers in act I want to warn them: I know where you sleep - every last one of you.), thinking of the future and how wonderful it will be. On top of that ititial distraction I've been trying to read Kant - an author I've never been able to understand while I was reading him. (Fortunately Mr. O. understood him, though, and explained him in seminar so that I won't die from a heart attack during my seminar final. I can just see Mr. S. looking down on my dead body with intellectual disgust. *shiver* How can someone be so cute and yet so, so . . . cruel?).

Then, while I was grappling with the Kant reading I took a break to go visit my thesis advisor, Mr. B., who handed me a pile of reading on Husserl. "Noooooooo!!!!" Okay - I must say writing a thesis arguing against an author whom the tutors claim they don't understand at all (and who I'm not even slated to read for seminar until after my thesis is DUE)- - this is not a happy state of affairs. I'll read the material but I think I'm going to suggest an alternative approach to my thesis. I'm supported in this by Mr. W., my academic advisor, who was very practical and helpful on the matter, thank goodness. With Mr. W., as my practical guide and Mr. B. as my think-tank things are looking up . . . I think. . . . maybe . . .

I'm going to have to read a pile of thesis research material, Kant, and Emma this weekend, while also getting together a group for the L.O.M. curia meeting, and helping my class with the Sr./Freshman Beach Party and Dance.

I hope I survive, that's all I can say.

Much love to everyone. Hope everything is going well.
My love, I will call you SOON - honest.

Emily

I really want . . .

. . . this dress.

I'm having a hard time thinking up how exactly I'm going to get it made, though.

*Sigh*
Oh, the burdens of the bride.

Much love
Emily

This morning I addressed an inquiry to my newly engaged classmate, Mary, concerning her plans for the future. It turns out that her fiance is hoping to be accepted to the same graduate program that my fiance is currently enrolled in. So, it seems that my fiance and I will probably be living in the same tiny little town, quite likely in the same block . . . heck, possibly even in the same apartment building, with two of my current classmates for the next six years. Mary and I will probably even have children at about the same time, if all goes well biologically.

!

That is weird.
This getting older thing is just plain freaky.

And I'm not the only one who thinks so, either.

Last night a girl in my dorm yells from the upstairs commons, "Emily! Do you know that this time next year you could be pregnant?!?!"

Now, see, this whole intra-class engagement thing has made everyone freak out.
Of course I'd thought of that. Does that notion unsettle me? Well, yes, a little, but not in a bad way. I am quite conscious of the realistic possibility, and I'm very much hoping for it, in fact. This reality had not occurred to this girl yet, though, and she seemed rather shaken, the poor thing. It's time for another big change, and that can be frightening for everyone.

And now for something completely different:

I received some good news from my thesis advisor today - he's been talking to Mr. N and Mr. P about my thesis and they have a bunch of stuff they want me to read. All I did was ask Mr. B to be my advisor and here I am, the lucky possessor of a whole thesis committee. This is a good thing - - especially since those two other tutors are likely candidates to end up on my defense board. If they have a hand in the formation of my thesis they are going to be much less likely to complain. :)

Well, anyhoo, I need to go study.
Big hugs to everyone (especially you, my love),

Emily

Engagements

. . . have officially begun.

The members of my class have started proposing to one another.
There have been two other members of my class engaged before now (including me), but the men involved in those engagements were graduates - not seniors.
Last night the first senior-to-senior proposal took place, and was accepted.

So, it's congrats to Mary and Paul.
It's a prefectorial alliance (like that's never happened before).

There was FAR too much screaming and hollering for my taste, though. An engagement is so personal - I was more inclined to let people notice by chance, one at a time. Well, that and I don't think it's very nice to make anyone think you might be flaunting it. I don't think anyone is actually doing that right now, but I know that sensitive young ladies who really want to be married will take it that way. I tried to be extra considerate of them.

I've been so blessed.
A prayer of thanksgiving is the only appropriate celebration for such a thing.

I cannot believe we're getting so freakishly old.
*sigh*

There are SO many things to post about.
I'll have to post again later.

Much love to you all
Em