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Partially changing
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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in the "Mathieu" journal:[<< Previous 20 entries]
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01:36 am
[Link] | Late-night discussions give me more faith in humanity.
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04:00 pm
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Lunch
Toast two slices of whole wheat bread. Mix together one large glob each of cream cheese and nutella, then spread on the bottom slice of bread. Crush four walnut halves over the spread. Peel and slice a banana, adding two rows to the sandwich. Put a generous layer of peanut butter on the top slice of bread and cut the whole thing in two.
On the same plate, put a handful of romaine lettuce with a dash of olive oil. Cut up a tomato from the neighbour's garden on top, and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper.
Now you have a main dish and a side dish, so all you need is a drink. For a strawberry smoothie, take a couple of spoonfuls of double fruit strawberry jam, half a cup of vanilla yogurt, and a spoonful of honey. Mix with a hand blender to get a very smooth drink indeed.
Sit down and enjoy. When you realize that this was just a bit too much, have some maple tea to help with digestion.
Current Mood:  full
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07:01 pm
[Link] |
Inspired by ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) telso
I hope the chapel bells play the Colby song again tomorrow.
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12:11 pm
[Link] | I came out to my parents this week. They seemed to take it well enough (which I expected, but still makes me glad). When I told my mother, she asked a few questions, we discussed a bit, and we hugged. When I told my father, he suggested in several ways that it was probably just a phase, and that upset me some. Still, I have it pretty good, especially compared to a friend of mine whose parents yelled at after eavesdropping on phone conversations.
In other news, exams have been over for a week, and I got most of my grades back: very satisfactory. I'm just missing one grade, but it's the one I'm most worried about. Also, I started my Summer research project. There are four other students with Darmon. We met Monday to choose projects, and Friday we presented our topics to one another. It's been very enjoyable so far.
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07:31 pm
[Link] | I spent the whole of last weekend writing up my number theory project. I finished typing my last assignment Tuesday. Wednesday was the last day of classes for the semester. I had my first two finals Thursday morning and Friday morning (Programming Languages and Abstract Algebra 2, which went reasonably well). I still have four finals to go over the next two weeks, and then I'll be done with school for the Summer.
All of this should be cause for celebration (or maybe relief), but instead I've been feeling down. I'm not sure what exactly is causing this; though I have some theories, none of them is convincing me. Maybe this is just an extension of my disinterest with schoolwork, which started a few weeks back. Maybe the constant pressure of assignments due over the last eight months gave me a sense of structure, accomplishment, and purpose, and now I'm left with nothing planned, nothing to do. Maybe my lack of sleep finally caught up with me. Maybe I'm subconsciously apprehensive about my Summer research program, because I have no idea what I'll be doing, and I'm prone to fears of inadequacy. Maybe it's because I think I have a boyfriend, but he's too busy studying for us to meet and talk and clarify things right now. Maybe it's because I'm going on exchange next year, and I just realised there are a bunch of people I won't see for a long time.
Whatever it is, I'm sure I'll get over it, though, especially since we've been having gorgeous weather recently. All of the snow has melted a while ago now, which is very unusual. Today, I went on my first bike ride of the Summer, and it really felt like Summer (at one point, the thermometre indicated 17 degrees Celsius, but it felt even warmer than that with the sun shining).
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08:15 pm
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Happy Pi Day!
Last Friday, some people in the math lounge mentionned pi day, so I made apple pies yesterday and brought some to the math lounde today. Baking them was fun, but it took me most of the day (with some help from my mom and my sister), and now they're all gone. At least people enjoyed it.
Current Mood: cheerful
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11:00 pm
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Hurray!
Things have been going very well recently (in part because I rested during Reading Week, probably), and I just got two very good news by email: both my student exchange to Waterloo and my NSERC Summer research applications have been accepted! Now, all I have to do is go in and fill in some more forms.
Other good things:
-Last Friday, I missed a good friend's birthday party because I didn't check my email all week (this is what happens when my regular schedule breaks down). This in itself is not good, but to make it up, I had dinner with him Monday and spent the evening chatting about philosophy and stuff. Very enjoyable.
-Wednesday, I went with my family to see a play, Forces, at the Quat'Sous theatre. This was my brother's Christmas present to us. I think we were all surprised when it started, because it was so strange; the husband, the wife, the male friend and the female friend were all dressed in white, and they all stood still in an empty decor saying very loosely connected words and punctuating them with weird gestures. We managed to piece together a significant part of it by the end, and we had a good discussion about it. Also very enjoyable.
-Tomorrow, I'll be going to my first gay party, Queers and Steers. I've started getting involved in Queer McGill, the club organising it. I'm really excited about it, and I hope everything goes well.
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06:48 pm
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Another funeral
The year 2005 isn't starting well for my mother. First her mother-in-law died, then her oldest brother, and then one of her best friends' father. Today was the showing for her brother. I've only seen him a handful of times in my life, so I'm not feeling too bad, but she's pretty sad.
More bad news: I just checked my email, and I missed a friend's birthday party last Friday. I wasn't on my usual schedule for Reading Week, so I forgot to check my email the whole week. Argh! I really want to have been there!
It's back to school tomorrow morning at 8:30, so I should finish up my homework and go to bed. Good night!
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08:06 pm
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Surprise
Today, I went for a haircut. I didn't tell anyone where I was going, so they were all pretty surprised when I came back with short hair! I don't have pictures yet, but I'll try to get some soon. I think I like it, and my family likes it. I wonder what people will say next week when the break is over.
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04:27 pm
[Link] | It's reading week! Yay!
This past week, I've been pretty good with homework. I did a large part of it during the weekend, and then I put the finishing touches on Monday and Tuesday. They weren't due until Friday, but I handed them in on Wednesday anyways. I wanted to really be free of any deadlines for movie night in the engineering lounge on Thursday. That turned out okay, even though one of the movies wasn't shown for technical reasons, and throughout the movie one of 'Lots of people are noisy' or 'I am alone in the audience' was true. I thought it was a good way of celebrating having written four of my six midterms. Then, on Friday, my last class of the day was cancelled, so I spent some time on campus before going home earlier than usual.
Now, I made a long list of (mostly small or unimportant) things to do during the week. I expect I'll skip many items, but at least I'll do some of them.
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10:37 pm
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A funeral and a play
( A funeral. )
( A play. )
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07:20 pm
[Link] |
Goodbye
Régine Gosselin, born on January 26, 1921, widow, mother of three, grandmother of eight and soon to be great grandmother, died on Saturday, February 5, 2005. She lived a long and good life with no regrets, loving and loved by her family and friends. She spent her last moments peacefully, surrounded by her three sons and her last living sister. Thankfully, she neither suffered of her illness for a long time, nor left this world unprepared. May God have her soul, and may she rest in peace.
I will miss her.
Current Mood:  sad
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09:32 pm
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The applications beast has been slain...
... and I have dragged its carcass to the proper administrative units. It was a two-headed beast (both NSERC and student exchange had close-ish deadlines). I cut off its NSERC head last week, and yesterday (now two days ago) I smote its exchange head. It's been eating away at me for a number of weeks now, and I can't begin to describe the feeling of elation and lightness that I've been feeling since. It's so good not to have deadlines hanging over my head anymore! I can finally concentrate on other stuff like sleep, homework and personal project. Yay!
Current Mood: relieved
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08:40 pm
[Link] | Today:
- I finally got around to getting faculty permission to go on exchange;
- I still don't have an NSERC supervisor, but I discussed a couple of Putnam problems with a prof;
- I learned about Montgomery domains from someone in an electronic engineering class.
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11:48 pm
[Link] | Lots of stuff going on, what with school being what it is, especially during that special time of the year when I have to apply for all sorts of stuff. However, all of that will have to wait for another entry. (Let me just mention in passing that I am finally doing the application stuff, that I am looking for a math NSERC supervisor, that I may have one instead in cs, that I went to a Queer McGill meeting, and that I joined the games guild.)
In spite of all these good things happening, tonight I cried for the first time in a long while. My grandmother, who's been living mostly with my family for as long as I can remember, has been diagnosed with some kind of lung-cancery sickness related to asbestos last Spring, and in the last few weeks, she's become incredibly weak. Still, even though she was tired, she could still live at home with some help from us. Today, however, she became much weaker still, to the extent that she can't walk more than a few steps (I'm not even sure she can walk at all, since I've only seen her in bed tonight), so she's going to the hospital tomorrow, and after that she'll go to a nursing home. It's really sad seeing her this feeble, and still worried about getting everyone their birthday cards in time on top of it. What makes me the most sad, however, is knowing that in the next few days, I could see her for the very last time. Her condition was deteriorating very slowly until now, so I had only started acknowledging the fact that she was dying a couple of days ago, and now everything seems to be going faster. At least, tonight I made sure to tell her that I loved her, since it had been far too long since I had actually said it. Whatever the last moments I spend with her are, I'll try to make sure I don't regret anything.
Anyways, sorry for a depressing post, but this is in part why I have a livejournal: to write about the important events in my life. It helps to write about it, and I feel like I have your support.
Current Mood: depressed
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11:55 am
[Link] | Last Friday, I forgot to post about this, and then yesterday there was the power failure. Better late than never, right?
Friday was pretty awesome. It was the last day of the student society's used book sale, so I swung by to look for textbooks during my morning break. I didn't find anything interesting on that front (they only had one of the textbooks I'm thinking of buying, and it wasn't cheaper than getting it new at the bookstore), but I stumbled upon the complete works of Oscar Wilde, which I got for only 15$. I leafed through a few pages, and it looks like it's good stuff.
After class, I had organised a game of Diplomacy, and even though a couple of people had cancelled, we ended up being seven players anyways! I got to use to board I made last year, too. I was England, and since Germany was all too obviously trying to get everyone to backstab everyone, France and I cooperated. Russia made a really agressive first move (he went against Austria-Hungary, Turkey and Germany all at once, it seemed), he didn't do so well. I tried to get his help, but we pretty much only stayed neutral for a while. Turkey managed to push back Russia, and eventually gained Sevastopol. Italy got into Trieste on the first turn, and got Serbia on the second turn. Austria-Hungary didn't do too well, so he was the first to go, and not long afterwards Germany died. Russia wasn't looking too good when we stopped playing, for lack of time.
At some point during this, we ordered way too much pizza. You'd think a bunch of people in the math lounge could compute prices and how much everyone should be paying, but everyone was pretty confused. I ended up just paying for the whole thing, and selling slices to the others. I almost got stuck with a whole pizza at the end (which I would have brought home, I guess), but another group of people came in the math lounge before going to see Elektra, and I sold it to them. Even though we didn't finish the game, I think everyone had fun, and the general consensus was that we should do this again.
The people going to the movie invited me, but I decided against it, and instead I went home and taught my family how to play Euchre. Much fun was had, but the whole day got me tired, and I slept until Saturday noon. The mystery hunt is still going, I think, and I did look at some of the puzzles, but somehow I'm not getting into it. I may try to participate more next year, but for now I need to do homework.
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10:48 pm
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First day of school
Today was my first day of school, and it followed the MWF schedule to balance out holidays with the TR schedule. I had:
-Algebra 2, which is basically the honours continuation of the algebra 1 class, and has a lot fewer students. Hopefully, the pace will be significantly faster than the previous course, but in any case Darmon is a good lecturer, and he gives interesting homework.
-Analysis 2, which is (you guessed it) the honours continuation of analysis 1, but with a different teacher in this case. It's really awesome! The teacher is sort of mean in an entertaining way, he goes really fast (and he mentioned vector bundles to scare us a bit), he uses the French notation for intervals (i.e. [a,b] or ]a,b] or [a,b[ or ]a,b[), and he has a great British accent (or a close relative thereof). I can't say I approve of it pedagogically (unless it ends up working), but I'm certainly enjoying it so far. Oh, and he has good notes online.
-Number theory. It's interesting stuff, and the teacher seems nice enough, if a bit awkward. We'll see how it goes. Oh, and I might have to actually buy the book for this one.
-Programming languages and paradigms. It looks like cool stuff, the teacher is a good enough lecturer so far, and I get to use Scheme! That's just unspeakably cool.
I took a slight course overload this semester, because I'd really like to take number theory, and I figure I still have two weeks to decide if I want to keep it or drop it. So far, though, I think I'll keep it.
Afterwards, I went to Sums and hung out with people. We played cards for a bit, and someone asked about the optimal strategy for linear phutball (he's making a simple AI for regular phutball). Even though an extra week or two of time off would have been appreciated, it's good to be back.
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12:39 am
[Link] | I don't have time for anything else right now (I haven't been near a computer in days, and I'm not staying near one for long), so Happy Belated Christmas and Merry New Year to everyone!
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10:07 pm
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Putnam!
I was getting scared about it, but the Putnam turned out to go really well. I think I got four of the morning questions, and five of the afternoon questions, which is way more than I hoped for. In between the two halves, we went out to eat dim sum, paid for by the math department.
Even more happiness comes from the fact that yesterday was the last day of classes for the term. Hooray! Now, I have five exams, and I think I have to review for two, and study for three. But now, I can sleep.
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07:22 pm
[Link] | This morning, when going to school, I had a few lines from the opera summary of the third season of Reboot, a really fun animated show I used to watch. I had my last classes of AdCal and ODEs, which felt sort of funny. Even if they're long awaited, endings always sort of pinch my heart. Then, I went back to the math lounge to eat and play. By some twist of luck, we started talking about chinese chess, and someone remembered he had a board on him, so I played a few games. Meanwhile, someone else started playing cows with guns, which kinejoshua had showed me a while ago. Right after that, ztbb popped up for a surprise visit. Unfortunately, we didn't talk much, because I had games going and he had a seminar. Still, it was a special moment. All of these events today really fit together to bring out a feeling of nostalgia.
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